Gritty Visions: An Interview With Sean Glenn

By Jesse Decker

Sean Glenn, art director for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game, has found his dream job. We sat down with him just after he finished working on the campaign pack Secrets of Tatooine to talk about Wookiees, deserts, and his favorite visual moments from the Star Wars movies.

Wizards of the Coast: You've been with the Star Wars Roleplaying Game team since the beginning. What has changed about your perception of the Star Wars universe because of your work?

Sean Glenn: Since I've always been a huge Star Wars fan, I don't know if I'd say my perception of the Star Wars universe has changed because of my work, but it has been great to be one of the lucky few who get to put their mark on the universe visually, to define a small corner of it.

Wizards of the Coast: How have your ideas about the roleplaying products changed?

Sean Glenn: As work has gone forward on the roleplaying game, I've tried to make sure that I design for the people who use it, not just to please myself. I'm a big gamer as well, though, so everything has to pass through my gamer stamp of approval, anyway.

Wizards: Are there visual concerns unique to the desert world that affected your design work?

Sean: In building the Tatooine book, we tried to create a dirty, used look to the visual elements. Everything looks ages old and sandblasted. For a while, we toyed with building a numbering system based on the docking bay number you see for a brief second in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, but in the end, I thought that would be too obscure. All in all, I was striving for a gritty, used look. I think you'll see that in the artwork by Sam Wood (interiors) and Carl Critchlow (who did the cover and some interior stuff).

Wizards: You said once that the Wookiee Rorworr was your favorite iconic character in the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. Is that still true?

Sean: Yes, I still dig Rorworr, but some of the characters we've created for The Dark Side are really growing on me. That book's got great stuff by Doug Gregory, Lee Bermejo, and Ashley Wood, plus some phenomenal work by Tommy Lee Edwards and Dan Brereton. All my illustrators are doing killer work, creating characters that just ache to be played or dropped into a game session by the Gamemaster.

Wizards: And what's your favorite image from Secrets of Tatooine?

Sean: I'm quite partial to a couple of pieces that no one will get to see. They were cut from the final product due to some conflicts with this little thing we call Episode II. My other favorite piece is Sam Wood's landspeeder being attacked by the krayt dragon. Sam and I sat down and "concepted" this illustration, making it really dynamic. He even did the final in color, even though the product is black and white.

In case you're wondering about the story behind this illustration, many years ago, before the events of A New Hope, CZ-3 was owned by a local moisture farmer with a really fast landspeeder. On their way to Mos Espa to pick up a new electrostatic coupling for the malfunctioning speeder, CZ-3 and his owner were attacked by a krayt dragon, which smashed the speeder and launched CZ-3 into the dunes. The farmer barely escaped with his life, and CZ-3 ended up as Jawa salvage, along with the speeder. Eventually, CZ-3 made it to Mos Eisley, where he was sold . . .

At least, that's what I like to think happened. I especially love the hapless look on the droid's face. You'll also notice the 1970s-style muscle-car graphics on the speeder -- that was my little addition to Sam's great art.

Wizards: As an artist who spends a lot of time thinking about Star Wars, what do you think are the most visually compelling scenes from the movies?

Sean: I think the scenes set in the carbon-freezing chamber are wonderfully well shot, well lit, and have great set design. The warm colors play perfectly off the cool backgrounds, and the strong lighting showcases everyone in that scene well. Almost all of Episode I is so lush, you could stare at plain shots of the sets all day, like the inside of Amidala's ship, the hangar in Theed, and the Coruscant skyline. There's so much to look at.

Wizards: What elements from those scenes did you want to bring to the roleplaying products?

Sean: In choosing images for the books, we've tried to mix up what is familiar and what is new, so that you're never quite sure what you're going to come across next. Will it be Han Solo's familiar cocky smile, or a shot of a droid that only appeared in the background for half a second?

Luckily for me, the Star Wars movies are chock-full of incredible imagery, leaving us mountains of stuff to pick through for images. Literally, there are thousands and thousands of images from the four movies. And yet, every once in a while, we run into something we don't have a shot of, like the Rebel Trooper uniform from A New Hope. No shots of that, except as film stills.

Want more behind-the-scenes looks at the artwork of Secrets of Tatooine?
Check out the online art gallery