The Origin of Species: How to Design a Star Wars Alien

If you Google Star Wars

alien

design

s, this image will probably appear somewhere in the results. It began floating online after the release of The Last Jedi and is

design

ed to showcase the diversity and creativity of George Lucas-era creature design. Star Wars contrasts with the squishy brown lumps that seem to appear so frequently in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, and while it's probably unfair to compare the creature design of two films to the entire six-film saga before This image, it wouldn't be published and republished years later, if there wasn't a general feeling that the creature design of this new era of Star Wars didn't live up to its predecessors, so let's find out why, let's take a look. look at the design process for each of these

alien

s. and see if we can figure out why each group of creatures looks the way it does, what's elevating the good designs, and what might be holding back the bad ones.

The first aliens we are introduced to in the Star Wars Universe are the Jawas who appear for the first time. In a second draft of the New Hopes script where they are described as wearing dirty cloaks and their faces covered so that only their yellow eyes can be seen, which is basically what ended up on screen, the Jawas are also described in ambiguously human terms. as men or dwarves with the word Jawa implied to be a nickname, costume designer John M's sketches would make them a bit more alien with inhuman faces barely visible in the shadows of their hoods.

In the final film, their faces were completely obscured, leaving them mysterious, the script constantly mentions how disgusting they are and not showing them allows the audience to imagine the most disgusting thing they can think of instead of just the most disgusting thing the artists work. In the film they could also think about living in them are the Tuscan raiders. which were designed by legendary conceptual artist Ralph Mcquery Mcquery thought that because they lived in a desert environment with constant sand storms, the Tuscans would need help seeing and breathing, so he gave them goggles and respiratory masks which carried over quite faithfully to screen, but the idea of ​​masked warriors ambushing the protagonist in the desert actually predates sand people as a concept.

The draft script for the film has a scene near the beginning of the story that is almost identical to the encounter we see on screen, but instead of Luke Skywalker being ambushed. by sand people deak Star Killer is taken by surprise and killed by a masked Sith Knight, an idea that would eventually evolve into Darth Vader and this focus on masks and capes for the sand people in the jaw means that the film shows us aliens. without actually showing us aliens, for all we know they could be humans there which makes it more shocking when we get to Moss Eisy Cantina and

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t seeing really strange things, unfortunately when they filmed it it wasn't strange enough to see the sequence. fell a week behind the shooting schedule and creature sculptor Steuart Freeborn became ill around the same time, so there weren't as many strange aliens available for the scene as George Lucas would have liked, so after returning home and Assembling a draft Lucas decided they needed to reshoot to add more creatures and managed to negotiate an additional $20,000 for the studio sequence, which would be around $100,000 today and this scene was a big deal for Lucas, even though the movie is full of iconic images, the Cantina sequence is one of the first and most persistent ideas he had for the film.

In May 1973, 4 years before the film's release, George Lucas wrote a 2,000-word summary of his story in this version Luke Skywalker is a 60-year-old Generals R2 and 3PO are human bureaucrats, the rebels are nothing more than a gang of teenagers, and the film ends with an unnamed princess rescued from the Empire's floating city Fortress while the Star of Death remains intact, but even with all these differences, the Cantina scene is complete with an alien creature being killed by a Jedi after disturbing his young companion, so for the sequence to be as shocking to the audience as must have been in Lucas' imagination, he hired a makeup artist who was a friend of a friend of one of the special effects guys to help and add to the list of aliens in the movie, luckily for Lucas, that makeup artist turned out to be Rick Baker, who would go on to win seven Academy Awards for his work, so it may not be as surprising that Baker, along with a small team of other artists, created most of the Cantina aliens that people actually remember. , including the first jump that scares the audience as they enter the Cantina, is a creature named Tad who would later be given the fitting name hem daison, as Tad was only designed to be in one shot, he was never created a full body for him, but his limited design definitely served the purpose of that shot, he's only on screen for a second, but the strong silhouette of his head and his golden glow-in-the-dark eyes are immediately identifiable and are a great way to bring the audience into this miserable hive of scum and villainy and if you look closely you can even see the flashlight they placed in the back of his skull to make his eyes shine again.

In addition to the La Cantina scene are the aliens that would become known as Duros designed by artist Ron Cobb. These guys were created to look like the popular image of Gray aliens and are apparently supposed to be pretty mysterious even in a world as strange as Star Wars. For other creatures he created, Cobb came up with things like their habitat and behavior to help inform and justify the design, but for the hardcore, the only note he left is a faint nothing known on the side of the page, not all the new Cantina aliens would do it.

However, the creations would be as fleshed out as cobs, because so many creatures were needed for the reshoot, Rick Baker donated some masks he had lying around to help complement those made specifically for the film, among them was a character diabolical that Baker had initially done. a film that John Landis was releasing in the early 1970s. The mask would eventually appear on the screen worn by Baker in the Cantina. Another of Baker's creations is Cana's live band which, according to Star Wars lore, is a quintet of bth jiz Whalers called figurin Dan. in the modal nodes and who, according to George Lucas, dug up some old Benny Goodman records and tried to replicate the music they found on it, this supposed interaction with Earth could be the reason for B's resemblance to the Grays and since these aliens They were meant to be musicians, the first mask sculptors even gave them second mouths on their necks to help increase their sperm, but even among all these strange creatures they're not exactly characters, which is why we have to go to Chewbacca, the W, the W term actually. before Star Wars was mentioned in the first George Lucas film THX 1138 I think I ran over, ran over a working EXP and the intergalactic version of the creature is also quite old, in the draft of the film, the heroes are found abandoned in a dense jungle. planet and kidnapped by a society of primitive alien warriors called Wookies who eventually help the heroes by stealing a squadron of Imperial spaceships and blowing up the Death Star.

This idea of ​​a group of technologically inferior people not only taking on an advanced military force, but defeating it. appealed to Lucas, who had some strong thoughts about the Vietnam War and was even supposed to direct Apocalypse Now before he got too busy with Star Wars when the entire Wook tribe was cut from the script. Lucas decided to keep at least one as a character. specifically as Han Solo's co-pilot, a decision inspired by his wife's dog, a large Alaskan malamut who joined Lucas on trips and sat in the front passenger seat of the car; that dog actually ended up influencing another famous movie character in the future because the dog your name was Indiana you are named after the dog chewy's first description in the second draft of the script was like an 80 foot wild looking creature tall that resembles a huge gray baby monkey with ferocious baboon-like fangs and Ralph McCor's concept art followed this description quite closely.

