Hugh Fleming

Fleming is known for his cinematic, photo-realistic illustrations in the style of movie posters. His compositions frequently used obscure or less common photographic references from film production photos or stills. This helped him to produce authentic and innovative artwork for well-known media properties. Fleming prided himself on crafting scenes that did not appear to be derived from widely recognized photo references.

Fleming's process involved coating a board with a gesso surface to achieve a textured effect. He primarily worked with acrylic paints. He would employ photographic references of actors and/or friends as models, ensuring proper lighting that matched the concept's environment. In the nineties, Fleming remained a strong advocate for traditional media, criticizing digital art for its perceived lack of attention to the nuances of light and the fine details of materials. He appreciated the unpredictable element introduced by physical materials, such as the random splaying of brush fibers.

Inspired by the initial Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, Fleming aspired to pursue filmmaking from an early age. He was primarily a self-taught illustrator, with his only formal art education consisting of a five-month commercial art course in 1985, shortly after graduating from high school. Fleming's career as a painter in the comic book industry began when he attended the San Diego Comic Convention in the early 1990s, where he started obtaining cover art assignments from various smaller comic book publishers.

He first encountered editors from Dark Horse Comics at the 1993 San Diego Convention, where Fleming and his close friend, Pete Ford, presented a proposal for a four-issue Indiana Jones mini-series, provisionally titled Indiana Jones and the Lost Horizon.

As lifelong fans of Indiana Jones, Fleming and Ford collaborated on the story—envisioned as a prequel faithfully depicting an Indy adventure alongside his mentor Abner Ravenswood—and Fleming created color artwork for the proposal to help sell it. Dark Horse acquired the mini-series, and Fleming was slated to provide interior artwork for the 96-page story. However, the mini-series was ultimately cancelled before production could commence due to lackluster sales of Indy comics at the time.

While that project was still under consideration, Fleming was approached by his prospective editor, Ryder Windham, to create the cover for another Indy mini-series already being published by the company, titled Thunder in the Orient.

The cover for Thunder's first issue had been created by Dave Dorman, a popular cover artist in the '90s, but Dorman was in high demand at the time (working on numerous Star Wars covers, among other projects), so Fleming was brought in to take over for the sake of expediency.

Consequently, Fleming became a regular cover artist for Dark Horse's Indiana Jones stories, beginning with Thunder and continuing with Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny in 1995.

Having demonstrated his familiarity with the character through his initial Indy story proposal, Fleming was granted considerable creative autonomy throughout the cover creation process.

He would receive copies of interior artwork from the stories and then collaborate with Windham to identify the most visually compelling scene to illustrate for the cover. He typically had around a month to complete a given cover. He primarily utilized his own collection of Indy paraphernalia and Harrison Ford books for photo reference.

The year following his initial Indiana Jones work, Fleming once again succeeded Dave Dorman as cover artist on the company's most popular Lucasfilm license, Star Wars, which was being edited by Ryder Windham.

In 1994, Fleming created the six covers for the second part of the Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi epic, Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi - Dark Lords of the Sith, continuing the narrative of ancient Jedi Knights Ulic Qel-Droma and Exar Kun. These covers included notable firsts, such as the initial depiction of a double-bladed lightsaber.

According to Fleming, Lucasfilm Licensing was significantly more generous in providing Star Wars reference materials, directly supplying him with packages of color copies from the LFL stock library and fulfilling any requests he made.

These covers were followed by work on the third Tales of the Jedi miniseries, Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi — The Sith War, the following year—firsts for these covers included the first painted image of Mandalore—and then as cover artist for the miniseries adaptations of Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, through to the end of 1996.

One of the most unique non-comic cover pieces of Star Wars art for Fleming came in 1998, when The Star Wars Fan Club presented an exclusive poster by the artist entitled Star Wars Rocks! The poster featured an in-action image of the heroes of the original trilogy playing a rock concert, complete with instruments, pyrotechnic lights, smoke effects, a crowd of cheering fans, and Darth Vader descending by wires from above the stage.

Fleming returned to Star Wars to paint covers for the four-part Dark Horse adaptation of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace in 1999.

As of December 2002, Fleming had taken a hiatus from illustration to concentrate on his ambitions in writing and filmmaking, and was last mentioned as being involved in several lower-profile TV and film projects in an online interview. However, in 2008, he made a comeback to illustrate the covers for the Dark Horse adaptation of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Beyond his Star Wars and Indiana Jones work, Fleming has also created illustrations for DC Comics, including titles such as Star Trek, Batman, and Green Arrow/Green Lantern, among others.

• " Star Wars Around the World " — Star Wars Insider 26
• " Cover Story " — Star Wars Galaxy Magazine 7
• The Secrets of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
• " Launchpad " — Star Wars Insider 227

• Interview on theraider.net
• Hugh Fleming on Comic Vine
• Article on Fleming at dayofthejedi.com