As with so many Decembers in recent years, so this one is too coloured by a distinctly Star-Wars-y mood, even for those of us with little optimism about the franchise's future. Nevertheless, I had been planning to make a gift to an old tutor of mine for quite some time, and happened to be a fan of Star Wars - go figure - at least the way it used to be. I figured a set of de-specialized editions of the original trilogy would be a fine one, but I needed some neat jewel case cover art for polish, to make it truly special.
On the other hand, in the course of my education I inevitably came to touch upon LaTeX, pretty much the single most powerful typesetting interface. For many applications it may be overly complicated and unnecessary, but there is little else to quite replace it well when it comes to typesetting scientific literature, especially when it comes to formulae and diagrams. The latter can be programmed with an embedded language by the name of TikZ. It is essentially a vector shape/path drawing interface with some more special functionality for the purposes of technical diagrams. Apparently, some find that, at least in intent, "TikZ is not a drawing program". I have been told this just one too many time and naturally felt challenged.
Needless to say, I was told correctly. Painting detailed images with TikZ, while possible, is rather cumbersome, especially when compared against other vector shape design software. Thus, if art is what one elects one day to do with TikZ, one is naturally encouraged to keep things as simple and elegant, minimalistic, as possible.
And so I drew the Death Star in three strokes. And I liked it. So now I'm sharing the results with you. Enjoy. And happy new year, too!
