About Colin Cantwell, first Star Wars ship designer

Born on April 3, 1932, in San Francisco, Colin James Cantwell and his brother Gill, born in 1934, were raised in an artistic family. His father, James L. Cantwell, was a commercial artist who designed exhibits and buildings for the 1939 World’s Fair. His mother, Fanny Cantwell, was also a skilled artist who joined the ranks of women building aircraft and vehicles during World War II, as exemplified by “Rosie the Riveter.”

As a child, Colin was a voracious reader who became interested in space when he finished all the books in the first grade library and his teacher made books from the upper grades available to him. He later attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as an art and engineering major and convinced the school to add animation classes to their curriculum; he became UCLA’s first animation graduate.

Colin originally planned to become an architect and was personally admitted into Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin architecture school by Wright himself. (“There’s no waiting list for you,” Wright told him.) However, Wright’s death ended Colin’s interest in that career, since the famous architect was the only mentor he was interested in.

To space and beyond

After college, Colin found his way to a job at NASA and its JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory). He later worked with Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey, recommending the famous theme music as well as the movie’s opening shot.

He even sat behind Walter Cronkite during the incredible moon landing on July 20, 1969, conveying the astronauts’ progress to the news anchor as one of the most memorable moments in human history unfolded.

Through a mutual friend, Colin met George Lucas in 1974 and was hired as the first spaceship designer on Star Wars. He created the first versions of the TIE Fighter, X-Wing fighter, Star Destroyer, and other now-iconic ships.

Colin later worked on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the TV series Buck Rogers, the movie WarGames (earning a British Academy Film Award nomination for Best Special Visual Effects), and other projects. He also helped Hewlett-Packard take the company’s software from 8 colors to 5,000, ushering in the modern era of computer graphics.