Return of the Jedi portfolio by Ralph McQuarrie

I finally had a moment yesterday to create a small update for Project 14.

Today’s Project 14 item is courtesy of a Return of the Jedi portfolio by Ralph McQuarrie.

I vaguely remember buying this at a bookstore named B. Dalton in a Dallas mall back when the movie Return of the Jedi first came out in 1983. B. Dalton is long gone, absorbed by Barnes and Noble quite some time ago. No caption sheet was in the portfolio and print number 18 was missing. But for two bucks, this was pure gold for a former Star Wars fan. I never tried to take the B. Dalton clearance sticker off the cover, and the prints never left the tattered portfolio except on rare occasions. A short time later, I put things like this in storage, and never pulled them out until now. What you see is exactly how it was 26 years ago.

It’s been 26 years since Return of the Jedi came out? Geeeeez.

Anyhow, if you follow the prints by number, it tells the whole story of the movie like a very high end storyboard would. The prints are good quality, and all of them are about 11 x 17 in size. I scanned them at 5088 × 3296 but scaled them down for posting to Flickr. The art itself is very, very impressive. Ralph McQuarrie gives these images a vibrancy even a live film cell lacks. Lucas was very lucky to have all of this as a reference.

Right now I’m putting this portfolio aside for Ebay. When I have enough things from Project 14, I’ll have a massive sale and see what comes of it.

Below is a slideshow of the prints. Click to play, or double click on an image to enlarge it.