BTS SW Costumes: Concepts and Designs (Note: Image heavy, may contain Ep VII spoilers)

You indeed are awesome. Thank you.

I liked this a lot: http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b241/ATMachine/Ewok Concepts/ewok_jj4_winter8081.png

I am aware with how Kenny B. fell ill on the day of filming and that a new character was eventually created for him, but there is more...I am still trying to pin point is when the roles were rewritten, as ever since I came across the Revenge of the Jedi drafts and Joe Johnston's picture book; I have been wondering how was my favourite character reduced to eccentric-looking comic-relief. The idea of having a character visibly bigger than the others and, according to most people, "scarry looking", who's barely visible in the actual battle just...confuses me. I guess Kenny and Jack P. were meant to have most screentime at first and portray two polar opposites (which eventually was the case in the cartoon series, with the role of Jim Henshaw/Denny Delk opposing the one of Eric Peterson/Jim Cranna), but that there were a lot of changes? Hmmm?

 

According to The Making of ROTJ, the official notice of Kenny Baker bowing out of the Wicket role came on Friday, April 30, 1981. Warwick Davis was initially scheduled to stand in for him in only one scene--one which happened to be shared with Carrie Fisher. But once such a major scene was finalized, Davis had to play the new Wicket for most of Baker's remaining scenes.

If you want more interesting info like that, I'd advise you to buy the book. I don't want to take well-earned money out of George Lucas's pocket, after all.

 

(Was not talking about Wicket or Paploo...)

 

PS: here's the version of that sketch of Teebo and his speeder bike from the 1983 ROTJ Sketchbook:

 

I need to get both of those books, because there is Teebo for the sake of great art.

 

Perhaps you can clarify whom you meant. I presume you were referring to "your favorite character"?

EDIT: I'm guessing perhaps Teebo, but I might be wrong.

 

Yes and yes (and sorry, I am trying to do too many things at once, no wonder I end sounding so...laconic).

 

No problem.

"Laconic." Heh.

"This is blasphemy! This is madness!"

"THIS IS SPARTA!"

 

great stuff as always. ATMachine

 

Here's something interesting:



Consider it an exercise in perception.

Here are two storyboards of Princess Leia from the SW 1975 third draft, drawn by Alex Tavoularis.

Look closely at Leia's shadow in the bottom storyboard.

In particular, look for a shadow within the shadow.

Do you see it?

If so... good.

Now imagine why such a thing should exist, where by ordinary measures it would have no right to be.

And remember that artists can change the underlying pencil outline of a picture when they add color... or shading.

When you've finished, submit your answers below. There is no time limit, but promptness would be considerate.

PS: This is an open-book exam, so feel free to look at the previous posts in this thread.

 

Rebelscum.com: Flashback: Star Wars The Magic Of Myth

 

I remember seeing this exhibit as a boy, years ago, when it was at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. In fact, my family traveled to DC specifically because I badgered my parents to take me to see the exhibit before it closed.

My strongest memory from the exhibit is the introductory film shown in the atrium, which featured a clip of the opening scroll from Chapter Two of the 1940 serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. Seeing something so very Star Wars which dated from nearly 40 years before the first film came out blew my adolescent mind.

I guess you could say it was one of the things that set me on my current career track in architectural history.

 

Remember the subtext I pointed out earlier in this 1975 Ralph McQuarrie illustration of Princess Leia?



I think I've figured out what scene that breast-chain was meant for.

At a certain point in the 1974 rough draft, Annikin Starkiller rips a royal necklace from Leia Aquilae's neck, in order to disguise her as a simple peasant girl:

--The Star Wars, rough draft, 1974

At this point, the story's protagonist, Annikin Starkiller, had a brash, hot-headed personality more reminiscent of Han Solo in the final film. The mild-mannered farmboy Luke Skywalker, on the other hand, would hardly dare to just rip a priceless royal crest from around Princess Leia's neck.

Further evidence of Annikin's likeness with Han Solo can be seen in a May 1975 outline for the subsequent third draft, quoted in The Making of Star Wars. Here, when the heroes are trying to rescue Leia from her prison cell, she suspects an Imperial trick, and refuses to come with them. So, and I quote, "Han punches her in the face," knocking Leia unconscious so she won't make any trouble as he and Luke rescue her.

