One of the most evocative of Ralph McQuarrie's early concept illustrations for Star Wars will soon be available as a 3-D vinyl model courtesy of the masterful artisans at Kotobukiya.
The figure designs inspired by McQuarrie's 1975 depiction of a duel between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker (or rather, "Deak Starkiller") include a more lupine face mask for Vader and a "breath mask" for Luke. According to McQuarrie, early versions of the script implied that the Rebel starship's hull was breached by the Imperials to board it, releasing the pressurized atmosphere into space. As a result, both Luke and Vader were required to wear breath masks for a duel sequence that was later revised (or rather delayed until Empire). While Luke no longer required the mask after script rewrites, Vader kept his since the look so perfectly captured his sinister mystique.
McQuarrie has always held a special fondness for this early version of Vader, which Kotobukiya has now masterfully translated into sculpted form. As one might imagine, the translation from 2-D to 3-D had its challenges. "There were many difficulties in this project, especially in making Luke," says Kotobukiya's Tomomi Iwasaki. "His figure is partially obscured in the original illustration, and we had to extrapolate much of his pose from the body language. For costume details, we gathered other reference material relating to this scene, and picked some costume styles which are commonly seen in some of the other Ralph McQuarrie concept art. Of course, we tried to include every single detail as seen in McQuarrie's original illustration as much as possible. However, it was necessary to make this sculpt with our special 'Kotobukiya interpretation' of the duel, as well as with additional guidance from Lucas Licensing. Compared to Luke, Darth Vader was much simpler for our sculptor and painters to create, as the majority of his body and costume details can easily be seen in the illustration."
In addition to the tricky sculpting, coloring the figures proved a challenge as well. "We had hard time deciding the color of the costumes, as well as attempting to replicate the lighting style that was used on Darth Vader," continues Iwasaki. "Using the same color in the illustration did not seem to be a good idea since recreating the colors exactly might result in a limited palette, which would be incredibly boring in such a large three-dimensional sculpture."
Even with its many challenges, Kotobukiya's interpretation of McQuarrie's iconic artwork is sure to impress fans of both the artist and of the Koto line of vinyl model kits. One can only hope that more McQuarrie concept pieces may be on the horizon. "Our original plan was just to create one McQuarrie item as a special event item," says Iwasaki, "but who knows what the future may hold! We are pleased that our 30th piece in our ARTFX Statue series coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Star Wars saga itself, and we are going to have many more releases in 2007 than ever before."
The two figures can be displayed together, locked in the iconic pose made famous by McQuarrie's classic illustration, or separately. Together, the combined bases measure approximately 16.5 inches long, with Vader standing about 11 inches tall. The pair will be sold as a two-pack.
