StarWars.com: You’ve illustrated a variety of characters and beings for Little Golden Books titles The Empire Strikes Back, I Am a Sith, and others. Did Random House have those titles in mind for you or did you get to choose?
Chris Kennett: I got a choice of doing two books at first, A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back. I was very, very torn about which one to choose, because obviously A New Hope is the one that started it all, and it brought lots of other people into the universe so that was on the top of my list for a long time. But the more I thought about it, the more I sort of started to sway towards Empire, because it was my favorite movie of the three.
StarWars.com: Did you have to adjust your style it all to match what they wanted for the books?
Chris Kennett: It took me a few attempts, actually. My natural style is very cartoony, big eyes and big expressions, so I had to tone that down quite a bit. The Little Golden Books are a little stylized, but not too stylized in a way. It did take a lot of experimentation on my part, but they were very patient with me. They worked through it with me and gave me guidance like, “pull this back” or “make the eyes smaller.” They [the art direction team at Random House] approve from rough thumbnails that show the likenesses and page placement.
