The Unofficial Clone Wars Site

MEET THE MEDSTAR CREATIVE TEAM

One is an Emmy award-winning screen-writer, one is a best-selling scribe, who also happens to be an accomplished martial artist, and the other is former architect from Boston who is a self-described "fanboy." What do they all have in common? The Star Wars: Medstar Duology, a set of two Clone Wars novels due out this year. Michael Reaves (co-author), Steve Perry (co-author), and Dave Seeley (cover artist) are the three men that made Medstar happen and TUCWS has the exclusive interview with the trio.

DAVE SEELEY, cover artist

Dave Seeley was an award-winning architect before he began doing sci-fi art for a living. He's worked for the likes of Sony, Microsoft, Tor, FASA, Wizards of the Coast, and of course Lucasfilm. You can check out his first Star Wars work on the covers of the New Jedi Order novels, Rebel Dream and Rebel Stand by Aaron Allston.

Seeley was charged with rendering covers for the Medstar Duology and the cancelled Clone Wars novel, Escape from Dagu. To learn more about Dave, check out his official website - www.daveseeley.com.

Rebel Dream

TUCWS: How long have you been a professional artist?

Dave Seeley: I've been doing pro illustrations since 1995. Prior to that I was a practicing architect (and fan boy) for a dozen years, so I got a late start in the illo world.

TUCWS: How did you get your start in the industry?

DS: Which industry?.... I started doing pro work for the Collectible Card Game (CCG) industry....some location images for the ill-fated CCG Heresy by Last Unicorn Games. My architectural background got me that gig. Then LUG got into a bind because another artist stiffed them at deadline, and they handed me 7 character images. All that work got me in the door at Wizards of the Coast for work on Magic, Sabbat, Netrunner, and Battletech. My first cover work was for White Wolf's Trinity role playing game. I didn't do novel jackets until I found an agent to go hustle them for me.

TUCWS: How did you get involved with Lucasfilm?

I had been knocking on Dave Stevenson's door at Del Rey for several years. During that period I had amassed a bunch of published cover work in the Sci -Fi book publishing world. I had my agent set up a meeting with Dave, and the timing was fortuitous, because there were several images that had the "inside the cockpit" atmosphere he was looking for. He submitted me to Lucasfilm as the proposed artist for the Rebel Dream/Rebel Stand duology, and they green-lighted me.

Rebel Stand

TUCWS: How does working on Star Wars compare (or contrast) to working with other franchises?

DS: Franchise work generally involves a two tiered art direction/approvals process. That means all the work you do needs to pass through two levels of approvals, from concept to final, and several drafts in between. I suspect it may work this way for the writers as well. For Star Wars, my interface is with Dave Stevenson at Randomhouse/Del Rey. When he is happy with my work, it goes off to Lucasfilm for the second tier. This process becomes more complex as you add multiple corporate entities, and it runs smoothly when the various heads have a relatively compatible perspective. I do a lot of work for video game companies where there is a similar process only under the same roof. Art direction is one department, then marketing is another. There are similarities between that and my Star Wars work. Non franchise related publishing is usually much more simple, where publisher has an an art director who works directly with the artist. The art director is communicating with the editor, owner etc, all under the same roof.

TUCWS: I talk to artists all the time and they often cite Star Wars (and other sci-fi films and t.v. shows) as a major influence on their being interested in art. Is this also true for you?

DS: Definitely! I was in the theatre for the original movie, and when that battlecruiser rumbled across the star field, I was transfixed. I still have that memory. I think I'm much more influenced by film SF than by any legacy of SF art, a lot of which I find pretty hokey. Films like Blade Runner, and Alien are my gut inspirations.

Medstar I: Battle Surgeons

TUCWS: When you are hired to render book covers, how much of the plot do you know beforehand?

DS: It totally varies with the project. For Star Wars, I've gotten both synopses and full manuscripts...probably dependent on where the writer(s) happen to be on the timeline. In publishing, there may be nothing but a description of what the picture needs to be, or a full manuscript where the art director asks me to read it and suggest an image.

TUCWS: Do you read the novels once they are published?

