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Blu-Ray and other HD box size STAR WARS covers — Page 9

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Video Collector said:

I said to myself, I'm not gonna do a Star Wars set. Everyone else is doing it. And if I WAS gonna do a Star Wars set, I certainly wasn't doing a Drew set. Everyone is doing a Drew set...

*sigh*















Seeing as I am the biggest Star Wars nerd on the Northern Hemisphere (check out my Star Wars Video collection at www.swonvideo.com) I just couldn't help myself.

It HAD to be the Drew Struzan posters. For one thing, that's about the only set that unifies all six movies. Mixing and matching posters from several different artists makes it difficult to make a cohesive set. Then there's the fact that the Drew posters are bloody excellent (almost, but I'll get to that later).

I usually start off these ramblings by complaining there's a lack of available Hi-rez images on the net for my projects. Well, for Star Wars there's a tonne of it. Still, I wanted to have textless versions of the posters to work with, and I needed to modify them so I wanted as much resolution as possible. I cracked open my Drew artbooks and scanned the posters myself. Some of them didn't fit the scanner so I had to scan in segments and stitch them together afterwards. I also wanted the original, unaltered version of Drew's Ep.3 poster and that is nowhere to be found online. It took me a day (out of three working on this project), but in the end I had pristine, 600dpi scans of the posters to sink my teeth into.

The challenge with the Drew posters is that they are formatted to fit a rectangular theatrical poster, which doesn't really fit the almost square front of a Blu-Ray cover. I see a lot of custom conversions of the Drew posters struggle with this, so I first had to modify all six posters to fit the proportions of Blu-Ray. Luckily, Drew included a rectangular frame in all the posters' design, so I used that as a starting point. I had to cut off some ships and characters from the bottoms of all the posters, and move the bottom frame up. I formatted all six posters to have an identical frame size, doing my best to preserve as much of the original compositions as possible. (Lopping of the bottom third of all the posters throws them somewhat out of whack, the center being lost, but they still work.) I discovered that Drew had been somewhat inconsistent with the size of those frames, especially between the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy posters, so that proved quite a challenge. To cap off the artwork and make it seem like it was originally finished at the bottom, I added a gold frame. This frame also replaced all the different frames between the posters, thus making them more of a unified whole.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, the Episode 3 poster does not have the same, obvious frame around it as the other posters do. Well, not the commercially released posters anyway. I had to go back to Drew's original version for Ep.3's poster, predating the hackjob the marketing gerbils did on it to squeeze a larger Darth Vader in there. Drew's version of the poster had the frame just fine.

Originally I was doing black covers for these, because black is the only single colour that goes with all six posters. The prequels are rendered in warm, golden tones while the original trilogy posters are colder. I found the black background to be bland in the extreme, so I decided to do a textured, coloured background instead. I tried to make all the covers crimson/gold, but ultimately I had to split up the set in two sections using blue as a background for eps. 4-6. I would have preferred them all to be the same base colour since it brings all the spines together beautifully, but I wasn't going to settle for black. No way.

For the background I used a NASA still of a Nova, tilted it on it's side and duplicated it back and front. To give it some texture I overlaid a leather texture image I googled. The Nova already had the red/golden hues I was looking for so I didn't need to modify that for the prequels. For the OT, I shifted the hue and saturation of the Nova towards a pale blue.

The one-sheets had to be isolated from their background to seamlessly fit on the covers. I used the colour-selection tool to isolate most of the blacks, then touched up the finished mask by hand. A lot of work, and I bet everyone takes it for granted. This removed Drew's signature for all the paintings, and I wanted to retain that, so I isolated his signature from the Ep.4 poster and put it on a separate layer from the artwork. That way it is consistent between all the posters. I found myself masking out most of Drew's paint-splatter stars, as they were conflicting with the stars from the Nova background, and frankly some of them just look like schmutz.

