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IMPERIAL FORCES
The Packaging
Conceptual Designs: Imperial Forces

I am also a member of a local (to me anyway) STAR WARS email fan club, and during the summer one of the other members, Bob Post, suggested this set of Ralph McQuarrie designs. His concept was for a boxed set of the character designs by the artist from the first STAR WARS movie. Having recently completed my "Daily Custom Update" (of 1999), I thought this would be a fun set as well. So, I did some research and found the various designs that I used for this set. One of the interesting things I learned is that lightsabers were much more common in the initial designs!

For this special set of customs, I wanted to try my hand at creating the packaging as well. I haven't done much in this area, but I thought I could do it! I wanted it to fit in with the STAR WARS line, but still be able to stand on its own. So, I came up with a simple design, and went to work!



  • DEATH STAR ESCAPE Cinema Scene box
  • Adobe Photoshop 5.0

For this IMPERIAL FORCES set, I chose to go a simple route. The reference photos were pretty slim, so I just stuck with the ones found on the character pages.

Assembling the images in Photoshop was a lot of fun, especially the back view. You can see that I was not quite finished with the figures for this set when I made this box, as the Stormtroopers were altered and Vader is still all black. You will have to see the full-size view to see most of these details. I used the "Ambient" font, which looked similar to the one on the box. Does anyone know the correct font?

One all the pieces were assembled, I printed them out at work and glued them onto the box. The hardest part was placing the figures into the box. Those shield and sabers take up a lot of space! I had to carefully place them so they would not knock loose when I placed it onto my scanner!

And finally, I want to give credit where credit is due. The images used on the package were screen caps from the BEHIND THE MAGIC CD-ROM. The text describing the set was lifted right off the back of a card from THE ART OF STAR WARS from Topps.