‘Star Wars’ Concept Art: A Death Star Rises From The Jakku Desert
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In early January of 2013, a few months after The Walt Disney Company had purchased Lucasfilm, a meeting was called to establish concept art for the film that would becomeStar Wars: The Force Awakens. This was long before a script was in place, and even a few weeks beforeJ.J. Abramswas officially announced as the film’s director. One of the people present wasDoug Chiang, a talented concept artist who now serves as Lucasfilm’s vice president and executive creative director, and you may have seensomeof theconcept artthat wasproducedin the days after that early meeting.
Today, Chiang has shared a piece of concept art we’ve never seen before – one that involves a Death Star rising out of the sands of Jakku. Check it out below.
Star Wars Concept Art
A post shared by Doug Chiang (@doug_chiang)
At Star Wars Celebration Europe back in 2016, welearnedthat Chiang created an image of a Death Star that crash landed on Tatooine, which inspired the idea for Jakku. In this new image, Chiang specifically mentions that this Death Star is rising out of the desert of Jakku, so this must have been a bit later in the creative process – but still within an initial three month window in which production designerRick Carterand his team were tasked with generating any material they thought might work (or look cool) in a newStar Warsmovie. And don’t forget that theStar Warsfranchise isn’t done with Death Stars yet: we see one featured prominently in thefirst trailerforStar Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
In the meantime, encourage you to click around in those links in the first paragraph for more Force Awakens concept art from the early days of development, and/or to buyThe Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakensto have a hard copy of much of it for yourselves.