I mentioned a reservation about these posters' greatness earlier, and to me, the posters for Eps 1, 2 and 4 are just too hot, colourwise. It may just be in the way they are printed, but I toned down the redish skin on all of them. I still couldn't approximate anything approaching natural skin tones for Qui Gon on the first poster. I know it irks Drew when someone second guesses his choices (as would any artist) but I took that liberty. For Obi-Wan's lightsaber on the Ep.1 poster I replaced it with the one from the Ep.2 poster. It's still all Drew artwork, but that feeble, anemic, pointy lightsaber from the Ep.1 poster had to go. :)

When making a set, as opposed to a single cover, I want to remain as consistent between covers as possible. This poses certain challenges when the artwork on all is going to be different. When placing the Star Wars logo on the front, I had to find a position that would remain the same across all covers, yet not obscure anything important on the different posters. I was largely successful, but poor Boba Fett got shafted on the Jedi cover. It just couldn't be helped. (Actually it could, I could have moved him to a different part of the painting, but I am just too knackered to perform that kind of precision surgery.)

The logo I opted for is one I first saw a year or so back, a slightly modernized version of the standard logo. I can't for the life of me find out who made it, but I see it used on the wallpaper sites everywhere. Anyone recognize it? It had to be a stacked version for the front, a horizontal version would obscure too many elements on the posters. For the spine I split it up and modified the leg of the "R" to follow the lines of the following "W". It's just a small thing, but it seemed in keeping with the other letters. I redrew the entire logo with the same gold/brown I used for the poster borders. I put in some shadow and highlight effects by hand to make it a little richer looking. I used that same colour for other elements on the spine and back, to tie the whole thing together.

For the actual titles of the films, I used a sans-serif font to complement the logo. It had to be readable against the logo, so I used a black glow effect to make it stand out more. I use the glow effect a lot when I need the text to be legible against a busy background. I find using a glow is more flexible than a standard stroke around the letters. The same font was then used for the text on the spines. Consistency is the word.

The roman numerals on the spine are rendered with the Emboss and Satin blending options from the layer pallette, as is the word "Episode". The titles themselves are so wordy, there's hardly room for much else on the spines.

The backs would be identical for all six, so once I established that template, it was just a matter of plopping in the images in their assigned placement and size. I still struggle with the backs, so I made three versions of them before I was satisfied. They're still a bit "boxy", and I am ambivalent about the gold frame I used, but it ties the back and front together so beautifully. The gold and crimson theme I used made the covers seem a bit excessively ornamental, sort of like baroque art. This called for a slightly elegant font for the  specs (I believe I used Bangle, don't quote me on that because I can't be bothered opening the PSD files to check). For the summary I used a narrow sans-serif font ("TW Cent" something...) to set it apart from the other text on the back. Typography doesn't come naturally to me, so maybe these mixes clash to a more trained eye. Let me know, OK?

BTW, where do you guys take the summary blurb from? I always use what's on the official releases, in this case the DVDs, and just add or subtract text to fit my needs (and remove the worst spoilers). This is where typos creep in, so if there are any, do let me know. Good thing a scan of the actual Blu-Ray back surfaced, so I could get the specs and running times right.

When choosing images for the back I wanted to, like I always do, feature as many different characters as possible. I made a point of including Jar-Jar for the first one. It's kind of tongue-in-cheek, but also that I feel sorry for the guy getting the short end of the stick from everyone. I like him just fine, and if there was room I'd have put him on the spine just to spite the haters. That's also why the Ewoks are centered on the Jedi cover. Come on, who doesn't love the Ewoks? Really. I mixed some lesser known photos with the same, stale PR photos we've seen in every article about Star Wars for the last thirty years. Usually I'd avoid them like the plague, but that Falcon cockpit shot from ANH is pure nostalgia.

As always I used Illest Villains template for this, but for once I redid the legal copy to reflect the actual Star Wars property. I added the artwork credit for Drew Stuzan, as well as a Package Design credit for myself.

That's it. Took me three whole days. A custom three-disc for the bonus discs is forthcoming, but for now this is all I have. If you appreciate these long write-ups for my covers, let me know. I enjoy writing about them just as much as making them. I'd love to read about other designers' processes as well.

