The latest from Acme Archive's Star Wars Character Key series -- Han Solo -- is now available for pre-order at StarWarsShop.
And with all the attention on Star Wars animation these days (The Clone Wars, anyone?) we thought now might be a good time to get an update from Acme's Chris Jackson on their expanding Character Key series and find out a bit more about their collaboration with Gentle Giant Studios. Gentle Giant, of course, has been producing a popular line of Star Wars animated-style statues which complement the look of Acme's Character Keys, much to the delight of collectors.
When did it become evident that it might be cool if Acme and Gentle Giant collaborated on the classic trilogy animation designs for a uniform look between the Character Keys and statues?
Well, honestly, it was evident from the first time we saw Gentle Giant's take on Princess Leia! Ironically enough, we were developing ideas around a Princess Leia of our own at the time, but we were focusing on Leia from Return of the Jedi while GG's was from A New Hope. We're all big fans of Gentle Giant here at Acme and we've long recognized how well our Clone Wars Character Keys matched up with their Clone Wars maquettes, so teaming up simply made sense. Plus, it's nice to have everything match from a style point of view.
How does the designer approach the classic characters to render as animated characters? I assume he or she is using the original 2-D Clone Wars look as a basis to start, but are there any other influences at work?
You hit the nail on the head with the idea of starting from [the first 2-D animated] Clone Wars. The whole idea was to bring the original trilogy world into that same space that the Clone Wars series occupied much in the way that the creators of that show did with the characters from Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. There are certainly other influences involved as the designer (so far, all of our original trilogy keys have been designed by Peter Ferk) will, of course, bring his own style to anything created, but we worked hard to keep it in the realm of the Clone Wars series more than anything else.
Acme and Gentle Giant are essentially creating a unique property -- the look and style of these new keys and statues is totally fresh to Star Wars and without precedent. What is it like to reverse-engineer these characters -- that is, create a look that appears natural to an animated show, but without the show itself?
It's certainly a challenge to do that, but both Acme and GG have loads of creative-minded and talented people working for them, so that's a big help. Honestly, I'm sure it also helps that both companies have done a great deal of high quality work with the Clone Wars characters. We're all very familiar with the look and the style of the animated series and, of course, with the look of the actors playing the parts in the original trilogy, so we have a pretty good idea of what these characters would look like in the world of Genndy Tartakovsky/Clone Wars. Collaboration is very important though; one person alone could not objectively come up with all of these great designs!
Can you describe the evolution of a design -- is it truly collaborative, or does one studio take the lead and let the other follow with some modifications to suit their particular needs, etc.?
So far, it has been mostly one studio taking the lead and the other modifying to match that first studio's original design. Both companies started down this Star Wars Animated line independently, so now we are catching up with one another and using existing designs and products as jumping off points. Future releases will likely be more collaborative in nature.
Are there any characters that have worked well in 2-D but not as a 3-D sculpture? Or vice-versa?
As of yet, we've not run into any problems coming up with 2-D versions of their maquettes and they've not had any problems producing 3-D versions of our character keys...so far, so good!
