While the cinematic release of The Phantom Menace may have been 25 years ago, work on the designs of the characters, locations, vehicles and creatures of ‘The Beginning’ got underway almost thirty years ago in 1995. One of the principal designers on Phantom was Iain McCaig, and speaking with Lucasfilm.com he reminisced about the process of coming up with character designs and how George Lucas gave him the latitude to work his way to Darth Maul.
“George [Lucas] just came up and said, ‘Darth Maul, he’s our new Sith Lord,’ and he walked away,” recalls artist Iain McCaig, who by that point had been working primarily on hero characters. “I didn’t know if Maul was male or female, an alien, anything. It freaked me out at the beginning that I didn’t get much direction. Then I realized that maybe he picked me because he liked my work and wanted me to show him what I thought a Darth Maul might look like. George clearly enjoys reacting to visuals. One of his many skills is that he can look at fifty things, make choices, move things around, take a head from this character and put it on the body of that one over there, and suddenly, it’s Star Wars. We learned to trust him and also to trust ourselves.”
It’s a fascinating piece so be sure to give it a full read, and while you’re in a McCaig mood read our vintage interviews with Iain and Iain and his daughter Mishi.
