Ballistic Publishing is pleased to announce
the
awarding of the EXPOSÉ 7 Grand Master
to
renowned Star Wars concept artist,
Ralph McQuarrie.
CGSociety :: Special Feature
29 May 2009, by Lorne Lanning & Daniel Wade
Ralph McQuarrie's name was forever linked with George Lucas and 'Star Wars' when the movies launched the science-fiction genre into the stratosphere in the late 1970s.
The concept artwork that McQuarrie created was instrumental in convincing movie studio executives to fund 'Star Wars', and inspired generations of artists who followed in his footsteps in not just the 'Star Wars' sequels, but the entire entertainment industry as it made its first steps into a larger world.
Lorne Lanning, co-founder of Oddworld Inhabitants sat down with Ralph McQuarrie to talk about his work, and to thank a most worthy Grand Master Award winner for his contributions to our world.
"Everything shapes the imaginary world - it's a wonderful thing. You'll be able to open your eyes and see a whole detailed picture in front of you - registering in the grey stuff of our minds. It's sort of soupy and I believe all influences help define a design's finesse."
Ralph McQuarrie started his life in Depression-era Billings, Montana where his mother and grandfather were active painters.
Ralph began art classes at the age of ten displaying an early talent which even branched into art critiques: "My mother painted pictures—oil paintings," explains McQuarrie. "She would put figures in, put a tree over here, and then she'd put another tree to balance.
I would tell her that maybe it shouldn't go there, but here. You know, she didn't like to hear from me on such things. She didn't need any comment."
On graduation, McQuarrie began technical art classes and in 1950 he secured a position at the Boeing Company in Seattle where he was the youngest of a group of 50 artists.
On graduation, McQuarrie began technical art classes and in 1950 he secured a position at the Boeing Company in Seattle where he was the youngest of a group of 50 artists.
Around that time, he was drafted into the military to serve in Korea on the front line of the conflict.
During the final stage of the war, he received a head wound that could have taken his life if not for the lining of his helmet stopping the bullet just short of its target. On his return to the United States, McQuarrie rejoined Boeing where he continued his illustration work.
He later moved to California and joined a company called Reel Three. During this time Ralph was producing illustrations for NASA which were used on CBS News's live coverage of the Apollo program to help explain what was happening hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth.
The highly detailed paintings McQuarrie was producing were a prelude to the film work he would later do, but his time at Boeing had an effect on his approach: "I loved the precision of the product that they had. Of being able to walk through their workshops and see the big milling machine-it was half of a 747, practically! The mechanical things I got to see, and the scale of such things and the amount of work that went into building them. That was inspiring."
McQuarrie studied at the Art Center College of Design in California where he met a fellow traveler in Syd Mead. Though in a competitive field, he didn't see himself competing with other artists: "I looked at Syd Mead's stuff and how do you help but feel a bit intimidated? I liked his stuff from the very start. It always made me want to do better work, but it was inspiration, not competition. I think there's a difference."
In 1972 Ralph was approached by Hal Barwood to produce visualizations for a science-fiction movie project he was undertaking with his friend Matthew Robbins called 'Galaxy'. It just so happened that Hal and Matthew had another friend who was interested in getting his science-fiction movie off the ground, so when George Lucas saw the drawings he met with McQuarrie and explained his vision for a space-fantasy film.
Lucas then went on to make 'American Graffiti', and two years later he was back to talk to Ralph about his space epic. At that point, United Artists and Universal Studios (who funded America Graffiti) had passed on 'Star Wars', but there was modest interest from 20th Century-Fox. The board were not grasping Lucas's vision for the movie, so McQuarrie was enlisted to produce a series of five concept paintings which would help get the movie greenlit.
McQuarrie explains: "George figured it out right away. He said, I'll give you this script, read it, and when you come to something you like, make a little pencil drawing and we'll look at it later. I thought, well, that's really a guy that I would like to work with. Some people want to tell you what color to make it, and, what they want to see. -
They go off to have dinner and you're stuck at the drawing table with all these things that need to be done. But I look at it and I think the first thing that comes to my mind is going to be an incredible thing.
He had a concept for a big spectacular visual, and it didn't come across in the script.
So I tried to give it scale, juxtaposing the tiny little figures with the great spectacular backgrounds. George would say 'Don't worry about how we're going to do it. We just want to see an impression of what the scenes look like on screen'."
The five pantings that McQuarrie produced did the trick with 20th Century-Fox. On the strength of the pitch they were given funding to start pre-production on the film and with another round of McQuarrie paintings and illustrations, the film was greenlit and 'Star Wars' was underway.
McQuarrie recalls his early experience in the production: "I'd sit with a pencil and dream about whatever I could imagine, sort of grotesque imagery. George would come by every week and a half or two weeks, look at what I'd done, and talk to me about what he'd like to see. I was reading the script to start with, but the script sort of got waylaid-the story was changing in his own mind-so George would just come and talk to me about what he wanted to see."
Among the first sketches that McQuarrie produced were the designs for R2-D2, Darth Vader and C-3PO.
With sketches and ideas bouncing between he and Lucas the main characters began to take shape. R2-D2 received his three-leg configuration on Lucas's suggestion, and C-3PO started life as a cousin of a famous female robot: "George brought a photograph of the female robot from "Metropolis" and said he'd like Threepio to look like that, except to make him a boy."
Production designer John Barry and sculptor Liz Moore took McQuarrie's concepts and made changes to C-3PO: "John, George and I had a meeting where John looked at my early sketches. In a few minutes, he'd drawn on a little pad the look of Threepio's head with the big round eyes. It did have a sort of humorous aspect, and I thought that was very successful."
