Chris Barbieri

Chris Barbieri, known professionally as Christopher Barbieri, illustrated the galaxy maps featured in the books of the New Jedi Order series. Working closely with Dan Wallace and James Luceno, Barbieri created a total of five maps for the New Jedi Order book series, showing the invasion path of the Yuuzhan Vong across the galaxy over five years. Barbieri's illustrated galactic maps appeared in the opening pages of all 19 novels of the series.
==Creating the Galactic Map==
Barbieri's involvement in the New Jedi Order project would begin during the pre-production of the series. Del Rey editor Shelly Shapiro and Lucasfilm editor Sue Rostoni agreed to create a new, more elaborate map of the galaxy as planning of the series began; James Luceno was chosen as the leader of the map-making effort in December 1998. Working with Dan Wallace, who previously had organized a guide to the galaxy, and using a planetary database created by Jason Fry, work began on a new map which took into account the events of the previous books and films, while also implementing events and settings of the New Jedi Order series to help guide the galaxy's layout.
Having organized the locations of the various worlds and trade routes, Luceno and Wallace believed it would be of value to readers to include the maps in the front of the novels. Using copies of Vernor Vinge's sci-fi epic A Fire Upon the Deep and Michael Shaara's acclaimed Civil War retelling The Killer Angels, Luceno made his case at a story conference in March 1999 that the maps of those novels proved their benefit to the readers and that Del Rey should include galactic maps in the New Jedi Order series. Convinced, the maps were green-lit for publication that fall.
Barbieri then came on board the project as the official artist, having already been a friend of Luceno's and Brian Daley's over the years. Luceno recounted, "Chris offered a couple of different approaches. I remember several discussions regarding the limitations of 2-D, the overall style, the type face, and assorted ways of rendering the Unknown Regions, Wild Space, and the invasion path." Barbieri hand-drew the pen-and-ink maps in a classic fantasy style, which Wallace remarked was successful at "evoking the romantic feel of an old pirate treasure map."
As the series continued, further maps were created which depicted the invasion route of the Yuuzhan Vong, which, with ominous black arrows, "called to mind the black-and-white graphics of the German army's European encroachment as seen in the newsreels of the 1940s," remarked Wallace. For a time, Luceno and Wallace even had dreams of having campaign maps done which zoomed in to show different Yuuzhan Vong and New Republic fleet movements within a contested sector of space. While this never came to fruition in Barbieri's style, more detailed digital maps of the fleet movements within the war came a decade later with the eventual release of The Essential Atlas, written by Wallace and Fry.
==Maps Gallery==
In total, five separate maps were illustrated by Barbieri for the series.Vector Prime Balance Point Enemy Lines I: Rebel Dream Destiny's Way The Unifying Force
File:NJOmaps VP.png|Vector Prime (25 ABY)
File:NJOmaps BP.png|Balance Point (26 ABY)
File:NJOmaps ELI.png|Enemy Lines I (27 ABY)
File:NJOmaps DW.png|Destiny's Way (28 ABY)
File:NJOmaps TUF.png|The Unifying Force (29 ABY)
==Notes and references==
Category:Reference work artists