IG-11 bounty hunter fighting — Print & Oil Painting

Everything in the room is pointed at one thing. Four muzzles, four sets of hands, and every bolt on the canvas running along a converging line to the same place: a narrow metal chest standing upright in the middle distance.

The impact is already happening. A magenta and white starburst blooms at the droid's sternum with hard spokes firing out of it, bright enough to throw pink light back onto the arms of the men shooting. Three more bolts are still in the air behind it, thin and streaked.

The droid does not react. It stands perfectly vertical, a smooth cylindrical head banded with a single dark ring, a segmented neck, exposed piston limbs and a narrow waist, both arms held down and slightly away from the body with a long weapon in one hand. Nothing about the posture is defensive, and against four shooters at close range that reads as the most alarming thing in the picture.

The foreground belongs to the attackers, and we are standing among them. One at the left in a domed helmet with a rifle; one at the centre in a hood and rebreather with a pistol at full arm's length, the flash going off at the muzzle; one at the lower right, horned, thick-necked, blaster coming up, a wet highlight running along his brow. All three are cropped by the frame and thrown out of focus, so the eye is pushed past them.

This model was manufactured as a hunter and is best known for being rebuilt afterwards as a nurse and a protector, which gives every picture of it in a firefight a second meaning it did not ask for. From our Star Wars collection, next to the man it eventually worked for, crouched over a child and a wall of the tools that trade runs on.