The Star Wars franchise has persisted for almost four decades, in that time it has entered the public consciousness, infiltrating our lives through popular culture. Imagery we are now more than familiar with has entered a collective hyper reality, half remembered through nostalgic tinted vision. This project was an an attempt to discover how the merchandising strategies became a paradigm for other similar franchises. Star Wars ushered in an era of diverse products united under a singular vision, examples include the Lord of the Rings, The Matrix and the more recent developments with the ever growing Marvel franchise. Visual responses have been born from the same source material as the dissertation. The designs reflect the obsessive lure of detail and trivia, which is heavily present throughout the textual response.
The project was timed perfectly to coincide with the development of The Force Awakens, as I was able to study the marketing and merchandising escalate before the film released. Now that the film has premiered and amounted a record breaking gross, it has been satisfying to quantify the reasoning and strategies behind the Disney machine compared the Lucas Arts efforts between 1977 and 2005.
There was a stage when I sought to discover whether this franchise, now at pseudo-religious levels was indeed a detriment to society, however I find that Star Wars is no less damaging than any other entertainment format, it has simply achieved an omnipresence.
It was also my intention to improve upon my previous CoP experiences, in this project I focussed on what I found more successfully in past; that is screen-pritning, technical diagrams and historically-structured discourse. I am conflicted whether the imagery has succeeded in becoming more than fan-art. However I am delighted to say it has entered the realm of hyperreality in true Baudrillard fashion. I have generated screen printed digital designs based on photographs of toys from the 1970s. These toys were based on fictional vehicles in a feature film, which were designed by teams of artists informed by concept artists and WW2 battle footage.
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