That was until George Lucas came across a story by George RR Martin in a science fiction magazine in 1975. This story featured a group of creatures that live in Furry Forest called janii and Lucas gave the illustrations of the creatures to the magazine. to serve as the new leadership. to take Chewy's design, that design would then be further refined by Steuart Freeborn, who adapted it into a wearable suit that would fit the lanky body of actor Peter Mayu, another alien who is a real character in the film is cool and, unlike most other famous Cantinas. Aliens We've Talked About Greo was one of the creatures that was actually completed in time for the initial filming of the sequence, perhaps in part because his rubber face was built on a pre-existing alien mask that Stuart Freeborn had created for a commercial when it first appears in the script.

Gedo is described as a slimy alien with a purple face and a short nose. Costume designer John Malo's concept art certainly includes the nose, but it ended up green in the movie instead of purple and in place of the alien. tracksuit appearance that he sported on screen, the illustration shows him wearing a flight suit similar to the one Luke and the other rebels wear later in the film, although in the end he did wear a rebel flight suit since the style of the jacket English racing clothing worn on screen would later be used as part of the snow speeder pilot suits in The Empire Strikes Back.

That same type of jacket would also appear a couple more times in A New Hope and would be worn by the walrus man Pond AB Bamba in the Cantina. and Luke himself at the end of the film, once we leave the Cantina, we are introduced to the last new alien creature in the film, Ginden, the Kubaz spy in the script. Gendon is only described as a creature dressed in dark and only appears in the fourth draft. which was written after the film was cast and after most of the concept art for the main characters had already been done, as the character was quite minor and added quite late in the process, his appearance would likely have been created by costume designer John Malo on the Fly.

The creature's appearance may also have influenced the sound of it, with its mask suggesting an insect like prascus. It would make sense to give him a droning voice to match a voice that was actually made up of heavily processed clips of John Wayne with the Cantina behind us and the rest. The portion of the film is dominated by human characters, so let's move on to the Empire Strikes Back, where we are quickly introduced to the ice monster Wampa on Hoth. The design of this creature is quite simple, being essentially a yeti with goat horns, but its final appearance in reality.

It took about 15 years to be refined inspired by 1951's The Thing from Another World. George Lucas initially wanted the first act of his Star Wars sequel to feature the rebels being driven from their Arctic base by attacks from terrifying alien creatures. . This sequence would also feature Luke getting attacked by the monsters, providing an in-Universe reason for his face to look different after Mark Hamill's real-life car accident and subsequent reconstructive surgery in 1977, so, although the story would eventually change to present the Empire as the reason for the rebels' evacuation of the monsters from Hoth. were not completely removed from the script, the attack on Luke had yet to occur and even some scenes were filmed in which the captive wampas were unleashed against the Imperial invaders, although they were eventually removed, this could have been at least partially because, given That the creatures were played by guys in suits walking on stilts seemed pretty ridiculous.

When George Lucas

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ted working on the Star Wars special edition in the '9s, he had the opportunity to go back and revisit the woman to make her look real. intimidating, instead of the ridiculous stilts of the

origin

al. In the film version, the special edition featured a suit sized correctly for the performer inside, filmed in a small-scale ice cave that would make the creature appear larger than it actually was. Another new monstrous creature in The Empire Strikes Back is the BountyTroiana. However, Forest Hunter, instead of starting out as a reptilian creature, the script described him as a slimy monster with tentacles, two huge bloodshot eyes, and a soft, baggy face.

That idea didn't make it into the movie and the Forest we got was recycled from Cantina's leftovers. His head was repainted from one of Steuart Freeborn's alien masks and his outfit was taken from a background actor wearing an old British Air Force pressure suit. Some of the other bounty hunters were similarly improvised. Boba Fett's armor was

origin

ally designed for a new type of Stormtrooper, but the prototype suit ended up being too expensive to make multiple copies, so it was converted into bounty hunter battle armor. Dengar also wears repainted Imperial gear, although his is cobbled together from Stormtrooper and Snow Trooper armor rather than being new.

In the design, the droids were also heavily reused. ig88 is partially made from old Cantina fixtures and forum is a modified protocol. Ironically, the Zuus or Tuckus droid in the script was described as human, so it's a little strange that he became more complex when he hit the screen, but the concept art for the bounty hunters that uses the big-eyed design brief from Bosque as a starting point seems to point to an evolution that ultimately resulted in an insectoid zuus with BOS himself becoming a cheaper creation, but like Cantina Denisons, none. Many of the new mercenary aliens in the movie are actually characters, so let's go ahead and take a look at the movie's biggest and smallest new character, Yoda, with Ben Kenobi killed off in the first movie.

Luke needed a new Jedi master for the sequel that George Lucas wanted. Luke's new teacher will be like Obi-Wan, a strange hermit character but he wanted to take advantage of that idea. Also, since Alec Guinness had brought a lot of unexpected nobility to his portrayal of Kenobi to help with this, Lucas thought of the idea of ​​making of the new character an alien creature potentially a puppet that would also give him an excuse to work with Jim Hensen and the Other puppeteers who had expressed interest in doing a project together, some of artist Joe Johnston's early designs, took Yoda in a direction more whimsical, although eventually the withered frog-like character Lucas was imagining began to take shape with the help of Ralph McCor and once the design reached the hands of Stuart Freeborn.

SC's sculpting process gave the character a lot more personality. Freeborn based the wrinkles around Yoda's eyes on those of Albert Einstein and even exaggerated some elements of Yoda's own face to give Yoda a slightly comical appearance. From The Last Jedi to Return of the Jedi, we have probably the best movie of the trilogy when it comes to new aliens, mainly because a lot of those new aliens are actually characters this time around instead of just background details from the first one. . What we know is Bib Fortuna, whose

species

the twx would become an iconic presence in the Star Wars Universe.

