As we shared last month, Funko are releasing six new Star Wars Funko POP! Holiday Snowmen for this holiday season, and Kristin Baver at StarWars.com talks to the art director, Reis O’Brien, behind the new line and learns how they came from a love of nostalgia.
StarWars.com: We’ve seen pink and red Valentine’s Day Star WarsFunko’s, and Darth Vader brandishing a candy cane for the holidays instead of his laser sword. But these snow figures are next level! What sparked this idea?
Reis O’Brien: This all came from a “blue sky” brainstorming session we had along with Lucasfilm a few years ago. We were trying to think of a nice way of connecting the Star Wars characters with a sense of nostalgia. We talked about kids making homemade costumes, or playing with their Star Wars toys, that sort of thing. Then one of our designers did a quick sketch of what a snowman version of Darth Vader would look like and we were all yelling, “Yes! That’s it!”
StarWars.com: There are lots of great little touches and details. What are some of your favorites on each one and, in your opinion, what specifically in the design makes it clearly read as the character it’s based on? Yoda’s carrot ears are inspired!
Reis O’Brien: These were all a little tricky, because you had to find that fine line between getting that snow-person look while still making each character readily identifiable. We really had to put ourselves in the shoes (or snow boots) of a little kid building this in their front yard, and so we made the decision that all of the parts and pieces had to be things they’d find around the yard; sticks, rocks, carrots, etc.
For Boba Fett, we imagined a kid finding the perfect sticks for his helmet scope and blaster.
And we pictured this kid meticulously placing tiny twigs on Threepio to represent his exposed wires. Artoo had a ton of detail, so we got to go crazy with the twig and carrot placement, but my favorite part on him are the two rocks jammed into the snow for his projector lenses.
I agree, Yoda’s giant carrot ears are a stroke of brilliance on the part of our concept designer. It made me laugh as soon as I saw it. But for Vader, we broke our rule a little bit and let the kid run into the house and borrow an old towel for the cape and their dad’s nicest dress belt.
StarWars.com: Of the six, which one posed the biggest challenge and how did you solve it?
Reis O’Brien: Artoo was the trickiest, I think. The actual droid has two legs (sometimes three) with a large open space below, so we had to solve that. We couldn’t do the usual big ball of snow that typically makes up the lower portion of a snow-person because Artoo is so low to the ground. So we just had to imagine how you would pack in the snow, get a basic Artoo shape, then maybe scoop some snow away to finally find that magic sweet spot, visually.
Read more here. Pre-order these new versions of Darth Vader (#556), Stormtrooper (#557), Boba Fett (#558), C-3PO (#559), R2-D2 (#560) and Yoda (#568) at Entertainment Earth and Zavvi now — happy hunting!
