Writing over at SlashFilm.com, Bryan Young talks to legendary ILM model maker Bill George about returning to Star Wars for Resistance and the models he made for the show….
Can you tell me about your start in Star Wars in ’81? How did you get that and what was the first thing you worked on?
I was hired in 1981 at Industrial Light & Magic to work in the model shop on Star Trek II: the Wrath of Kahn. My goal at the time, of course, was to work on another upcoming film, Revenge of the Jedi. (That’s what it was called back then.) By the time Jedi was ramping up I had shown that I was really fast at building model prototypes and was pulled into the art department to work with Joe Johnston on a bunch of the new ships. I was in heaven! After that, I returned to the model shop to help build the stage models for the movie. I worked on the B-Wing, Shuttle Tydirium and the under construction Death Star.
How did Dave Filoni approach you into making models for Resistance?
He didn’t! We were having lunch and he mentioned that he had always wondered what a Corsair version of the X-Wing would have looked like. That night, I went home and ordered a Corsair model kit. When the kit arrived, I “kit bashed” a design based on the plane’s main fuselage and distinctive wings. When I presented it to Dave and he exclaimed, “That’s going in the new show!” I thought it would be used as a background ship. I was shocked to find out it’s the ship belonging to the main character.
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