The Twx are also unique in that they are the first alien race in the trilogy to introduce sexual dimorphism, although that may be down to them. It didn't actually start out as the same

species

. Bib was described in early versions of the script as a wrinkled old man with a tall hat and his female counterpart, Ula, was simply a generic alien dancer. Ralph Mcquery created some early, more human versions of fortune with artist Neilo. Rus Jero picked up the character later and took him further into the realm of alien. Eventually, future designer Phil Tippet would create the final look complete with head tentacles and an enlarged skull with pulsating protuberances like Jabba's main Dome.

The filmmakers wanted the character to be. tall and disgusting, but the opposite would have to be true for Neil Rus Jero's early classroom illustrations depicted her with an elongated skull as her only alien feature, but eventually Phil Tippet would give her tentacles on her head and the Gorian guards are also introduced. along with Bib and actually started out as something resembling generically reptilian gorillas in Ralph McCor's early drawings, when Joe Johnston made his version of the creatures, they began to take on more pig-like features, but he was actually the sculptor of Creature Shop, Dave Carson, who came up with the idea. final design next of Jabba's guards we can go to Jabba himself Jabba the Hut is a character that has changed quite a bit since he was first created and first appeared in the second draft of A New Hope back then he was just one of several pirates who served on board. the Millennium Falcon under its captain oxis in the third draft, he was the captain and Han was a cabin boy who has to rob the ship to take Luca obiwan's job.

In the fourth draft, Han outright owns the Falcon and Jabba became the Crim Lord we know today. More or less none of the early drafts even suggest that Jabba is not a human being and only one version of the script published in 1979, 2 years after the film's release, he modifies his description of Jabba to say that he is a fat, slug-like creature with eyes on extended antennae and a huge, ugly mouth, and the famous version of the Jabba scene that exists today in the The film was originally filmed with M Holland's human actor dressed in full Star Wars costume.

George Lucas has claimed that Mulholland's performance was always intended to be temporary and that he wanted to superimpose a different creature in post-production until it was decided it was too expensive, but I think he was just being polite: the scene with Jabba had to reshot twice after the initial filming day because Lucas was dissatisfied with Moh Holland's performance, something that wouldn't happen if you intended to replace the actor entirely anyway, but regardless of the reason after the film's release film, Lucas had the opportunity to think about what Jabba would look like in the next one. The time it appeared, Star Wars was a big enough hit that sequels were inevitable and Hans' debt to the Crim Lord would have to be resolved, so when the Cabin finally appeared in exchange for the Jedi, its more or less appearance Less aligned with what was in that 1979 version of the Star Wars script without the eyes on extended antennas, this version of Jabba was inspired by the characters played by actor Sydney Green Street whose imposing presence also influenced the Marvel Comics character Kingpin. as a counterpoint to Jabba's immense size we have lewd miga B a PR that started as a joke suggestion from sound designer Ben Bert thought it would be funny if, as part of what happens in Jabis Palace, there was a little exaggerated alien who sits on the shoulder of a bigger friend and repeat everything. the big guy said during a discussion, so a puppet was built based on this idea.

He was originally supposed to be paired with a creature known as effent M, but the team found him so funny that they promoted him to a partner and gave him a larger role in the film. actually comes from the Creature Shop going out to lunch drunk after George Lucas asked him to think of something appropriate for his new creation. When the future Wrangler dinosaur Phil Tippet slurred what he needed to tie up his demands the character's name began to take shape Lucas would later give him the last name Crumb in honor of Horon, the leading underground comics artist, Robert Crum, in the Opposite end of the scale from cacious is the sorter, the only story requirement for the creature was that it would be able to grab Luke with its hands and try to eat him, which gave the artist a lot of freedom when coming up with his design, but there was also a practical element to considering how the monster would come to life on screen.

At first it was thought that the creature could be an artist in a suit like Godzilla, so early designs had more humanoid proportions, but when that didn't work and the creature became a puppet, its shape was exaggerated with longer arms. , shorter legs and an overall appearance that his creators described as a cross between a bear and a potato and, despite the tragic fate in the movie The Show Must Go On and who better to act in than Max REO and his gang, Max is one of the most misunderstood aliens. In Star Wars, the little blue elephant was designed as a musician who would play a strange circular organ instrument, but what made his design unique was that he did not use his hands to play, but instead used his feet when the initial microphone was set. translated to In an Artist's Disguise, much of that design intent was lost and, like Max Rebo, Rees, the three-eyed goat-like alien, was one of those characters who was designed by a sculpted MCAT instead of a two-dimensional illustration;

In this case, the mikette was created. by Chris Whis, who was also working on two other films at IMM at the time he was hired to work on Star Wars. Chris, like the other creature sculptors, was told to make as many different aliens as he could to help complete the film. repertoire with the expectation that most of them wouldn't be approved, as it turned out that Lucas liked all of the creatures SE featured in that first batch, including Ree, who was designed as an homage to the quirky aliens seen on various shows. 1960s science fiction television show by Irwin Allen After the destruction of Jabba Sailb's bars the next new creatures introduced in the film are the non-human members of the Rebel Alliance.

The first to get a speaking role is Admiral Abbar in the revised draft of the script. Admiral Abar. He is described as a pale blue non-human creature that speaks a strange language, but his actual appearance was left to director Richard Markin, although many of the film's creatures were approved by George Lucas. Lucas wanted Markn to choose the design used for a car from among the Several aliens created for the film Markins chose an illustration by Neil Rus Jero of a bulbous fish-headed creature because he wanted children watching the film to understand that good people don't They were always pretty and that ugly people were not automatically evil and that some of them are excellent singers enough of this serious talk I would like to regrow you now with oh I'm ugly I'm ugly Asen because beautiful comes out ugly if you're ugly like me you're in good company because There are millions of us who are ugly, the other notable new member of the alliance is Nine, a soloist who serves as Lando's co-pilot during the Battle of Endor, like many other aliens in the film.

Nine started out as just another random microphone, this one sculpted by Dave Carson. and was only later cast in a more prominent role, according to Carson, the design evolved as he did, with the character's focal point being a pair of nostrils that continued along the face until they became jowls, thus which, although its design did not appear. From any specific character requirement, the focus on giving them a couple of prominent, easy-to-recognize features probably helped them stand out in a way that a more generic design wouldn't. From the space above Endor, we can go to the forest itself and take a look.

