From Concept to Screen: Kamino

Creating Kamino for Star Wars

Our friends at starwars.com have run another of their From Concept to Screen pieces, this time about Kamino, the Star Wars water world and cloning facility.

The Star Wars saga is not only filled with many great characters and vehicles, but the worlds that make up this galaxy far, far away are just as interesting. For this installment we brave the heavy rain and winds of Kamino and look at everything that was needed to bring the world, its inhabitants, and its native species to life.

Concept

With the script still being written, George Lucas shared early ideas of a world with cloners to concept artists in the Lucasfilm art department. He imagined this world as one consumed by storms, with very high-tech sophisticated cities built on stilts. Doug Chiang started working on concept paintings right away, with inspiration found on oil derricks in the North Atlantic. These oil derricks were then re-imagined to be the size of a big city like New York by Marc Gabbana, while Edwin Natividad focused on the storm elements, basing the waves on those he had seen in his home on Hawaii as well as the storms that were created for the movie The Perfect Storm. Originally, the Kaminoans were to pilot the typical flying saucers from alien abduction lore, which then became the main influence for the design of the city exteriors. With all the designs finished for the exterior of the planet and Tipoca City, Erik Tiemens made a digital composition for the establishing shot as a reference for ILM and the actors.

To read the whole story, go to Star Wars Kamino Concept to Screen