Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S01E28: Vacuuming with the Visual Design, Part Two
23 Plays6 months ago
We're back with Harrison Gerard to talk about the design of Galaxy's Edge, the Starcruiser, the Imperial Star Destroyer, the TIE Fighter, and more! Plus, Harrison cops to the REAL reason he didn't like Star Wars as a kid. You don't want to miss THAT!
Recommended
Transcript
Star Wars Design Discussion with Harrison Girard
00:00:00
Speaker
We're continuing our conversation about the design of Star Wars with my son Harrison Girard. Grab your joints and brooms as a Star Wars cleaning crew. Welcome back to the Star Wars cleaning crew. If you were here with us last week, remember I was talking to an actual graphic designer who happens to be my son Harrison about the design of Star Wars.
00:00:23
Speaker
We had a great talk, but it was too long. So this is part two. We're going to dive in and start talking some about design of galaxies edge. But before that, we're going to take a little detour and go back to Star Wars skeleton crew. Here's our conversation.
00:00:40
Speaker
You've got in front of you the book of the art. of Before we move on from this, I want to talk about people in Star Wars, and people in Star Wars planets having green
Realism vs Fantasy in Star Wars Aesthetics
00:00:50
Speaker
grass lawns. They're going to have, they're going to have green grass lawns in their suburb. That seems weird to me. If I was them, I would have made it blue, blue grass.
00:01:00
Speaker
Yeah, like Kentucky. Or purple grass. I don't know. There's something about the green grass on the lot that really bothers me. See, I didn't even notice the green grass, but that's part of the problem because it just looks so normal. Yeah. Like it's just even normal. I'm telling you, I think if they had like an aqua grass, yeah they should get in on that. Tell George, if he's messing around in Photoshop with the movies, go ahead and hue shift that. Well, he's probably actually actually sitting back and complaining about it somewhere.
00:01:25
Speaker
because he really has no more cursing Kathleen. Yeah, exactly.
Galaxy's Edge Concept Art Exploration
00:01:29
Speaker
So um the art of Galaxy's Edge, we were just talking before we hit record on this that there's so much beautiful concept art in here. Yeah, phenomenal. That just never, you know, it never never happened. But that happens, too. I mean, that's the Disney process. They do the blue sky. It's dreaming and imagining if money was no object. um But there's also things in here that they seem to indicate we're going to happen that didn't. Totally. Like I'm looking at this page for like a tailor shop. Yeah. Which seems like an upscale kind of like merch store. Yeah. And it is so gorgeous. I mean, all the concept art is gorgeous, both in execution and conceptualization. And boy, what a bummer that we got what we got. Yeah.
00:02:22
Speaker
Well, someday people will stop going to it and then they'll have to put more money back into it. Yeah, totally. We'll see about that. Or the whole thing will become like a new extension of Cars Land.
00:02:37
Speaker
Are there things you remember in that book that like really stood out to you as i think well i I mean, in terms of just like artistic fidelity, their concept art is like incredible. And like the speed in which, like if you're a professional concept artist working at a place like Disney Imagineering, like you are churning out these pictures. You're doing like three or four a day. yeah It's insane. um And it is so well crafted.
00:03:09
Speaker
um It's just crazy. but I think all the concept art of Galaxy's Edge was really good in terms of, well, kind of going back to what we said, like I think they do a good job of mixing a lowbrow and a highbrow kind
Critiquing Star Cruiser Design
00:03:25
Speaker
of thing. um We should talk about the design of the Star Wars Star Cruiser. Yeah, again rich. That's the rich version of Star Wars. To their detriment because it felt like incredibly clean and yeah yeah not great. What do you think would have been better?
00:03:45
Speaker
ah more rooms. I mean, we always talked about that. I think in terms of like, a in terms of a gameplay perspective, it is lame that you're supposed to be on a ship and like the the actual explorable area of the ship is so small.
00:04:02
Speaker
but Especially when you think of the Queen Mary, which is like this old ship like docked in Long Beach. And if you get on it like without paying for a tour or anything, you can see so much more of the ship than you do in Disney's you know star attraction, headliner, $10 million dollars a night.
