Last year we featured the work of Edouard Groult, Senior Concept Artist for Splash Damage and Osprey Publishing and developer for Firesprite. Here he reveals a quartet of conceptual images, fan art that deliever a chilling ‘what-if’ scenario.
When enjoying Edouard’s latest work I was reminded that for Darth Vader, Order 66 marked only the beginning, perhaps even jealously, a missed opportunity. When not projecting Emperor Palpatine’s power, Vader tirelessly pursued Jedi purge survivors. Embers first ignited during the ill-fated attempt to rescue his mother Shmi from a Tusken clan’s camp were fanned to an iridescent, irreversible flame at the Jedi Temple’s Youngling School.
Beneath Vader’s expressionless mask his rage burned hotter than Tatooine’s twin suns or the lava of Mustafar which imprisoned him within his armour. It’s sadly poetic that following his fateful encounter, the young and innocent Anakin Skywalker was rescued from lifelong slavery by the Jedi.
Reincarnated as Darth Vader and through his hatred for the Jedi, he enslaved himself and would go on to hunt down any survivors, whether Jedi Masters or light Force sensitives. To him, it mattered not.
These four new conceptual images from Edouard capture the brutal ruthlessness of Darth Vader’s unquenchable thirst for vengeance, and Eduoard kindly agreed to share his art and his thoughts behind these beautiful images:
‘I wanted to try a highly contrasted scene, with small characters on an Imperial Star Destroyer (ISD), at the very point of the ship, and bringing dramatization with a dead end for Jedi trying to escape Lord Vader.
While I was painting the scene of Vader approaching from behind, I was listening the Hunger Games original sound track, ”Tenuous Winners”, and its reflection of sadness in survival suggested to me the idea that the only escape for these dramatic heroes, was to jump off from the ISD and from Lord Vader, so I extended the first image with three more telling a simple very short story’.
If you enjoyed these images, you can view more in our earlier Fantha Tracks article, an interview with Edouard.
