Born in the late 1950’s, Mark Raats was attracted to art at a young age practicing his drawing skills by copying Hal Foster’s weekly comic strip – Prince Valiant. On completing his education, Raats was keen to pursue a career with Disney animation and in the very early 80’s he was attracted to the fledgling computer graphics industry – completing his first computer animated short film in December 1985.

Mark Raats’ first official project for Lucasfilm and its licensees was done just under 30 years ago and in the time since, he has been contracted to create a teaser theatre poster for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the official movie theatre poster for the 30th anniversary release of Raiders of the Lost Ark and most recently for Disney and Lucasfilm, the 40th Anniversary artwork for The Empire Strikes Back.

George Lucas has purchased many of the original artworks Raats has created for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises for his personal art collection.

Mark Raats works from his studio in Perth, Western Australia and the medium of choice for all his illustrations is marker pen, gouache paint and coloured and graphite pencils. Due to time constraints, he only works on a select number of illustrations for his clients in any given year. Mark’s work also includes two privately commissioned illustrations for Marvel legend, Stan Lee and official poster illustration for Disney and Lucasfilm’s SOLO – A Star Wars Story, The Rise of Skywalker and season 2 of The Mandalorian.