In the last major species to be introduced in the Star Wars Trilogy, the Ewoks, despite their late arrival, their role in the story dates back to the draft of A New Hope, in which you will remember that George Lucas wanted the Wookies primitives. Help the heroes save the day when the Wookiees evolved into the rebellious Rebel Alliance. Lucas held on to his hairy warrior idea and repurposed it with the Jedi, but he ran into a couple of problems, the first being that Chewbacca had already proven that Wookiees were something technologically capable which went against his desire to present a primitive species that defeated the Empire.

The second problem was choosing the casting for the first film. He had a hard enough time finding Peter Mayu and it would be much harder to complete an entire tribe of 7. Foot tall Wookies In the old days, you could simply digitally replicate a handful of basketball players, so Lucas cut the Wookies down. in half, shortening the name to Ewok and shortening their height, making them more similar to the jaws and ugots that had filled the other films. Ralph Mccy was the first artist to attempt to design the Ewoks and Neilo Rus Jr. and Joe Johnson came later. to refine and flesh them out once George Lucas approved a design direction that would give them turned-up noses and big, intelligent eyes. and for a while that was it, new aliens would appear in books and cartoons over the years and a couple of creatures would receive makeovers for the special editions, but Star Wars management would not expand in a wayreally significant until 1999's The Phantom Menace. and that movie wasted no time in doing so right away, we are introduced to n gunray of the neimoidians, these guys are essentially robber barons, hyper-capitalist demons who are named after republicans and act as the main villains of the movie.

Initially, the Neimoidians were supposed to be CGI characters like battle droids with emaciated limbs and elongated faces that would suggest that the droids were built in the image of their masters. Ironically, in real life the droids were created first and the first Neimoidians were designed to match, but adding as many. Additional digital characters for the film would have been quite expensive, so the idea was scrapped and a new design was quickly put together based on the Diner Hardcore scene in A New Hope with enough differences to make them a new species to avoid stepping on. the toes of established lore, let's move on to the second new species introduced in the film The Gungans jarar Binks was designed to be a slapstick performer in the vein of Buster Keaton or Disney's Goofy, his long ears and gangly limbs They lend themselves to physical comedy and its stock. eyes with the ability to make exaggerated cartoonish expressions without breaking physical plausibility skill too much artist Terell Whitlatch started with a turtle-like creature and began slowly playing with different combinations of features until he came up with the final design of it.

All of these early versions of gungans have one thing in common, although they are amphibians, which probably came from two places. The first is an early idea that George Lucas needed to include a water planet in The Empire Strikes Back, which would allow the film to feature an underwater city that he eventually found. a location in The Phantom Menace that requires an underwater inhabitant. The other big influence on Gungin and the prequels in general is Jurassic Park, after seeing the work he had done on that film, George Lucas decided that his digital dinosaurs meant he could finally enjoy all the ideas he had. had.

He had had to abandon the original Star Wars films because they would have been too expensive or completely impossible to make, but even though CGI became such a powerful tool, it still had limitations, particularly when it came to simulating things like hair, so digital wookies were out of the question. table, but the smooth-skinned amphibious Gungans were more plausible, the film then takes us from Lush naabu to the arid place where we meet the toari and the scrap metal dealer W, like the Gungans. W is a CGI character, meaning he is mostly hairless save for a short, scruffy beard, and his face is based on one of the first illustrations for the Neimoidians by design director Doug Chang, as to W's body, which was more challenging after settling on W's face.

George Lucas asked the art department to put it on a creature with a fat body, duck legs, and bat wings next. some more physically plausible designs were rejected. Doug Chang made a version that interpreted the report as literally as possible and it turned out to be exactly what Lucas was looking for. At first the animation team was concerned about the approved design and worried that the size of W's wings would make his ability to fly seem implausible, but they ended up justifying this by treating his belly as if it were filled with helium, meaning that his wings would just need to help him turn instead of needing to lift themselves up and once we meet W that brings us to this movie's version of the Cantina scene or to Jabis's palace with Pad R and his strange variety of alien racers and because they are mostly computer generated characters, of course he will be bald.

The first runner we meet is a particularly dangerous Doug named Sabala. This camel-faced bruiser was a whitlatch teral design and didn't go through many revisions as Lucas liked his spidery feel and walked on his hands and drove with his feet Sabala and most other pod racers like Ratz. Terell and V quadros were also designed with specific features that would be beneficial when racing pods, sometimes this manifests as extraneous or extra sensory organs or extra limbs and, in many cases, a small stature, similar to that of pod riders. real life, they benefit from not adding too much extra weight to their frames.

The two-headed announcer designed by Terell Whitlatch was originally intended to be a mix of live action and animation with the actors' heads placed on a double-necked digital alien body after the capsule race films The Heroes Have Their First important encounter with Darth Maul whose design didn't actually start out as a Sith Lord when he designed the character George Lucas started the art department by simply telling them to draw their worst nightmares in the hope that one of his illustrations would be enough to serve as a point of reference. departure and while there were some designs that were used elsewhere, none of them became Maul himself, as artist Ian M actually refined a design he started. as a senator of the republic, a bald human with a pattern of tattoos on circuit boards, and Maul could have remained human as well if not for a crown of feathers wrapped around his head that eventually grew into horns, cementing him as member of the new Zabra species after the encounter with Maul, the next batch of aliens we see, is currently most prominently on the Jedi Council when trying to come up with new Jedi designs, the Art Department sought out a variety of sources that Benton Jew created oen cissus based on a Chinese calendar illustration he was looking for.

His parents' house and Ian McKay created Eth Coth by making an alien caricature of Doug Chang, although the origins of other Jedi are not as clear, although we know that Cy Tin is a toned down version of a much scarier piece of concept art. PLU tune. There does not appear to be any initial design published. However, we do know that Ian Mcag, in addition to caricatures of other members of the art department, used Ben Kenobi as inspiration when he created the New Jedi. Kiti Mundy, for example, came from mck Crossing Old Obi. -Wan with a whale and plun may have come from a similar place, perhaps imagining a version of Ben Kenobi who had to wear a vader-type breathing apparatus, another character without a clear design story is Vice Chancellor Massam as with the Jedi.

The Art Department was tasked with coming up with a bunch of designs for potential Republic senators and it's likely that it will come from this set of illustrations and move on to the Clones attack. One of the first new aliens introduced in this movie is Nain Kit. Fisto, like many of the new Jedi in this movie kit, originates as an initial design for the character who would become Count Dooku, as he did in episode one. George Lucas let the Art Department run wild to come up with potential designs for the film's new Sith. villain and although the character ended up based on an illustration for a modern-day cop, the Sith team's work did not go well with many of artist Dermit Power's flashy villain designs being reused for New Jedi Kit Fisto, including the other New Jedi.

