With every new addition to the forever-evolving Stars Wars franchise, a series of brand-new exotic beings are introduced to fans. Star Wars has consistently throughout the decades truly surpassed previous expectations and barriers that come with the vast creation of fantastical entities. The Star Wars sequel trilogy proved to keep that impeccable artistic vision intact. Each alien and robot design that was presented felt completely new and yet touchingly familiar. This rigid balance of bringing fresh energy to each design, while still managing to uphold the franchise’s overall thematic and moralistic elements, is partly what has made Star Wars so successful and popular.
RELATED: Star Wars: Andor Series May Be Shorter Than Originally Expected
Now, in a recent interview with Inverse, special effects artist and supervising animatronic designer Gustav Hoegen shared that when he worked on the more recent Star Wars productions, he was given a huge amount of creative freedom and autonomy throughout the process of designing the characters. “On Star Wars movies, they would just present you with a script and leave it to us what creatures would inhabit that story," he stated. “You’d have a design team just pumping out design after design to plant a seed in the director’s mind. He would pick the ones he liked and leave it to us to build it.”
Examples of the team’s work can be seen in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, which introduced audiences to the character of the tentacled Rathtars. Rathtars in Star Wars are regarded as dangerous tentacled predators who are known for their skilled techniques in pack hunting. As a result, the tentacled Rathtars ended up demolishing Han Solo’s (Harrison Ford) freighter. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ushered in the Bor Gullet, a purple-skinned Mairan who invaded the mind of the Imperial pilot defector Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed). However, Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker seemed to bring in a new fan favourite alien, a miniature Anzellan on the planet Kijimi.
Typically, a design team is given a general description of the creature that is already set in stone by the writer and director of the film. The team would then go about creating various different character designs and present them to the director for him to be able to physically articulate his vision. The creative liberation and the freedom to play that Hoegen claims the design team was allotted is a very rare experience to have as an animatronics designer. It proves just how much the director J.J. Abrams trusted his design team’s innovation and imagination, perhaps as much as he did his own. It also goes to show the special unmatched quality that each Star Wars creature seems to have within them - the freedom to play without creative restrictions and barriers getting in the way.
The Star Wars saga is now available on Disney Plus.
MORE: Star Wars Should Take A Big Leap Into The Future
Source: Inverse
