March 4th, 2012 
PatMan 
RIP Ralph McQuarrie, the first individual hired by George Lucas for the Star Wars films. His amazing conceptual artistic talent and ideas helped shape the entire Star Wars universe. Without his concept art many of the amazing characters and locations in the Star Wars universe would never had been created the way they turned out on film, TV and video games. He has and will continue to inspire artists , movie makers and fans such as myself. His work helped shape a big part of “PatMans”childhood, heck to be honest, it still plays an important roll in what I watch and what video games I play. Of course and by far most importantly, I feel for his family & friends at this time who knew the personal and non Star Wars side to this man that we the fans never did. Ralph McQuarrie died at the age of 82 years old. Here is some of his historic conceptual art from the original Star Wars Trilogy. You can see more great art after the link, below.
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A once in a lifetime artist. I didn't know who he was until long after I had seen the original trilogy. I have never been a big fan of concept art, but his was just amazing. They came alive for me and that is rare. God speed Mister McQuarrie, you had a profound affect on my childhood just like Pat.
Its amazing how many of his concept art works , such as the speeder bike and Cloud City one in the above post turned out to be VERY close to the final movie versions. Check more of his concept art from all 3 of the original movies at the official star wars site. He also did the original Battlestar Galactica & ET
That top one is my favorite. The guy fighting " Vader" is actually a character called " Luke StarKiller " not Skywalker. Its cool that the name returned, in cannon no less, when The Force Unleashed came out.