1. Early life

2. Career
    Star Wars (1977)  Star Trek  Star Wars sequels  Other film & TV work 

3. Retirement

4. Death

5. Critical assessment

6. Legacy

7. Filmography
    Actor 

8. Bibliography

9. See also

10. References

11. External links

Ralph Angus McQuarrie (June 13, 1929 – March 3, 2012) was an American conceptual designer and illustrator. His career included work on the original Star Wars trilogy, the original Battlestar Galactica television series, the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and the film Cocoon, for which he won an Academy Award.

Early life

Ralph McQuarrie was born on June 13, 1929 in Gary, Indiana and was raised on a farm near Billings, Montana.^[1] He served in the United States Army during the Korean War, surviving a shot to the head.^[1] After returning from the war, McQuarrie moved to California in the 1960s,^[2] studying at the Art Center School,^[1] then in downtown Los Angeles.

Career

McQuarrie initially worked for a dentistry firm, drawing teeth and equipment,^[1] before working as an Artist and Preliminary Design Illustrator for the Boeing Company, where he drew diagrams for a manual on constructing the 747 Jumbo Jet, as well as designing film posters and animating CBS News' coverage of the Apollo space program at the three-man company Reel Three.^[2][3]

While there, McQuarrie was asked by Hal Barwood to produce some illustrations for a film project he and Matthew Robbins were starting.^[2][3] McQuarrie married Joan Benjamin in 1983 and stayed married until his death.

Star Wars (1977)

Impressed with his work, director and filmmaker George Lucas met with him to discuss his plans for a space-fantasy film. Several years later, in 1975, Lucas commissioned McQuarrie to illustrate several scenes from the script of the film, Star Wars. McQuarrie designed many of the film's characters, including Darth Vader, Chewbacca, R2-D2 and C-3PO^[4][12] and drew many concepts for the film's sets.^[2]

McQuarrie's concept paintings were instrumental in helping Lucas to win approval from 20th Century Fox; armed with vivid illustrations of his planned movie, Lucas was able to convince Fox executives to take a gamble and fund his Star Wars project. Despite their scepticism, it became a huge success upon release in 1977.^[1][2][3][5] Among McQuarrie's Star Wars portfolio were concept paintings depicting scenes on the planet Tatooine, inside the Mos Eisley cantina, inside the Death Star and on the moon of Yavin. During filming, Lucas ensured that many shots reproduced McQuarrie's paintings exactly, such was his esteem for McQuarrie's work.^[6] McQuarrie has said of his work on Star Wars, "I thought I had the best job that an artist ever had on a film, and I had never worked on a feature film before. ... I still get fan mail — people wondering if I worked on Episode I or just wanting to have my autograph."^[3]

McQuarrie's production painting of R2-D2 and C-3PO wandering in the desert on the planet Tatooine was the first to be completed. His early concept for C-3PO was visibly inspired by the Art Deco Maschinenmensch robot from Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis.^[20][7] The painting had a particular impact on actor Anthony Daniels, who was about to turn down the part of C-3PO; "He had painted a face and a figure that had a very wistful, rather yearning, rather bereft quality, which I found very appealing," stated Daniels, and the appeal of McQuarrie's image convinced him to accept the role.^[22]

It was McQuarrie who first suggested that Darth Vader should wear a breathing apparatus.^[1] In an interview with Star Wars Insider Magazine, McQuarrie stated that Lucas's artistic direction was to portray a malevolent figure in a cape with Samurai armour. "For Darth Vader, George [Lucas] just said he would like to have a very tall, dark fluttering figure that had a spooky feeling like it came in on the wind." McQuarrie noted that the script indicated that Vader would travel between spaceships and needed to survive in the vacuum of space, and he proposed that Vader should wear some sort of space suit. Lucas agreed, and McQuarrie combined a full-face breathing mask with a Samurai helmet, thus creating one of the most iconic designs of space fantasy cinema.^[8][9] A 1975 production painting of Darth Vader engaged in a lightsaber duel with Deak Starkiller (a character prototype for Luke Skywalker) depicts Vader wearing black armour, a flowing cape and an elongated, skull-like mask and helmet. Its similarity to the final design of Vader's costume demonstrates that McQuarrie's earliest conception of Vader was so successful that very little needed to be changed for production.^[10] Working from McQuarrie's artwork, the costume designer John Mollo devised a costume that could be worn by an actor on-screen using a combination of clerical robes, a motorcycle suit, a German military helmet and a gas mask.^[11] The prop sculptor Brian Muir created the helmet and armour used in the film from McQuarrie's designs.^[12]

