I have postponed the idea of working on Star Wars custom covers again and again and again… stowed it away deep down in the cryostasis chambers of my HQCovers space station. But not particularly because I didn’t want to work on John Williams’ opus magnum. No, because I was afraid of not being able to do it justice. I’ve put so much effort into this or that covers series, that I sometimes find it hard to raise the bar. But this is Star Wars, the mother and father of all film franchises and fan fiction universes ever, right? It has to be the very best, most fucking awesome custom covers entry in the history of ever, am I right!? One does not simply post a few custom covers! (sorry… wrong franchise).
You can possibly understand my hesitations and procrastinations every time this subject matter became topical. But with the Star Wars hype train rolling at hyperspeed, I had to get my shit together, if I wanted to stay relevant.
So I finally settled upon a new and rather unusual way: Instead of publishing one gargantuan post with dozens and dozens of Star Wars related custom covers, I’ll divide them into their own, smaller posts. First, this prevents me from going absolutely insane while trying to draft that one post to rule them all (sorry again). Second – and this might be far more benefitting to you – it means you’ll get to see Star Wars custom covers as soon as I make them. In fact, right now!
This fictitious Deluxe Edition set first and foremost only exist, because of those gorgeous, absolutely breathtaking matte paintings by Saby Menyhei. If it weren’t for him, I would have never thought of a collection like this in the first place. I love the vastness, silence and tranquility in these images, depicting famous locations before or long after certain key events.
For the package design itself I re-utilized my old Hobbit Limited Edition template and adapted it for the Sci-Fi world of Star Wars. The logos are from the 1997 RCA Victor Special Edition soundtracks, because their sans serif font (“Astro“) offered an excellent level of uniformity and consistency. And the chance of designing the remaining logos is exactly the thrill of excitement I’m craving for. More specifically, I’ve created all seven logos from scratch (including an alternate design for A New Hope) and I’d like to take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to rotane, who was an invaluable resource of help! Without his font expertise I wouldn’t have been able to perfect all those little details like curves, spacing or font-weights.
Update:
Having concerns is a perfectly normal thing in the life of a designer. How often have I finished a new artwork, only to dismiss it after a brief moment of reconsideration. It’s very rare that you’re really, really satisfied with your work. The process of self-doubt usually starts as soon as I click on “Publish”. I can really relate with George and his Special Editions in this aspect.
And so I sat down once again and gave this whole collection a slight revision. And to give it a bit more significance, I added the two A Star Wars Story soundtracks to it.
Another Update:
When you make a custom covers collection based on concept artwork, you’re bound to come across a lot of images that would be worthy of ending up on the front cover of a CD. For this reason I would like to show you the following alternative takes. Maybe there is a version that one or the other of you likes even better than my selection above. And to give credit where credit is due, I have added all original creators of the used source artworks in the image descriptions. Just click on a cover and scroll down a bit to find the relevant info.
Also, in the past I have been asked time and again if I could release these so-called Deluxe Editions as regular versions as well, which I am doing now. Just go on and download this ZIP archive and feel free to use all of these covers for your original soundtracks in your media library. Have fun!
HQCovers 
I was about to ask when you were gonna post them here – but i guess it took a little while longer to come up with the accompanying text ;-)
Anyway, fantastic set again, and a good idea to give it its own article!
LikeLike
This is even greater than usual! Man, you are an artist!!
Thank you very much for all this work!
LikeLike
Thank you Luis. You’re my personal hero, so hearing this especially from you is like… idk… Christmas! :D
LikeLike
[…] the front artwork was taken directly from my initial (and highly popular) Deluxe Edition series, the back cover is a carbon-copy of the 1997 Special Edition digipacks from RCA Victor. […]
LikeLike
Nice work! Could you please do a Deluxe Edition of ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ (2008)? I’d really appreciate it.
LikeLike
Do you know of any matte paintings or concept arts that were useful for such an experiment? I’ll have to find one first, because this collection is dependent of a specific style of source images and I don’t think The Clone Wars fits that style. But I’ll see what I can do for you.
LikeLike
[…] Edition Way back in February 2016 I already came up with a front cover for a so-called Limited Deluxe Edition. So today’s job was a total piece of cake, even more […]
LikeLike
Will we have a ‘Solo’ version of these? It would be great.
LikeLike
Most certainly, but not right now. Better follow my social media pages for updates.
LikeLike
Is there anyway to change Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker….. It seems strange that they are not „landscape“ shots like the others.
LikeLike
I could of course offer alternates, but I didn’t find concept art for either TLJ or TROS that I really liked
LikeLike
I would like to say thank you for these beautiful cover images! As I’m refreshing my iTunes library art, I was looking for something more uniform than the “official” covers because nothing matches across the entire series. My only reservation (I’m sorry, I really hate to be “that guy”) is that the episode number is left out. I realize that this is done and published, but would you be willing to do alternates that include “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” etc.?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you so much!
I haven’t published anything this past year unfortunately, but reading a comment like yours certainly boosts my enthusiasm to get this thing going again :)
Regarding your request… I’m not sure where to place the “Episode XY” text tbh… as you can read above, I was going for the 1997 RCA Victor Special Edition design and the numbers weren’t there either. I don’t think a smaller text right above the logo would look good. The only thing I can think of is to replace the DELUXE EDITION lettering with EPISODE XY, but would that be sufficient for you?
LikeLike
I’m sorry for the late response. I think that would be ideal, if you were to put “Star Wars Episode XX” across the top. That being said, I wouldn’t want you to redo these masterpieces for one request, but it would be so greatly appreciated. And now that I’m looking at all of the covers, that would make “Rogue One” and “Solo” stand out and not be uniform.
LikeLike
You’re right about Solo and R1, didn’t think about that. I can tell you that I have a couple more Star Wars projects in the works and some of these will indeed feature the Episode numbers.
LikeLike
[…] you like the last one (#20), check out this blog post because there are many more where this one came […]
LikeLike