Visiting Artist Lecture: Iain McCaig – Visual Storytelling

As of 2025, McCaig has worked for 45 years in the entertainment industry. Many of his creations have become pop-culture icons, like his cover for Jethro Tull’s ‘Broadsword and the Beast’ or his Star Wars designs for Queen Amidala and Darth Maul. He has created art for games, from LucasArts ’The Secret of Monkey Island’ to Respawn’s ’Titanfall’, and for many films, among them ’Terminator 2’, ‘Interview With The Vampire’, ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, ‘Hook’, ‘Peter Pan’, ‘Charlotte’s Web’, ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’, ’The Avengers’, ‘Avengers: Infinity War’, ‘Avengers: Endgame’, Disney’s live-action ’The Jungle Book’, and the ongoing ‘Star Wars’ movies, as well as designs for the ‘Star Wars: The High Republic’ graphic novels, and ’Star War: Galaxy’s Edge’ theme parks.

In his other life, McCaig writes and illustrates books and screenplays. In 2008, Insight Editions published ’Shadowline: the Art of Iain McCaig’, a combination of 28 years of McCaig’s commercial and private artwork, a mini-course in how-to-draw, and a fictionalized expose of his creative process. In 2023, Design Studio Press published his ‘Once Upon A Time In The Sketchbook’: a selection of four decades of McCaig’s sketchbook art, woven around a new and an entirely visual story. And in 2024, Titan Books published McCaig’s ‘delightfully creepy’ anthology of ghost stories, ‘Smalltown Tales’

In May 2008, Spectrum Fantastic Art gave McCaig their GRAND MASTER Award, and in September 2021, the Concept Art Association honored him with a LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT Award.