Ralph McQuarrie, 'Star Wars' artist, dies

Ralph McQuarrie, an artist whose paintings of a gold-plated robot in an otherworldly desert and an intergalactic sword duel between a scraggly youth and a black-masked villain helped persuade film executives to gamble on a young director named George Lucas and his visionary story, "Star Wars," died Saturday at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 82.

He had complications from Parkinson's disease, said John Scoleri, co-author of a book of McQuarrie's art.

"Ralph McQuarrie was the first person I hired to help me envision 'Star Wars,' " Lucas said in a statement posted online. "When words could not convey my ideas, I could always point to one of Ralph's fabulous illustrations and say, 'Do it like this.' " McQuarrie, for instance, designed the Samurai-inspired helmet and black caped-outfit worn by arch nemesis Darth Vader. (It was McQuarrie's idea to put a breathing apparatus on Vader's mask, so that he could survive in the vacuum of space, which led to the villain's raspy voice in the films.)

McQuarrie's pens, pencils and brushes brought lush color, dramatic scenery and lifelike characters to stunning vibrancy in film classics such as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "Cocoon," "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "E.T." He was part of a team that won the 1985 Academy Award for best visual effects for his work on "Cocoon," about aliens who can pass on the gift of immortality.

As an artist for all three episodes of the original "Star Wars" films, McQuarrie was widely credited with shaping Lucas' far, far away galaxy.

McQuarrie had been fascinated with flight and outer space exploration since his days building model airplanes as a youngster.

As a technical artist for Boeing in the 1960s, he drew diagrams for a manual on constructing the 747 jumbo jet and later worked as an illustrator animating sequences of the Apollo space missions for NASA and CBS News.

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Through two artist friends, McQuarrie was introduced to Lucas in the mid-1970s.

At the time, Lucas' tale of a interplanetary civil war between a loose band of rebels and a Naziesque empire, had been rejected by United Artists and Universal.

Lucas enlisted McQuarrie's help to show movie executives his story. Using Lucas' script as inspiration, McQuarrie drew scenes of a space battle between laser-shooting fighter planes and lightsaber-wielding warriors.

Lucas, armed with the images, quickly won funding from 20th Century Fox and "Star Wars" was born, beginning with "Episode IV: A New Hope," in 1977.

Anthony Daniels, the British actor who portrayed C-3PO, initially turned down the part, unimpressed by his proposed character's lack of depth.

Then he saw an expressive drawing of the robot painted by McQuarrie.

"He had painted a face and a figure that had a very wistful, rather yearning, rather bereft quality, which I found very appealing," Daniels said in 2010. He took the job.

In "Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back" (1980), McQuarrie makes a cameo appearance in a scene inside a hanger on the icy planet Hoth.

On the 30th anniversary of "Star Wars," a collectible action figure was released of his character, rebel Gen. Pharl (a play on Ralph) McQuarrie, complete with blaster pistol.