In that scene with the kit Miry Allen luminara unduli and bars offi are presented, who also came from the potential Sith designs of dermit power. The art department spent a lot of time on this film trying to convince Lucas to add a female character to the series' roster of villains and while Darth Tyrannis ended up being a man, they were still successful, the character's design evolving into in Be Offi was also used as the basis for the Clone Wars character Assange Ventress, and the team's suggestion for a female villain may have also helped inspire the CLA Bounty Hunter.

Zam Wasel, whose costume actually comes from an early clone trooper uniform design, a potential female Sith Lord was also used as the basis for Tuda Jedi Shak, a character who acts as a sort of digital Band-Aid for the film. Attack of the clones. It only has a brief scene in the Jedi Council chamber, so instead of spending money to rebuild the entire set from episode 1, the scene was filmed on a blue screen that matched the camera angles of the previous film and reused the old setting for the background, but this presents a problem. in episode 2, Yoda is the digital character, but the archival footage from episode one still has Yattle as a puppet, which presents an incongruity, and although she would only appear in one shot in this film, if they left her in the advice, it also doesn't mean having to build a digital yattle for episode 3 or letting her remain a puppet and maintain incongruity throughout the trilogy, so in the long run it's better to replace her with someone else, enter sha T, the other new member of the Jedi Council and the episode. 2 is Coleman Treor, who also exists as a replacement for a character from episode one, this time as a replacement for the long-necked Yariel Poof, whose design was probably too distracting for The Camon, who appears later in the film, unlike Shak T, although Coleman's design does not.

He doesn't come from an amazing unused Sith Lord, but was actually an unused head sculpt for the new alien character Dexter Jeter to help with Dexter's design process. Artist Mike Merain sculpted a bunch of different mettes to help George Lucas figure out what kind of face. the character would have and after being put together by the animation and VFX supervisors who would be in charge of bringing the character to life, Lucas combined elements of two mettes to obtain a character with the Earnest Borgnine personality that he was looking for. Dexter Jeter also leads us. To the next major alien species introduced in the film The Mysterious Denis of Kamino, these creatures are another one of those surprisingly old Star Wars ideas dating back to the Empire Strikes Back, where a secret race of tall, pale aliens were going to be the native inhabitants. de besin When the idea for Attack of the Clones was revived, Lucas thought that perhaps the Chamon could be the alien seen at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, although as the design evolved further to include seal-like elements to help. fit into their aquatic environment that idea was abandoned as a new species important to the film several different artists were involved in creating the camans with an unused idea from Doug Chang eventually reappearing as the mysterious polus massons from episode 3 as a counterpoint to the camans that If the Geonosians are like the cloners, the Droid Builders are also a reference to an earlier Star Wars idea, this time the early Neimoidian design that resembled battle droids with the Droid Factory shown in this film , it made sense to use those early Neimoidians as a starting point for the Geonosians, their historical role as a society of builders also helped inform their habitat, as their buildings were designed to look like termite mounds mixed with Gothic cathedrals.

The Geonosians are not the only aliens on Geonosis, although Dooku's breakaway clique includes a few new alien creatures, including the robotic Watt Tambour, who originates as an unused Dexter Jester head and whose body was developed by sculptor Pierce Shumai. Mike Merain Tambor and San Hill do not have designs that come from additional jeters, but instead have unique designs. From artist Dermit Power as speaking characters, it is important to differentiate them from each other and make it clear to the audience that Dooku is making an alliance with several different groups rather than a single large organization like the Trade Federation in episode 1.

Palpatine also has a The new Entourage in Attack of the Clones with the human age of Chancellor Vorm from episode 1 was replaced by the cunning umaran Moore designed by the dermit power in this film. George Lucas wanted to start bringing in some hints of Palpatine's true evil nature, which included giving him a slightly sinister look. posy to go along with his red office and his guards and in contrast to the kilos of udap from Palpatine episode 3, they look unpleasant, but they are actually good guys and if you think that their appearance does not exactly fit with their surroundings, you would have reason, they were originally designed. by artist Jan Lee sang to be the denisons of Mustafar, which is where the ashy gray skin and red robes of the original inhabitants of udupa come from, they were to be eras of lemur-like aliens who eventually appeared in the Clone cartoon Wars, the change may have been a cost-cutting measure, since the residents of Udow don't actually appear much in the film, creating a race of CGI lemurs may not have been worth it and that brings us to the end of the prequels , at least according to the collage, there are some obvious emissions from theimage, including the sand monsters, General Grievous, many of the pod racers, the entire nibu ecosystem, but that just speaks to how much work was done to populate the version of the Star Wars Galaxy depicted in those films and we still have With almost the entire trilogy to cover, there's actually an alien from Return of the Jedi included in the sequel section of the collage. wart, the alien frog that lives outside Jabas Palace, another wart appears in The Force Awakens, although he is hidden inside a cage and is transported by a different alien in Jau, the only way to know he was in the movie It's if you read the visual dictionary or go to Wikipedia, that's probably how this whole picture was compiled in the first place by looking at Wikipedia's list of aliens and creatures. that appear in the sequels and select those that share a particular aesthetic, regardless of whether a design was actually visible in the film or was even created for the sequels and what that tells me is that the line between a Disney Air Design and a Lucas Air The design is not as sharp as it may seem at first, not all the designs from the older films are amazing and could be some of the newer films.

With that in mind, let's take a look at the first one. New alien species were introduced in episode 7. Abednedo, two of which are included in the collage image. This new species was created by creature designer Jake Lun Davies, who noted that the original trilogy tended to be very human-centric outside of the creature feature scene. He came up with an alien design that he liked and tried to place it in as many places in the movie as he could, since they aren't designed for any particular setting or role, meaning his design is a bit generic, but it can also be. tailored to fit a wide variety of character types, from the burly cybernetic rud to the aged brass monk to Hot Shot's elasti pilot.

