SKot said:
I'm not sure exactly when McQuarrie painted the original piece, but I believe it was well before production began on the Holiday Special, and served as an inspiration for the show. I'm guessing it was earlier in 1978, when ideas were being thrown around for the Special.

Yeah.... It's just that, given all the neat pre-production images he did, many wildly different from what actually made it into the film, there's the dream that it was a conception of the plan for Jedi: a planet of Wookiees.

Not unlike my first thoughts when I saw the partially built Death Star II. Wasn't a clear picture, and I didn't know a new one was being built, so my mind leapt to an interesting conclusion: it was the shell of the original station, the part opposite the direction of the blast that destroyed it. The Imperials had found it, were refurbishing it....

Neither dream true, of course. But pleasant alternate realities.