Full Series Early Star Wars (1974 - 1979) Influence in Rebels

OK - this is everything that's said about early art inspiration:

P122-123:

Inspiring Rebels
When designing the characters, worlds and vehicles of Rebels, the production team was determined to match it to the look of the existing Star Wars trilogy. To accomplish this, they often used existing concept material for inspiration.

Ralph McQuarrie
"What I think makes Rebels unique is the influence of [concept artist[ Ralph McQuarrie. His brush stroke, his colour pallet and sense of pencil lines are kind of what we wanted to have all over this thing. Zeb is like an original McQuarrie Chewbacca, but striped like a purple tiger!"
-Dave Filoni

Chopper
"There's an obvious reference to Artoo Detoo in his design. But Ralph's original art for Artoo had those articulating arms. So we were inspired and ran with that. He's like the anti-Artoo and a pain in the butt, sort of selfish and like a house cat."
-Simon Kinberg

Lothal origins
"Where Ezra lives, where we meet him, the prairie that he lives on, the town that it's adjacent to - all of that, literally down to what the alleys look like in the town - was inspired by Ralph's original art."
-Simon Kinberg
(example is of Sicemon concept art)

The AT-DP
"There's clearly some influence from concept artist Joe Johnston as well, in our walker. Ours is actually one that Joe had designed for the Episode V scout walker, an abandoned design."
-Dave Filoni

Other influences
"If you look through a lot of discarded work that had been done [for the original trilogy] or things that had just never quite hit the screen, there are always influences that we've really tried to keep."
-Dave Filoni
(example is of Joe Johnston Episode VI speeder bike concept art)

 

Check out Giorgio Moroder's version of Metropolis if you can -- it's like an remix edit of the original film, complete with campy 80s rock music on the soundtrack. Diehard cinephiles may disagree, but I think it's a fun way to transform an artistic silent film into a Saturday night movie.

Also, there is an anime re-imagining of Metropolis, based on the work of Osamu Tezuka, that is also worth experiencing -- very creative.

 

Iron_lord thanks a lot for posting all that!!! There's a lot of really interesting stuff there and this is great to have as a reference, you rule.

Faithful Wookiee that sounds interesting, I may look into that after I finally see all of the original.

 

A follow-up with one of my 1977 Stormtroopers and Stormtrooper toys from Rebels I got today:



Mouths definitely going down farther than on the helmets used in the films in both cases as best I can tell. It was really hard to get this to focus right, but a better references for the 1977 action figure is above in the quote.

More pics: http://imgur.com/a/squAx

 

Perfect timing here. I just happened to stumble across this picture which is the best example I've found online yet of the early Star Wars Marvel comics art showing that the stylization of the mouths on Stormtroopers' helmets in Rebels was likely copied from that and the 1977/1978 action figure rather than photographs of the film because of the differences shown and detailed above. Here it is:



... compared with:



Looking very similar and in the same ways as this:



... thus similarly different from this:

 

This isn't really "news" anymore but since I'm using this thread to keep track of this stuff I figured I'd throw it in.

http://variety.com/2014/tv/news/star-wars-rebels-premiere-oct-13-1201286033/

I have more stuff to post about in this thread but doing these kinds of posts takes a lot more time so I need to make the time to write them and find the necessary sources.

 

Vorax do you know where exactly that screen-grab comes from? I completely missed that!!!

Here's an official statement mirroring what I quoted above.

http://www.starwars.com/news/star-w...-premieres-friday-october-3-on-disney-channel

 

It is from the latest short with Sabine:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/08/19/new-star-wars-rebels-short-spotlights-sabine

 

Vorax thanks, that rules and I hadn't even seen that video!! That is the original Han Solo concept by Ralph McQuarrie that was used for Dark Horse's recent The Star Wars 1974 rough draft adaptation version of Kane Starkiller, who Kanan is a doppleganger of in every significant way possible as I've been documenting in this thread.

I got almost all the new Rebels toys I've found in Target so far, and in some pictures I took you can really see how they're emphasizing what I was talking about on the last page of this thread:

And, as I was saying, on the toy you can see they were very careful in accentuating that samurai hand-guard part of Kanan's lightsaber, just like Darth Vader's in this poster.





That's very distinctive compared to all of the lightsabers we've seen in the films or TCW, and I still think it looks just like Darth Vader's from that vintage poster.

More pics: http://blazeatoms.imgur.com/

 

yea I think they were trying to go for the McQ early saber designs which looked more like flashlights while also adding in TFU stuff as his kanan's hair style is modeled on Kota's and the Inquisitor's lightsaber is also taken from an unused TFU concept. TFU also made use of the unused concepts and even some Kenner.

http://www.originalprop.com/blog/20...inal-prototype-lightsabers-from-1976-meeting/

 

Wow, original Burger King Star Wars glasses. Complete with lead paint.