00:04:23
Speaker
Like, I think even if they just had more empty area, it would have been cooler to walk around. But I think that, I mean, the design of the Star Cruiser is the same as anything modern Disney is doing where they have really cool, great ideas. And then the bean counters get ahold of it and they snip everything cool away. yeah And they know that people will still buy it because they will buy anything Disney branded or Star Wars.
00:04:53
Speaker
And it'll be interesting to see how long that lasts. Yeah, it doesn't feel like it's gonna last too much longer. ah i Hope so, but I don't know every day. They have a new Star Wars show coming out Well, this one is this one is the Renaissance fair in space. This one is goonies in space Yeah, but you know, they've got this one coming out this will be in December They've got the next season of and or coming out And then I don't think that there's any more shows that have been in announced. oh Thank God. They've got the
00:05:25
Speaker
They've got the Mandalorian in Grogu, which is filming right now. um So that's gonna be the next movie. They know that they're working on on Dave Filoni's movie that's gonna kind of cap off the whole Mando-verse saga, apparently. But apparently this movie that they've been working on with Rey and the New Jedi Order is, if it's not already canceled, is in danger of being canceled.
Star Wars Content Overproduction Concerns
00:05:50
Speaker
well So I think we're gonna start to see a slowdown because i think star wars works better when you get it in bursts i think you know i mean we we got to the end of return of the jedi we thought we'd never get any more you know maybe some comics yeah maybe some saturday morning cartoon shows stuff like that that we got then we were so surprised and happy with the prequels
00:06:14
Speaker
Maybe a little disappointed after that, but never thought we'd get anything more. And then remember how excited everybody was when episode seven came. Totally. That was just like peak Star Wars. Yeah, I think in many ways Star Wars is at its most successful as like a nostalgia based franchise.
00:06:34
Speaker
and you kind of need that dead area for people to build like build the hype up again and also like really cement in their mind how much they enjoyed the movies that they grew up with, you know whether those are prequel or the original trilogy um so that they can get hyped up for it again. yeah But I think it's the same kind of thing as the Marvel movie where I think like the majority population is just like burnt out of it. they don't It's hard to keep that excitement up for that long. yeah Not that that will stop. Disney. As long as they keep printing money, they're not going to slow down the presses. Yeah, why do anything? Why change anything? Right. yeah so All right. I think we got enough content. You don't say like a goodbye? No. Not to you.
00:07:29
Speaker
Well, thank you, Harrison. This has been very enlightening. You're so welcome. What else do you as a professional artist have to say about
Ralph McQuarrie's Influence on Star Wars
00:07:35
Speaker
Star Wars? I have to say um Ralph McQuarrie's original concept. Oh, we did want to talk about Ralph McQuarrie. Let's talk about him. OK, let's talk about that. um Let me bring that up. his His deal, as I understand it, was he was an artist for, I think, McDonnell Douglas from one of the you know, one of the companies that was involved in the space race. okay And George Lucas saw the art that he did for that. And that's what gravitated him towards Ralph McQuarrie.
00:08:06
Speaker
I think ah his original stuff is so good. and so in the vi like You can see exactly what aspects of it yeah George Lucas took to become Star Wars, right but also the stuff he left on the cutting room floor is so cool.
00:08:26
Speaker
yeah and It would be so interesting to see like if the tables were turned and it was like the majority of that stuff was what fueled um Star Wars as a Series versus what they took but in terms of talking about like clean lines and stuff you see that way more It's not it's really not gritty at all. Yeah, so art deco and it's so Like you really see those kind of especially like in the Darth Vader concept art where he's so samurai looking Yeah, it's like hugely hugely the influence and And I'm always struck by looking at it how much it reminds me of like good Dungeons and Dragons art. Like when you see these little guys, like they look straight out of Monster Man. They really don't look that alien as much as they look like fantasy, yeah and which I think is really phenomenal. That's what he was calling for.
00:09:27
Speaker
Well, when they made the Star Wars Rebels animated series, especially at the beginning, the idea was they they wanted the design to evoke those original Ralph McQuarrie paintings. And there were a lot of things that they went back to stuff that he had left on the cutting room floor and brought that back into the design. I don't think that we saw that quite so much in the later years of Rebels, but you watch that first season of Rebels and it really, really looks that way.
00:09:53
Speaker
You can see that a lot in in the way that some of the ships look, like the star destroyers look very different in Rebels than they do, quote unquote, in real life. look this Yeah. Hold please.