The incident in question clearly derives from the scene in the 1974 rough draft quoted above. There, though, it's Annikin Starkiller, the principal protagonist and Jedi-in-training, who knocks Leia Aquilae out in order to rescue her in spite of herself.

Meanwhile, the motif of a prisoner of the Empire being divested of an important familial necklace resurfaces in the 1975 second draft, where the necklace's owner is Deak Starkiller, older brother of Luke:

--The Star Wars, second draft, January 28, 1975

No equivalent scene is evident in the third draft, where Princess Leia replaces Deak Starkiller as the Rebel leader captured by Darth Vader in the opening of the film.

It's worth noting, however, that the third-draft script also contains no references to Leia's clothing being in any way disheveled as a result of her capture and torture. But as Ralph McQuarrie's sketches and storyboards make clear, GL in 1975 considered having Leia run around stripped to a loincloth, as a result of being tortured in a much more gruesome fashion than in the finished film.

Once GL had completed the third draft in August 1975, Lucas and McQuarrie together brainstormed the chasm-swing scene with Luke and Leia, which at that point took place on the prison planet of Alderaan (later merged with the Death Star).

While McQuarrie's finished production painting depicting this iconic scene shows Leia in her well-known white dress, his pencil sketches for the same scene instead depict a golden-haired Leia clad in just a loincloth.





An additional McQuarrie sketch for this scene shows Leia with dark hair, and with one breast covered by the tattered remnants of her white gown:



This illustration's particular take on Leia's appearance is confirmed by another McQuarrie illustration of her as a brunette, where she's being menaced by the Imperial torture robot, and has one breast exposed:



So much for the concept art. But how do GL's scripts handle the chasm scene?

GL's January 1976 fourth draft--the first to contain a fully-scripted version of the chasm-swing scene--describes it like this:

This description is repeated in the revised fourth draft/shooting script from March 1976.

However, the "public" version of the fourth draft, first published in 1979 in The Art of Star Wars, describes the scene rather differently:

Suddenly the script goes into considerably more detail about precisely how Leia stops Luke from falling into the chasm below.

Why, I wonder?

Time for a literature lesson:

--"The Servants of Bit-Yakin," by Robert E. Howard (first published under the title "Jewels of Gwahlur")

I've long known that GL was quite familiar with Robert E. Howard's stories about Conan the Cimmerian. In the climax of "The Servants of Bit-Yakin," Conan is faced with a dilemma: a beautiful woman and a chest of incomparable priceless jewels are about to plunge off the edge of a cliff at the same time... and Conan only has time enough to rescue one of them. He saves the girl, of course, and the jewels crash into the river far below.

It seems plausible that something similar was going to happen in the chasm-swing scene as Lucas and McQuarrie originally envisoned it back in 1975.

Perhaps something like this:

Pursued by Imperial stormtroopers, Luke rushes down the corridor toward the gigantic chasm, but stops short just in time, at the edge of the retracted bridge. From behind comes the half-naked Leia Organa, also running to evade the stormtroopers at their backs. She runs so fast, in fact, that she can't stop herself in time, and bumps into Luke when he halts--knocking him over the edge into the yawning abyss.

As Luke falls, he clutches at anything he can grasp... and the first thing he grabs hold of is Leia's ornamental breast chain.

No doubt this was going to be a royal jewelry piece of some sort, like Leia Aquilae's necklace in the 1974 rough draft. For symbolic reasons, it likely would have featured seven shining jewels, of a type found only on Leia's home planet, hanging from a metallic chain--which would have been affixed to Leia's body via piercings.

The flimsy chain wouldn't be enough to stop Luke from falling, though, and he'd continue plummeting... ripping the chain right out from Leia's nipples in the process. (OUCH!)

Nonetheless, this would buy Leia enough time to grab hold of Luke's arm, and pull him to safety. The chain with its seven priceless jewels from Leia's lost homeworld, on the other hand, would fall into the depths of the gulf below... and the rest of the scene would then continue more or less as scripted.

