Exclusive: The Art of Star Wars - An Interview with Joe Corroney & Brian Miller
I recently had the privilege and honor of sitting down with Star Wars artists and illustrators, Joe Corroney and Brian Miller. I was able to learn more about their background, their influences, their careers as artists and illustrators for Lucasfilm and other franchises, and the upcoming Star Wars Celebration in May. The interview, as recorded below, has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Mara: The first question I had was, when did you both start doing artwork?
Joe: I can remember drawing as early as three or four years old and sneaking crayons into my bedroom and hiding them under the pillow and drawing on my wall in the bedroom in the middle of the night. Luckily, my parents were pretty supportive of me in my endeavors, so I didn't really get in trouble that I remember. I was pretty young. I was drawing as far back as I can remember. I can't imagine a life of not making art at some point. It's kind of been a constant in my life since my early years.
Brian: I'll jump past the early times and to when I knew I really wanted to be an artist. I grew up in a home where we weren't allowed to watch regular broadcast television and the only choices were Christian television or public television. That's all that was on the menu. So being the rebellious child, I chose public television, where I was exposed to all sorts of dangerous shows like Doctor Who, Monty Python, Bob Ross, and William Alexander. And I would sit, like a lot of people, and just watch in amazement as Bob Ross would paint and I was not only mesmerized, I was like, “Oh, I think I could do that.” My mother and her friend would go to garage sales in our little town and come home with treasures. One of the things that she came home with was this old children's oil painting kit that was well used. Maybe the black and the white were empty, but the rest of the colors were still there and I talked my mother into going to Wal-Mart and getting whatever cheap little canvas they had available at the time. I tried to do Bob Ross-style brush strokes and I was very young, five or six years old, and it was a mess and didn't look anything like Bob Ross, but I was hooked. And I think that's when it really clicked for me, this idea of not just doodling, or just coloring in a coloring book, but actually creating something from whole cloth. Thinking about taking a blank canvas and turning that void into something else completely. And you know, as a little kid, when you get that instant feedback and accolades, that feels good. It's a good warm fuzzy. And so, I think that also pushed me in the creative direction.
Mara: Kind of reinforced that?
Brian: Yeah, exactly. I was such a bad student. To find something I was good at… I wasn't good at sports. I wasn’t great at math or anything. And so, I was like, oh, I found my thing. So, I was, I was hooked.
Mara: Found your niche?
Brian: Exactly.
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Mara: What would you guys say are your major artistic influences, if any? I think you're kind of hinting that Bob Ross was kind of an inspiration for you, Brian?
Brian: Yeah, as early inspiration goes for sure. You know obviously, he and William Alexander were probably the reason I first picked up a paintbrush. And then as I got older and went to middle school, I remember going to the school library and seeing these Omni magazines. Omni was this science fiction technology magazine in the 1980’s. They had these amazing cover illustrations and at the time I didn't know who the artists were, but later I learned the prolific futurists like Tsuneo Sanda, Hajime Sorayama, John Berkey, and Hans Giger. But, you know, that kind of style, just like hooked me in and I flipped through the pages to find the short science fiction stories and poured over those illustrations. And so that kind of started .y journey of finding other art books, poster books, and just discovering artists. One week I might be discovering a movie poster painter, or maybe a fine artist from the past. Absorbing as much as I could from these books. I just started taking little bits and pieces of inspiration that started to inform my artistic ideas. What about you, Joe?
Joe: Yeah, mine. I mean, my artistic path really started at the same time I saw Star Wars. I was barely four years old, so that was sort of the biggest inspiration to me was seeing the first film in 1977 and then also just before my 4th birthday I remember my mom got me the Marvel Comics adaptation of Star Wars and I would look at that comic book and study it and relive the movie because back then… we didn't have VHS yet. Or DVD's. We would relive the movie through the comic book adaptations and I would study that artwork by Howard Chaykin and some of the other artists you drew for Marvel. Those are some of my earliest influences. Not even just from the Star Wars comics, because Star Wars Comics introduced me to other comic books like Batman and Captain America and Spider-Man and The Avengers and X-Men and Superman. So a lot of those artists were pivotal in my early years because throughout grade school and into high school I was really idolizing these artists and drawing like them and learning how to draw anatomy and perspective. And that of course led into other illustration areas like movie posters. Artists like Drew Struzan were profoundly influential and inspired me to want to create realistic illustration. So, it is kind of a mixture of comic book artists and even artists like Ralph McQuarrie, who did concept art for the Star Wars films, which I was introduced to at an early age and the Star Wars sketch books and the trading cards from Topps and Joe Johnston, who designed a lot of Star Wars characters and creatures. So those artists and emulating them and studying them and learning about movie production art, as well as comic book illustration. I mean, those worlds really collided for me at an early age, and so they ended up sort of dictating my path as an artist going forward.
"The Slave Princess" by Joe Corroney (Celebration II Europe Exclusive)
Mara: Did you ever own the Return of the Jedi Sketchbook?
Joe: Oh yeah, it's so funny. Yeah, exactly. So, the Return of the Jedi sketchbook was a major one for me. Oh man, I looked at that thing so much. I still have these drawings. In fact, they're upstairs. I would draw Jabba’s Sail Barge and the Speeder Bikes, and AT-STs. I would draw those from those sketches and I still have those drawings or some of them anyway, where I would essentially just copy that sketch and I would draw it really big on big watercolor paper I got from my Saturday art classes with the intention of painting it, you know, and never really finishing it. But I had that Return of the Jedi sketchbook and I would draw the ships and characters from that.