 

I wonder if Rebels will use some of the early concepts for potential plot and stories.

 

Vorax I have never seen that concept art and that article is an incredible resource with lots of very interesting information!!! Thanks so much for posting that, this just piles on the reasons to suspect that highly unique part of Kanan's lightsaber's design was influenced by or an homage to these earliest lightsaber designs.

Good eye!! More pics of my vintage collection: http://imgur.com/a/squAx#26 And these pictures are older so my vintage collection wasn't quite as big: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/collection-photos-thread-v-2.31748666/page-2#post-51038287

Prepare to have your mind explode: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...uence-in-rebels.50018390/page-3#post-51685821

 

Thanks be to the Whills that other people post about this stuff and I catch it. Been too long since I made the time to write a decent post here.

Hijacked from: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...ilers-allowed.50011239/page-521#post-51795970

Thanks for the pics and full explanations, all of you. Here's another shot of how this 1977/1978 toy will appear in Rebels:





http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10...fo-on-the-role-of-jedi-and-more-on-the-empire

 

Dark Lord Tarkas

That 70s star wars toy commercial was so cheesy...

 

More hijacked Imperial Transport details/research from Trebor Sabreon:

 

Thanks for the nod, but I should have sourced those Kenner catalog and Sears Wish Book quotes I used in my post:

Kenner http://www.12back.com/vehicles/transport.php3
Sears http://theswca.com/images-toys/figuretoys/impcruiser.html

More detailed info (with pictures) can be found at those links. If you're interested in this vehicle (or early SW/Kenner toys, in general), I recommend checking them out.

You never know, there may even be info contained on other blasts-from-the-past to be featured in future episodes of Rebels.

 

Trebor Sabreon you seriously rule.

 

That thing looked like a deathtrap. That toy looks only good as some sorta prisoner containment transport not a frontline combat vehicle.

The new toy vehicle looks what it is, cheap junk. An unfortunate abortion job of a vehicle that could have been quite cool if done right. Looks really poorly underscale, no heavy weapons or interior for the troops. Apparently the Stormtroopers just stand upright and await snipers to pick them off as if they're willful participates in a shooting gallery - or just hang around on the sides for extra armor for the pilot to prey that he has an extra second to hit the injection seat. Would've been nicer if the Rebels toyline had the same quality as the CW line where its also back compatible to the regular line. Homages are cool and all if they serve a practical value and function and had appropriate upgrades not downgrades. The Force Unleashed team did a good job updating and upgrading an unused Kenner designed vehicle, dont see why they couldnt do it either:

 

Vorax what is that CGI picture?

 

Yea, the Imperial Dropship Transport:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Dropship_Transport

 

Nah, but that's just it - by suggesting what you think the vehicle does look good for, you've actually described perfectly what it's intended use really was (ie. troop/prisoner transport, with a twin light-blaster canon as a means of defense, if and when necessary).

It was never intended to be utilized as a front line, offensive weapon. Simply a means of transport, with most Imperials housed inside, and prisoners immobilized and transported exposed in the racks.

For example, the original toy came complete with a little story booklet (scans of which, you can actually enjoy in that first link - the '12back' one - I provided above). The story showed the transporter used by the detachment of Stormtroopers sent down to the surface of Tatooine by Vader to locate the missing Death Star plans. They used the transport as a means of conveyance across the desert, not as a combat vehicle rolling into an active war zone.

And our newest glimpse of the vehicle in Rebels shows the vehicle being used by Imperials (Stormtroopers who have just finished razing a settlement to the ground) to load and transport prisoners in the traveling racks. Unless the series does something unexpected, I don't think we're going to be seeing the Empire using this transporter as an offensive machine. Anyone with the image of an offensive tank in their minds, I think, isn't quite in-step with the concept of the vehicle.

Oh, and incidentally, I suspect your mention of a "death trap" might not be far off-the-mark. I get the feeling this contraption is a target ripe for ambush, and that this is something we may see exploited by the crew of the Ghost. Maybe even while rescuing the very prisoners we see in the clip.

My only question is "why did someone (whether it was a Kenner product photographer, a comic book artist, or what have you) first decide to place Imperials in the prisoner racks"?

I mentioned earlier that my only guess is either to accommodate troop overflow, or as a means of publicly flexing their Imperial muscle. Otherwise, I don't get it, either.


Other than that, though, I don't see much of an issue with the vehicle, really. You transport your troops within, expose your prisoners publicly as an example to others, without. What's wrong with that?