Today on his Facebook page, John Cassaday, artist for the current STAR WARS book at Marvel, announced he was leaving the book but gave readers a look at how his cover art comes together. Originally reported by CBR, Cassaday posted this:

Here's a couple of the images:

With this being the first issue, I needed to show the cast but didn’t want to go the movie poster montage route (of course, there’d be time for that later). There was a lot to fit in, so I went with what reminds me a lot of the publicity shots the cast did, especially for the first two films. Action poses from all, sort of backed into a corner and essentially contained to the space of an 8X10 glossy… Maximum impact in a small space...

And what’s a Star Wars first issue cover without star fighters? So X-Wings and TIE fighters made their way in. Notice I initially had a set of Vader style TIE fighters in the center, but our friends at Lucasfilm balked at having more than one (there was a fleet constructed, in my mind), so I scrapped them in favor of more standard issue ships...

Make sure to check out Cassaday's page to see how the rest of the cover came together. Issue #6 is Cassaday's last issue on STAR WARS. Issues #1-3 are currently on sale.