Mara: I loved reading that too. I used to own it. I don't know whatever happened to it, but yeah, that was something I looked at a lot too.
Joe: Yeah. I still have my original copy of that on my bookshelves. It's all beat up, but yeah, it's still a prized possession.
Mara: Absolutely. Did either of you study art before you began doing it professionally?
Joe: I did. When I was eight years old, I had my first private art lessons with a woman in the neighborhood that was teaching art… and my mom felt like I had an aptitude for it and was really supportive of my art endeavors. So, I did have training early. I mean, she was a professional artist and she taught these small little classes in the neighborhood. She was she was very talented. And then I went from there to Saturday art classes at a local College in town. And then after I graduated high school, I went to Art College in Columbus, Ohio at the Columbus College of Art and Design. I took about four and a half, almost five years of art training there.
Brian: I talked about Bob Ross, that's what got me into it. A local store carried a series of Walter Foster art books. There would be one on cartooning, one on landscaping, one on perspective, etc. When I was still in grade school I would save my allowance to buy these art books and consume everything I could. Growing up in a small town, the public school art classes didn’t start covering much of these fundamentals until middle school or even high school so it could be frustrating as a creative child.
Mara: Pretty basic, huh?
The Great Remorse of Darth Vader by Joe Corroney
Brian: Yeah. You know, it's tough. You sort of end up as a big fish in a small pond, and every art project you do gets an “A” because they're having to teach the kids who don’t want to be artists. So, when I got to go to college that was the real awakening moment. I went to school for fine art and, at this point in my life, I had “put childish things away" as they say, and I didn’t think I was into comics or action figures anymore. I thought would become a painter, then move to Paris and live on wine and bread. All of the romantic ideals that a young artist has. So yes, I did go to school for fine art, but the life-changing part was that I ran into this other artist and he was into comics. He took me back down that rabbit hole and I started working with him on watercolors and airbrush over his comic book artwork. Then he drug me to my first comic book convention and it was so much fun. We went around and we showed our portfolios to the comics professionals and publishers and I received so much positive feedback that day, that it made me want to go to the next convention and the next one. That inspired me to take the fine art training that I was receiving and start to look at Photoshop during its early days. How do I take these painting skills and then move them over into this digital space? Can I recreate this watercolor and airbrush work I've been doing on these comics in Photoshop, so they could be reproduced commercially? It all just kind of intersected at this perfect point in time when those skills just happened to be what Marvel and DC were looking for. I sort of jumped from this fine art painting into comics and the next thing you know I’m working on Wolverine, X-Men, the Avengers, and many other comics, because I was one of a handful of people who could paint and color comics with Photoshop. It was definitely a strange transition from what I thought I wanted as a creator to where I ended up. I’m so thankful I got into the pop culture world when I did because it's been a wild ride. I’ve loved every minute of it.
Joe: It's interesting that in that time that you were just getting your feet wet in the industry with Photoshop. I mean the industry itself. Comic book coloring was heading that direction for all publishing and comic book illustration was really embracing.
Brian: It was a breakthrough. A sea change.
Joe: Yeah. And not that I was necessarily coming at it from the same angle you were, because you were coloring comic books for Marvel and DC right out of the gate at that point. But I was starting to illustrate with Photoshop and some of these computer programs for the very first time. As I had already been trained traditionally, I was learning how to incorporate some of my coloring and painting in this new way and I was doing it with the technology. Not so much for the industry’s sake, but it just seemed like, you know, that's where the future of illustration might be heading and I wanted to do that, even in my early twenties, it was scary but I wanted to embrace it, I wanted to pursue it. And I thought I knew Photoshop until I met Brian.
Brian: It was new and it was exciting and, like you said, it felt like the future.
Joe: Right.
Brian: It was like the first time you held an iPhone in your hand and played with it. Oh, this is the future. The first time creating something in Photoshop that looks like how you want it to look and can go out to a million eyeballs. There's just no going back after this.
Joe: Yeah. I knew digital art was, especially with painting, I could expedite my artwork so much quicker and the industry was well aware of this as well as they were pushing a lot of comic book dealers to go digital and a lot of comics were being painted digitally and colored digitally. So, I think we came in right at the groundbreaking moment of that.
Brian: Good timing.
Joe: Yeah.
Mara: How long have you both been Star Wars fans?
Joe: Oh gosh. My whole life.
Brian: I just heard of it last week.
Joe: I can't remember. I mean, my life is so entwined. Because my earliest memories were Star Wars. Going back when I was nearly four years old and Star Wars was brand new to the world. The first movie had just come out and it had just taken over the world. It was such a groundbreaking film and to just be that age with my imagination just taking off with toys and comics and to have a movie like Star Wars. You have to imagine back then there weren’t Marvel movies, there weren’t sci-fi movies coming out all the time. Star Wars was so unique and so epic and so huge and so widely universal and universally loved, that it was just a constant in my life from my childhood and until now I mean, even in the dark times after Return of the Jedi until 1991 or so, when Dark Horse started putting out Star Wars comics and Del Rey and Random House were putting out the Thrawn Trilogy for the first time. But there's like, eight years or nine years there maybe when Star Wars had kind died down, but I was still grabbing whatever kind of Star Wars stuff I could and embracing it, whether it was the role-playing games, books, or going back and buying back issues of the Marvel comic series and trying to complete my collection or collecting the Star Wars trading cards and getting into old stuff that I missed as a kid. So, for me, there just hasn’t really been a day without it.