Okay, High Rez JPEGs of these are available by PM.

 

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Hello everybody, I'm looking for ".psd" case file like this, can anybody share me or help me to find this? :D

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 (Edited)

Since I grabbed an Episode 2 while I was getting A New Hope, I'm being forced (by myself) to create matching versions of my covers for the prequels. I'll post them once I finalize the snarky bottom paragraphs. Still debating on using comparison images (which aren't very noticeable for the prequels) or just humorous images from the movies. I think I'll leave the movie description straight and use funny images from the films. I'll even create the "Extra-Snarky" versions of the OT.

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Star Wars Visual Comparisons WordPress

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Back to the basics...

 

Galatians 2: 20: I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

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Here is my prequel set based on the official disc art:

http://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-_cmQb45wMIc/T4_wi6sa2RI/AAAAAAAAK40/YyDas20e-Vc/s640/005BD-Ep1.jpg

http://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-9H1TbQVsCNE/T4_xztvw-OI/AAAAAAAAK5A/EUK9RrF7gtg/s640/005BD-Ep2.jpg

http://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-wWOXWr2oHKo/T4_zApq2fNI/AAAAAAAAK5M/dfY5fRw4PjY/s640/005BD-Ep3.jpg

They're available for download here. If you select a cover, once it goes full screen you can go to "Options" at the bottom and "Download full size".

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Coov said:

Back to the basics...

This is sharp COOV......

 

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Finding Harmy's or Eye Shot First's blu ray covers/labels are proving to be pretty dang difficult.

 

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

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EyeShotFirst said:

Ok, these are the new and improved covers, with disk art that doesn't have a template over it. I fixed grammar, and hopefully any issues with color, though my monitor isn't the best judge. The box is being postponed.

http://www.mediafire.com/?liswvrpo76uz6nh

{NOTICE: This preview was made before errors were brought to my attention, but it is pretty much what you get}

As I stated before, if you have any problems with the link, give a shout.

ESF, any chance you'd re-upload these?  I'll archive them with the rest of the ones I've got in case anyone else needs them.

Thanks

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Hey everyone! I'm new here. I just picked up both trilogy's on bluray from Amazon and I need to make new covers for them. Video Collector's is the best I've seen so far, I PM'd him but he hasn't been online in a little while.

Does anyone else have his covers they can PM or email me? I'd appreciate it.

 

Thanks for the help! :)

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RockMax said:

Hey everyone! I'm new here. I just picked up both trilogy's on bluray from Amazon and I need to make new covers for them. Video Collector's is the best I've seen so far, I PM'd him but he hasn't been online in a little while.

Does anyone else have his covers they can PM or email me? I'd appreciate it.

 

Thanks for the help! :)

Hi everyone. I'm never away from the OT forums more than a couple of days, but sometimes I forget to check my PMs. (There isn't one from RockMax in my inbox, incidentally. PM me again and I'll set you up.)

I would just like to state, for the record, that I ask everyone NOT to share my covers, in whole or in part, without my prior consent. No sharing by PMs or email, no uploading to Photobucket, no uploading to cover sites, no torrenting as part of a "cover collection". No exceptions. I have to trust that the people I give these to will employ them for personal use ONLY.

I want to keep the proliferation of these covers under control, to avoid someone uploading them to a cover site under their own name and gain credit/payment for them. I'm happy to share them with all the members here, but ask that the source files and the location of the download links only be disclosed by me personally. If you are asked to share my covers, please direct that person to me and I'll take care of it.

Your continued understanding and patience in this is appreciated, and will ensure my future cover work is shared freely with this forum's members.

Fritz

Visit my *NEW* Star Wars on Video Collection site:

http://www.swonvideo.com

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Jetrell Fo said:

EyeShotFirst said:

Ok, these are the new and improved covers, with disk art that doesn't have a template over it. I fixed grammar, and hopefully any issues with color, though my monitor isn't the best judge. The box is being postponed.

http://www.mediafire.com/?liswvrpo76uz6nh

{NOTICE: This preview was made before errors were brought to my attention, but it is pretty much what you get}

As I stated before, if you have any problems with the link, give a shout.