While McQuarrie was working on visualisation work for Lucas, he was also commissioned by an executive of Ballantine Books, Judy-Lynn del Rey, to produce the cover art of the forthcoming novelization of Star Wars. The first edition of From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker went to press in 1976 featuring McQuarrie's version of Darth Vader's helmet on the cover. Like the film, the book was a runaway success, and McQuarrie began a long relationship with the publisher, producing the artwork for 22 further titles for Del Rey Books between 1978 and 1987.^[6]

Star Trek

Around the time that McQuarrie was completing his work on Star Wars, he was brought on board the design team for a planned cinematic production based on Gene Roddenberry's science fiction television series, Star Trek. Entitled Planet of the Titans, the film was to feature a redesigned USS Enterprise starship, and McQuarrie was recruited to provide the visualizations. His triangular ship design has been likened to the appearance of the Star Destroyers featured in Star Wars. Star Trek: Planet of the Titans did not make it past the pre-production phase and the project was cancelled in 1977.^[13] The design was later used in 2017's Discovery as the basis of the titular ship.^[14]

Star Wars sequels

When Lucas began work on his sequel to Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), McQuarrie was once again brought in to supply previsualization artwork. His sketches and production paintings established the appearance of some of the saga's most enduring elements, such as the gigantic AT-AT Walkers in the battle on the ice planet Hoth and the wizened elf creature Yoda. McQuarrie's design for Cloud City, a floating city in the clouds, actually originated from his early sketches for Star Wars from 1975, when he was illustrating a concept for the planet Alderaan, as described in Lucas's 1975 draft script, Adventures of the Starkiller as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars.^[6] McQuarrie made an uncredited cameo appearance in The Empire Strikes Back, when he appeared in the film's opening sequence in the Rebel base on Hoth as a character named General Pharl McQuarrie.^[1] In 2007, McQuarrie became part of the Star Wars action figure range when an action figure in his likeness as "General McQuarrie" was produced for the Star Wars 30th anniversary in 2007.^[1][12] Action figures were also produced based on McQuarrie's concept art, including conceptual versions of the Imperial Stormtrooper, Chewbacca, R2-D2 and C-3PO, Darth Vader, Han Solo, Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and other characters.^[15]

By the time McQuarrie was engaged on Lucas's third Star Wars picture, Return of the Jedi (1983), he had begun to experience creative fatigue. "It became less fun as time went on. I had done the best part already and I was just rehashing everything. I kept meeting myself in my thinking. It became more and more difficult to keep my enthusiasm up," McQuarrie has said. Despite his earlier success, fewer of his design ideas were included in the final cut of the film.^[16]

Other film & TV work

McQuarrie designed the alien ships in Steven Spielberg's films Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982),^[3] while his work as the conceptual artist on the 1985 film Cocoon earned him the Academy Award for Visual Effects.^[12][17] He also worked on the 1978 TV series Battlestar Galactica,^[12] and the films Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Voyage Home and *batteries not included.^[5]

Retirement

Death

McQuarrie died aged 82 on March 3, 2012, in his Berkeley, California home, from complications of Parkinson's disease.^[1][21] He is survived by his wife Joan.^[1][5][22]

Critical assessment

Christian Blauvelt of Entertainment Weekly praised McQuarrie's works as "pioneering of the 'used future' aesthetic" which unlike other science-fiction, "imagined a lived-in galaxy that was gritty, dirty, and in advance states of decay." He described McQuarrie's style as "strongly geometric subjects rendered in muted colors against a flat, purposefully compressed backdrop. A McQuarrie Star Wars design looks like what would have resulted if Salvador Dalí had sketched concepts for Universals 1936 Flash Gordon serial by way of Sergio Leones Old West."^[23]