Bounty Collected by Brian Miller
Mara: I can certainly relate to that.
Brian: I was looking through my whole life as a child in these photos and keepsakes that were still in my father’s house after he passed away. So much of it was related to Star Wars. Even there was this little chair. I don’t know why he kept it all these years but there was this plastic chair. My sister had a red one and I had a blue one and we had them in our rooms when we were kids. And you look at it now, it’s like, my cat’s too fat to sit on this chair. But somehow, when I was a kid, this was my chair, and it was covered in the little stickers that came out of the Topps Star Wars trading card packages. You could hardly see the blue plastic because it was just covered in stickers. First of all, like wow, how many pieces of that gum did I eat? It just reminded me of how much Star Wars was everywhere in my life. You know, all these photos, all this stuff. I think about how my childhood room had been decorated in Star Wars posters and things like that. As a grown-up maybe you don't realize how big of an impact it was on your whole life until you have a moment like that to go back and reflect on things and to look back at the past through your adult eyes. And think to yourself, it's so weird that I ended up here because that little kid back then could never imagine that we would have grown up to be working on Star Wars now.
Mara: Nice. And by the way, I love your background, your decorations.
Brian: Thank you so much. It was really fun to put this together with the lightsabers and kind of a cool way to show off the artwork.
Mara: Definitely. How did you start creating officially licensed Star Wars art?
Brian: Joe, you shouldn't go first, because you were into this way before I was.
Joe: Yeah, I started in the mid-90s, right out of art college. I had sent a portfolio to a publisher who was producing the Star Wars Role Playing Game, which if you're if you're familiar with it, is like Dungeons and Dragons. It’s the same concept but set in the Star Wars Universe. So, I had these books and these game modules that were being published since 1988. I had been collecting them through High School and into college. I remember flipping through these books and illustrations and thinking that they’re making Star Wars art for these game books that they’re still publishing and me and roommates were playing the game in college. I thought that I should take a shot. In college, I knew I wanted to do Star Wars comics at some point. I wanted to draw Star Wars comic books and do Star Wars illustrations, so I saw this as an opportunity. Maybe I could just do some freelance work for these publishers. So, I mailed a portfolio of samples. I had done my own Star Wars illustrations. I designed my own characters and drew some of the film characters and sent those in and then, months later, I got a phone call from the publisher. “Hey, we got your samples. We love your work. Do you want to do some freelance work for us on our Star Wars books?” My knees were shaking. Oh my God, this is it. I'm going to actually make Star Wars art professionally. So, for the next few years, I illustrated about maybe thirteen or fourteen Star Wars books for this publisher and hundreds of illustrations. Pen and ink drawings, color. This was some of my very first coloring work in Photoshop as well, where I'm scanning my ink drawings. And then, from there, that led to doing illustration a few years later for some Star Wars magazines. And then, from there, I was illustrating Star Wars projects for Lucasfilm directly. And this is around the time of the prequels
Destroy The Rebellion by Brian Miller
Brian: For me, working with Joe was such a pleasure and I learned so much from him about style and composition and the way he would create action scenes. We worked together off and on for over a decade on various projects. I would be coloring and painting his work. Because of Joe, the opportunity came up for me to work on some of the Topps trading cards and sketch cards and other projects. I don't know if it was a good idea, or if it was an idea born from laziness, but I had this idea with these Topps cards. They would want you to draw a bunch of them really fast. And so, I’m looking at reference of Star Wars movies. Of course, they’re all widescreen and I was like, I could create one image across three cards. That would be kind of cool. I would arrange it so each card would have at least one really recognizable character on it. So, I was like, if I do that, I can get this done three times as fast because I’m drawing or painting three cards at a time. I'm kind of a process geek. So, I'm like, I hacked this. So I completed my first set of Topps sketch cards that way, and if you're a collector and you pull middle card out of a pack and then think, I want to find the one that’s on the left and on the right too. So you start searching but it became this thing, where these people go on forums and on eBay and were like, I’ve got the Brian Miller card. I got these two and I'm looking for the third piece. Collecting these puzzle cards I had drawn took on a life of its own and, unbeknownst to me, there's all these collectors out there that are swapping and trading and hunting down my cards. It really took me by surprise. I didn’t know there would be this crazy demand for, what for me, was kind of a cheat. I had fun doing it, but that's really what it was. That was the first official Star Wars work and then that eventually led to the opportunity to create the limited-edition collectible illustrations, which just opened up a whole entire new world and let me figure out my artistic style. None of it would have happened without those Topps trading cards. Talk about a trial by fire when you have to create 150 or 200 hand drawn cards in two to four weeks. You’re at it night and day, just cranking away and you do have to love Star Wars. Who would do that if you didn’t absolutely love Star Wars, right? It tests your creativity and lets you prove your passion and show collectors and show Lucasfilm that you give a damn about this. I’m excited about this and want to do a good job. Luckily, the fans took notice and went crazy for them.