This likely explains why in one of the McQuarrie illustrations above--the one where Luke is standing next to her--Leia is pressing her right arm against her breasts, and has shifted her blaster to her left hand.

Additionally, as I said above, Ralph McQuarrie sketched the scene in question two different ways. In one version Leia was topless and had blonde hair, but in the other she had only one breast exposed, and her hair was dark.

Presumably, in the alternative version where Leia was a brunette, the scrap of her tattered dress which remained to cover one breast would substitute for the nipple-chain ripped off by Luke as he fell. Like the chain, the torn fabric would plunge down into the depths of the Death Star/the prison city of Alderaan, leaving Leia naked to the waist.

The question is, why were these two variants of the same scenario--one where Leia is merely further disrobed, and another where she suffers a fairly serious injury--also linked to the Princess's hair color?

Symbolism, probably.

In the case where Leia's breasts (symbols of nurturing and new life) were injured, she was going to be blonde... as was Luke.

Princess Leia's name was originally derived from a passage in the libretto of Richard Wagner's opera Götterdämmerung.

In the SW third-draft script of 1975, Annikin Starkiller is said to have died at the Battle of Condawn... whose name derives from the Battle of Camlann, where, according to medieval legend, King Arthur and his nephew Mordred slew each other.

Figure it out.

 

I've only just realized that I posted this material earlier in the Saga In-Depth Discussion thread by mistake, so here it here now in its proper place.

English Lit class is back in session:

--Seamus Heaney, "Punishment," in North (poetry collection, 1975)

Heaney's poem quoted above refers to early scholarly theories about the Windeby Girl, a mummified bog body from northern Germany. The body was believed in the 1970s to be a 13-year-old blonde girl, blindfolded, with the left side of her head shaved, who had presumably been executed for adultery. (We know now that the body is actually that of a sixteen-year-old boy, whose head was in fact not shaven.)

Heaney's line about the wind that "blows her nipples / to amber beads" may have been the inspiration for Princess Leia's breast jewelry depicted in Ralph McQuarrie's 1975 concept art for the first SW film.

In fact, looking closely at McQuarrie's thumbnail sketches of the chasm-swing scene, when Leia is shown with golden hair, one side of her head actually appears to be shaven, like in Heaney's description of the Windeby girl:





In the first image, the left side of Leia's head has seemingly been shaved. In the second picture, however, it appears the right side of her head was shaved instead.

Further inspiration for the imagery of Princess Leia with a half-shaven head probably came from H. Rider Haggard's 1885 adventure novel King Solomon's Mines:

The normally impeccably dressed Captain John Good of the English Royal Navy here becomes a figure of fun during an African expedition led by Allan Quatermain (the book's narrator).

While Good is shaving his face, standing in a stream (and thus not wearing his trousers), a tribe of warriors from a remote African village takes the exploring party by surprise. The various features of Good's appearance--his face shaven on one side but not the other; his bare white legs; his monocle and false teeth--all become objects of great wonder to the Africans, who have never seen white men before. As Allan Quatermain explains to him, if Good were to don his trousers again, or shave his face entirely, the previously hostile tribesmen would likely lose their fascination with the European outsiders, and kill the whole party on the spot.

Haggard's description of Captain Good in King Solomon's Mines likely influenced the appearance of Princess Leia after being tortured--naked to the waist, with one side of her head shaved, an eye swollen shut and at least one tooth knocked out--implicit in GL's third-draft script of 1975, and in Ralph McQuarrie's associated storyboards.

Notably, at the end of Haggard's novel, Quatermain, Good, and their travelling companion Sir Henry Curtis are forced to abandon the vast majority of the diamonds in the titular mines of King Solomon, in order to escape with their lives from inside a sealed treasure chamber. (Shades of Indiana Jones.) However, Quatermain does have the presence of mind to stow a few diamonds in his jacket pockets before they leave--which are still enough to make the trio very wealthy once they return to England.

