by Anna Daugherty

Editor’s Note: Francis Tsai died on April 23, 2015. This story has been updated.

It is evident in Francis Tsai’s work that he loved science fiction, textures, and graphic shapes. What isn’t obvious is that he drew using only his eyes.

Tsai, BS ’90, MAr ’93, died April 23 after struggling with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, for more than five years. During that time, he never stopped creating art.

Tsai took the long way to his art career. He fell in love with Star Wars as a wide-eyed 10-year-old, filling his notebooks with doodles. Luke Skywalker became a personal hero for Tsai, who grew up in Lubbock — not too different from Tatooine. He enrolled as a pre-med at UT, which he soon realized was not his calling. Switching to architecture offered a chance to be creative, although after four years working in that field he dove full time into painting and drawing in 1998.

“Ever since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to draw,” he said in late March, just before his death. “Architecture was the foundation that I ended up using in design work. I had to fill in the gaps.”

After nearly 10 years as a concept artist and designer, Tsai decided to become a freelancer so he could focus on creating art he was passionate about. Soon his work was appearing on Marvel comic covers and in graphic novels, the game Dungeons & Dragons, and the film Sucker Punch. By 2009, he had also published two books on designing and painting for fantasy and science fiction. Tsai had never been happier. “I was finally on the trajectory of where I wanted to be,” he said.