Jennifer A. Reuter Illustration
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Even Cad Bane cannot contain the pain of betrayal, mid-chase

Dramatic action shot scene of Cad Bane

Posted: 16 August 2021
#fanart #starwars #cadbane #2k20 #illustration #scifi #process #obiwan #storyillustration #featured

Reading time: 3 min

“Ohhh, no, no. This isn’ business.”

“It’s purely personal.

Most dreams makes absolutely no sense. But sometimes, sometimes they pull at the heart-strings.

Cad Bane is known for being a lone, stern and independent bounty hunter. His long life of being backstabbed, and stabbing right back, among criminals does not make for a trusting individual.

On top of that, he’s made killing Jedi, who can use powers that defy physics, part of his sales pitch.

In the Star Wars series ‘Clone Wars’, that whole mantra gets tested.

Then one of them, Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is particularly well-known for being sensible, fakes his own death and undergoes some intensive identity changes to look like a criminal himself. He teams up with Cad and they undergo a number of trials together in order to capture a high-standing politician. Of course, Obi-Wan’s mission is to prevent that from happening in the first place.

Cad doesn’t know that. He began to respect this criminal who was generally competent and helpful in missions… which of course is largely Obi-Wan’s empathetic side bleeding into the cold character he’s supposed to play.

So when the mission fails for the bounty hunter and Obi-Wan’s true identity is revealed, he’s pissed.

Screenshot source

Pissed that he was fooled. Pissed that he allowed himself to trust anyone. (Which seems to suggest that he used to be prone to it at some point in his career…)

And what does my dream come up with?

A chase scene through the air highways of the city planet Coruscant, where Cad is in one vehicle, and Obi-Wan, looking like his normal Jedi self again, in the other.

The bounty hunter is ramming the others’ vehicle, shooting almost too haphazardly for a professional. When the Jedi looks over, he sees a rush of tears torn away by the rushing wind, accompanied by a taught… pained… grin.

Fanfic material for sure! We’ll see if I ever get around to it.

Process work

This piece started off on Autodesk sketchbook on my Note9 phone (being sick in bed for 2 months makes you a little desperate), but later transferred to the PC with Krita. Before tackling the whole composition, though, I did a style test (1st image below), inspired by Max Grecke, whose energy and edge work felt very close to how I work naturally.

Then I worked on the silhouette, value tests and colour iterations (2nd image). But around half-way of applying those in the final painting, I noticed everything looked too green. I correct those sorts of issues by taking a screenshot, making the corrections in small thumbnail format, before copying those changes over to the big file.


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