This plot point, combined with the ending of Robert E. Howard's Conan story "The Servants of Bit-Yakin," was likely the impetus behind the scenario I reconstructed above: Luke nearly falls into the chasm on the Death Star/prison planet Alderaan, and in saving him, Leia loses a priceless jeweled chain of gems from her now-vaporized home planet.



In fact, the influence of Haggard's novel is likely why another Ralph McQuarrie illustration from 1975 shows Leia wearing two necklaces: one with a single jewel around her neck, and the other, with many (seven?) gems, hanging from her breasts beneath her white gown. Presumably, then, Leia would have lost her bejeweled breast-chain (again, ouch!) but still retained the single gem from her necklace.


Curiously, as with the presence/absence of her jeweled breast-chain, McQuarrie appears to have only drawn Leia with a half-shaven head when he depicted her as a blonde.

"Master of doom, by doom mastered!"

Quiet, you.

 

I was re-reading the book Star Wars Costumes: The Original Trilogy, and I noticed in the ROTJ storyboards some confirmation of my earlier hypotheses about the design of Leia's slave outfit.





Storyboards of Leia strangling Jabba with her chain, by the late George Jenson.

In these storyboards, Leia is wearing a gauzy cloth cape around her neck. Earlier I guessed that such a cape was featured in early designs for her slave costume.





Storyboards by George Jenson of Luke and Leia escaping from Jabba's barge in the climax of the sail barge battle.

The first panel in this sequence is very clearly a riff on a couple of iconic panels from the first year (1934) of Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon comic strip:





Note that Flash's girlfriend Dale Arden is wearing just such a cape as Jenson drew Leia wearing above.



Here's another storyboard, this one by Joe Johnston.

In this image Leia watches from Jabba's sail barge as Luke, Han, and Chewbacca are taken to be executed in the Sarlacc's maw.

One thing not visible in this image, however, is the rear fastening-strap of a metal bikini--about which more presently.













Storyboards by artist Roy Carnon (also now sadly deceased) of Luke's arrival at Jabba's palace, where he finds Leia dancing before the Hutt crime lord.

Leia being seen dancing in her own right was something else initially planned for this sequence (and rightly suspected as such in an earlier post of mine).

Carnon appears to have depicted Leia wearing a gauzy silk loincloth, and a pair of metallic breastplates, such as often appear in the paintings of Frank Frazetta.



Here, for instance, is an iconic painting by Frazetta of Dejah Thoris, the Martian princess of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars novels.









As can be seen in these other storyboards, Carnon also depicted Oola--referred to as the "bird lady" in his storyboard labels--with a very similar outfit.

Note that Roy Carnon's version of Oola has dark skin, reflecting the appearance of the character's actress, Nigerian-English singer and dancer Femi Taylor. This was apparently before George Lucas decreed that Oola ought to have green skin, like an Orion slave girl from Star Trek.

However, as seen in this storyboard of Oola and several others (one, two, three, and four) of Leia, Carnon sometimes depicted both Oola and the enslaved Princess Leia with bare breasts. Naturally, these particular storyboards are slightly NSFW.

Also, here's a closer look at Carnon's first storyboard drawing (also a bit NSFW) of Slave Leia: a long shot of the Princess dancing in front of Jabba. This part of the scene would have been framed in-camera by Luke's shoulder in the foreground.

 

I'm reviving this thread because a chance sighting on Pinterest led me to discover an additional historical source used by the ROTJ costumers.

The digital version of The Making of ROTJ includes a previously unseen sketch by Nilo Rodis-Jamero for Princess Leia's slave costume, bearing a date of October 1981:



The sketch itself is work-safe, but here Rodis-Jamero shows Leia in what is apparently a transparent fabric top. This makes it yet another design which is rather less family-friendly than Leia's now-infamous metal bikini in the finished film.

In fact, Leia's see-through top in this drawing was likely inspired by old portraits of women of the royal harem of the Qajar dynasty, which ruled 19th-century Persia (modern Iran). These three portraits of Persian royal concubines are particularly good examples of the type of women's clothing in question. (I should caution that these paintings are NSFW, at least as far as 19th-century semi-stylized portraits of Iranian women go.)

