The idea of recreating Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper using characters from Star Wars had been in London-based photographer Steve Brown's head for over a year before he was finally able to make it real. The painting is such an iconic and brilliantly composed imaged, and such a great way of showing a large group of people, that it has been used and parodied by many films, TV shows and other groups.

I had never seen it done in the way I wanted to present it, and the key for me was the relationship between Darth Vader and the Emperor. In The Last Supper, one of the apostles shown is Judas, who went on to betray Jesus. In Return of the Jedi Darth Vader finally betrays the Emperor, killing him. Recreating the painting with the Emperor in the role of Jesus and Vader as Judas meant that the photo worked not only visually, but conceptually as well, with some emotional drama as well as just a nice composition.
-Steve Brown

I sketched out the image, using stormtroopers in the roles of the other apostles, and then developed it further with colour and lighting. I felt that the scene needed a central element, something that everyone could be focusing on, and so had the idea of adding in the hologram of the second Death Star, which not only gives a focal point to the image but also dramatically lights the characters. I also decided that the perfect setting for the scene would be the Emperor's throne room on the Death Star, with that amazing, iconic round window behind him as he sits in his throne.
-Steve Brown

I had already done a shoot a year or so before with members of the UK Garrison, an amazing Star Wars costuming group, and through my friends there I managed to pull together an Emperor, a Darth Vader and four stormtroopers (top tip, stormtroopers all look the same, so you can reuse them in the image!). Next was the set. There was no way I could even begin to attempt to build a physical set, so much as I would have liked to go A New Hope and do everything physically I sadly had to go down the Phantom Menace route and design a completely digital set. My good friend Steve Newman is a dab hand at 3D modelling, and agreed to build a replica of the throne room in 3D, into which we could place a virtual camera and virtual lights to match the real people I would photograph.
-Steve Brown

My style is usually quite graphic and stylised, rather than naturalistic. I like bold colours, strong lighting, interesting angles and cinematic concepts. Don’t be a follower. Find your own unique take on image making or you will get lost in the noise.
-Steve Brown

Behind the scenes photos by Sharon Leese - http://www.sharonleesephotography.co.uk/
CGI Z brush modelling by Steve Newman - http://www.stevenewmancreative.com/

About Steve Brown

Steve Brown grew up in Yorkshire, in the north of England, and studied photography at Blackpool. Early on, even before digital photography took off, he became excited at the possibilities of Photoshop and compositing, and when he began doing shoots for music magazines he used those techniques to create images that were far more cinametic in scope than anything that we actually had the budget to acheive for real. He continued to exploit the possibilities of composition as he began to shoot promotional images for TV shows, a situation where actors are often available at different times and in different places to each other, and only for a few minutes. By shooting them separately and comping them together he could still produce the big group shots that the client wanted, even when the logistics made that impossible in a single shot. See more of his works on Behance or his website.