Point your browser towards StarWars.com for an interview segment recently conducted with Funko senior product designer Reis O’Brien in which he speaks about designing the new Star Wars Concept series POP! figure assortment that will be exclusive to their 2020 Virtual Con Galactic Edition event. Included in the article are boxed photos of the four figures that make up this line – Boba Fett, Chewbacca, Darth Vader, and Starkiller. Check out the boxed photos in the image gallery provided below and be sure to take the supplied source link for the full inteview with O’Brien.
Funko’s 2020 Virtual Con Galactic Edition event is scheduled to take place sometime next week.
When Funko’s senior product designer Reis O’Brien was younger, he came upon some Star Wars tomes that would have a profound effect on him. They weren’t the sacred Jedi texts, but for a fan and a future artist, they were close.
“I had books, when I was a kid. The Art of Star Wars and The Art of The Empire Strikes Back,” O’Brien tells StarWars.com. “They had a lot of [Ralph] McQuarrie sketches in them. Those early sketches always blew my mind.”
Ralph McQuarrie is, of course, the legendary Star Wars concept artist that gave form to George Lucas’ ideas when making the original trilogy. To put it simply, Star Wars does not exist as we know it without his work. On top of that, his images were gorgeous, somehow telling stories of new worlds, heroes, villains, and robotic beings. “Initially, it was important to me because it was just so beautiful and rich and detailed,” O’Brien says. “But McQuarrie had a way of dipping the entire scene in mood. And not every artist can do that.”
While what ended up on film was naturally a little different from McQuarrie’s sketches and paintings, due to realities of production or script changes, he laid the blueprint. Now, Funko and O’Brien are honoring McQuarrie’s contributions to a galaxy far, far away with the Concept Series, a line of Funko Virtual Con-exclusive Pop! bobbleheads based on his designs, including Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Starkiller, and Boba Fett. It’s a project that started with O’Brien, and one that he’s been itching to do for a while.