ESF, any chance you'd re-upload these?  I'll archive them with the rest of the ones I've got in case anyone else needs them.

Thanks

Oops, been  a while. Thanks for telling me.

http://www63.zippyshare.com/v/83014879/file.html

"The other versions will disappear. Even the 35 million tapes of Star Wars out there won’t last more than 30 or 40 years. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition], and you’ll be able to project it on a 20’ by 40’ screen with perfect quality. I think it’s the director’s prerogative, not the studio’s to go back and reinvent a movie." - George Lucas

<span> </span>

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Back to making SW covers. Here's my first set, started out yesterday and finished today. For download, please pm me.

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 (Edited)

Video Collector said:

RockMax said:

Hey everyone! I'm new here. I just picked up both trilogy's on bluray from Amazon and I need to make new covers for them. Video Collector's is the best I've seen so far, I PM'd him but he hasn't been online in a little while.

Does anyone else have his covers they can PM or email me? I'd appreciate it.

 

Thanks for the help! :)

Hi everyone. I'm never away from the OT forums more than a couple of days, but sometimes I forget to check my PMs. (There isn't one from RockMax in my inbox, incidentally. PM me again and I'll set you up.)

I would just like to state, for the record, that I ask everyone NOT to share my covers, in whole or in part, without my prior consent. No sharing by PMs or email, no uploading to Photobucket, no uploading to cover sites, no torrenting as part of a "cover collection". No exceptions. I have to trust that the people I give these to will employ them for personal use ONLY.

I want to keep the proliferation of these covers under control, to avoid someone uploading them to a cover site under their own name and gain credit/payment for them. I'm happy to share them with all the members here, but ask that the source files and the location of the download links only be disclosed by me personally. If you are asked to share my covers, please direct that person to me and I'll take care of it.

Your continued understanding and patience in this is appreciated, and will ensure my future cover work is shared freely with this forum's members.

Fritz

 

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Hey Fritz, sent you a PM about the Star Wars covers ... just wanted to give you a heads up. Thanks in advance!!

 

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Harmy, any plan for new covers for V2.0? I'd assume they'd come along with the BD release if anything.

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Yep, new cover is planned for the BD. There will be at least two versions too.

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Thinking about doing a Topps set. I've got multi-disc cases holding my SW BDs, with various fan edits and documentaries tucked inside.

Here's a Star Wars mockup.

 

Thing is, I like the SW card designs better than the Empire or Jedi ones, so I'd probably want to use them for all 3 OT movies.

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LOL... there's just something very kitsch about that cover art.  Nice.  If the movie was originally sold on that... people would certainly have expected something very different than what the movie turned out to be.  Not camp like Flash Gordon.

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Just printed these out, with thanks to Video Collector!

They look so damn awesome!

 

 

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 (Edited)

Been on a "play with vintage packaging as a blu ray cover" kick lately.  Darth Vong did a set of DVD covers based on the Kenner cardbacks:

LukeGorgeous said:

I've just been reading back through this thread and seen some covers with awesome preview pictures, but long-dead links. Does anyone have copies of PepsiOtaku's box sets, ChansawAsh's VHS-inspired covers, or Plamdi's 1993 & 1995 Laserdisc-inspired ones?

I've tried Google and the Wayback Machine to no avail. Help me, OT forummers, you're my only hope!

EDIT: Imrahil, are these by DarthVong the Kenner-inspired covers you're looking for?

http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/9561/episode1.jpg

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3195/episode2s.jpg

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/6931/episode3.jpg

http://img807.imageshack.us/img807/6051/episode4oldart.jpg

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/2799/episode5oldart.jpg

http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/7827/episode6oldart.jpg

DarthSolo posted them over in The Custom DVD Cover Request Thread

 

They're awesome; I wanted to do something similar for blu-ray cases, but keep a stronger "vintage" feel, so I took the idea and ran in a slightly different direction. The back of this one is based very heavily on a Kenner 20-back card (down to the P-O-P).

Here's my SW: