Ralph McQuarrie, artist who designed the look of Star Wars, dies at 82
Ralph McQuarrie was hired by George Lucas in 1974 to design the characters for the space fantasy,”Star Wars.” McQuarrie created the look of many of the major characters, including C-3PO, R2-D2, the Stormtroopers, and Darth Vader. His artwork helped convince 20th Century Fox to approve the film. McQuarrie had once been a technical artist for Boeing. Besides major characters, McQuarrie created production paintings of locales like the Death Star and the desert planet of Tatooine. McQuarrie liked the concept of “Star Wars.” He just did not think that the film would be made.
“My impression was it was too expensive. There wouldn’t be enough of an audience. It’s just too complicated,” he recalled in a 1999 interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune. “But George knew a lot of things that I didn’t know.”
Ralph McQuarrie died on Saturday, March 3 at his home in Berkeley, according to John Scoleri, coauthor of a book on McQuarrie’s art. McQuarrie had been in declining health while battling Parkinson’s disease.
Ralph McQuarrie was born in Gary, Indiana on June 13, 1929 and became interested in art at an early age. He survived a bullet that pierced his helmet in the Army, during the Korean War and entered what is now the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Besides Boeing, McQuarrie worked for a company that did animation for coverage of the Apollo program by CBS News. His original cover art for the Star Wars novelization, published before the movie release led to his providing of artwork for dozens of covers of science fiction paperback books!
Besides “Star Wars” (1977), he also did “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980), and “The Return of the Jedi” (1983).
‘He also did spaceship design work on Steven Spielberg‘s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977) and “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) and shared an Academy Award for best visual effects for “Cocoon” (1985).
Among his other credits are the “Battlestar Galactica” TV series and the 1986 film “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.”‘
McQuarrie is survived by Joan, his wife of 29 years, his sister, Joan Wolfe, and his two stepsons, Vaughn and Leonard Griffin.
-Bill at
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