ALT Thumbnail sketches, circa late 1974, spaceships, planets and Dai Noga creature encounter 1, 2, and 3 are the first sketches McQuarrie completed for Star Wars. Lucas likely showed McQuarrie photographs of fellow designer Colin Cantwell's sketches or concept models, being developed around the same time, before he began these sketches. The creature is a Dai Noga, described in the second draft by Lucas as a "cross between a huge spider and a giant squid." Luke, Han, Chewbacca, and an unconscious Deak Starkiller are depicted encountering the Dai Noga in a dungeon within the Imperial city of Alderaan.

ALT "George was very interested in science-fiction illustration and in fact wanted to be an illustrator himself at one time," McQuarrie said. With his interest in illustration art, comic books, and other visual media, Lucas recognized the effect that a visionary could have. He was also able to hire McQuarrie, who had relatively little film industry experience, at a more favorable rate than an experienced production designer would have cost. "Having an illustrator who could paint the kind of images he wanted was a natural thing for this kind of project," said McQuarrie. "I think most production designers are more architects-interior designer-type people who are concerned about getting all the architecture right for a certain period and designing things so that the set works for the camera. I was not concerned with that at all, and I could be very relaxed while creating all kinds of creatures and robots that maybe couldn't be made.

ALT In addition to the script, Lucas had prepared a packet of reference materials for the illustrator including vintage illustration art, science-fiction and fantasy paintings (including several from novel covers), comic art, stills from Metropolis (1927), real-world military photographs, and his own loose sketches for things such as the starships. The script itself was adorned with an illustration by Esteban Maroto, from a Flash Gordon tribute to noted artist Alex Raymond. "George had a lot of ideas about how this picture could look," McQuarrie added. "I think the look of the picture was almost as interesting, or more interesting, to him than the plot. He would keep leafing through material-science-fiction illustrations of the past from the magazine Amazing Stories and so forth. He wanted to get all this on the screen. He could see it in his mind."

ALT A background in technical illustration made the concept artist the ideal collaborator for Lucas, who had known since their initial meeting that McQuarrie was his first choice as the film's concept illustrator. "A lot of the artwork in the early seventies was incredibly cartoony and psychedelic," recalls Kurtz. “It wasn't very realistic. Both George and I felt that Ralph was perfect for what we needed because his style was realistic enough to be believable and imaginative enough that you could push it into the science-fiction/fantasy world very easily, without it being silly. We felt he was the perfect combination of that."

ALT Art by Grant Gould