🂡 Darth Vader - "Ace of Spades" - Digital Illustration and Animation

"All I am surrounded by is fear, and dead men!"

The vaunted Ace of Spades was an easy pick for me. The fallen Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker better known as Darth Vader needs little introduction. One of the most iconic fictional character of all time, Vader's natural power over the Force did eventually lead him to "return balance to the Galaxy" by systematically betraying and destroying everything he loved during his fall to the dark side, which was perhaps not quite what the Jedi council and Obi-Wan had intended. After the Republic was reformed into the First Galactic Empire and subsequently plunging the galaxy into a state of perpetual war, Vader did eventually redeem himself and dispatched of then Emperor Palpatine by throwing him into the one of curiously many bottomless pits that populate the Star Wars universe after his son Luke turned him back to the Light. Make no mistake, this Sith Lord was one of the most feared and powerful entities in the entire galaxy with the ability to kill a man with willpower alone.

• This is a digital collage of about 32 bitmap layers. Using my mouse and standard Photoshop brushes and layer blend modes. The cards and textures I got from FusRoDa and edited them to suit our needs along with the Imperial Logo and Tie Fighter. I also tried to preserve as many of the steps as possible for the process animation. I then made the animation in Premiere Pro CC, simplified it, sped it up, added inserts, rendered it as an mp4 video file and then converted it to an animated gif online (nifty!) with 25 fps :)

Category	#FanArt
Medium	Photoshop
Suit	Spades
Character	Anakin "Darth Vader" Skywalker
Universe	Star Wars
Style	Digital Illustration
Original Artists	George Lucas & Ralph McQuarrie
First Apperance	1975

• Gif Source

  There is no escape. Don’t make me destroy you. Luke, you do not yet realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your power. Join me and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy.

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Lore

"Anakin, as Skywalker, as a human being, was going to be extremely powerful," he says. "But he ended up losing his legs and an arm and became partly a robot. So a lot of his ability to use the Force, a lot of his powers, are curbed at this point, because, as a living form, there's not that much of him left. So his ability to be twice as good as the Emperor disappeared, and now he's maybe 20 percent less than him. So that isn't what the Emperor had in mind. He wanted this really super guy, but that got derailed by Obi-Wan. So he finds that, with Luke, he can get a more primo version if he can turn Luke to the Dark Side. You'll see, as this goes on, Luke is faced with the same issues and practically the same scenes that Anakin is faced with. Anakin says yes and Luke says no."

• George Lucas

Blessed with impressive reflexes that were typical of a Jedi, Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn saw enormous potential in the 9-year-old Skywalker, and believed him to have been conceived by the Force itself. Indeed, when his blood was tested, Skywalker's midi-chlorian count was above 20,000, reportedly even greater than Yoda's. The total amount was, however, unknown, for the reading was off the scale.

• WookiePedia

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Process

Here's the animated process for ol' Darth that I made out of the individual layers. This is a digital Illustration with some collage elements so I borrowed freely from established imagery for this one like the Tie-Fighter and Imperial Icon. I'm also trying to make a unique transition at the end of each card. Hope you dig it.

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The ninth face card went to one of my favorite characters. If I keep this up I can make a whole deck for us :)

• I also encourage you to come by our Steem Artists Discord Channel. There is a pretty sweet community emerging here with talent worth supporting methinks.

give yourself to the dark side,

ZeroOoC

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Or draw a card:

• 🂫 Leonardo - "Jack of Spades" - Digital Painting & Process
• 🂱 Optimus Prime - "Ace of Hearts"
• 🂾 Vol'Jin - "King of Hearts"
• 🂻 Duck Avenger/Phantomias - "Jack of Hearts"
• 🂭 Batgirl - "Queen of Spades"
• 🃎 Iron Man - "King of Diamonds"
• 🂢 Goomba - Foil - "Two of Spades"
• 🃋 Renji Abarai "Jack of Diamonds"