Mara: Nice. Do either of you do artwork for other franchises, and if so, which ones?
Joe: Brian and I have worked on a ton of properties and franchises over the years. We've done our own thing separately as illustrators and worked together on multiple properties. At the same time, I was doing Star Wars for Lucasfilm and these different gaming books, I was also getting hired by other publishers because they would see my Star Wars art go “wow, would you come work for us on Star Trek now?” And I was, of course, you know, I'm a big Star Trek fan. I mean, I love Star Wars. It's what I live and breathe. But I grew up with a love for Star Trek as well. Doing Star Wars really opened the doors for me to illustrate a lot of other properties that I grew up loving. Star Trek and X-Files and ended up working on Farscape, which was a huge favorite of mine on the Syfy channel back in the day. So as a big Farscape fan, the publisher of those comics had come and gotten in touch with me. Normally, as an artist, and I'm still doing it today, where I'm emailing directors and clients. It’s like, hey, knocking on the door, basically, virtually. And hey, can I do anything? Sometimes, it works the other way, where you're doing artwork and you’re noticed and the publisher will reach out to you and that happened a number of times over the years. It happened with Farscape, getting to illustrate those comic books for Henson Studios and Boom Studios for three years or so, which Brian colored almost every single cover, I believe, for that series. And then, for years, it's been stuff for Marvel and DC, and gosh, there's so many properties that I've forgotten that I've worked on over the years. GI Joe, Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, True Blood, Indiana Jones. You name it, Brian and I have probably left our mark on it somewhere.
Legacy of the Darksaber by Joe Corroney
Brian: That's true, and I think a lot of fans or a lot of media want to know, "what’s the coolest character that you ever got to work on?" or "Brian, I know that you're a Batman fan. Are you really excited to work on Batman?" But what you learn as you go through this life is that was when you're 19, you think, “I want to work on Batman”, or “I'm going to work on Star Wars”. But when you get some experience, some time, and some projects under your belt, you realize that it's not the characters that you worked on so much, but the people that you get to work with. I've had the pleasure to work with Dan Jurgens , the mastermind behind The Death of Superman. I've been so fortunate to work with George Perez. I’ve worked with Jim Lee, Amanda Conner, and all these incredible talented artists, writers, editors as well as people at Lucasfilm, Marvel, and Disney. Even luckier to have a friend and collaborator in Joe Corroney right here with us tonight. And when I look back on my career, of course I love Doctor Who and it's amazing I worked on Doctor Who. I love Batman and Star Wars too. However, it's all those interactions with real people, including fans and collectors. That's what makes the career feel complete, special, and fulfilling. While it's fun to say, “oh, I’ve done all these things,”, it‘s important to note, it‘s all those human interactions that actually make it feel like a success.
Mara: If you had to pick one, what would your favorite piece of artwork that you've ever created be?
Joe: That’s kind of tough from my perspective, I mean, there's definitely pieces that are the most popular, that have taken on a life of their own and maybe they’ve shared it on the internet and over the years they’ve gone viral. And some of those are my favorite pieces, some of those are ones I’ve illustrated with Brian that have been for Star Wars or other properties, but usually it tends to be whatever the newest thing that I’ve just worked on, because it tends to be the thing I'm most proud of. But it’s also because I almost always take everything that I've learned from my many years of illustrating, especially from working with Brian and his sensibilities and I apply all that knowledge from him to whatever the latest project is that I’m doing. And so that ends up being the thing I’m most proud of because it has these influences and things that I‘ve learned and these design things that I experimented with and was successful with. It may not end up being a fan’s favorite piece but it‘s usually the newest thing I’ve painted or illustrated tends to be the thing I’m most excited about or most proud of until the next painting comes along and, as long as I can be true to myself and not phone it in and be as successful as I can be with it, it tends to turn out being my favorite thing. That said, there’s a couple of pieces, maybe more than a few. Brian and I are known for our propaganda art as well and that’s been very popular with fans and we’ve done artwork for Star Wars propaganda, we’ve done Star Trek propaganda, so there’s definitely pieces there that have resonated with the fans we’re really proud of we would say. A couple of other iconic illustrations over the years that have taken on a life of their own, like “The Great Remorse of Darth Vader”, which has Vader in his meditation chamber reflecting on the death of his wife, Padme Amidala. It’s a very sentimental, very emotional scene and the way that Brian colored it, the way it’s lit with this stark white background as if you’re actually inside the meditation chamber and you see this ghostly visage of Padme floating above his head. Everything worked on that illustration perfectly and it really resonated with the fan base and still does today, so that’s the one I will be known for the most.
