Project Description

INKTOBER 2024 Day #1: BACKPACK.

“Why yes, this is a ‘Star Wars’ reference. It’s also a reference to the hilarious song ‘Seagulls! (Stop It Now)’ by the folks over at the Bad Lip Reading YouTube channel (if you’ve somehow never seen the video and are even moderately a fan of ‘Star Wars’, you must watch it). I quote this song at my kids, and when they were several years younger and tough to get out of bed for school, I’d play it at full volume until they got moving (they may have a slightly different relationship with the song than I do because of that…).
This actually isn’t the first time I’ve paid homage to this scene from ‘Empire Strikes Back’, when Luke was training with Yoda on Dagobah. I did a full color illustration very similar to this back in 2015. While it represented the best of my abilities at the time, still being relatively new to digital illustration and experimenting with workflows and techniques, it hasn’t aged well to me. PMD looks very different, but is still recognizable, but overall, it’s just not as good of a piece. At least I can take solace in knowing that my skills have improved over the intervening years.
The concept of PMD as my Yoda just makes sense to me. In many ways, he represents my ideal self, free from anxieties, depression, and self-esteem issues; full of confidence and positivity; finding joy and humor in all things and trying to spread cheerfulness to others, among many other admirable attributes. I may be getting up there in years, but I still have a lot of room for growth, and a lot of work to do to be more like PMD.”

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