Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, kickstarter

The Art of Ralph McQuarrie

Published Sat, 28 Jun 2014 09:00:07 -0500

The Art of Ralph McQuarrie: ARCHIVES Book. By Stan Stice and John Scoleri. Published by Dreams and Visions Press. Kickstarter Campaign Close Date: July 13, 2014. Publication Date: May 2015.

John Scoleri writes,

Dreams and Visions Press has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the necessary funds to publish our latest book, a 432-page hardcover collection of artist Ralph McQuarrie's non-Star Wars work entitled: The Art of Ralph McQuarrie: ARCHIVES.

The book will showcase the artwork Ralph did in his career outside of his amazing contributions to the Star Wars trilogy, from his earliest days doing technical illustrations through his movie poster and book cover work, other film and television projects, commercial work, and even a selection of his personal art. This will be the largest collection of Ralph's non-Star Wars work ever assembled.

My name is John Scoleri, and my friend Stan Stice and I knew Ralph for the last sixteen years of his life. He was a dear friend, and we were honored to publish the first collection of his work in 2007. Through Dreams and Visions Press, we have proudly published the following Ralph McQuarrie books:

The Art of Ralph McQuarrie (2007)

The Star Wars Art of Ralph McQuarrie (2008 – Japanese exclusive)

A Gallery of Imagination (2010)

Remembering Ralph McQuarrie (2012)

The 35^th Anniversary Battlestar Galactica Portfolio (2013)

To give you a glimpse of what you'll find in The Art of Ralph McQuarrie: ARCHIVES, I wanted to take this opportunity to provide a brief tour through some of Ralph's history.

Ralph got his start in technical illustration working at Boeing and a number of small firms. In the 60s, he was hired to paint animation cels for CBS News Special Events coverage of the Apollo missions.

In the early 70s, independent filmmaker Charles B. Pierce hired Ralph to paint the movie poster for his low budget horror film, The Legend of Boggy Creek, which was a huge financial success.

That led to Ralph painting numerous posters for Pierce and others, for such varied family film fare as Where the Red Fern Grows to The Adventures of the Wilderness Family and several more classic 70s horror films including The Creature from Black Lake, Night of the Strangler, and The Town that Dreaded Sundown (below, under the working title Phantom: A True Story).

Ralph's paintings for Star Wars put his work in front of Ballantine's Judy Lynn Del Rey, who saw a great opportunity for the artist. He was hired to paint the cover for the first printing of the Star Wars novelization that was released in the Fall of 1976.

The success of that assignment led to another (the first Star Wars spin-off novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye – early concept below) and dozens more for Ballantine. One thing that made Ralph's covers particularly interesting, and I'm sure a welcome surprise to the authors who had the good fortune of having a McQuarrie cover, was that he read actually the books. He would regularly come up with a half dozen different concepts before deciding on what he felt was just the right one.

The following concepts provide an example of the flow of Ralph's process in these sketches for Christopher Rowley's War For Eternity.

r12

Years later, Ralph would return to book illustration for Byron Preiss, who hired him to create illustrated editions of two of Isaac Asimov's short story collections, Robot Dreams and Robot Visions.

Ralph's film work following Star Wars was quite varied. He worked on Battlestar Galactica (the pilot film) and Star Trek: Planet of the Titans (which was ultimately cancelled in the wake of Star Wars' success) with famed production designer Ken Adam, who envisioned a new look for the Starship Enterprise.

Ralph made a single contribution to a film that would become my personal favorite, by creating the bible drawing illustrating the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Other film work included Close Encounters of the Third Kind (below), E.T., Cocoon, Star Trek IV, and Clive Barker's Nightbreed.

Ralph also worked on numerous projects that never saw completion, including Irvin Kershner's proposed remake of Forbidden Planet. We're thrilled to include an extensive selection of Ralph's drawings and paintings from that project in the book.

Ralph was regularly asked to participate in other projects, from Budweiser and Pepsi commercials (below) to box art for Video Games (an early Star Wars PC game, Vanguard for the Atari 2600, and the role-playing game of Larry Niven's Ringworld.

Ralph had a vivid imagination, as his body of work so clearly communicates. His personal pieces are often just as fascinating.

If you are intrigued by the art I've shared here, which represents but the tiniest fraction of what you'll find in The Art of Ralph McQuarrie: ARCHIVES, then I invite you to check out our Kickstarter campaign (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/970452904/the-art-of-ralph-mcquarrie-archives-art-book) and consider pledging your support. In addition to the book, which is available in a standard hardcover and deluxe traycased editions, we've got numerous incentives for backers at all levels. We've already passed 70% of our funding goal in the first two weeks of our campaign, and are confident that with the support of Ralph's fans, we will make this book a reality.

Many thanks to Bleeding Cool for providing this opportunity to share a taste of what I came to appreciate in my time knowing and working with Ralph McQuarrie.

John Scoleri

Dreams and Visions Press

dreamsandvisionspress.com

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