The importance of visuals and aesthetics in Star Wars

I think that one of the things that makes Star Wars so compelling is its visuals. I think the comics, particularly Legacy, really benefit from their striking visuals.

The novels could do with better visual cues, either in descriptions or covers, or even addendums with ships or such.

Some authors don't give enough of the visual cues, though I try to fill in the blanks.

Really, I'd like to see an updated visual companion for the current eras, and maybe some illustrations of ships or something in the backs of books, if not on the covers.

 

There has been a surprising lack of both visual reference material and in-text descriptions since the switch to DR I've noticed. Now at least we have Invasion to give us some NJO visuals, but at the time there was very little, and I really don't feel like any good descriptions were given until the second half of the series. Until, say, Allston's books everything was analogue this, analogue that.

LotF was even worse, giving us almost nothing, and what we did get was rather dull. The new Jedi Temple has the exact same layout as the PT one, despite being a different shape? And Ben has so few images that a single, honest mistake in hair color becomes a rather notable event, partially caused by a general lack of canon images of him.

Star Wars is at heart visual, and they should try to maintain that.

 

GODV totally had the right idea.

No, seriously. A page of character mugshots is a hell of a lot more useful than a dramatis personae. And if we could get interior illustrations, well . . . that would only be a bonus.
[image=http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/e/e4/SKY_HOUSE_interior.png]
How else would we see Han Solo talking to Lando Calrissian inside his sky house?

While interior illustrations in novels are probably too much, I loved the fact that we got a diagram of Outbound Flight inside . . . Outbound Flight. Stupid titles. Anyway, I think a small gallery of images for new designs and characters like that would really add to the books.

What's most important, though, is the production of big, color, actiony shots of major events and fresh images of important characters and objects. And that means Essential Guides and other supplementary sources. The NEC and EGTTF did a great job of introducing images of the NJO and LOTF as well as other under-covered things. It looks like the Atlas will be doing the same. But that's not enough; they need a better volume of guides to really provide all the visuals we need. And I think that means going ahead and abandoning the slow-to-update Essential Guide to Topic format and going to an Essential Guide to Source format. The Essential Guide to the NJO -- with entries on Cal Omas, Shedao Shai, Fyor Rodan -- people who wouldn't all get an entry in an updated EGTC -- but also entries on the Viscount-class, the Ranger-class, the Battles of Coruscant, Zonama Sekot. Have an Essential Guide to LOTF, with plenty of illustrations of Ben, and Cal Omas, and Lumiya, and the Battle of Shedu Maad, and Tenel Ka with Jacen and Allana, and the Twee, and Niathal, and Luke and Mara dueling Lumiya and Alema, and Jagged Fel being declared the Imperial Head of State, and the Anakin Solo, and Dur Gejjen, and GAG soldiers at the Ossus academy.

Heck, pitch them IU as the Essential Guide to the Yuuzhan Vong War and the Essential Guide to the Second Galactic Civil War. The recent EGTTF, and the upcoming EG to the Military, are promising steps in this direction, as the breadth of their subject matter allows a lot of inclusion of new elements and new images. WOTC's era-targeted Campaign Guides are likewise great for fleshing out eras. But a further step is really needed to combat years and years of visual neglect.

 

Maybe it's cause I'm not a fleet junkie but I'm fine with how the novels depict the EU for the most part. Especially in the Del Rey stuff. The regular bench at Del Rey are fine at evoking the feel of Star Wars without overwriting. The books are getting shorter though and I could have used more something in No Prisoners. But more description in Omen would have killed me.

It's the story and pacing for me. I don't like over-description in regular lit nevermind sci-fi. Especially over-description of things that don't even exist. So long as the space battles are well thought out and advance the plot, I'm fine.

I've certainly noticed an overuse of the holonet recently. There is no aesthetic value in those damned holograms.

 

Lotf had to many characters of which we have no idea how do they look.

 

The big problem with visuals is that they can't match the majority of readers' individual mental visualizations, and often they simply don't match the text-descriptions.

The curly wings on the Clawcraft, I can just about deal with ("jutted out and forward" sounds angular to me)...

... but hula!Bomo!Vergere? The ridiculous Hobbit!Kyp? Or the latest illustration of Jacen, Ben and Luke? Or, even with my liking for the in-universe sketching hobby of retired Bothan admirals, the New Class ships?

Yuuzhan Vong? Why do I care.

The majority of Star Wars visual material since DelRey and WotC took over is mediocre-going-on-crap. Even the good stuff, like Jeff Carlisle, is often wildly inaccurate to the written source material.

Sure, get Joe Corroney to illustrate everything, and maybe we're talking, but they won't, you know. Late '90s Dark Horse, this isn't.

I'm happy with my mental images.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Frett, what exactly do you mean by insufficient visuals in comics? The wholt thing is visual...

 

I'm happy with my mental images.
That's fine for you, but my mental images suck. Everything looks the same in my head, and thus everything becomes...forgettable.

I would rather have some sort of horribly inaccurate image that I can at least picture than a whole lot of nothing.

 

I actually pictured Hapan Battle Dragons as looking like dragons at first. So my mental images are generally cool, but not what they're supposed to be.

 

I hope we get more illustrations. Then maybe we can finally move away from X-wings and Star Destroyers back to their successors that aren't a seventy-year-old design.

 

A quick point about "old" ships:

The B-52 strategic bomber isn't going to be retired by the Air Force until 2040. It was first operational in 1960. So it'll have a design life of oh, eighty or so years.


Old ships stick around until something that's a distinct improvement comes around-in other words, an improvement in all areas-cost/usefulness/etc. There's no particular reason the X-Wing design can't have lasted this long-it's a superbly versatile design that can be adapted to do alot of things. Similarly, the ISD is also very adaptable-you can use it as a battleship, command ship, troop transport, or starfighter carrier.

 

You could take that to the extreme, in a way. How much have boats actually changed all that much over the years? Or cars? Lorries? Sure, you get special purpose things that break the mould but by large things don't exactly change an awful lot. Main evolution with boats is just what they're built from, not the actual shape as such.

That's why things that look like this don't bother me (even if this is just fanart):
[image=http://www.swagonline.net/files/images/T65XJ5_Stealth_05.preview.jpg]
I saw an even better model once though (which was an actual model) that somebody had built. I can't remember what page that was on though, but it was a very neat evolution with some rather different looking engines and overall a more smooth looking ship, but it still kept the same "X-Wing" feel. It was like an elegant modern sports car compared to some four decade old thing that looked more like an angular brick.

I take it that the comic artists whose faces all look the same aren't much of a help for you then?

Yeah, that'd work a lot better than the "Topic" books. I remember the old WEG and first WOTC series of sourcebooks that were tied into particular series. For years the NJO Sourcebook was still the only decent exploration we got of anything from the NJO... and even that only went up to SbS. It'd be so much nicer to get more "Series" books.

Which I guess is why I like the current Campaign Guides so much. Not all of them, admittedly, but the basic premise has been pretty good, even if some have fallen into the trap of just regurgitating existing artwork more than others. It would be nice if the Essential Guides did the same thing though, as I can't say I ever get that much enjoyment out of the guides to Droids or Technology, as so much of them is always the most basic stuff time and time again.

The NEC? Sure, chronologies are good. EGTTF? That was fine too, to a large extent because it was sort of an update to the NEC, at least for the Jedi related conflicts. And the Atlas is almost certainly going to be good. But even today though, I'd still kill for a NEGttNJO or NEGtLOTF or whatever. There is just so much stuff that hasn't been explored and that even the Campaign Guides don't go into that much depth about, as they naturally have to focus on half the pages being RPG stats and things.

 

Faces all look alike to me in the real world too.

 

Yeah, but that doesn't explain the use of X-wings in Legacy. Though I can see the Jedi using more Force-based tactics, and the XJ is the classic example. (Well, actually, Thrawn's use of cloaking devices and C'boath is the most likely ur-example, but you know what I mean.)

 

The B-52 is probably only leaving service then because the airframes will be too expensive to keep flying past that date, given that B-52 production also ended in the 1960s. There's no equivalent reason for X-Wings in Legacy-there's been no notice that X-Wings have stopped being produced by that time, and if I'm not mistaken, the X-Wings in Legacy are not T-65As, or even XJs. There's been design progression from this:


[image=http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/File:Xw1.jpg]


To this:


[image=http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/thumb/5/57/X-83_Squadron.jpg/800px-X-83_Squadron.jpg]


The X-Wing is a thoroughly excellent multipurpose starfighter and there's no particular reason IU to replace it.

 

If in the real world tech can last 80 years, I expect in such a technologically static age as the GFFA it probably can be a lot, lot longer. Take a look at most of the CEC freighter lines, for instance. Even I sometimes gaup at just how long ago things like YTs first hit the racks. And people think the Falcon is old! Some of those things are positively ancient.

The one main difference I suppose is that freighters aren't military craft, so provided they get you from A to B and carry your cargo, they don't actually need to modernise all that much. Faster hyperdrives is about the only thing that matters. Maybe more refined engines to allow you to run a bigger ship on just as much fuel, or whatever.

So, there is perhaps an argument in that military craft are always in competition, so may be adapted and upgraded more frequently. But I tend to just assume that there can be a long list of alterations in the term "X-Wing". The basic model had several updates, it just involved playing with arbitrary numbers until they decided to add the "J" part and make the number increments more logical. There's been similar things with the A-Wing or the E-Wing "Series IV". I guess that means there was a Series II and Series III at some point too.