Another new alien species that is included twice in the collage is the tarant like Abed, these guys were designed by J clun Davies. and they share some of the same design cues, such as wide eyes and nostrils that taper to a narrow mouth with some hanging parts on the side, although they have a unique posture, as one of the things that creature designers in the sequels they tried to do. As far as possible, the form of the human performers was disguised. One alien who does this quite well is Babaj Jo, the guy who carries a wart in a cage in Jaku and who actually debuted in one of the first promotional videos long before the movie with this alien.

Davies hid the performer inside the Tower of animal cages hanging on his back. Another jaku denisen is the crolute unar plut. The idea for this character actually came from director JJ Abrams' daughter, who suggested putting an alien based on a blob fish in the movie The Early Look. Artist Ivan Manzela's character was designed as an animatronic that would be worn by an artist in a suit, so his features were initially more extended and exaggerated when Simon Peg was cast in the role. Abrams decided he wanted to switch to a makeup and prosthetic approach for the character so he could ultimately maintain as much of Peg's performance as possible, although the mask did not appear in the film and the plut face was replaced by CGI rendering based on Peg's performance, which allowed the film to go over the top.

Its features a little more, although not as much, as in the original design, another new alien character is everyone's favorite grave robber. Union Buster Maz Canada Early in the film's development there was a call to design a new Yoda, a character who would impart wisdom about the force. For the film's protagonist, early drawings took this literally, creating characters of the same species as Yoda, some of which used Ralph Mcquery's old art as a base and others that were designed to look like Mcquery himself, eventually scrapped. the idea of ​​literally making a new Yoda. and the art department was instead asked to model the character after Rose Gilbert, a high school teacher of whom JJ Abrams and production designer Rick Carter had been students in Gilbert's Big Glasses Became a Point. focal point for the character with some designs trying to incorporate the feel of them without actually giving him the physical glasses and although the character had this specific starting point it still took a while to finalize his look, the production was aiming for Maz to be a puppet or animatronic, but without an approved design being ready in time to film the The decision was made to transform her into a CG character, rather than give the team more time to work on the design, but sometimes working on something for too long Time can be detrimental to it, whether you spend so much time touching up the details and sanding anything rough. edges that you end up with something generic and that lacks a vital creative spark or you never find that spark to begin with and you just have to throw up your hands at some point and Say enough and maybe one of those two things happened with Maass after all, the character began as New Yoda, which is a creative endeavor that is as likely to succeed as the new Coca-Cola.

Ma's Castle also serves as this film's version of The Cantina or Jabis Palace. and many of the creatures within were designed with classic aliens in mind versus those other scenes. One of the most egregious examples is the Atigan Praster Omlin, who was given the nickname Priest during development and is clearly inspired by some new Ithorian hopes within the castle. We also got a look at Maz's Chef cookie after seeing the initial concept art for Ivan Manzella's character's face. JJ Abrams thought the character looked a bit like Quasimoto, so later iterations of the character pushed more in that direction, giving them a hump and more.

Deformed facial features Also inside the castle there is a small one called PR Sevent as Cookie PR had a specific design inspiration, although in this case the character's face was designed by Ivan Manzella to be a mask worn by a specific artist, Kieran Shaw, who He also played the scavenger. Tito previously appeared in the film and appeared in Return of the Jedi, both an Ewok and the gonk droid being tortured in Jabba's dungeon. Another character designed for a specific actor was Wallan, played by Star Wars leading man War Davis and designed by Ivan Manzella and Jake Lun.

Davies, the idea behind wvan was that he would probably be pretty easy to convince, but he would have a huge alien dog at his side for protection, while Wan and the dog made it into the movie, they weren't paired, so now wvan exists alone Like just this strange Millhouse alien, there were also some new hand puppet characters appearing in the castle, such as the Jak Lun Davies designed brasian, known as snoody pirates on set, their glasses and long noses make me think they might have inspired by Ginden, who himself was known as long snoot before he was given a proper name, another long-nosed alien is guis bagoro dug Elan in Luke Fiser's concept art based on the production nickname and his proboscis, probably We can assume that he was inspired by elephants, one of the most massive sponsors of M's Castle are grummgar the duten, this big daddy Dongo is paired with the little bazine first order spy Nal and has a lot of character in his stance costume and his large size, which is actually somewhat unlikely if you think about it.

Too big to fit in the door, so how did it get in there? There's like a cargo bay or something. As for the design, Grum's face was first created by Ivan Manzella, as many of these aliens were with Jake lent to Davies completing his body and costume. Taking particular inspiration from the Bounty Hunter Forest, one of the castle's most notable creatures is the space pirate Wiggled, who was initially illustrated by Luke Fiser and later finalized by J Clun Davies as some of the creatures in Return of the Jedi and Attack of the Clones. Wiggled was pulled from Castle's group of alien designs to have a more prominent role in the sequence even though Quiggle is more prominent, though it's definitely Ely, the kind of creature that blends into the background, especially compared to its captain. more striking, and that could be because.

For him to essentially be a promoted extra, Ma's Castle's creatures and characters are largely made up of warm yellow and brown tones with a bit of blue for contrast, which makes sense if you're designing a background set and want to be able to Keep your focus on the real characters in the scene, even if there are a lot of wild creatures running around in the background. Jabba's Palace did something similar with most of the aliens being pale yellow or orange with a green here and there and a couple of notable characters with blue. Moss e Cantina had to have its cake and eat it in this regard too thanks to the way the sequence was filmed, the more generic opening characters falling into the bar's warm sandy palette and largely blending into the background, while That all of the memorable creatures were filmed separately months later, meaning there was no danger of a hammerhead shark passing by in the background and taking focus away from the story.

The next film, The Last Jedi, takes us away from the scum and villainy and into the galactic high society of Kanto. The creatures that appear in the casino are a trio of smiling Sans who represent a notable change from the aliens in the other trilogies. Many aliens in the newer films that are brought to life using jersey masks are sculpted with a specific expression on their face to give them more character, while the older films used masks that are more neutral, although this allows each character to stand out. Fit more specifically to the environment they are designed for, it also limits where they can be used, so while it might make sense for a pair of aliens to laugh while enjoying a game together, their expressions would be inappropriate if they were blending in with the crowd. of viewers watching the destruction of the Hosnian system and this ultimately prevents the audience from becoming familiar with some of the new designs in the same way they did. with the older ones because the ones we see that are reused from one show to another are the ones with those neutral faces without context or characters with animatronic faces in the case of rig Fu Ora, who ended up reappearing in Mandalorian, this guy is also a creature Seemingly designed to hide the internal operators with an outsized frame and a head in the center of its chest, it feels a bit like an alien version of the Spider Universe's Kingpin.