Brian: I think that illustration is a masterclass in visual storytelling and it’s emotional as an artist and also as a fan. I mean, if you know the story of Star Wars at all, it’s not just a clever design, it connects you and takes you to that moment in time and it resonates. You feel the emotions of anyone who loved Padme, whether they like Vader or think Vader is evil, they’re still going to have a connection to that piece on so many levels. That’s why it continues to be a fan-favorite to this day. You know that makes me think, whether you're an artist, an actor, a writer, or some other creative person, you‘re always trying to outdo yourself and sometimes it’s not possible. We all are going to have pieces in our past that are our greatest hits, but it doesn’t mean we’re not trying to push ourselves to do something more. I can look back and think, “Remember the Death Star” was massively popular. It’s in the propaganda style and features Darth Vader. J.J. Abrams sent one of his people to purchase one of these prints at Star Wars Celebration and put it in his office. I get blown away by that kind of stuff. But then the next time I’m trying even harder and some of them are bigger hits than others, but you’re still putting your all into it. I think about the oddball stuff sometimes and it‘s what I get really excited about. At Star Wars Celebration, I did the one with travel tags and a lot of people have it in their collection. That was one of those things that was just a side idea. When Lucasfilm looked at some of my concepts, they said, we like your stuff but what else you got? I showed them this Travel Tag thing. They said “this could be something cool. What can you do with that?” I said, give me twenty-four hours. I worked on a composition and I said, hey, I can tell the story of the original trilogy with these travel tags, so I start with Tatooine and work my way across the other planets. I get to the end and I have the Death Star and it’s just not working. My wife, Kristy, looks at it and says, “yeah, it‘s cool, but it’s just all right.” I can tell by her response it is missing the wow factor that gets you really excited as a fan. And then I have this idea, what if the Death Star tag is torn in half like a cancelled travel ticket or something. So, I tear it in half and write cancelled on it. When she comes back that night, I show it to her and she’s like “yes, that’s it!” I got so excited. But then the fear kicks in, the artist's insecurity. I show it to Lucasfilm and now they’re excited. But then the fear kicks in again because it doesn’t have any characters on it, it doesn‘t have any ships. It’s just my interpretation of mid-century airline tags within the Star Wars universe. I‘m almost paralyzed with fear that nobody is going to want this, but people went absolutely crazy for it. And so, you never know where those "happy accidents" are going to come from and sometimes us artists have these crazy ideas that would never come from a corporate environment and those ideas can connect with the fanbase and collectors and help get this excitement going in a way that some product planning committee never could. That‘s why artists like myself and Joe and other artists that are in the Star Wars Celebration Art Show are so valuable because we can come at the Star Wars universe with our own creative ideas and our own interpretation and sometimes have these wild imaginative sparks, create whole new ideas.
Mara: One little spark.
Brian: Exactly. Ignite the spark!
Mara: Brian, I had a question for you specifically. How did you come up with your tagline, “Funny name, serious art”?
Brian: First of all, Oktopolis came from my inability to sit still. I’m always trying to do eight things at one time and my wife loves anything with an Octopus on it. So I was like, Octopus plus Metropolis equals Oktopolis! I was coloring and painting comics full time and the illustration was a once-in-a-blue-moon thing and then it exploded and Oktopolis was everywhere and so I had to explain the crazy name to people over and over, especially when I launched my website and people would just be like “what is this? Is this real? Is this a phishing site?” So, it really just came down to letting people know that, “yes, I’m a real artist, it’s a crazy name” but for everybody who was discovering it for the first time as a fan, that put them at ease. With a name like Brian Miller, it’s so generic that I can’t really go by my name because there are hundreds or thousands of Brian Millers out there. Even in middle school, I remember getting called to the principal’s office. I walked in and I was scared and I’m like, I’m Brian Miller. There was two cops standing there and they tell me that they found weed in my locker and that I’m going to jail. And then a tough looking older kid with a tattoo and a ripped-up jean vest walked in and says, "I’m Brian Miller, what’s up?” They took one look at him and one look at me and let me go.
The Legend of Han Solo By Brian Miller
Mara: Wow!
Brian: I learned early on that the name, Brian Miller, was just too generic and so when I got into art and comics, I just decided I have to go by something else so that people could actually find me.
Mara: That’s an interesting story.
Joe: There’s not too many Joe Corroneys out there, so I’m on the opposite end of that issue.
Brian: I think that there are two other Brian Millers involved with Lucasfilm, right?
Joe: There’s one for sure. There’s another Brian Miller who actually works at Lucasfilm.
Brian: A producer, right?
Joe: Yeah. He’s a producer or something. Because haven’t you gotten e-mails crossed with him?
Brian: I was at a convention where I was on a panel and I was introduced as “the producer behind legendary episodes of The Clone Wars and Star Wars videogames”, and they go through this whole beautiful introduction. I was on stage with voice actor Sam Witwer, author Delilah Dawson, and a couple of other Star Wars creators. I’m sure it was a real let down for the audience when I told them, I was Brian Miller the artist, NOT Brian Miller the producer. Lesson to would-be parents, find a somewhat original name for your kids!
Mara: For Brian, would you talk a little more about what you do in terms of educating future artists and your interest in NASA.
