When I saw this assignment, I knew immediately I wanted to do Star Wars.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been out for about a month and a half now, and it is still killing it at the box office. I remember when I saw the movie, once it had ended, I wanted it to start over so I could watch it again. I loved the story and the new characters–especially Rey. So when my professor gave us the assignment to recreate a movie poster with ourselves as the main character, I jumped on the opportunity to actually be Rey.

Here is the original movie poster for Star Wars: The Force Awakens:

It’s not perfect, but here is my recreation. I’m quite happy with it.

This took me hours. There were a few roadblocks while making this, such as temperamental speed lights and neutral background malfunctions, but I persevered, and 7 hours later, here is the result!

My roommates were absolute gems helping me take this picture. Since the speed lights weren’t working, I had one roommate hold up a desk lamp, another position the camera and focus it, and another to hold up the fan to blow the pieces of hair around my face. It took quite the team!

After taking about 50 pictures and finding the one that I liked the most, I used the Refine Edge tool in Photoshop to get those wispy hairs around my face and crop myself onto a transparent background so I could insert another one of a desert scene that I had found.

Then, I tweaked the exposure and everything on my face to get it to match the lighting of the background, and then cut Rey’s staff out of the original poster and laid it on top of my face. Then, I added this texture to my t-shirt to give it a more weathered look.

After some more color tweaking editing, I finally added my own altered Star Wars logo with a similar title. I then resized the image for printing and ta-da! Recreated movie poster. Don’t get me wrong, even though this was a pretty brief explanation, it took a lot of time.

Here is a link talking about how to make your own movie poster in just five minutes! That sounds a lot better than 7 hours.

Anyway, I would just like to end by thanking my roommates for being patient with me and turning our living room into a photography studio for an hour. The result was worth it! I’d also like to thank Rey for being an amazing and hardcore character that I could channel. You’re my homegirl.