I decided for the Apocalypse piece, I needed to break free of my “cartoony” style. Anakin Skywalker had now become Darth Vader, and the scarred remains of him needed to be gritty and disgusting for the piece. More machine than man (definitely tones of mecha here), what was left of the flesh was a charred reminder of his defeat at the hands of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Everything Anakin/Vader had strived for was gone, and it was this climactic moment of Star Wars Episode III when his emergency surgery was completed that the audience could truly feel the pain of Anakin Skywalker’s personal apocalypse. The villain they’ve come to love and hate from the original trilogy was now much more relatable. His wife who he swore to protect was dead, his body was a memory, and his best friend left him for dead. Anakin’s world has completely changed, and because of his actions, the galaxy itself suffered an apocalypse of its own. The descending mask represents the darkness slowly closing in and masking Vader’s face…for a time.