When I discovered J. W. Rinzler’s Star Wars: The Blueprints, I instantly knew I was going to end up spending many hours in the immediate future trying to translate its technical drawings into 3D environments from the original Star Wars trilogy.
I’m all about reverse-engineering things that make me feel…feelings, a tendency that manifests in my various passions for music, science, theme park design, film production, etc. For the first part of this year, I used bits of down time to work on a 3D model of the changing designs of Hogwarts; you can find my progress in my other blog. That project is far from over, but recreating the worlds of Star Wars is occupying more of my time at the moment. After all, the technical drawings in this book (plus others I’ve found online) are the ones that were used to build the real-world sets for the films.
When my beautiful copy of Rinzler’s book arrived, the first challenge was immediately obvious: many of the coolest drawings spanned multiple adjacent pages, and the parts in the gutter between pages were difficult to see and impossible to scan. That soon led me down some paths I never thought I’d travel, but more on that in a later post. I first wanted to at least try out the concept. So I started with a drawing that fit all on one page: Obi-Wan’s house on Tatooine, AKA “Int. Cave Dwelling”.
Not too shabby. Actually, not nearly as shabby as old Ben’s house was designed to be, but I’m not trying to do much texturing or set dressing with this project. I’m more interested in breadth than in depth. For me, part of the fascination is in seeing exactly how these sets related to each other in space, and where they fit into the real world.
For instance, just over 43 years ago, this set was built in Stage 7 at Elstree Studios, a stage that still exists to this day. Two other sets from the original Star Wars also occupied Stage 7 at the same time, both from other parts of Tatooine: the homestead kitchen and the Tosche Station interior. (The latter didn’t make the final cut of the film.) I only have simplified plans for these, and no elevations, but I figured I’d get some basic representations of them in there for the purposes of visualization.
For example, let’s hop into Obi-Wan’s house, right around where Luke first activated his lightsaber, and turn around to face where the cameras were:
That’s the kitchen on the left and a bit of Tosche Station on the right. We’re just seeing the outer walls of the sets, though. The next render may help you visualize this a little better:
Hey, there we go! It’s all three sets, as they existed together in Stage 7, conveniently showing them all from the general directions seen in the film. Let’s also pull back for an aerial view:
I love how this exposes the forced perspective in the design of Obi-Wan’s house. The real-world building on Djerba Island that stood in as the exterior doesn’t taper like that – it’s a classic trick that crops up all over the various sets of these films, making the environments look larger than they actually are. Near the top of the image, you can also clearly see the large scenic backdrop that represented the blinding desert landscape outside the windows of Tosche Station.
While we’re here, we might as well check out a few other angles from before I built Tosche Station:
Anyway, who knows how long this project will last, but I’ll enjoy it for as long as my brain will allow. For the next steps, I’ll be using those multi-page drawings…more on that process soon!
Sets of Star Wars 