THE ART OF SAYING GOODBYE – STAR WARS REBELS
Talented fans bid farewell to Rebels
As Star Wars Rebels reaches its fi nale, a collective of fan artists has come together to create an epic poster honoring the Ghost crew, their allies, and even their foes.
“I have actually always wanted to try a collaboration like this, but I was really worried that artistic styles would conflict with each other,” says Michael Pasquale, a Florida-based professional designer and avid fan artist. Over the years, he has built a crew of talented friends and fellow fans that have become a supportive community on individual projects. “These are the folks I talk to almost daily now,” he says. “I had a feeling that we’d all have artwork planned for Season Four, so I thought, ‘Why not share this moment together and salute the cast and crew?’” Using the initial teaser trailer as inspiration, Michael illustrated Grand Open any closet in the North Fork, California home of Roy Greenwood and you could be buried by a sea of soda cans.
Roy, a card carrying member of the International Plastic Modeler’s Society, uses the cans to build scales models of airplanes and spaceships. Roy’s most ambitious build to date is a life-sized replica of R2-D2, built over the course of four months from more than 1,400 soda cans, with help from his children Evelyn and Neil Jr. “I affectionately call them the ‘soda can elves,’” he says. Admiral Thrawn, then recruited 11 artists to contribute other key characters and icons from the show. “For the Spectres, Elisa Ardell painted Ezra, Melissa Thomas did Hera, Olivia Moy provided Sabine and Chopper, Bethany Moy came up with Kanan, and Misty Hillard gave us our Zeb,” Michael explains. “Then Ksenia Zelentsova added Rex and Governor Pryce, Darren Tibbles handled the death troopers, Shane Molina took on spaceships, Courtney Morelock resurrected Bo-Katan, Carsten Bradley tackled the Loth-wolf and Saw Gerrera, and James Raiz did Fenn Rau! Melissa and Bethany also gave us Agent Kallus and Mon Mothma.
“What had started out as just the Ghost crew on a simple background snowballed into a dozen artists working on a movie-style poster!” Michael digitally merged each of the individual artists’ work to make the finished poster, which he describes as being “All about family, which is the true essence of Star Wars. “This motley crew of characters have formed such a tight-knit family who, no matter what, are always there to support each other as they persevere through the dark times.”