Kilian Plunkett

Kilian Plunkett is an artist whose portfolio boasts a multitude of Star Wars ventures. His work for Dark Horse Comics includes several prominent Star Wars comic book series, and he currently works at Lucasfilm Animation. He held the position of lead character designer for Cartoon Network's Star Wars: The Clone Wars and served as art director for Disney XD's Star Wars Rebels.

Over time, Plunkett became a much-loved Star Wars cover artist at Dark Horse during the 1990s, ascending to a position alongside notable Star Wars comic cover illustrators such as Dave Dorman, Hugh Fleming, and Duncan Fegredo. He created a number of unforgettable covers and interior illustrations for various Star Wars titles, and has, in some capacity, evolved into a significant Star Wars artist in recent years.

Within the realm of comics, Plunkett is recognized for his distinctive cover art that merges the fluidity of animation with the effects of painting, dynamic action, and, in certain instances, humor.

Biography

He was born and brought up just outside Dublin, Ireland, and was a fan of the British periodical 2000 AD, to which John Wagner and Cam Kennedy contributed. On his seventh birthday, he saw Star Wars, which deeply affected him, and he would later cultivate his talent by drawing Darth Vader and spaceships. Around the age of twelve, he experienced a "sad, dwarf-induced" period of Tolkien-inspired and sword-and-sorcery fantasy artwork.

In 1992, at the age of twenty-one, Plunkett presented his artwork to Dark Horse Comics, which included a six-page story, both colored by hand and uncolored. It depicted a couple in formal attire in a mansion, and a running man, who is revealed to be a droid, whose head explodes. He also included character samples such as Lobo and The Predator. Ryder Windham, who was seeking an artist for Alien, another of the company's well-known movie franchises that required technical equipment and regular humans, was drawn to the artwork. Windham regarded them as the finest amateur art samples he had ever seen. Because Plunkett had not included his phone number, Windham had to contact his uncle in Dublin.

The 1990s

Plunkett relocated to Portland, Oregon, in the 1990s, where he worked from his home studio. Plunkett's initial venture into the Star Wars world occurred when Windham, his former Alien editor, tasked him with creating painted covers for the company's Star Wars: Droids series, from issues 2 to 6 in 1994. This marked the beginning of the company's series centered around Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio. Plunkett went on to become the primary cover artist for nearly all of Dark Horse's subsequent Droids comics, totaling 16. This encompassed covers for all eight issues of the second new Star Wars: Droids series, as well as the Star Wars: Droids Special 1 (which reprinted a three-part Droids story from the pages of the Dark Horse Comics anthology series), both in 1995. The only Droids issues for which Plunkett did not create covers were issue 1 of the first miniseries, which featured a special gatefold metallic foil cover drawn by Star Wars: Dark Empire artist Cam Kennedy, and a special one-shot Droids story, The Protocol Offensive, which was entirely painted—covers and interiors—by artist Igor Kordey and co-written by See-Threepio himself, Anthony Daniels. Additionally, in 1995, Plunkett served as the cover artist for the final two issues, issues 8 and 9, of Classic Star Wars: The Early Adventures, which had been reprinting the early Star Wars newspaper comic strips by Russ Manning.

1996 marked Plunkett's first significant Star Wars assignment, as he provided the interior artwork for the six-issue comic miniseries Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. Shadows of the Empire was a major Star Wars event, being the first multifaceted, multimedia Lucasfilm release, launched simultaneously with a video game and novel. Plunkett also contributed character and vehicle concept art during the project's initial phase in January 1995, including four pages of proposals for the project's main antagonist, Prince Xizor. Aware that Star Wars drew inspiration from "samurai epics," he sought to give Xizor an oriental appearance, consulting illustrations of Mongol warriors and even experimenting with an Ushanka-hat or a cowl. He also elongated Xizor's face to make him appear more inhuman, taking care not to imitate Star Trek.

The project continued to evolve even after Plunkett completed the first issue. He was instructed to create looser pencils for Xizor, allowing inker P. Craig Russell to keep up with the final visual changes to the character. Jon Knoles credits Plunkett with giving Xizor's face a sleeker quality by adding "a lot of nice lines." While still working on the second issue, he had to erase his finished pencils of the Outrider and other objects and redraw them because their designs were revised for the project.

Working on a major Star Wars project caused Plunkett some over-excitement and brainlock, as he initially attempted to cram all the cool elements he could think of into a single page. While working on Shadows, Plunkett noted that the visuals of comic book characters differ from those designed for a moving screen, whose dynamics must be captured in a two-dimensional static medium. A live-action character like Darth Vader — with his bulky designs and details, a strangely shaped helmet, and reflective surfaces that can appear differently each time — was more challenging to render than Superman or Batman, who were specifically designed for that medium.

Plunkett attended the July 1995 San Diego Comic-Con, where he finally met John Wagner, the writer of the Shadows comic, in person for the first time.

Ryder Windham recognized Plunkett's extraordinary talent for drawing intricate details of mechanical objects, such as ships and droids, from memory. While other artists would consult model kits, Plunkett's ability allowed him to look at a photograph of a vehicle and draw it from a different perspective. Plunkett found it risky to work with photo references from the original trilogy because, as he pointed out, the models and props differ in each film. For instance, he noted that R2-D2's casing has Philips head screws in Episode IV, which are absent in Episode VI, making it appear more "otherworldly."

