Battle of Endor - A Graphic Design Perspective
by F. May

With recent chat about some of the images in the set, I thought it might be good to see how the cards come together. I am always given an image suggestion with the card list, but sometimes they are too blurry; either with too much action going on as in Luke Skywalkers battle with Vader or the subject simply isn't in any of the movies as in the Imperial Banker. Card Development thought it would be a good idea if Le Chiffre from the film Casino Royale was used somehow and requested if it could be made possible, so I'll take this opportunity to briefly go through the stages of creating the Imperial Banker card and Captain Gilad Pellaeon. The images have been reduced in size for the sake of space in the article.

First, I had to find a picture of Le Chiffre suitable. I found a few, but thought this one was the best.

With that sorted, I needed to find an image of an Imperial Officer that I could chop up to put his head on. This scene seemed perfect, so a screengrab was taken.

I always imagined Coruscant being visible outside a window in the finished image so cutting the background out of the pic was next.

I cut Le Chiffre's head out next. This part was a little difficult. I had to alter the size of the head to match the body.

After a lot of adjustments, I finally felt it good to go. At this stage I made alterations to the colour and the shading on the face so it matched the body's shading and lighting.

As I mentioned earlier, I wanted Coruscant to be seen in the background, so I looked through the DVD's until I found this scene.

I felt that would be good as it had the window visible. I really didn't just want a pic of Coruscant. I wanted it to be known that he was in a room. With that placed in the background, the image now looked like this.

This is what was on the final card for review by the IDC. Suggestions were made to remove the rank and code cylinders so after doing that, this became the final image for the card.

Gilad Pellaeon was done exactly the same way. This card was always put off till later and was kind of haunting me. With five days till release and PA needing the pdf's and Lackey images it needed doing now. The problem was I had a 'head' for him but no body. The images just weren't matching. I had decided to use an image of Leigh Matthews, the coach of Brisbane Lions from the Australian Rules Football League. I just thought he looked like a good Pellaeon.

I had several images of him, but they just wouldn't match any bodies from the films. The problem is getting a good match with the composite pieces so they all look natural together. For example, if the head is positioned one way then the body needs to look as though it's following it or it won't look natural. If it looked like a poorly made patchwork quilt, then GD had failed as far as I was concerned. It almost got to the point of conceding defeat and using this cartoon image.

I also knew in my mind what the finished card was going to look like all along, which didn't help matters. I had the image of him seeing the Death Star exploding outside the window stuck in my head and I didn't want that idea to be lost. With days to go, I found all the pieces for the card. I couldn't believe I had overlooked it.

After some experimenting by dragging Matthews' head onto the image and turning it slightly and adjusting the size, I found that this would indeed work. So I prepared the background by cutting out Ozzel. The final scene in ESB where Vader asks Piett if he has deactivated the hyperdrive on the Millenium Falcon was perfect as it had a big window visible with no one standing in front of it, so that was placed in the background and the window removed.

Mattews' head was positioned, recoloured, had shading adjustments done

and finally the hat was placed on him.

The final touch was placing the Death Star's final moment in the window so 'Pellaeon' had something to grimace about. The screen grab of the Death Star was flipped upside down and reversed so the brighter side was facing Pellaeon. This made the natural lighting on his face from the original photo seem natural in the finished composite. The clothing on that side was also brightened slightly.

That's pretty much what goes into making a card. I'm certainly no expert, but I would have to say I am pleased how these cards turned out. I would have to say that Pellaeon, the 181st Imperial Fighter Group (A), Vader's Lightsaber (A) and Gold Squadron Y-wing would have to be my favourite images I've done at the moment, as they seem to have an 'excitement' to them and capture a certain moment in mid-action.

There are quite a few card images that were edited in this set and as a kind of treasure hunt for those interested I'll list the exact cards that had editing done to them by Graphic Design. Oh, and by editing I mean images that had painting, cutting, pasting, etc done, ie composite work. Not simply colour correcting, contrast and/or size adjustments. They all had colour and size adjusting done. If no one can tell it has had work done to it, then the image is even better as far as Graphic Design's strict quality control goes.

181st Imperial Fighter Group (A)
Captain Gilad Pellaeon (A)
Chewbacca's Ewok Squad (A)
Chimaera (A)
Darth Vader's Lightsaber (A)
Tempest One (A)
AT-ST Assault Team
Baron Soontir Fel (A)
BT-L Y-wing Bomber
Fel's TIE Interceptor (A)
Flurry (A)
Imperial Banker
Interdictor-class Star Destroyer
Rebel Gallofree Transport
Scimitar Squadron TIE
TIE Defender
TIE Hunter
Executor (C)
Gold Squadron Y-wing
Proton Torpedoes
RZ-1 A-wing Interceptor
Sullust System
TIE Pursuit Fighter
Victory II-class Star Destroyer

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