Gaatha elu slightly resembles our friend rig Fu in that it is a small face sitting in the middle of a large hunchbacked body, although it is a little softer, it was designed by Luke fiser and elba's name is derived from its production nickname of M elbow face defano stoil is another alien scene in the casino and was designed by J Clint Davies to be performed by artist Derek Campbell, who is a double below-the-knee amputee. The character's body, Long Live, is topped with a head that resembles that of a dog, which along with the Spurs he wears in the concept art of him suggests the idea of ​​a greyhound who, unfortunately, is a jockey.

Despite this rather clever design, I never got a good look at the character's full body in the film, so physicality is wasted on screen and our latest alien cobit, Soer L, is a creature that has no information about who designed it o What the artist intended to capture with this creation has some distinctive features of Jake Clun Davy's work, although particularly the wide eyes and conical face structure that also appears on the alien Tarson an Abed and away from the bite From KOB, we meet a new species of alien caretakers who maintain the ancient Jedi Temple on their homeworld.

The idea for these creatures, the Leni, was that they would be genetically related to their neighbors, the pigs, in some way to differentiate them from pigs, although the Lenai were given more aquatic characteristics. making them a bit fish-like, the approved design for the creatures was created by jacn Davies with Chris Weston working to develop their personality and culture and that brings us to the end of the collage and I think we now have a good understanding. What sets them apart is the creature designs of each trilogy and why someone might prefer one group over another in the original trilogy.

The design of the creatures sometimes emerged from the script, but was often just the result of the sculptors and illustrators drawing inspiration from anywhere they could, whether it be old sci-fi movies and alien lore, real-life animals, or just play with Clay until they got somethingcool and when there were alien characters that weren't just there to fill the frame, their designs grew out of who they were as people. Chewbacca was a loyal companion Yoda proved that strength can come from expected places and Jabba looked exactly as disgusting as his personality in the prequels, we begin to see the aliens as true inhabitants of the Galaxy, the environments and societies in which How these creatures lived shaped their designs and even the individuals seen from afar.

From their homes they were created to fit the community they had become a part of, whether they were dominant pod racers with multiple members, powerful and noble Jedi, or weak and shrinking capitalists, the prequels also had more aliens who were real characters this time. time, even in very minor roles, which meant designing aliens that could quickly form an emotional connection with the audience and, although there were still some aliens with stone-face masks, many creatures had complex animatronics to help them express dialogue, they were They either molded directly onto an actor's face or had digital faces. that it wasn't up to an artist to try to get through a rubber mask; with the newer movies we see things collapse a bit instead of designing aliens to fit their habitat or drawing from obscure personal interests, the main inspiration was simply Star Wars when they were When designing aliens for the new movies, the artists a They often wonder if their design would fit in the Moss Eisy Cantina or the Jabis Palace, a question none of the artists on The Original Trilogy asked because back then the only barometer for a Star Wars alien was that it was in a movie. from Star Wars and as to why that specific alien appearance from the Sequel Trilogy seems to be so common, I think we might have an answer: we've seen that many of the newer aliens were designed in a way that they could somehow disguise Some human actors can be quite creative, but when you need to complete a crowd scene you can't make each character a unique feat of engineering, most will be people in masks, so instead you play with the characteristics of the expensive to achieve it.

It's not as humanoid, but you also have to make sure that the artist can see what they're doing, so you have to put eye holes somewhere and they often end up being nostrils, so the nostrils are They become the central point of the face with the eyes and mouth. By being rearranged around them and because there are a limited number of places to put those things and still look like a face, you end up with some designs that stand out for being very similar, but the fact that those sweater-masked aliens that fill the crowd are the most prominent.

Some of Star Wars' modern creature design is also a sign that the newer films are devoid of actual alien characters. There's Maz, but again, she was explicitly designed to be a replacement for something that already existed. Unar plut, it's soft Jabba with legs and I guess. you could call the Supreme Leader snow and alien, maybe like in the first two movies, but he's just a palette-swapping Palpatine with the scale slider turned up. The only really new alien character who isn't a retread of something from a previous movie is Babu Frick, whose species, the anelons, got an encore in the Mandalorian because it turns out that when you make something new, people really like it and so does With the creatures, the Wrath tars were just a new version of the dianoga and the trash compactor, but the porgs are unprecedented in Star Wars and stuff that's what this collage leaves out all the alien and creature designs from all over Saga that don't support the modern Star Wars narrative being uniformly terrible compared to what came before, so let's take a look at those designs, some old movie designs that might be successful, as well as some more aliens and creatures new ones that I think work very well.

First we will return to La Cantina. I've mentioned before that George Lucas was dissatisfied. what it was filmed with the first time and when you look at the lineup of creatures that were actually on set, yes there are definitely some classics in there, greo, the bat-faced cave, the artist eventually known as BOS, but look at the rest of these guys, he's just beige mammals with glassy black eyes and stretched out faces the lut trillians haven't even gotten an action figure and they made an action figure of everyone, they made an agent zuvio figure and he's not even in the movie, but even after doing the re-shoot George Lucas still thought that some of the creatures in the Cantina were a bit missing among the changes in the Star Wars special edition was the replacement of two of the creatures from Rick Baker's Werewolf with new ones. aliens and interestingly, those four different aliens only wore two different masks, the werewolves, you can probably guess that one is a ready-to-wear Halloween mask that Baker had created, while the other was the same mask simply modified to be a little more alien, but the new guys also share the same face with The Reptilian.

Melis is simply the back of the elephant like the head of CET Wall. The guards on Jabba's skiff in Return of the Jedi are also actually Samy being these leathery, dry greenish-brown guys with vaguely humanoid faces. A couple of these aliens are so similar to each other that the expanded size of the universe even made them different races of the same species. I think part of the similarity comes from them being characters who are involved in a major action sequence, meaning they will be played by stuntmen who need to be able to see. what they're doing while putting on a very physical performance, meaning you can't play with the facial features or proportions like you would with some of the other creatures who just need to sit still and move on to the prequels, the big alien exposition.

