That’s the image that inspired the cup for the Illustrated Star Wars Universe. It’s a concept painting for the interior of the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, by Ralph McQuarrie. I googled him for this post, and found out he’d passed away in March.
He worked on all three original Star wars movies, as well as ET, Star Trek IV, Battlestar Galactica, Back to the Future, and Forbidden Planet. He did book covers and magazines and computer games. Even some animation for NASA. I didn’t learn his name until my teens, but by then his work had already made a huge impact on my imagination. I remember being impressed with the sheer scale of his work. How big the pieces were, how detailed the worlds got. He was one of the most important people in science fiction (or at least, the science fiction that interested me), and one of my biggest art heroes.
It’s sad to know he’s gone.