Brian: Of course. My wife is an educator and early on I had developed this process for coloring comic books in Photoshop and as I needed to hire more and more people for coloring due to high demand and training them to do what I do. Eventually, that turned into a guide and my wife was at a comic book convention talking to a book publisher. “You have a book on lettering, you have a book on penciling, and a book on inking, but where’s the book on coloring?” They said they didn’t have one and she made sure they did after that. We worked on that art education project which eventually turned into three books and several DVDs and then that turned into us visiting high schools and colleges and taking trips across the country to go to schools and educate aspiring creators. I was in panels at San Diego Comic Con and other conventions about art and art education and how art could be a career. In a lot of schools and in our culture in general we don’t talk a lot about art as a career and so letting people know that they can be an artist and be successful and you can work on really cool things. The world of comics and pop culture has been really good to me and the least I can do as a way to give back is to try to help bring up other artists, inspire other artists, and give them some tools, stories of what not to do, my experiences, or whatever I can do to help them. That’s led me to also collaborate with schools like ASU and some other colleges and doing a lot of stuff with the Kubert School and both of those also got me involved with astronauts, NASA, asteroid mining. I’m a huge sci-fi fan and I love everything to do with space travel. It’s been a dream come true to collaborate with astronauts and rocket scientists and engineers on some illustrations and short story projects. I think as Joe was saying earlier, sometimes people see what you do and then invite you along to do other things. One of the side benefits of Joe and I both being involved with Star Wars is that there are people at NASA and there are people at space agencies and at other scientific places like the Smithsonian who are also Star Wars fans and they might see what we do and go, “oh man, Joe and Brian would be perfect to work on this other thing with us!” Being an ambassador for the Star Wars brand opens up new doors and opportunities.
Destiny on Malachor by Joe Corroney
Mara: Interesting. Do you both have a favorite convention that you enjoy attending every year?
Joe: I might be speaking for both of us on this, but definitely Star Wars Celebration. It’s the most fun for us, but not just because it’s Star Wars necessarily. That’s a huge part of it but a lot of our friends and extended family that we’ve made over the years through this fandom, for this passion of Star Wars we’ve had our entire lives and we’ve made lifelong friendships with some of these people, even many of these people from Lucasfilm we’ve worked with on projects, you get to meet up with them again and after so many years, getting to meet back up with our friends and extended family and catch up with each other and celebrate our passion for this thing we all love, that drives us, inspires us to create is so special for those reasons. It’s unlike any other event or comic con and we go to a lot of really fun comic cons but Star Wars Celebration is always a bit more special for us in that regard. It‘s more than just about selling artwork or networking.
Brian: Or the parties!
Joe: Star Wars Celebration has some great parties for sure. But even those are about hanging out with all of our friends in the 501st Legion that we don’t get to see. Star Wars Celebration brings us all together. Star Wars Celebration is definitely our favorite event that we get to do. We’re really excited for the one coming up in Anaheim this May. It’s been a few years since we’ve had a Celebration in-person event, so we’re overdue and I think fans are excited and ready to reconvene in California and have the biggest and best Star Wars party in the world!
Brian: I do think there’s pent-up demand and like you said, it’s been a couple of years since we’ve had an in-person Star Wars Celebration and now fans have this chance to come back and meet their favorite Star Wars creators and interact with their friends in the 501st and get those special collectibles. When you think about it, the difference between a Star Wars Celebration and a traditional comic con is, at a comic con you don’t really know what you’re going to bump into. There’s some things announced, right, but it’s a little more random. It’s all pop culture. But with Star Wars Celebration, you know it’s going to be focused on all the things you love about Star Wars, so the fans get to stay in that Star Wars mindset the whole time at the show. It’s not just the convention floor but when you spill out in the hotels and restaurants, this one is in Anaheim, so a lot of these fans are going to be going to Disneyland too, Downtown Disney, it’s going to be living and breathing Star Wars for the entire time that show is going on and it just lets you have an escapism that you don’t get anywhere else and you have this feeling of community that just goes on and on and when it’s done you’re ready to do it all over again.
Mara: How many conventions do you guys go to usually every year, COVID notwithstanding?
Joe: Gosh. I go to a lot. When COVID happened, it definitely pumped the brakes for a little over a year and there weren’t any in-person events. Late last summer, they slowly started to pick back up again. Usually, when there’s not a life-endangering pandemic, I do a lot. I’m in the Midwest, so I’m in a good spot to travel to the east coast and to the south and the north. I probably do an average of fifteen, seventeen, eighteen conventions a year. These events are accessible for me, so I can hit them a little easier in the Midwest but comic cons in general over the last ten years have been so big they’ve really taken on a life of their own and they just keep growing and keep popping up, so they’ve been a great way for me to get out and share my art work with a lot of different fanbases.
Brian: Well, if you look at the music industry over the last twenty years, we’ve seen this real shift from bands that would release an album and go multiple platinum and they might do a short summer tour to where there are some bands that are touring all year and that’s how they’re meeting their fans, interacting with people, and having a majority of their success because of so much noise in the music world. I think comics are very similar and pop culture in general in that you used to attend San Diego Comic Con, Chicago Con, and then maybe New York or Seattle or something and those are the main cons you would be a guest at. Back then the comic books and the projects you would work on would come out to great fanfare and acclaim but now there’s a lot of noise out there, so much new material being released all the time and it’s hard to get noticed in the same way, so as creators we do have to hit the road. Between May and September, I might be gone every weekend to a convention to meet fans, speak on panels, and just out of necessity, so when the pandemic came along, it really put a damper on things.
Mara: I’m sure.
