Artist Mark Raats Shares More Information On 'The Mandalorian' Season 2's Promotional Poster
Mark Raats is a famous and very well respected artist within the Star Wars community. The artist has been working with Lucasfilm for a while now, creating posters for the Skywalker saga, as well as Indiana Jones. His work has made such a huge impact that even the creator himself, George Lucas, has bought some of Mark's pieces for himself.
The artist was interviewed by The Direct, with whom he talked about his latest commission for the second season of Lucasfilm’s first Star Wars live-action series, The Mandalorian. The artist explained that he had a lot of freedom when creating the design of the poster for season two of The Mandalorian, yet he had to be careful when designing the poster in order to avoid any potential spoilers.
Raats wanted to add Jedi Master Luke Skywalker to the poster, but the timing for the release of the episodes and his artwork were yet to be determined. So he left Luke out to avoid any spoilers for the fans who hadn’t seen the final episode of season 2.
"The artwork was revealed pretty much prior - probably a day earlier - than the final episode was revealed, and most people saw it only - with time differences - most people saw it once the program had been aired. But that said, a lot of people hadn't seen it yet. So even if I had put Luke in, with the timing being that it would be released pretty much as the final episode was revealed, it would've still spoiled it for a lot of people who hadn't seen it. So I was actually quite grateful that Lucasfilm made the decision to not include Luke, even though it would've been nice to have him there."
The poster included the show's own familiar characters like Mando, The Child, and Cara Dune, as well as Star Wars: The Clone Wars character Ahsoka Tano. The poster was officially released for the season finale for The Mandalorian and only featured Ahsoka as a new addition to the show, yet excluding characters like Luke, Bo-Katan, and Boba Fett.
The artist also spoke of how fun it was to work with Disney and Lucasfilm, and he also explained how hard it is to receive feedback on his work from the companies due to the many personnel working within both companies. The Melbourne native told The Direct that before Disney took over Lucasfilm in 2012, he only had to send his work to George Lucas himself. George would email him immediately, and he could continue working on the project.
Now with Lucasfilm having a whole new team and new management, it takes about a week for them to get back to him, which sometimes worries the artist, as the more time they take on replying to him, the less time he has to work on notes before the deadline is met. Despite both companies taking a while to reply on him with notes, the artist can’t deny how pleasant it is to work with both Lucasfilm and Disney.
Although now it is a more extended process to deal with, the fun of working on a Star Wars poster remains. Raats proved it with the new poster for the The Mandalorian season 2 finale, as the poster not only showcases iconic characters from the series, but also represents the light side, the dark side, the rebels, and the Empire in one genius piece of art. The poster for The Mandalorian showcased warm colors for protagonists, and cooler colors to represent the antagonists.
Raats’ creativity never ceases to amaze when it comes to his posters. Take the poster he created for Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker, which shows the hand of Daisy Ridley’s character Rey holding Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber. In the background of the poster, Raats drew many characters from the entire Skywalker saga, giving a huge shoutout to the prequels and the original trilogy. The poster itself is very simple compared to the one he did for the The Mandalorian finale, as the one for the series displayed two changes in temperature colors.
Although Raats has been creating iconic Star Wars posters for a long time, we can still see the excitement he has while creating these amazing pieces of art. Will he one day put Luke Skywalker in a poster and live his longtime dream of drawing his favorite character for an official Star Wars poster? One can only wait and see what his next piece will look like.
Source(s): The Direct