Neil Kendricks of The San Diego Union-Tribune emphasised McQuarrie's importance to the Star Wars franchise, saying that the artist "holds a unique position when it comes to defining much of the look of the "Star Wars" universe."^[3]

After McQuarrie's death, George Lucas said: "His genial contribution, in the form of unequalled production paintings, propelled and inspired all of the cast and crew of the original Star Wars trilogy. When words could not convey my ideas, I could always point to one of Ralph's fabulous illustrations and say, 'do it like this'."^[24]

Legacy

The current Lucasfilm creative team is employing parts of McQuarrie's original unused concept art from the seventies and eighties in the development of new Star Wars-related media.^[25]

Filmography

• Star Wars (1977) (production illustrator)
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) (Mother Ship designer)
• Battlestar Galactica (1978) (production and concept illustrator)
• Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) (illustrator)
• The Empire Strikes Back (1980) (design consultant and conceptual artist)
• Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) (ILM illustrator)
• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) (scenic artist/spaceship design)
• Return of the Jedi (1983) (conceptual artist)
• Cocoon (1985) (conceptual artist)
• The Voyage Home (1986) (visual consultant)
• batteries not included (1987) (conceptual artist)
• Nightbreed (1990) (conceptual artist)
• The Ride (1991) (conceptual artist) (uncredited)

Actor

• The Empire Strikes Back (1980) - General McQuarrie (uncredited)

Bibliography

McQuarrie's previsualization artwork, production sketches and paintings, and matte paintings feature prominently in the first three volumes of The Art of Star Wars book series.

• {{cite book|editor1-last=Titelman|editor1-first=Carol|editor2-last=Hoffman|editor2-first=Valerie|title=The Art of Star Wars|date=1979|publisher=Ballantine Books|location=New York|isbn=0345282736|edition=1st}}
  Reprinted 1994 {{ISBN|9781852865832}}
• {{cite book|last1=Bulluck|first1=Vic|last2=Hoffman|first2=Valerie|editor1-last=Call|editor1-first=Deborah|title=The Art of The Empire Strikes Back|date=1980|publisher=Ballantine Books|location=New York|isbn=9780345293350|edition=1st}}
  Reprinted 1994 {{ISBN|9780345392039}}
• {{cite book|last1=Kasdan|first1=Lawrence|last2=Lucas|first2=George|title=The Art of Return of the Jedi - Star Wars|date=1983|publisher=Ballantine Books|location=New York|isbn=978-0345312549|edition=1st}}
  Reprinted 1995 {{ISBN|9781852865856}}
• {{cite book|last1=Anderson|first1=Kevin J.|last2=Carabetta|first2=Michael|title=Star Wars, the art of Ralph McQuarrie|date=1996|publisher=Chronicle Books|location=San Francisco, CA|isbn=9780811813204}}
• {{cite book|last1=McQuarrie|first1=Ralph|last2=Alinger|first2=Brandon|last3=Lageose|first3=Wade|last4=Mandel|first4=David|last5=Ltd|first5=LucasFilm|title=Star Wars Art: Ralph McQuarrie|date=2016|publisher=Harry N. Abrams|isbn=9781419717932|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8ik3jgEACAAJ&dq=the+art+of+Ralph+McQuarrie&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjY2buC8c7UAhVrIcAKHXlZCy8Q6AEIJDAA|accessdate=21 June 2017|language=en}}

See also

• List of Star Wars artists

References

• {{cite book | last=Rinzler | first=J. W. | title=The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film | year=2007 | publisher=Ebury Press | isbn=978-0-09-192499-7 | ref=Rinzler}}

External links

• {{Official website|http://www.ralphmcquarrie.com}}
• {{IMDb name|574319}}
• {{wookieepedia}}
• Ralph McQuarrie Concept Sketches and Concept Paintings for Battlestar Galactica (1978)
• [https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/mar/06/ralph-mcquarrie?INTCMP=SRCH Ralph McQuarrie obituary: Conceptual artist who brought Star Wars to life] (Guardian article)

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