In the Fall of 1974, George Lucas hired Ralph McQuarrie to provide several paintings illustrating scenes from his script, The Star Wars. Those paintings helped convince the 20th Century Fox Board of Directors to finance the film, and McQuarrie went on to design many of the film's iconic locations, vehicles, creatures and characters, including Darth Vader, Stormtroopers, R2-D2 and C3P0. McQuarrie also worked on the film's two sequels: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). In 1977, McQuarrie worked with famous film production designer Ken Adam on the unfilmed Star Trek feature: Planet of the Titans. He also designed spaceships for Steven Spielberg’s films Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). McQuarrie’s work on Cocoon (1985) earned him an Academy Award for Visual Effects. Other film work included the pilot for Battlestar Galactica - Saga of a Star World (1978), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), and *batteries not included (1987). Ralph McQuarrie’s career spanned from illustrating parts catalogs and industrial design at Boeing, to creating movie posters and book covers, theme park attractions, and even the packaging art for toys. His work has been collected in the following books from Dreams and Visions Press (dreamsandvisionspress.com): The Art of Ralph McQuarrie (2007), The Star Wars Art of Ralph McQuarrie (2008 Japanese exclusive), A Gallery of Imagination (2010), Remembering Ralph McQuarrie (2012), The 35th Anniversary Battlestar Galactica Portfolio (2013), and The Art of Ralph McQuarrie: ARCHIVES (2015). Ralph McQuarrie’s body of work continues to inspire his legion of fans around the globe.