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S01E27: Vacuuming with the Visual Design
33 Plays1 year ago
Join our resident logo artist and my own son Harrison Gerard as we dive into the visual design of Star Wars! What works, what doesn't, and what's coming up next? Enjoy a discussion of visual design on a purely audio based show (but we make it work)!
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Transcript
Introduction & Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
We're talking about the visual design of Star Wars with the famous Harrison, not the one you're thinking of. Grab your joint improves, it's a Star Wars cleaning crew. Welcome back to the Star Wars cleaning crew. Last week I mentioned that a couple of weeks ago I was helping my son Harrison move into his new apartment and we recorded a discussion about the design, the visual design of Star Wars. Now Harrison is well versed to talk about this. He is the art director at an ad agency in Wheaton, Illinois.
00:00:33
Speaker
And he is the best graphic designer I know. I have to say that. He's also famous because he designed the logo for Star Wars Cleaning Crew. So we had a fun conversation. We're gonna play the first part of
Starship Design Evolution
00:00:46
Speaker
it now. So let's tune in and talk about the design of Star Wars. I was thinking today that we could talk about starships. Okay. And I have some feelings about the starships in Star Wars and specifically the fighter craft.
00:01:02
Speaker
like I always loved the X-wing. I think a lot of that was from you know my first experience of seeing the first Star Wars movie and that's what they flew and that's how we knew. There's the X-wings and the Y-wings and all of that. and Nobody really explained why it was X and Y and those were the shapes of the wings even though they don't use that language, but I don't think anybody worried about that.
00:01:28
Speaker
but The design of the fighter craft definitely changed when the prequel started. Totally. It's much more 2000 Z. Yeah. Yeah. But but also like a little more a little more our deco. i Totally. So I would have to say that right behind the X-wing my favorite ah starfighter is the Naboo Starfighter. Remember from episode one, you know those yellow ones with the long yeah total fish tails? Yeah, they definitely. The prequels get more art decoy in kind of like a Cheesecake Factory direction, you know? like when you Like the way the restaurant is designed? Yeah, when you think about like when Padme is running around the palace with like the gun, which is great, great, the only good part of that movie.
Trilogy Visual Texture Comparison
00:02:14
Speaker
And she's running around Cheesecake Factory, you know?
00:02:18
Speaker
Well, it's just like a villa in Italy, I think. Well, you know it has a very it has a very like weirdly stylized art deco vibe. But I think you you do see it in the Starcrafts, too. Yeah. And like her ship, right? Do you remember her Queen Padme ship? And it's the kind of got the same sleek lines as the N1, but it's all chrome.
00:02:43
Speaker
Oh yeah, well that is the one that is, I think, like the most memorable from those movies. Yeah. And it is great. The design of that is so fun and so hugely different from like the X-Wing or a TIE fighter. or It's much more like Flash Gordon kind of vibe, I think, which is fun. And that Star Wars kind of doesn't get into as much.
00:03:09
Speaker
You know, they talk, sometimes people talk a lot about how in the original trilogy, everything looks kind of beat up and dirty and all of that kind of stuff. yeah And that's true, although there are definitely some differences in that. Like the very first ah interior of a ship that we see, the Rebel Blockade Runner, that is like white, pristine. Totally. You know, just like completely clean. Yeah, I think part of that is Part of it is like the grittiness, but I also think they lean further.
Canto Bight & Planetary Architecture
00:03:44
Speaker
There is a lot of like visual texture. like When you think about the walls and stuff, like everything's got little bumpy things. like there Yeah, there's a lot more greeblies is the perfect word on everything in a way that's like really similar to the Nostromo from Alien.
00:04:02
Speaker
um And I think you lose that's like not as emphasized in the prequels. And I think that's a lot of what people are talking about when they talk about how clean it is, or like complaining about the CGI and stuff. um And part of that is art direction. But I also think it is kind of a disservice overall. Because in the new and then new movies, you know they go totally cluttery beat up again. Yeah, right.