I dug out the url for that guy who makes models, which give a nice idea of how I think you can still have an "X-Wing" but still tweak it a little:
[image=http://www.alfredsmind.ca/nr/xwgroup.jpg]
I think these are by the same guy:
[image=http://www.starshipmodeler.info/wfest2k4/ta_mod_953.JPG]
[image=http://www.starshipmodeler.info/wfest2k4/pa_mod_0426.JPG]

The distinctions are very small, but then the changes in most new car models aren't exactly all that big either. I just like the way he's tried to make the XJ look a little smoother, slightly more modern. The engines in particular look a bit more advanced, and the whole craft doesn't seem quite so large and bulky.

On the whole, I think the X-83s aren't that much different really. They just have a really big engine. Apart from that, they're still basically X-Wings. The wings are static, true; but my understanding is that the wings on an XJ are meant to be fixed as well. The X-83 might look more removed from a T-65 than an XJ is from a T-65, but that's probably natural when every few years they might make a couple of tweaks, so little by little it just shifts a bit.

In the end though, X-Wings are clearly still a viable design, albeit a slightly altered model. Exactly why they upgrade so regularly? I guess that's a somewhat open question. I'd put it down to a combination of (i) backwater worlds get the main GA Navy's cast offs and are still using them, like how pirates in LOTF might still be using Clone Wars things, and (ii) with the number of wars the GA simply gets through the things so regularly they probably figure "Hey, if we're building another 100, may as well make a couple of changes while we're at it". With the number of Galactic [World] Wars they have and ships they need to build, they evidently don't have the budgetary concerns that real defence departments have.

 

No, I was saying that the comics give MOST of the visual information. I love most of the comics. They give the best depiction of the eras, oustide of the actual casted media (movies, shows, etc).

I'd like to see comic adaptations of more books.

 

Funny, I hadn't even thought of that before. The glaring weakness, IMO, of the recent series is the lack of visuals or background material. That's an excellent suggestion, and belies the question why they haven't thought of this before. Wouldn't a post-series guide be a way for people to buy at least one more book while also being an advertisement for the series? The CWAS Guide certainly seemed to fall under this category, and since there's a second one coming out one wonders why someone at LFL isn't connecting the dots...

 

I agree that it is an excellent fighter; in my roommate's copy of Rebellion, the X-wing was the only fighter that I still used throughout the game. (I slowly phased out the Y-wings once I got B-wings. As the Empire, I replaced everything with TIE defenders the moment they were available.)

 

You mean like the E-wing was, until the New Jedi Order planners decided to junk it in favor of a movie visual?

Which is an argument for keeping existing ones, but political reasons should have dictated that the New Republic and successors wouldn't build more. Should have.

 

Hapan Battle Dragons? This is what comes to mind

http://www.unificationfrance.com/IMG/jpg/Battlestar_Galactica_basestar01.jpg

Star Wars is totally visual. I think that is sorely missing from the novels and to some degree the comics too. SW is about scale and awe. Look at the opening shot in ANH, you're blown away by the size of the Star Destroyer. Then in ESB the Super Star Destroyer. Even Darth Vader's image speaks volumes of his character. There's not enough "holy crap" moments in the EU. Really, what did the Empire have to fear about a one man fighter against the Death Star? It was freaking huge! I really like the pic of the Jade Shadow at the start of each chapter in FOTJ, but why can't they rotate images? How about Ship? The Aing-tii ships?

Edit: $$$ I don't want to have to pay for a visual guide for each series either. $$$

 

I'm assuming the you mean the same E-Wing which initially could only use an R-7 astromech droid and was undercut in unit price for a new unit by the X-Wing by 30,000 credits?

Secondly, the E-Wing was designed as an escort and assault fighter-it's not a space superiority design, which the X-Wing is. It's like comparing an F-111 fighter-bomber to the F-15C. They're not equivalent starfighters.

Thirdly, the E-Wing had the misfortune of being widely introduced during Operation Shadow Hand, where the New Republic got absolutely thrashed. It went from a half-million systems to just over ten thousand, and had to pay for the rebuilding of Coruscant. In other words, the budget and a perceived lack of Imperial threat post-Dark Empire is what killed the E-Wing.


Edit: The E-Wing was at least mentioned in the following novels:

* Dark Empire (First appearance)
* Empire's End
* Crimson Empire
* Darksaber
* Planet of Twilight
* Before the Storm
* Shield of Lies
* Tyrant's Test
* Young Jedi Knights: The Lost Ones
* Agents of Chaos I: Hero's Trial
* Balance Point
* Edge of Victory I: Conquest
* Edge of Victory II: Rebirth
* Star by Star
* Dark Journey
* Enemy Lines I: Rebel Dream
* Enemy Lines II: Rebel Stand
* Destiny's Way
* Ylesia
* The Unifying Force
* Dark Nest II: The Unseen Queen
* Betrayal
* Exile (Mentioned only)

E-Wing escort starfighter

 

I can see the technical superiority of the E-wing, but there's that damn backward compatibility issue. Make one compatible with R2~R6 units, and you can actually have an ideal fighter. Or provide an upgrade for R2s, since they clearly have the memory for it. (Notice R2 having 60+ years of memories.)

 

By FOTJ the Millennium Falcon is 100 years old. It was built 60 BBY.