The Art of Star Wars: High Republic Author Kristin Baver on Organizing and Executing [Exclusive Interview]

What was the first taste of "The High Republic" that you had in general, because I think it's a bit out, right? On the surface it's like, "Okay, we're gonna do something, it's gonna be way back in the past, and it's gonna be new," so what was your first introduction to "The High Republic" as a concept , and how did you go deeper into the subject?

I think because of where I work, I heard things before I really saw anything about it. I knew Project Luminous, which was the code name, but I didn't really know what Project Luminous was. I knew the writers who were involved in crafting this story, and I had interviewed most of them for various other projects they worked on. I knew them and I knew their work, and so I knew I trusted everything they created, but I think, if I remember correctly, my first real understanding of what "The High Republic" really is. and what she really was. didn't come until the launch event in February 2020 or maybe a bit before. I may have had an early glimpse because I covered it for StarWars.com, but I think it was around that time that I really saw the first concept art and I really got a sense of what that story was about.

Do you have a favorite highlight of "The High Republic" so far as a fan? Because I know you're as big a "Star Wars" fan as I am or anyone else.

It's so hard, because I love these stories and characters so much. I remember when I was reading "The Rising Storm" for the first time, and it was one of those rare books for me where I [was] literally laughing out loud and crying [and] rightfully in tears over the things that happen in the story. It's one of my favorite "Star Wars" books of all time now, but it was just something I was so happy to be a part of. I love this book, but for me also discovering on the comic side, the Marvel comic series "Star Wars - The High Republic" was really eye-opening in allowing us to have a Trandoshan Jedi who is at the foreground and something we've never seen before. But also right after Keeve and her trials as she tries to figure out what it means to be a Jedi. You see so much of what happens in the books through his eyes and you meet so many of the same characters in comic book form, and it's just a really neat way to pull all those stories together and allow you to have more. of that connective tissue between a character that you might see on a book cover or imagine for yourself based on the author's description in a novel, but you really spend time in their presence in the comic. ..

What the writers of "The High Republic" did was allow everyone to see themselves within one of the Jedi, which is really amazing because, when you think about it... there has a lot of varied species among the Jedi that we know of from the prequel era, but they're all very buttoned up and follow order and of a very specific ilk, and we don't really dig into those individual personality traits as much as we do in "The High Republic".< /p>

I'm curious what the process looks like. The way the book is laid out you have chapters that are written in a journalistic style where you explain the background through interviews but then you also individually give some of those snippets about the art itself as you go as you go. . Do you start by diving into the artwork? Do you start with interviews? How do you approach a project like this?

From the very beginning when we knew we were going to do this project, I had access to all the concept art and art that was being created for him, so I really had to swim through that , a la Scrooge McDuck in his money pit, but going through all these different rooms and looking at the embarrassment of the wealth that we had created for "The High Republic" and really starting to understand, "Okay, that do we have here, and how could we possibly organize that?" Because in many of the art of the art series books based on the production of a live-action movie or series, the organization really goes through the pre-production, production, and post-production.

I realized early on that we couldn't do that with this one, because you had vertices bringing everyone together at one point on the timeline, but then you had all these people are scattered, all these new artists coming all over the world and everyone working at the same time, and it would have been really, I think, narratively difficult to put all of this on a chronological level to know when it happened.

What we ended up doing was deciding to follow that character-based approach more, while giving you that introductory chapter where you really understand more about the making of "The High Republic...