Brian: I’m excited that this upcoming Star Wars Celebration will be my first live event since the pandemic started. It might be the only convention I decide to attend in all of 2022, so I’m really excited and I would say anybody who’s going to be there, there’s so much pent-up demand I hope they come by and say hi to Joe and I and pick up our latest artwork. If you already know you’re going to be there, be sure to go to the Acme Archives and Dark Ink Art websites and pre-order our exclusive artwork that’s going to be at the show. When you come, be sure to see us to get those exclusively autographed, chat with us, let’s take some selfies together. We’ve missed our Star Wars family and think it’s going to be wild and crazy here in a few weeks in May, so look forward to seeing everybody and it will be nice to be back at a real live event again. Star Wars Celebration is my favorite event and I cannot wait to see everybody
Mara: What would you guys say you’re looking forward to the most at Star Wars Celebration this year?
Joe: We touched on it earlier. There’s so many of our friends that we don’t get to see that often and with Brian and I, he’s in the southwest and I’m in the Midwest over in Ohio, so when we do get to meet in person it‘s maybe once or twice a year if we’re lucky, so, for that reason, Celebration is kind of special for us to reconnect and get to hang out and catch up in person. And with all of our other friends too and all of the fans that have supported us over the years, who bought all of our prints and shared our artwork online or they come to us at other events and conventions. Those are the people that I’m excited to see again and friends we’ve made over the years since working in the industry for over 23 years. And that’s totally honest, without any kind of cheesiness or anything. It’s great to see the reveals. I hope they do a big thing for Kenobi, like a preview. Kenobi will actually launch the first day of Celebration or the night before. Hopefully, we’ll get to see a preview of the first few episodes, not that we’ll necessarily get to see it because we’ll be busy in our booths but at least we can partake in the excitement of that. And all the panels and all the actors. They’re always fun to meet and catch up with. We’ve gotten to know a few of them over the years and that’s always exciting, to rub elbows with some of the celebrities in the Star Wars world but honestly, it’s just meeting the fans and the friends we have known and making new friends and fans every celebration always happens. That’s the highlight for us, I think.
Brian: Like Joe said, I’m super excited to see what’s going on with Kenobi, everyone is. But along the lines of our fans and our friends, we’re creators, so we’re also excited about what other people create, so I am excited to see the other Star Wars Celebration artists and what they’ve created. I’m excited to see the fans, the 501st, and if they’ve built new armor that just got approved or maybe it’s a new cosplayer with a new costume or some of our friends are tattoo artists and they’re live tattooing and we get to see their work. There’s this human element to Star Wars that is hard to express, but as a creator I get excited seeing what other people are creating and it doesn’t have to be the same thing I’m doing, right? Just because it’s Star Wars and they have some crazy idea that you could just see it brought to fruition. That’s exciting and that’s a memory that you can take home and no one else was there to experience it except for you and the other people there. When they talk about Star Wars Celebration exclusives, it’s not just the stuff, it’s the experiences. The experience is an exclusive, because you can’t buy it, can’t bottle it, you can’t sell it. You have to be there to have that experience and THAT is what I’m really excited about.
Joe: Well said.
Mara: You guys have any favorite memories of any convention you’ve ever attended?
Joe: There’s been a few where I’ve gotten to meet some of the actors from the Star Wars films. If you had told me when I was a little kid that someday as an adult, I’d be working as a professional on Star Wars, illustrating for this property and that I’d be going to a convention in New York and hanging out with David Prowse, the actor who played Darth Vader, my favorite Star Wars character as a kid right next to Boba Fett, Jeremy Bulloch, got to hang out with Jeremy Bulloch at multiple conventions over the years, to the point that Jeremy sees me walking down a hotel hallway and cracks jokes at my expense. We had that kind of relationship because we had done so many conventions together over the years and been in those trenches of those really small sci-fi conventions where not a lot of people came but we still had a great time hanging out together and going out to dinner and stuff. There are just memories like that, hanging out with some of my idols, these characters who were legendary in my youth and getting to meet them in person as a professional or even as some of the other artists like Dave Dorman or Tsuneo Sanda, these incredible Star Wars illustrators who just inspired me to want to create Star Wars art, getting to go to conventions and now be considered a contemporary or a colleague still kind of blows my mind because I still look up to them but they don’t treat me that way. They treat me like I’m one of the guys but I’m like, but what you guys do is magic. I want to do what you do. I’m just lucky enough to be included at these events with some of these people I’ve always looked up to my whole life, so I never try to take that for granted anytime I go to Celebration or at any convention. I was just in Lexington Comic Con recently in Kentucky and Larry Hama, creator of G.I. Joe was right down the row. He’s like my other George Lucas because I loved G.I. Joe. I love the mythology of that comic and every time he passed by my table, I always made sure to say, Hey Larry, how’s it going? He’s a genius creator and a genius storyteller and writer and artist, someone else I really look up to.
Brian: I have so many stories but I’ll just pick one. I remember that Joe and I were at Celebration, I think the last one was in Orlando, and we had graciously been invited to the VIP area that the 501st had and it was a real big party and Weird Al was the music that night.
Mara: Oh wow.
BB-8 and BB-9E Art by Brian Miller
Brian: We had a great time and I remember that we got to hang out with Dave Filoni. This is before The Mandalorian and before Disney+ and Joe and I were treated like equals and you’re in awe of this person but they’re treating you just as an equal creator and we just got to sit there and had a really nice conversation before the show started about our Star Wars fandom and the things we like and different things about the movies and it was just like a normal Star Wars fan conversation, just with Filoni, so that was a pretty nice moment because it didn’t feel forced, it’s not part of a gig, it just happened organically. It was a really nice moment. But to top it off, right before Weird Al came out, in walks Billy Dee Williams and his entourage and he glides past and says some hellos and has some drinks or whatever and then they go to their sofa to watch the show. So, the rest of us from then on, whatever we were talking about is over because of our admiration for Lando and his suaveness, so it was the perfect way to cap off that VIP moment.