In all three portraits I've linked to above, the women of the Qajar royal harem are depicted wearing loose open jackets over a transparent veil-like shirt--which is really more like the false shirtfront or "dickie" worn with old-fashioned white tie and tailcoats. This serves to provide a fig-leaf of modesty while still allowing onlookers a good view of the concubines'... tracts of land.

I should also note that two of the Persian women in those portraits are wearing striking red jackets, corresponding to the scarlet color of Leia's loincloth in the Rodis-Jamero sketch above. The use of these particular paintings as reference material likely explains as well why Rodis-Jamero drew Leia in this instance with jet-black hair, as opposed to Carrie Fisher's actual brown hair.

Related tangent: in a small example of how times change, The Making of Star Wars notes that, before settling on Tunisia, GL considered going to pre-Revolutionary Iran to do location filming of the Utapau/Tatooine desert landscape. (The name Tatooine, which first appears in the January 1976 fourth draft script, reflects Lucas' decision to film near the city of Tataouine in Tunisia. Earlier, in the second and third drafts, Luke's home planet had been known as Utapau.)

 

Currently investigating a rather... surprising source for some of the costume and creature designs in the original 1977 SW. (Though, in light of what I've already posted here, perhaps less so to some readers than for others.)

More details soon.

 

All right, largely out of necessity, this is going to be more or less an all-text post.

The reason?

It turns out that quite a few of the designs for Princess Leia's outfit in the original SW were actually based on what was then the first Flash Gordon film (of sorts) to come out in over 30 years: namely, the 1974 softcore porn parody Flesh Gordon.

Yes, seriously. And it doesn't stop there.

The film opens, just as in Alex Raymond's original comic, with Flash Flesh Gordon and Dale Arden Ardor meeting on a small passenger plane in the middle of a fierce storm -- which turns out to be caused by a "sex ray" engineered by the evil Emperor Wang of the planet Porno. An orgy breaks out among the passengers and pilots, so Flesh and Dale have to bail out before the plane crashes.

Dale Ardor is introduced wearing a blouse and skirt of white fabric, but almost immediately she loses her shoes and her top during the orgy scene. Flesh gives her his coat to wear, but Dale is still running about essentially bare-breasted for the next 10 minutes or so. (Remember what I said about Ralph McQuarrie's storyboards for the Death Star scenes in ANH? Seems Leia was going to be wearing -- or rather, not wearing -- a cosplay of Eugene Delacroix's Lady Liberty.)

The two leads stumble upon Dr. Hans Zarkov Flexi Jerkoff, who worries that Flesh and Dale are there to steal the plans to his super-secret rocket ship, which Jerkoff says was "twenty years in the making." (Rather like the Death Star, one might say.) Said rocket ship has a pronounced curve to its hull -- giving it the appearance either of an erect phallus or a colossal version of Count Dooku's saber hilt.

During the journey to Porno, Zarkov's ship (ed. note: I'm just going to use the original character names from now on) passes through the sex ray. In the resulting fracas Dale loses her remaining skirt. Zarkov gives her a sheer nightgown (but no shoes) to wear afterward; he'd had it conveniently stowed in a compartment on board the rocket. The inspiration for a certain scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark is rather obvious.

I should note here that Dale Ardor is always dressed (when she's dressed, that is) in white. Make of that what you will. She's also blonde, and so is Flash -- like in the original 1936 Flash Gordon serial, or Ralph McQuarrie's drawings of Luke and Leia circa 1975.

Once on the surface of Porno Mongo, the trio are attacked by the Peni-saurus*, a tentacled monster that lives within the rocky floor beneath their feet. In fact, its tentacle stalks each terminate in a single eye -- making the creature rather a family relation of the Dianoga on the Death Star.

*hyphen added to protect the innocent

(Side note: Until the revised fourth draft, the "Dia Nogu" was actually an insubstantial energy being in the vein of the Id Monster from Forbidden Planet, and it appeared in a separate scene from the garbage compactor. Presumably Lucas changed this around the same time he made the film more family-friendly overall... as a tip of the hat of sorts to what he'd originally planned.)

