Charles Apple

I’ve mentioned a few times here in the blog and on Facebook recently that I’ve been happily tied up lately with a nice free-lance project — the kind of project that just doesn’t come along all that often for a science-fiction geek like myself.

The Huntsville Times hired me to build six full-page graphics taking a look at the Star Wars movies and the science demonstrated — or not demonstrated, at times — by the movies.

The graphics are running one a day, beginning yesterday. Day two ran today. But let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

—
THE PROJECT

There’s a really nice exhibit traveling the country featuring props and costumes from the Star Wars movies and explaining technology of the movies. Why does Luke Skywalker’s speeder hover? How can Han Solo’s ship travel faster than light? Will we really have androids like R2-D2 and C-3PO to help out around the house?

The difference in this particular exhibit, however, is that it’ll be at an actual NASA center — Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Ala., where the Saturn V rocket was developed. And the space shuttle engines. And the International Space Station.

The Huntsville Times wanted to make a big splash for this exhibit — which, by the way, opens this coming Friday. With all that interest in space travel there, folks will be curious to see the traveling exhibit. Plus, both the editor of the Times — former San Jose Mercury News design director Kevin Wendt – and the design director of the Times — Paul Wallen, former design director of the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel – have a huge interest in Star Wars.

Yet, Paul is still getting folks hired, on board and up to speed. He just didn’t have the manpower to pull off something of the magnitude they envisioned.

So he called his old pal, me. The guy who made his own Star Wars costume when he was the tenth grade:

Yep, that’s me. The costume is mostly cardboard. The faceplate is taped to an old motorcycle helmet. The “gun” is cardboard taped around a hacksaw minus its blade.

Kevin and Paul wanted someone with a little science background an a huge interest in Star Wars. They also wanted someone who could do his own research and bring a heavy infographics bent to the project.

And, naturally, I was delighted to sign on. Rarely do I get art directed myself these days — and I’ve not worked with an art director of Paul Wallen’s caliber since I left the Chicago Tribune, 11 years ago.

Plus, y’know, it’s Star Wars. How could this not be fun?

—
PULLING TOGETHER MY RESOURCES

I have a ton of Star Wars reference on my bookshelves. On the left is a book that shows working sketches and conceptual art from the original Star Wars movie. On the right is a huge book detailing the making of that first movie. A companion volume on the Empire Strikes Back comes out this fall.

And I have a huge number of magazines and softcover publications. Many of these were published as “official souvenir” books when each of the movies was released:

Knowing we’d be venturing into infographic territory, I pulled out my Dorling-Kindersley book of Star Wars cutaway drawings:

This one has all sorts of cool stuff in it, as you can see:

My favorite part — which I didn’t really bring to use into this project, unfortunately — is a four-page gatefold spread on the Death Star:

One book that did come into play on this project is this one, which came out four years ago:

Published by National Geographic, this is the companion volume to the original opening — in Boston — of the same exhibit that’s coming this week to Huntsville. I didn’t use a lot of excerpts from this book over the course of the six graphics. But it did guide me in terms of figuring out what museumgoers can expect to see in the exhibit.

I had to buy this one fresh from Amazon. And yes, it did come in very handy during this project:

The author, Jeanne Cavelos, is a former scientist with the Johnson Spaceflight Center in Houston. I cited her a number of times in the graphics. You can see the many bookmarks I used in this book.

The downside with this book was that the revised editon was published right after Episode I: The Phantom Menace was released in 1999. Therefore, nothing that happens in Episodes II and III is covered here.

I also bought one of these:

For visual reference, nothing tops these Dorling-Kindersley books. This book is actually a collection of two or three previous books, resulting in more than one entry for R2-D2, for example. Which can be frustrating when the information on one page differs from another.

Keeping your story straight in the world of science fiction strikes me as a giant pain in the ass. I can’t help but wonder if it would have been easier for everyone if George Lucas had just built actual working robots, spaceships and Death Stars.

Also part of my prep work, I also re-watched all six of the movies…

…taking tons of notes along the way. While I love the “original trilogy,” I’m not terribly fond of the “prequel trilogy.” So it was important to refresh my memory of what happened, say, in Episode II and what new technology we saw in that chapter:

I first saw Star Wars not long after it was released in 1977. I was 15 years old. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen it since then — dozens, I suppose — but it was fun to watch it again with an eye out for taking notes:

Once I had a good idea of what technologies were to be featured in the exhibit and what technologies were in which film, I was able to draw up a grocery list for Paul and Kevin.

The rough plan was to build six full pages. We wanted each page to correspond, roughly, to one film of the series — preferably in numerical order. Naturally, we’d like our big science hit of the day to tie into things we observed in that movie. If possible.

I wrote up detailed proposals and e-mailed them to Huntsville. Kevin called a meeting with his features editors, reports, Paul and myself via phone, where we discussed a few of our ideas and settled on the plan.

The big thing that came out of that meeting: We wanted to give these pages had a strong local bent, so Times reporters Kenneth Kesnet and Lee Roop went over to the NASA center — and to other technology companies and agencies in the area — to collect quotes and material I could weave into the graphics. I even wrote up a detailed list of possible questions for each topic.

