ILM give us a peek behind the curtain at the creation of Star Wars: Beyond Victory, the mixed reality playset from 2025 that brought the Star Wars racing world to life, and here Senior Concept Artist Casey Straka gives us a look at the creation of the games central character, the racer Volo. Also, check out their case design study article over at ILM.
Volo is our main/player character, and there were a few different physical traits they had to have, storywise; mainly, they had to be on the smaller side for podracing prowess, and have four arms for some specific game mechanics they wanted to incorporate. Besides that, it was a very open brief.
We considered multiple different species for Volo at first, lots of mulling over, lots of options that didn’t feel quite right. I proposed a Nikto, since they are such a varied species in the galaxy and have different subspecies and evolutionary traits depending on where they’re from. Maybe one subspecies evolved an extra pair of arms, which was a trait we needed. We landed there, but I don’t think we stayed there in the end, so I think Volo is something new altogether. I mostly took inspiration from previous Star Wars heroes! I wanted Volo to be very appealing, like you’d want to be their friend after you spend enough time following their story. I did a lot of additional drawings of Volo to find their mannerisms and expressions, the little things that make them, them.
Volo’s outfit was fun to do, I love a good Star Wars jacket. They also have flexible spines on their head, and how those move according to emotions ended up being inspired by cats; they flatten to their head when scared, flare out when angry, droop a little when sad.