Eventually, Emperor Ming decides he just has to have Dale the Earthling for his bride. For the resulting wedding ceremony, Dale wears a long white skirt and a wraparound cloth bikini that leaves little to the imagination (which, naturally, she loses repeatedly during the remainder of the film). Meanwhile, Flash's clothing has been damaged in a spaceship crash, so Zarkov obtains for him an electric blue leotard with a lightning symbol on the chest.

These latter outfits are actually quite faithful "re-imaginings" of the costumes worn by Buster Crabbe and Jean Rogers in the 1930s Flash Gordon serials. What's more, they seem to have provided the inspiration for the two costume designs for Leia in ANH seen below:





In the first drawing, by John Mollo, the top-right sketches show a midriff-baring bikini much like "Dale Ardor's" wedding outfit -- with the addition of billowy sleeves and a Ming the Merciless collar. In the second image, by McQuarrie, Leia sports a leotard of the style favored by "Flesh Gordon." Mollo would later reuse this design, in the same electric blue color seen in Flesh Gordon, for the Tonnika Sisters' wardrobe in the Mos Eisley cantina.

 

Nothing on Trisha Biggar's costumes?

 

I don't know much about them, I'm afraid. And the PT costumes were, I confess, never of as much interest to me as those of the OT. Feel free to post about them if you like, though!

 

I am Very New to the Star Wars Forums. I just finished my Sons Halloween Costume of Deadpool and I wanted to make a costume for myself. Last Year, while Trick O Treating in our new neighborhood, I saw all kinds of adults dressed in their costumes as well. I have always been a Star Wars Geek. So I started a project of building a Darth Revan Costume. I have taken some Artistic freedoms with my build. I started building the mask. As I researched the mask more and more, I saw the resemblance of the Mandalorian helmets. So I started building a helmet with the pepakura program. After several attempts at Boba Fett style helmet, I just made a foam mold of my head using tin foil and duct tape. Now I had a basic helmet the shape of my head and started to add the front face of Boba Fett while keeping reference online photographs of Revan's helmet/mask. I wanted to be the Sith Revan and decided to put a Darth Vader style flare of the back of the helmet. Also similar to a Samurai helmet. I am in the process of painting the helmet after coating several times with a resin to fill in the seams and build up some areas which needed extra material.

I was wondering how it would be received by Star Wars purists.

I have also taket some liberties with Revan's Chest armor as well. Instead of the flat chest armor, I decided to go with a muscular chest armor, (Pectoral muscles) to add a little bit of toughness to the Character. I know, Darth Revan is a Total Stud and doesn't really need extra toughness. I just felt compelled to take some Artistic Freedoms. Again, Wanting to know how the costume will be perceived by the Star Wars Community.

All of the other portions of the costume adhere to the 501st Costume requirements.

I would like to post some pictures for your review, but the newbie in me doesn't have a clue how.

 

Hi Budd - welcome to the forums! Might I suggest posting your questions in the Costuming Forum? This particular thread is really more centered on costume design and stylistic issues regarding the actual pieces used in the films, not so much fan-produced costumes or props. I think you'll get much more relevant responses there.

 

Lt. Cmdr. Thrawn,

I appreciate your direction. I have had no luck in getting anyone's opinion in the Costuming Forum. I was really just seeking the advice from those who are really know their Star Wars inspired costumes. However, I appreciate your suggestion.

 

Budd Terry, if the costume makes you and, more importantly, your son happy, who cares what the "purists" think? I expect there will be some who applaud your creativity and originality, and others will vilify you for taking liberties with any minor detail that isn't screen accurate. Life is too short to waste time on people like that. Do what you do, and do it well, let the chips fall where they may.

 

Sarge,

I sincerely appreciate your kind words, yet I came to this site for the feedback. I don't intend to change the costume, I was merely looking for expert opinions. For possibly future costumes. Those who have made costumes previously and those who appreciate the craftsmanship will know what I have done. As the project continues, I have ideas of things I could have done different and other creative ideas have come about as well. This is my first attempt at a cosplay costume. My creative juices have started to flow and I was just looking for some direction from those who might be "purists".

Besides, I don't think Darth Revan has any screen time with the exception of Video Games.

Thanks for your kindness.