In 1998, Plunkett created the cover and interior artwork for the comedic one-shot Star Wars: The Jabba Tape, a loose sequel to Shadows of the Empire that featured the return of the swoop thugs Big Gizz and Spiker. He also provided cover art for his second major Star Wars miniseries, the six-part Star Wars: Mara Jade – By the Emperor's Hand. This marked the first story to focus solely on its title character, the popular future wife of Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade. The series was written by Jade's creator, Star Wars novelist Timothy Zahn, and its covers combined imagery of Jade during her time as the Emperor's Hand with existing Star Wars movie imagery, visually integrating her into the Star Wars mythos. In the same year, Plunkett also illustrated the cover of the trade paperback collection of Dark Horse's comic adaptation of Zahn's Star Wars novel Dark Force Rising.

The 2000s

Beginning in 2000, Plunkett contributed three times to the Star Wars Tales anthology series, starting with issue #4 in June 2000. In this issue, Plunkett provided both cover and interior art for the story "Sand Blasted," which featured the reappearance of Jabba the Hutt's nefarious swoop thugs, Big Gizz and Spiker (from Shadows and The Jabba Tape), who encounter a Dark Trooper (akin to the Star Wars video game Dark Forces) in the ruins of Tatooine's Podracing arena (from Episode I).

Plunkett's subsequent work for Star Wars Tales occurred in December 2000, when he created an iconic Hamlet-inspired cover image for issue #6, depicting Darth Vader holding See-Threepio's disembodied head. Plunkett also provided interior illustration for the accompanying story, written by veteran Star Wars editor and comics scribe Ryder Windham. In the story, "Thank the Maker," set on Cloud City during The Empire Strikes Back, Vader encounters Threepio's head, which leads to some poignant reflections on his former life as Anakin in the prequels. Plunkett's final contribution to Star Wars Tales was the cover for issue #11, which was dedicated to stories about Han Solo in 2002.

Also in 2002, Plunkett created covers for the two-part story "The Devaronian Version" in Dark Horse's prequel-era Star Wars (later renamed Star Wars: Republic), issues 40–41. The story presented a dishonest retelling of recent story arcs from the perspective of the series' resident comedic rogue, a Devaronian bounty hunter named Vilmarh Grahrk, who recast himself as the hero. The cover of issue 40 pays homage to the original poster for A New Hope, with Grahrk replacing Luke Skywalker and other elements and characters from the issue's story taking the place of other poster elements. Issue 41's cover image depicts Villie as a great hunter, with a wampa skin on his back and the heads of various Star Wars creatures (including Wicket the Ewok, Jar Jar Binks, a Tusken Raider, and a Rancor) on his wall.

Beginning in 2002, Plunkett contributed to seven issues of Star Wars: Empire, specifically providing cover artwork for the story "Darklighter," which focused for the first time on the story of Luke Skywalker's best friend, Biggs Darklighter. Plunkett provided cover art for issues #8–12 and #15 during that story arc. His final work for Empire was in 2004 with the cover for issue #26, featuring the obscure Mos Eisley cantina character BoShek.

Plunkett's Celebration IV piece

In 2005, after departing from Dark Horse, Plunkett secured an interview for a design position on the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series on Cartoon Network. He obtained the interview through a friend from his time at Dark Horse, Henry Gilroy, who had already transitioned to the show as head writer. Gilroy showcased Plunkett's work to director Dave Filoni and producer Catherine Winder. Filoni soon met with Plunkett, where they discussed shared ideas regarding the look of Star Wars, and Plunkett provided copies of comics such as The Jabba Tape. Several weeks later, Filoni contacted Plunkett, inviting him to work on some of the show's characters. The initial two characters he was assigned were Mace Windu and Palpatine.

While Plunkett has contributed to various aspects of the show, ranging from environments to weapons to creatures, his primary emphasis has been on character design. Subsequently, Plunkett became the lead character designer for the show. Plunkett stated that when seeking inspiration for designing the new look of the CG animated characters, he drew upon the work of the original 2-D Cartoon Network series by Genndy Tartakovsky and Paul Rudish, design work on the original trilogy by artists such as Ralph McQuarrie and Joe Johnston, and prequel movie design work by the team of Doug Chiang, Erik Tiemens, and [Ryan Church], all in an effort to absorb the look and feel of the movies and the established Star Wars style. As a tribute to Plunkett, the PLNK-series power droid, which emitted a "plunk" sound, was named after him.

Plunkett illustrated the cover of issue #2 of Dark Horse's Star Wars: The Clone Wars spin-off comic series in 2008.

Plunkett's first name was used to name a new character in The Clone Wars, Admiral Kilian.

Works

Sources

Notes and references

External links

  • Lines, some colour on Blogspot (backup link (kilianplunkett) not verified!)
  • Kilian Plunkett (@plunkdroid) on Instagram (backup link (plunkdroid) not verified!)
  • Irish Comics Wiki

Appearances