Ralph McQuarrie's Concepts Live Forever
Fans of Star Wars or conceptual artwork should immediately recognize the name Ralph McQuarrie. This man was responsible for all of the original and beloved Star Wars concept. In 1975, McQuarrie was asked by the creator of Star Wars, George Lucas, to illustrate several scenes from his film script. Unfortunately, McQuarrie passed away in 2012, but his legacy still lives on and his work continues to play an influential role in the Star Wars universe.
In the current animated series, Star Wars: Rebels, tons of original works from McQuarrie are directly being used. Here are just a few examples of how McQuarrie's legacy is living strong.
Chewbacca/Zeb
Garazeb Orrelios, the rough and tough Lasat known as "Zeb" from Star Wars: Rebels, is a perfect example of how an original character concept from Ralph McQuarrie is being used now. As seen in this side-by-side image, Zeb's design was contrived from unused concept art of Chewbacca. It's not a direct rendition as Zeb's lower half is different from the Chewbacca sketch, but his facial features are almost identical to McQuarrie's concept.
Chopper
C1-10P aka "Chopper" is also taken from a McQuarrie character sketch. The image below shows how R2-D2 was originally drawn. R2-D2 turned out to look a lot like McQuarrie's concept, but with less arms sticking out from his dome and his legs are different. Chopper inherited these arms from the dome and almost the exact legs from the sketch. Chopper is also a little shorter than the finalized version of R2-D2, which was most likely taken from this concept as well.
In the current animated series, Star Wars: Rebels, tons of original works from McQuarrie are directly being used. Here are just a few examples of how McQuarrie's legacy is living strong.
Chewbacca/Zeb
Garazeb Orrelios, the rough and tough Lasat known as "Zeb" from Star Wars: Rebels, is a perfect example of how an original character concept from Ralph McQuarrie is being used now. As seen in this side-by-side image, Zeb's design was contrived from unused concept art of Chewbacca. It's not a direct rendition as Zeb's lower half is different from the Chewbacca sketch, but his facial features are almost identical to McQuarrie's concept.Chopper
C1-10P aka "Chopper" is also taken from a McQuarrie character sketch. The image below shows how R2-D2 was originally drawn. R2-D2 turned out to look a lot like McQuarrie's concept, but with less arms sticking out from his dome and his legs are different. Chopper inherited these arms from the dome and almost the exact legs from the sketch. Chopper is also a little shorter than the finalized version of R2-D2, which was most likely taken from this concept as well.
.jpg)