Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

"Ironically, it’s a very poorly designed site"

When I first clicked the link and and saw the opening page I was like "Well, it's a little garish but not that bad!" Then after clinking a couple of links that didn't work and seeing the cheesy water effect on the "Empire Strikes Back" page, I had to admit you're right.

But hey, that's no reflection on Ralph McQuarrie's terrific paintings at all! I love his stuff, and he has as much to do with making Star Wars what it is as George Lucas..... He's a huge part of my childhood mind, and ultimately how I turned out in adulthood.

Thanks for the link!

I noticed that the links to the battlestar galactica stuff don't work.
The site is under construction. Does that count as bad design or bad timing? :)
I'm just glad for the part that is up already. That guy created so many pictures in our minds over the years... :)

I've never seen so many beautiful photoshop slices.

It's always amazed me that Lucas didn't retain the vastness of McQuarrie's artwork. The films would've have been all the more awe inspiring had he followed the perspectives of the art more closely.

Um, you should say via metafilter

The site is very good!!!...only if the pics still But, only if the images were optimized.

It seems that try to be created an atmosphere whenever click a Link, but the abuse of heavy images under the obtained thing that this the design.

Too bad Lucas didn't have enough taste to use a designer like Mcquarrie whose visuals were modern, elegant, and powerful. Instead we have the visual monstrosity that is the prequels all thanks to the concept art drones he relied on.

Oh, that's not why those movies sucked.

eh, one of the main reasons why

The thing could've had the best art direction in the world, and they still would've still been really really bad movies. But yes, I think the original McQuarrie stuff was original and inspired.

There's nothng wrong with that website. It's better than most.

I love this guy, and not only because I used to spend hours looking at his pictures. I actually wrote him a dopey fan letter (the only one I've ever sent) when I was about 13 years old and he took the time to write me back and give me some encouragement. It really made my day.

I hear that he now has Parkinsons so he doesn't paint anymore

Hi guys, constructive criticism, I like it.

Allow me to introduce myself - I'm the guy responsible for the 'poorly designed' site.

Thanks for the support Brett, shame there wasn't a little more!

In answer to the comments, I can understand folk’s unhappiness with the bitmap heavy content and applet usage. However my priority during the initial construction of this site has been 'what would Ralph' like to see.

However the opinions of every visitor to the site are important to us, so we’d appreciate it if you’d bear with us. This job is much larger than it may appear on the surface.

The website will be upgraded significantly, but for now the majority of our time is being spent recovering and restoring a huge amount of Ralph’s work (and there’s a lot).

Apologies that the site isn’t to everyone’s liking, but we’re getting there (anyone remember the old site? Take my word for it, this one is a big improvement). I guess you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

Once we’re able to update the content, we hope you revisit and enjoy your stay a little more.

All the best . . .

Paul (RMQ.com)