At the age of 90, Colin Cantwell Dies on Saturday, May 21, 2022. After a long struggle with dementia, the idea artist is said to have died at his Colorado home. Sierra Dall, Cantwell’s longtime collaborator, later informed Newsy of the artist’s death.
He was well known for his work on Star Wars alongside George Lucas, where he conceived and built prototypes for the X-wing, TIE fighter, Star Destroyer, and Death Star, amongst other things.
Colin Cantwell’s legacy is still being felt today
Colin Cantwell was born in San Francisco in 1932, and his interest in architecture began at an early age. He then went on to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he proposed that the university create an animation department. Cantwell would go on to become the first UCLA animation graduate.
Cantwell spent most of the 1960s and 1970s working on real-life NASA missions, investigating the last frontier, and sci-fi visions of what might be available.
He had a successful career before deciding to pursue a career in Hollywood. Cantwell worked at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, developing public education projects to help people understand space flight.
He would go on to create a number of key scenes in a number of science fiction films, integrating his structural and architectural interests. His contributions included ideas for 2001: A Space Odyssey, particularly the film’s dramatic opening sequence.
After viewing his work on the spacecraft in 2001 and serving as a technical dialogue marketing consultant for Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1973, George Lucas requested him to be an idea artist on Star Wars.
From the X-Wing fighter and Rebel cruisers to the Star Destroyers and Death Star, his test drawings were used to create all of the ships seen in the original 1977 film.
Cantwell claimed that the X-Wing was inspired by the back end of a dart he’d thrown in a pub, and the Death Star’s trench, which Luke Skywalker flies down to destroy, was inspired by a touch of laziness.
His importance to the Star Wars brand cannot be understated, as his work defined the franchise’s design beliefs, which are still evident in new designs released in shows like The Mandalorian.
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Colin, on the other hand, did not stop there. He later worked as a computer programmer on John Badham’s Cold War drama WarVideo games, which was released in 1983.
Colin Cantwell preferred a quiet life away from the spotlight, subsequently working as a computer engineer in Colorado. His two science fiction novels are CoreFires 1 and CoreFires 2. And fans of the artist will remember him fondly for his contribution to the construction of a galaxy far, far away.