00:04:31
Speaker
I mean, it seems like that was JJ Abrams goal was to bring it back to the original. That was his mission. Yeah. And ryan Johnson had no desire to stray from that. Yeah. Although Ryan Johnson, I mean, with the with the casino planet. Yeah, I love love that. the ship Remember the ship that they escaped from the casino planet. And that's all very clean. Yeah, it's very like yacht.
00:04:52
Speaker
inspired. But I think like in terms of the prequels, when they go to canto bite, that's like one of my favorite. I know people i really lot it hate so yeah people had a lot of feelings about that. But as an art director, there are definitely movies where I go into being like, okay, I'm i'm watching this purely for the art and design of this movie. And in terms of that, the canto bite sequence is so good.
00:05:16
Speaker
And I love how they're all in all black and white and there are different costumes. like It's just such a phenomenal visual aspect of that movie. yeah you know Even if people are mad about it.
00:05:30
Speaker
What other parts, ah you know, like what other scenes or sequences really strike you as having good art design? I think um in, okay, this is going to be embarrassing that I don't know like which parts of which movies, but when they're on the rebel base and like that jungly planet yeah where it's like the big Mayan temple kind of structure they're in. In the older one. Yeah. They kind of do two of those. They do that again in episode seven, but in episode four.
00:05:55
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I love that. I think that's phenomenal. I think all the desert stuff, like the Tatooine desert thing is so strong um just in terms of visual designs and being different than other stuff that you saw in sci-fi at the time. right um And like those rounded Tatooine kind of like houses or the cantina. I think one thing that Star Wars has always been really good about is like really like having very separate, well-conceptualized architectural flair for different planets.
CGI Changes & Opinions
00:06:35
Speaker
and ah I know people people make fun of jj abrams for being like this is er George Lucas for being like, this is a desert planet and it's all just desert. you know There's nothing else. A single climate. Yeah, exactly. A single climate. Everything looks the same. um Every planet is the size of a sound stage. But i do I do love that each planet feels very crystallized in its own kind of design language. i love um and turkey in terms of speaking about the prequels, when they go to that like weird cloning ocean planet. Yeah, that's phenomenal. And Cloud City, I think the Cloud City sequence, especially when they changed it to have the skylights, which, in terms of George Lucas fucking around with a movie after it comes out, I really like that he added the skylights.
00:07:27
Speaker
yeah Yeah, that really enhanced ah the Empire Strikes Back for sure. It seems like they ran out of budget on Empire Strikes Back when they were doing the and the interiors of Cloud City. what In terms of like George Lucas messing around with the artistic intent of the movies afterwards, like what cgi edit are there any that you feel like, oh, that was a net benefit?
00:07:50
Speaker
It is. I talk about the Cloud City changes. I think that there were some enhancements to the ah the first Death Star battle, the Battle of Yaren, that really look a lot better. And the storytelling on that is CRISPR with the additions.
00:08:06
Speaker
I'm pretty hard-pressed to see anything else that really wasn't canceling all the changes he's made. Well, I know you love when they got rid of Max Rebo and put the sexy puppet CGI girl. What's her name? Oh, man. I can't even remember. I know. That's tragic. But the worst thing that they changed in Return of the Jedi was getting rid of the Yub-Nub song.
00:08:32
Speaker
Yeah, that's tragic. I mean, magic that was just absolutely a classic. Yeah. And I miss it. And you know what? ah The Dodgers, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Oregonians will bring that out from time to time. He'll bring out the Yum Nums song. I love that. Which is great. Okay, ty talking about other, I'm trying to think of other Star Wars designs. Well, youify one thing one thing that's interesting with everything you were saying about like the planets and the locations is I think that Lucas was a master of kind of taking what was given to him with wherever they scouted locations and then being able to tweak it just enough to make it look alien.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, totally. And they talk about the, I think Doug Chang, the designer, talks about the principle of, you know, Star Wars has to be in this delicate balance between looking like real world that we're used to and also like something that we've never seen before. And I mentioned earlier on the podcast, when I saw the trailer for um the new show that's coming out, Skeleton Crew, have you seen that trailer yet? um No.
Integration of New Series into Star Wars Lore
00:09:34
Speaker
Hold, please.
