Friday, January 26, 2007

McQuarrie Duel 3-D vinyl model




I always loved the early Ralph McQuarrie paintings for Star Wars and especially this painting of Luke vs Vader, just loved the Vader helmet with the thinner skull like appearance, anyway there's a 3D sculpture getting released based on the concept and here's the blurb from Star Wars. com

One of the most evocative of Ralph McQuarrie's early concept illustrations for Star Wars will soon be available as a 3-D vinyl model courtesy of the masterful artisans at Kotobukiya. The figure designs inspired by McQuarrie's 1975 depiction of a duel between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker (or rather, "Deak Starkiller") include a more lupine face mask for Vader and a "breath mask" for Luke. According to McQuarrie, early versions of the script implied that the Rebel starship's hull was breached by the Imperials to board it, releasing the pressurized atmosphere into space. As a result, both Luke and Vader were required to wear breath masks for a duel sequence that was later revised (or rather delayed until Empire). While Luke no longer required the mask after script rewrites, Vader kept his since the look so perfectly captured his sinister mystique. McQuarrie has always held a special fondness for this early version of Vader, which Kotobukiya has now masterfully translated into sculpted form. As one might imagine, the translation from 2-D to 3-D had its challenges. "There were many difficulties in this project, especially in making Luke," says Kotobukiya's Tomomi Iwasaki. "His figure is partially obscured in the original illustration, and we had to extrapolate much of his pose from the body language. For costume details, we gathered other reference material relating to this scene, and picked some costume styles which are commonly seen in some of the other Ralph McQuarrie concept art. Of course, we tried to include every single detail as seen in McQuarrie's original illustration as much as possible. However, it was necessary to make this sculpt with our special 'Kotobukiya interpretation' of the duel, as well as with additional guidance from Lucas Licensing. Compared to Luke, Darth Vader was much simpler for our sculptor and painters to create, as the majority of his body and costume details can easily be seen in the illustration."

5 comments:

Ken Chandler said...

McQuarrie is the man! And I love this sculpture-- oh, if only I had the money to buy this and all of McQuarrie's original paintings. Absolutely fabulous!
Thanks for letting me know about this Andrew. It's gorgeous. Though it would look even better on my shelf.

I. N. J. Culbard said...

My uncle bought me colour print packs of all three movies back in the late eighties. Lovely big prints too. Those print packs survive in reasonable condition to this day. Later this year I'm hoping to move into a new office which is when I'll be framing those prints and sticking them all over the walls. They're great paintings.

Michael Grant Clark said...

Always liked that painting, still have the print pack from the 80's.

Very nice translation into 3 dimensions, Vader looks a lot eviler.

Jim said...

I'm trying to decide whether or not to shellout the money for this... the other Kotobukiya figures run about $70-100 each, so I imagine these will be no different. I have a Vader, Boba Fett, Jango Fett and Clone Trooper.... and they are all really cool - totally worth the money. Hmmm, I guess I just decided!! hahaha

John Hood said...

Now, if only Hasbro released this as part of their excellent McQuarrie Series!