In honor of Star Wars concept artist Ralph McQuarrie's recent passing, a group of artists at Comic Book Resources' The Line It Is Drawn illustration competition imagined a world where just about anybody could enter the Galaxy Far, Far Away. There's no Jaxxon/Bucky O'Hare crossover, but the results are otherwise…

It's a sad day for the concept art world. Ralph McQuarrie, the artist who created concept designs for the first Star Wars trilogy, the original Battlestar Galactica television show, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., and other science fiction classics, has passed away at age 82. He set our minds on fire and made …

The beautiful 11 x 15 inch watercolor painting by John Schoenherr, used for the ACE paperback first edition of Dune, just sold for a little over $26,000 at Heritage Auction Galleries, shattering the $10,000 to $15,000 pre-auction estimate. Internet bidders pushed the price to just over $19,000 prior to the live segment …

Summer is coming to a close, and for many of us that means new beginnings. With school right around the corner, hordes of us will be moving into new apartments and houses for the year, and with new digs comes the opportunity to update (or start) your collection of science fiction and fantasy artwork!

Around the same time Ralph McQuarrie's concept art was helping make Star Wars a reality, he was designing a new Enterprise for a Star Trek movie that didn't get off the ground. Check out his radically different, Imperial Destroyer-esque starship.

The answer to the question is, "No, of course not, that would be too random for words." However, it does transpire that he did inspire the visual look of Chewbacca in the original Star Wars movie through an interesting chain of events.

You can't celebrate the awesomeness of concept art without paying special tribute to Star Wars. Ralph McQuarrie's paintings for the original trilogy inspired every concept artist today, and the prequels and video games' art was eye-popping. Here are our favorites.

If it hadn't been for this gorgeous concept art by Ralph McQuarrie, Fox may not have embraced George Lucas' pitch for A New Hope. McQuarrie's illustrations didn't just define the Star Wars aesthetic - they made Star Wars happen.

Here's a knock-down dogfight between a high-tech spaceship and a whole swarm of pirate galleons, from the mind of artist Nicholas Ferrand aka V.I.A.G. Or maybe the spaceship is teaming up with the more low-fi pirates? My new favorite blog is Concept Ships, which posts nothing but concept art of spaceships, including…

In the original Battlestar Galactica series, the cylons were created by lizard people, creatures who died off before they could hit the "shut down" buttons on their solider creations. Now you can see those old lizard-made cylons, plus some half-robo, half-bug creatures that the humans fight, in these amazing concept…