00:10:17
Speaker
Like they've got very tall conning tower structures, I don't know what you would call it, the bridge structure. Speaking of ship design, I love the TIE fighters.
Villainous Design Praise
00:10:27
Speaker
Yeah, what do you like about them? They were always my favorite. The X-wing and Y-wings look very plane-y in a way where it's easy to imagine how they would fly in the real world. Like they are very I feel you could see that as a real ship right wouldn't be too crazy. Yeah, where the TIE fighters are so spaceship oriented. And I think the TIE fighters do such a good job of like you you look at it and you know that that is a bad guy. Yes, they would never ever mistake it for being a good guy ship.
00:11:00
Speaker
Yeah, I love the sound that they made. And I think the shape like they're very kind of like bat shaped. The spherical cockpit is so cool. It really is. That's a great ship. So you see on the Star Destroyer, see how it's got like this big tower? Yeah, that's phenomenal. You don't see those in the real, the real quote unquote Star Destroyers. Totally. Well, I'm actually seeing it on the real one by a man on Reddit who says a very simplistic edit of what Star Wars Destroyers would look like. Oh, interesting. Yeah.
00:11:31
Speaker
oh great his start ah Lucas films, hire him. Hire fans. Hire him. Hire fans. Hire that guy who does that Harrison Ford impersonation. He's so much better than. The real Harrison Ford. Oh, he's so old. I know. Very sad. Did you talk about how your son who's on this podcast is named after Harrison Ford?
00:11:56
Speaker
I have not mentioned how you were named after Harrison Ford. But and but i whenever I say this to people, I always say, but in an Indiana Jones way. That's exactly right. yeah Thank God. If you named me after him in a Star Wars way, it'd be embarrassing. But the Indiana Jones way is just cool. That's always been the biggest um rift between us, is that I like Indiana Jones much more than Star Wars.
00:12:20
Speaker
Well, I don't know if we call it a rift. It's just, you'd never got into Star Wars as much as I, you know, had hoped you would, but I've come to terms with that and you've come to a, you've come to a nice level of appreciation of it. Totally. Just enough. I don't, I don't pretend to hate it anymore. Like I did as a small child just to piss you off. Yeah, exactly. See, I knew that that was what you were doing. Thank you, Harrison. And, you know, at the end of our conversation, we talked a little bit about some future ideas for future episodes that we could do, but we want to keep those a surprise.
Future Episodes and Fact-Checking Reflections
00:12:52
Speaker
So not going to tell, but you can look forward to hearing more from Harrison in the future. What I am learning about doing these live interviews is
00:13:03
Speaker
Unlike other podcasts that I do, I have to go back and do some fact checking. So a couple of different things I picked up in editing this one. First off, I forgot to mention that Ahsoka season two is in production or pre-production. That is also coming, but really there's not a lot on the horizon. It's definitely not as the the full slate of things that were promised to us a few years ago. So.
00:13:28
Speaker
It's interesting to see things keep changing. Not sure exactly what I mean by interesting, but it is a thing. Ralph McQuarrie did not work for McDonnell Douglas. He worked for Boeing.
Clarification on Ralph McQuarrie's Employer
00:13:40
Speaker
I guess if you work for Boeing right about now, you might want to think you work for McDonnell Douglas. I don't know. Maybe I should edit that part out. I'm not going to. Nobody from Boeing listens to this.
00:13:52
Speaker
just a little company that's had some problems lately, especially where space is concerned. ah Third, I just butchered the name of Alden Ehrenreich, which is actually kind of funny. This is a good LA story, one of the joys of living in LA. Southern California. ah Right after Solo came out, I had the art of Solo sitting out on my coffee table and my friend Jill came over and she saw it and she's like, why do you have a picture of Alden on the cover of that book?
00:14:23
Speaker
And I said, well, he's playing Han Solo. Like, do you know him? And she's like, yeah, he used to come over and play with my daughter all the time. Oh, I didn't even know that he was playing Han Solo. And she probably called him Hans Solo. So that was actually kind of a funny thing. Anyway, that's it for this week. We'll be back next week. In the meantime, may the force be with you. Keep your kitchens clean. Tell your friends about us. We'll see you soon. Bye bye.
00:14:59
Speaker
Oh, yeah!