DS: Typically no. The issue is a two parter.... My brain is a visual and spatial one, and as is often the case with that kind of skew, I'm a painfully slow reader. I'm usually too involved in reading what's available for the next cover, to be able to read the finished book when they send me my copies. That means that if I read only a synopsis, it may be all I ever read, and in many cases, I got HALF a manuscript, so there are several books that I've been meaning to go back and finish, but never seem to get the chance. In the last year I've become a subscriber to audible.com, an audio book club. I live in downtown Boston and don't own a car, so I walk a lot....with my ipod, and audio books. I don't do much SF beyond what I read for assignments, but I do all the audio I can get from favorites William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Margaret Atwood.

TUCWS: You are now officially part of the Clone Wars creative team. Are you following the ongoing tale of the Clone Wars in the comics and novels?

DS: I may well have shifted from architecture to illustration because of my comics fandom. Since becoming an illustrator, my overwhelming desire to collect has been subverted into image making. I haven't been actively collecting now for many years, but now my son is 8, and we've been buying a bunch of the Star Wars comics, so I'm familiar with some of the back story, and characters.....AND their respective toy personas. My first Clone Wars novel cover was for the Escape from Dagu project that was cancelled shortly after I finished the piece.

That was kind of a bummer. I liked that character Shaak Ti, and I got to design the lead bad-ass, Artel Darc, for his first public appearance. Assajj Ventress was in Dagu as well, but unfortunately too peripheral a character for the jacket. BTW...I love the design of the clones! They're so macho and muscular compared to those whimpey storm troopers with their skinny arms and girlie shoulders. Maybe, like us, they were just victims of the fashion of their time. It'll be interesting to see how the clones fare in the next thirty years.

TUCWS: What sort of mediums did you use to create the cover art
for the Medstar Duology?

DS: I work in a kind of frankensteinian flurry of digital photo collage. That's how I started and developed the image. Then I have the piece printed at about 3' tall and laminate it to a masonite panel, put a clear acrylic finish over it, then oil paint on top of that. In these two covers, only the backgrounds are not covered in oil paint.

Medstar II: Jedi Healer

TUCWS: Are the Medstar covers based on specific scenes in the novels or something else?

DS: The Battle Surgeons image is based on a specific action scene. The Healer image is a blatant rip-off/homage to Michelangelo's Pieta sculpture in St. Peters....going for the mystical, magical, maternal side of Barriss, and casting "the" clone in a rather martyred role.

http://www.christusrex.org/www1/citta/B1-Pieta.html

TUCWS: How dissappointed were you when you heard that Escape from Dagu was cancelled? That must happen all the time?

DS: First time for me doing an illo. Used to happen 50% of the time when I was an architect..... I was certainly dissappointed because I really liked the piece a lot, but I would have been more so if the piece had been killed before the finish. That means about half the fee remains unpaid! Dave assigned me the Medstar pair shortly afterward, so that was a bit of a salve.

Escape from Dagu

TUCWS: Artel Darc, the dark Jedi on the Escape from Dagu cover, looked like he was going to be interesting. How did you come up with his visage? He sort of looks like the actor named Michael Hurst ("Iolaus" from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys).

DS: Typically I comb my photo library when I have a vague mental image of where I want to go. His face started with a royalty free pic I had in my library.... and I built him around a description by the author. His expression and look were all a part of what I thought I needed to portray in his character.

TUCWS: Any more Star Wars projects down the pipeline?

DS: I hope so! Nothing pending, but the last one was a pleasure to do with Dave Stevenson, and Lucasfilm just bought the original painting for Surgeons, so I think I'm still in their respective good graces.

TUCWS: What's up next for Dave seeley?

DS: I'm working on two book jackets and a vid game box at the moment, and as is the nature of my profession, I don't have any idea what I'm doing in two weeks.

TUCWS: Finally, are you hyped about Episode III, which is less than a year away?

DS: Absolutely!

Medstar I: Battle Surgeons is in stores now! Click here to purchase it from Amazon.com.

Conducted by Brian Gates and the TUCWS staff, with contributions from JTS and Quest