For secondary and sidebar topics, I’d be on my own, with my reference material. We’d also include a nice sidebar each day recapping one of the movies, using a synopsis one of the reporters culled from a web site and material from my notes.

The biggest issue, though, was finding high-resolution art. In the past, I’ve never managed to find a good source for Star Wars art — for the last movie opening I recall one of my staffers scrounging online for high-rez pictures.

That’s where luck stepped in again. In May, the Toledo Free Press ran a special issue commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Empire Strikes Back. In his message to me — which I published in the blog — James Molnar told me his editor had been in contact with a guy at Lucasfilm who had given them access to high-resolution art.

Luckily for us, that editor — Michael S. Miller — shared the e-mail address with us. Paul wrote the Lucasfilm guy who granted access to us as well. That put us in business.

—
THE GRAPHICS

Now that we had a) a plan, and b) access to high-rez pictures, it was time to get started. I went ahead and began building graphics with the intent of dropping in quotes from Huntsville-area NASA folks later.

I believe strongly in sketching. I rarely pick up a mouse before I’ve knocked out a number of sketches:

As you can see here, it didn’t take long before I realized a horizontal format worked best with the assortment of sidebars I planned to use.

Here was an early version of my Day One piece, on lightsabers. Right away, you can spot a mistake I made from the outset — and was repaired by the copy desk in Huntsville, at the very back end — namely, breaking “lightsabers” into two words. In all the Lucasfilm materials, it’s always one word.

I had built my Episode I recap down the left side, as you can see. I hadn’t figured out yet what to do with my sidebar. For my lead art, though, I used the best lightsaver

Here, I used my favorite lightsaber photo as my lead art. I found a Lucasfilm closeup picture of a lightsaber, so I was sketching it in across the bottom:

Later, though, I decided I’d rather use art for the first page that is actually from Episode I. So I switched to this action shot instead:

You can also see I moved the podracer art over to my science sidebar and used cute widdle Ani Skywalker as my main recap art. Here, I’ve also laid in the text — mostly, quotes from scientists — by Kenneth Kesnet.

For what it’s worth, I also tried a vertical version. But Paul agreed the horizontal ones worked better:

Once I was finished, Paul requested a number of changes that made the entire page much, much stronger. First of all, he lightened up the headlines to the font the Times typically uses for features pages. He also suggested swapping the episode recap to the right side and tweaking the colors slightly.

Paul also designed the page topper and then, at the last minute, created a cute little device that helped readers understand the graphic was just one of six on this topic.

Here is the final version, as it looked in Sunday’s Huntsville Times. Click for a larger view:

You see the change Paul had to make to the headline to bail me out of that “lightsaber” jam, right?

The second of the series inserted today. On this one, we focused on everyone’s favorite ‘droids, R2-D2 and C-3PO, as well as cloning technology:

The scientist quotes in the main robotics section were written today by reporter Lee Roop. The rest of the copy I compiled from my other sources.

Both of the reporters — Ken and Lee — were a real pleasure to work with. They did a great job of giving me usable quote nuggets and in keeping the material on-topic. And once I started shipping pages to Huntsville, I received nice praise from them.

Truly, the Force was with me on this project.

Much to my delight, the Times posted online versions of these graphics, grouping them into little snippets for easier reading online. Here’s a bit that appeared near the bottom left of my lightsabers piece on Sunday:

Here is the part-by-part look of Darth Vader’s lightsaber that ran across the bottom:

And here’s as much of the ‘droids piece I could fit into one screen for a quick capture:

Find the Day One piece online here. Find the Day Two piece here.

Just to show you how nice these guys are, they gave me plenty of credit on the web pages. And when you click on my name, the link brings you back to this blog.

As if that wasn’t enough, the Times also made PDF versions of the graphics available to readers:

• Click here to download the Day One graphic on lightsabers.
• Click here to download the Day Two graphic on robotics.

—
PROMOTING ‘STAR WARS WEEK’

The graphics, as I said, were just part of a huge promotional effort by the Huntsville Times on behalf of the traveling science exhibit.

I posted this the other day, but here it is again: The first Star Wars page Paul designed for a features front that ran Sunday, June 6:

Now, this makes me just a little bit jealous. I used a little wit, here and there, in my graphics. But man, this was a scream.

Last Wednesday, Paul came back with another skybox promo:

Another one on Thursday:

And this one ran Friday:

All those, I had posted before. With Saturday’s effort, however, Paul definitely topped himself:

Sunday, Paul put together a huge splash on A1. And I mean huge. Click for a bigger view:

You can see Lee Roop’s story there and an extensive refer to what the Times is calling “Star Wars week”: Daily character profiles and, of course, my full-page graphic.

Here is Sunday’s jump page (Again, click for a larger view):

And here is the front of today’s Huntsville Times. We see the return of the humorous skybox promo and the character profiles migrated to the left-side rail:

I finished the last two graphics and shipped them to Huntsville Sunday evening. They’ll continue to run, one a day, through Friday. Here’s a small preview: Letter-sized working proofs as they looked last week, taped atop the plaques that hang over my desk:

I’ll post the other four graphics on Friday.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Charles Apple, Free-lance, Graphics, Huntsville Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.