AT AT PIlot

Part of series of oil painting commissioned by Lucasfilm for my Tribute Series.

One of the things that always bothered me about the Hoth battle scene in Empire Strikes Back is that the AT-ATs that are fresh off of the Star Destroyers, had huge snow packs on them. These are vehicles that just 15 minutes ago were in space! Where did the snow come from? So I thought it would be fun to make a piece that showed the AT-ATs emerging from a blizzard or snow storm. In the end, making the blizzard look cool meant obscuring too much of the vehicles so I opted for just atmospheric haze to the blizzard had just ended as opposed to huge amounts of falling snow.

I included the concept sketch used to pitch the art to Lucasfilm. The only major change between the concept sketch and final art is that I changed the angle of the star destroyers.

The officially licensed print for this can be found at http://bit.ly/2LdcJwv