The episode one scene was the pod race and the racers themselves are cool, but there is one design that stands out to viewers that maybe isn't as unique as it could be. Ora Singh isn't all that bad on her own, but she represents a trend in the prequels of simply making aliens who are human beings with different skin colors and maybe a prosthetic or two, this sort of thing goes back to the twx in the trilogy original, but the prequels went crazy with humans, but green humans, but blue humans with horns, humans with tentacles. Humans with horns and tentacles Humans with different horns and tentacles.

I think what makes us more willing to forgive these types of alternative techniques for groups like Jabas Skiu Guards or the prequel.Humanoids is that they are similar enough to humans that their similarities are not obvious, since We see human faces every day, so seeing a group of aliens with more or less human facial proportions doesn't activate our brains in the same way. a lot of non-human faces arranged in a particular way does, so let's take a look at them this time for interesting creature designs and we can use what we've learned about successful creatures in the older movies to help guide us.

We're looking for designs that tell us something about the character, whether it's her personality or her role in the story. We are looking for designs that seem like they belong to a living universe, as if there is a logic to why they live in a specific place or belong to a specific group. We are looking for designs that are iconic characters and creatures that may be in the background but that catch our attention or We feel like they could play an important role in another story, we're looking for designs that are unique and unlikely to be confused or combined with another creature, and finally, we're looking for designs that aren't just inspired by other Star Wars movies.

A force awakening creature that I like is the Luga Beast. Its design effectively communicates what it is. A sort of cybernetic Beast of Burden, its weathered look fits well with jaku's scrapyard aesthetic and you're unlikely to mix it with a duac or a Tonton, and while it definitely feels inspired by other Star Wars creatures, it's basically what What you might expect a jawwa bantha to look like The Luab Beast's origin actually came from the stage adaptation of Warhorse that one of the films' puppeteers had worked on, leading the Star Wars team to try to create a creature. based on the same puppeteer technology once we get For Ma's Castle the standout design has to be the Crimson Corsair Codon and his cape and cowboy hat silhouette make him feel like a badass gunslinger and he looks right at home in the castle Ma's pirate Haven, even if it seems unlikely he'll go for a drink.

The design of him is definitely iconic and feels cool and mysterious without obviously trying to be something like the next Boba Fett. The next movie to be released after episode 7 was Rogue, which was left out of the original collage for some reason and while the movie definitely introduces a ton of new creatures, most of them are still clearly trying to fit into that yarn aesthetic. leather and without a showcase scene like Ma's Castle, most of the aliens we encounter are members of the rebellion and there is one design in particular that is the best of the bunch, the Tognath twins Benic and Edrio, are surprising members of the partisans by Saw Warrior.

The first time we see one is when imperial deserter Bodh Rook is being taken to Meatsa and the mysterious skull-faced benic makes both Bod and the audience wonder whether or not he's going to survive the encounter, these guys make sense as members of Saw's most radical rebel group and become basic members of his crew who reappear in places like Rebels and Andor and although they share some basic similarities with characters like Zuus or Plun, their skeletal aesthetic. It definitely sets them apart from those guys and those characters don't serve as direct inspiration, rather Tog nass' appearance was based on the gas masks used in the first two world

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, which makes sense since Rogue one shows the Galaxy through through the lens of a war movie after Rogue One is the Last Jedi and while it definitely has its fair share of generic Star Wars aliens, it also has some really cool new designs and the first ones we see are the pigs I already mentioned and they absolutely meet all the criteria we've laid out first, they're not based on anything from Star Wars, they exist to solve a real world problem. skeleton like Michael, the location where Luke's island retreat was filmed is a nesting site, so rather than digitally removing the creatures from the footage, the filmmakers decided to incorporate them into the film by creating the pores to act as the version of Star Wars animals.

This means that, by necessity, they are designed to belong to a specific environment and their design must be appropriately inflated. I like that the real ones don't clash too much with the puppets, this also makes his design quite unique among Star Wars creatures that generally tend more to be strange and monstrous and of course his iconic merchandise was everywhere when he came out movie and unlike Jar Jar's tongue lollipop people actually bought it, there's one more creature from The Last Jedi that deserves a mention. The vulpes on the box, its elegant crystalline design makes sense for a creature that lives on a mineral planet and also has quite a mystical quality to it.

That is to say, his narrative role in helping him escape his resistance also makes sense. Their design is iconic enough to appear in the film's trailer alongside the porgs and they definitely won't be confused with any other creatures in the Star Wars Universe below. it's just that it probably has the laziest alien design in the entire series with dry and Voss, but it also has some that are pretty cool. The first of the interesting designs is the alien gangster lady Proxima during the film's initial development, the Han underworld faction working on Corellia was going to be a group of albino vampiric aliens whose gang was named after Bram Stoker's novel The Lair of the White Worm when Phil Lord and Chris Miller briefly joined the film, they decided to go more literal with the name and turned the leader of the white worms into a huge snake and while turning her into a literal worm, Echo punches the cabin on the line, it seems that it was more of a coincidence than an intentional inspiration and is not likely to confuse them.

She definitely feels like she belongs in that sewer too, which is an interesting and literal take on Proxima's underworld concept. We get a look at another new female character, Dren Voss' assistant Margot, her design fits well withthe surroundings of Dren's ship. She is elegant. It's a prequel of sorts, but her cracked face suggests that the beauty aboard the First Light hides something corrupt, and like some of the flashier Jedi prequels, Margo's design was originally intended to have much more screen time. , as she was a potential design for Kira. When the filmmakers were considering turning her into an alien after the solo, Skywalker emerges and with him some cool new creatures, but while the movie definitely increased the diversity of aliens across the board, there's only one that really lives up to everything it claims.

I think we need for great Star Wars creature design and that, of course, is Claude and, strangely, what makes Claude work is that he doesn't. The character was created to be comically out of place as a member of the Millennium Falcon crew and the design pulls it off beautifully with no arms, stubby little feet and a flared base, there's nothing about this guy that makes sense as a creature that even he would survive long enough to reach space, and that design philosophy of going against the usual rules of Star Wars creature design makes him stand out from the rest.

To me, Claude is representative of the best possible future for Star Wars, one who does what he wants and doesn't take the franchise too seriously, but is still invested enough to know the rules he's breaking. It's a shame that be a homophobe