Topps 2017 Star Wars Rogue One: Series Two Sketch Cards

As a huge fan of the Star Wars universe I am always happy when I have an opportunity to work on a Star Wars trading card set from Topps. Today Topps releases a new Star Wars trading card set called Rogue One: Series Two. This is the third trading card set I have worked on from Topps that specifically deals with Rogue One – the first two being Rogue One: Mission Briefing and Rogue One: Series One.

What you may not realize is that sketch cards for sets like this one are created months to a year prior to the release of the trading card set. For Rogue One Series 1 cards, like previous Star Wars sets, the trading card product was timed to release as close to the movie’s release date as possible. As this means the artwork must be produced earlier, obtaining reference images of the characters is exceeding difficult. When it comes to the sketch cards, the artists are not privy to anything other than what has been made public.

The Rogue One: Series 2 product is timed to release with the Blue Ray /DVD release of the movie, which meant the deadline for the art cards was cutoff about a week after the theatrical release back in December of 2016. For my reference material, this meant that I had access to all the magazine articles (I was also given some costume photos to work with), all of the trailers, and like a true fanboy I had rushed out to see the movie on opening night. Because I had actually seen the movie I could draw a few of the spoiler characters which I had not previously known about!

In all I created 100 sketch cards for this product. I alternated between water colors and a mixed media of pencil crayons (mainly just white pencils), copic markers, and india ink. I felt a little rushed on some of the cards but am overall happy with my results. Below are 13 of my Artist Returns from this project, all of which are listed on Ebay.