Mara: That would have been really cool. Do either of you have any favorite Star Wars movies, series, or characters? Anything or anybody in particular?
Joe: I have my favorite characters for certain that inspire me as an artist to want to work with and illustrate because they’re fun to draw or I want to continue the storytelling about those characters in some fashion through my artwork. I have my favorite Star Wars films. I love it all. Even the projects that may not be universally loved, or the ones that have more bumps and bruises in them than in the others, but I still love it all. I’m really excited for Bad Batch Season Two because I love Bad Batch. It feels like Clone Wars Part Two because I love Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. I’m a huge Star Wars Rebels fan. It seems like most people are excited about the next movie or the next live-action experience on Disney+ and I’m looking forward to those too. I’m excited for Kenobi. I can’t believe it’s happening, but there’s something with Lucasfilm animation and what they’re able to do with the storytelling with Star Wars in that medium. There’s no limits. Another great example of that is Star Wars Visions, which was another Lucasfilm animation project which I loved and there were so many different styles and different animators and different animation studios that contributed to that project, so that was really fresh and exciting to see Star Wars boundaries pushed, especially my favorite episode, The Ninth Jedi, was so good. It was what Star Wars needs to be going forward. Almost like Star Wars a hundred years from now or five hundred years from now, that’s the story I want to see, where Star Wars is headed and I really hope they do more with that episode and those characters. Darth Vader and Boba Fett are my favorite and they have to be Brian’s as well, which explains why we’re such good friends. We have very similar tastes when it comes to Star Wars. I know he’s excited about Bad Batch and Kenobi as well. So, we’re usually on the same page when it comes to Star Wars and all this stuff we’re passionate about.
Brian: I’ll echo everything he said and add, Rogue One was such a great film that I’m really excited for the Cassian Andor series and I don’t know what to expect because it’s all supposed to happen in the past. I think the anticipation of the unknown has me really excited. As a fan, I like going into those scenarios where I don’t know what’s coming next, I don’t really have any pieces to put together and I can go along for the ride. So that’s what’s coming in the future that I am really excited for. I would count Rogue One amongst those favorite films and those characters amongst my favorites even though I’ve only created two Rogue One illustrations in my career but who knows? Maybe this will open the door to more?
Mara: Well yeah, exactly.
Joe: I’ll add this, without giving too much away, I had a conversation with someone in the know and the Cassian Andor series is going to be really special. It’s something to consider because it’s not necessarily Filoni and Favreau involved in this series, which is not a good or bad thing, but it’s going to be different than the other live-action series we’ve been getting. It’s going to be a UK production, which is another difference as opposed to the other live-action stuff that’s being shot here in the US and also, it’s Tony Gilroy directing, who was a co-director on Rogue One. He did all those reshoots with Gareth Edwards and molded it into the amazing movie that it was. Word I’m hearing from some people involved in production is that Andor is going to be different and it’s going to be special. If you loved Rogue One, you’re going to love Andor.
Mara: I just have one more question and then we’re done. Is there any information about yourselves or your work that you don’t get asked much that you would like our readers to know?
Brian: That’s a really good question. I am trying to interpret the Star Wars Universe through the lens of my art style and how I see Star Wars and hopefully my illustrations show the collectors and show the fans a new side of Star Wars through my eyes. For me that’s the sign of a transformative art process. If a fan can see a version of Star Wars that they like in my artwork, then we’re connecting on a different level because it’s one thing to capture a still frame from the movie and share that and everybody goes, oh I remember that. But if you can create some new illustrations, some new interpretations… maybe it’s a moment that happened on screen or maybe it’s a moment that never happened on screen… then you can connect to people and build that story in a new way that is unexpected. And I think the new and unexpected is what I hope fans take away from my artwork.
Mara: Thank you.
Joe: What’s personally rewarding as a Star Wars creator for me is not just being a lifelong fan and getting to contribute to this property with my artwork. It’s incredibly special and I cherish every single time I’m allowed to play in the sandbox, whether it’s sketch cards or posters or contributing a new design to a character or story. It doesn’t really matter how big or small the contribution is, it never gets old. It’s always a thrill and I think the thing I’m most proud of is getting to leave my mark on this property that I love so much even if it’s just a small thing because there’s hundreds and thousands of artists that work on Star Wars in different aspects whether it’s production for the films or the live-action series or the animation or the licensing art. Brian and I are just one of many artists who do this for a living. Personally, as a Star Wars fan, I feel extremely honored and lucky to be able to attend Star Wars Celebration, to create new artwork for Star Wars Celebration and to offer that artwork to all of the fans out there who already like my artwork or who are just discovering it for the first time, because getting to share our love of Star Wars through our artwork, nothing beats that.
Brian: Amen. Well said.
Mara: Well, I will have to say that I feel very honored and lucky to be able to spend this time with you both and ask you all these questions and just learn all these fun things about you.
Joe: Thank you.
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