INKTOBER 2024 Day #5: BINOCULARS

“Hey look, another ‘Star Wars’ reference. I always thought Luke’s macrobinoculars from ‘A New Hope’ were cool. That is until I did the visual research for this prompt and realized the macrobinoculars I have envisioned for I don’t even know how long were the one’s the Rebels had on Hoth in ‘Empire Strikes Back’. I’m not sure how that got scrambled in my Brain. Luke’s from his moisture farm days on Tatooine are much more complicated to draw. Good thing I enjoy details, though it got me thinking about the almost uncountable number of ‘Star Wars’ comics over the decades. I would hate to have to draw these for multiple panels in a comic. All the panels where artists did their best to capture the likeness of such well-known characters, ships, weapons, settings. I just don’t know that I could handle that. Some artists are amazing at drawing just enough, implying certain details and forms, letting the viewer’s imagination fill in the details, but I’m not really one of them. Even if I were to wind up obscuring details at a later stage either through the use of heavy black shadows or color or something, I would still have to draw everything and make it as accurate as I could. It’s particularly bad for me when I work digitally and can create high resolution files and zoom in endlessly. That means working slower, which doesn’t align with pumping out comic pages. It’s kind of a problem for me that I’m working on. One of the things I loved about the ‘Star Wars’ universe when I was young was the attention to detail (surprise). Everything looked used. Functional. There was just so much visual information to soak in that helped tell the story, and told stories of their own. Where did those scorch marks on that ship come from? What dented Boba Fett’s helmet? What the heck was that skeleton on that dune? What purpose do all those dramatically different looking droids perform? Of course, the eventual Expanded Universe and the prequels, sequels, cartoons, and live action shows answered most of those questions. It’s good world building and it makes stories that much more engaging. Just one of the many lessons learned and many reasons why I love ‘Star Wars’.”

Do you enjoy my Plunger Monkey Inktoberings? Would you like to have a bunch of them in your very own hands while supporting the pursuit of my dreams? Go grab a copy of Inklings on Amazon.com today! https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733734716?re