A long time ago…

May 25, 1977 is a date burned into the brains of many Star Wars fans, since it was the day the movie premiered in theaters in the United States.

However, other dates are also important in Star Wars lore. For example, sometime during 1974, a mutual friend, Hal Barwood, introduced Colin Cantwell to George Lucas.

At the time, Colin was interested in what was known as “kit bashing,” which involved buying a bunch of model planes, ships, and so forth and scavenging their parts to create spaceships and other vehicles. (Kit bashing was the method used by the Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) team to build many of the final spaceship models for Star Wars.)

The Star Wars

George was impressed by Colin’s own kit-bashed models, as well as his model work on Journey to the Outer Planets, a movie shown at the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater Planetarium in San Diego. (The theater it was shown in was dubbed Omnimax, which later became IMAX; more about that in a future blog post.)

That chance meeting in 1974 led George, fresh off the prior year’s box office success of American Graffiti, to explain to Colin the next movie in his mental pipeline, one known at the time as The Star Wars.

In J.W. Rinzler’s book, The Making of Star Wars, Colin recalls: “He wanted the movie to be as immersive and new as 2001, but George wanted to make this action saga with a comic-book nobility.”

Nascent days

Working with George Lucas, Colin spent much of 1975 creating concept art and concept models for Star Wars. Recalling that time period during a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), he says: “The biggest hurdle was the initial design concept. They had to be relatable but ultra-cool, alien but believable, they had to be something no one had ever seen before but would instantly be recognized as awesome.”

We’ll dive deep into Colin’s prolific output in future blog posts, but here’s a quick overview of some of the key paintings and models he worked on. You can buy the prints shown, as well as many others, in our shop.