00:09:44
Speaker
Okay, so we just watched the trailer for Skeleton Crew. What did you think of the design over there? Oh, you don't want to talk about the Patagonia ad that just came up. That just came up. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I thought it is so crazy to have a Star Wars movie in the suburbs like that. Yes, exactly. And it feels very, I don't know how I feel about it. I'm still processing it. I lean towards my gut check is I don't like it being in the suburbs like that.
00:10:21
Speaker
I think it feels too Fallout 4. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. But that was my take on that trailer, too, is that the whole suburban scene sequence feels too much like a real suburb. It doesn't have enough of that alien quality, like just throwing a little alien kid out in front of a house. Yeah. But that looks like it could be a house in, you know, Redondo Beach. Yeah. You know, like that's all those little blue alien kids running around Redondo Beach. It's breaking the rules.
00:10:50
Speaker
Other than that, I'm excited about that show. I think it's gonna be interesting. It's kind of fun to have like a stand by me. Yeah, goonies in space. Yeah, goonies in space. Yeah. But yeah, I don't love the it feels so suburban. And it also feels like i mean I feel this way about Star Wars overall in terms of world building where it is hard to conceptualize like where do random suburbanite people live in Star Wars? like are they
00:11:23
Speaker
Like, i do they all work for the Empire? Are they like independent? like Like, that's the part where it's so like, with everything in Star Wars being like, here's the Rebels and here's the Empire. Like, it is hard for me to, like, have the suspension of disbelief of like, Oh, yeah, there must be no normal suburbs in the Empire.
00:11:46
Speaker
Like I just can't conceptualize. Even more than that, I think what it is is it's hard for me to imagine there being like an idyllic middle class yeah of the Star Wars universe, which seems so like French Revolution style. Like either you have really rich people or you have like really poor people.
00:12:06
Speaker
Well, that's what we've seen up until date, right? Like we've seen the really poor people, Tatooine. We've seen the really rich people like Canto Bight or Alderaan. Yeah. ah You know, that that first ship that we were talking about, the very first ship, the blockade runner, that's an Alderaanian ship. So it looks very clean and rich and all of that. But we haven't. seen Well, we've seen a little bit of the middle in the Andor series. We get to see kind of like.
00:12:29
Speaker
the middle-class people living in in apartments. So you see that, so you see it a little bit, sure but this is like new ground for them. Thanks to Harrison for his views and of course for dropping the first F-bomb in the history of the Star Wars cleaning crew.
00:12:48
Speaker
I thought about beeping it out, but then I thought it was kind of funny. And also you get one of those and you still get a PG rating. So I think we get to keep our clean rating on Apple podcasts. Hopefully I won't get into trouble. A few errata just because I was listening back to this and I was like, wow, I was so tired that night that we recorded this. I forgot some basic things. Okay. First off, I said Queen Padme's ship.
00:13:16
Speaker
Everybody is probably screaming at me saying it's either Padme or Queen Amidala. It's more properly Queen Amidala ship. So it's Queen Amidala ship. The singer of the not the lefty neck song, but now Jedi rocks is of course, size noodles. I don't believe I just can't believe that I forgot her name.
00:13:39
Speaker
I think that's about it. Other than that, I think we handled it pretty well. But ah we did have a couple more points to make, and I think I will edit those together for next time. So make sure that you come back next week and finish out the conversation with Harrison. We're going to talk more about design as it applies to Galaxy's Edge and the Star Cruiser.
00:14:03
Speaker
and a whole bunch of other stuff like that. So come back next week. We'll jump back in with Harrison and then we will continue on our intergalactic voyage. In the meantime, please like this podcast, leave us a review, tell your friends all of that good stuff. We'd love to get the cleaning crew bigger and bigger and bigger. Let me know what are the chores that you do while you are listening to the Star Wars cleaning crew.
Conclusion & Invitation
00:14:30
Speaker
I know a lot of you don't clean your kitchen. Totally cool. You can do whatever you want. It's your time. I just am glad that I can be there to entertain you. So we will see you next week. Keep your kitchens clean.
00:14:43
Speaker
May the Force be with you, we'll