The co-production designers on the series explore bucolic At Attin, the bustling pirate port of Borgo, and the Onyx Cinder, an all-new Star Wars spaceship.
The very idea of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew — an adventure told from the perspective of four young travelers seeing the wider world for the first time — invites the design of new worlds in rich color palettes, transfixing the characters and fans at home with all the splendor and danger the galaxy far, far away has to offer.
Behind the scenes, co-production designers Doug Chiang and Oliver Scholl tackled the job with more than half a century of filmmaking experience between them. “One of the joys of working with Oli is that it's a terrific collaboration, because he brings a very distinct perspective to it,” says Chiang, Lucasfilm's Senior Vice President and Executive Design Director. “I love those kinds of collaborations because we get fresh ideas. He may suggest something that I hadn't thought of before, and it's a terrific way of world building. It feels more authentic, and I think that's one of the things that's so important for Star Wars, is that we want this to feel authentic.”
Having worked as a concept artist on films like Back to the Future Part II, Chiang served as design director on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace before working as production designer on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Mandalorian, and Ahsoka. Scholl’s first Hollywood production design job was on Independence Day, followed by projects like Edge of Tomorrow and Spider-Man: Homecoming, where he first worked with Skeleton Crew creators Jon Watts and Chris Ford.
Spoiler warning: This article discusses story details and plot points from the first three episodes of Skeleton Crew.
Nevertheless, creating the worlds of At Attin and Starport Borgo presented unique challenges, not to mention the Onyx Cinder, a brand-new type of starship with set components that had to rotate 180-degree. With a bold new aesthetic defining each new locale coupled with nostalgic homages to Steven Spielberg films of the 1980s, the worlds of Skeleton Crew are here to welcome you with the first three episodes now streaming on Disney+. “We wanted to pay respect to Spielberg’s films, but at the same time world-build at a level that we've always wanted to do for Star Wars,” says Chiang. “We wanted to fill every frame with a visual spectacle while supporting the story. I think it’s one of the most beautiful series that we've done and it has a touch of nostalgia.” Recently, we sat down with Chiang and Scholl to pull back the curtain on the series’ first three locations.
Exploring At Attin
Scholl took the lead on designing At Attin, the serene homeworld of the four young protagonists — Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), and KB (Kyriana Kratter). The planet had to be at once painfully dull and blissfully safe, reflecting the emotions of the kids and their parents through the look and feel of identical homes dotting the quiet cul de sac, the school tram, and the downtown. “There’s a sense of dread,” Scholl says. “The kids want to have an adventure and they're stuck there.”
“Clarity is really important to show the progression of the journey,” adds Chiang. “We were very conscious of using the color palette to distinguish the environments. And it's one of those things where George [Lucas] had established that idea way back. He was very clear in terms of lighting and color and texture and form so that the viewer knows where they are. The color palette, for instance, on At Attin is your Spielberg suburban neighborhood with beautiful lighting. There are some sunset shots that are very Spielberg."
The school tram evokes the yellow buses of American public schools with a blocky, rectangular shape and rows of bench seating. “We didn't want to go so obvious as to turn it yellow,” Chiang says. “But there are very similar form languages in there and that was very specific because we didn't want to turn it into a subway car. It's a school bus, but our Star Wars version.”
Even the layout of desks in the classroom, lockers, and a large screen behind the droid teacher feels distinctly familiar. “The hallways are something that you could find on Earth in terms of the layout of the structures,” Chiang says. There’s even a callback to Scholl’s earlier collaboration with Watts and Ford, courtesy of set decorator Gene Serdena who also worked on both productions. “In Homecoming, we had the science experiments on the walls and along the sides,” Scholl says, “and we did the same thing here.”
Scholl pulled from earthbound architecture to solidify his concrete jungle of grid-like cityscapes surrounded by more swirling suburban abodes. “Star Wars has shown us many different cities, from glamorous to rundown and falling apart,” says Scholl. “In our case, we went with a brutalist architecture style. It has ornamental elements like in Soviet architecture and there are some Le Corbusier [the Swiss-French architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret] elements in the city development.” Urban development studies in the style of Kenzo Tange helped inform some details as well as an old photo Scholl found of a now defunct Armenian airport in the brutalist style. “I think it doesn't exist anymore, but that led to some inspiration for building shapes around the central plaza. It's basically a ton of concrete with structure and texture on it.”
Outside the city center, structures are more spread out and painted in earthy tones, with prominent and identical sloping roofs that could be seen from afar and mid-century modern interiors with a sci-fi twist. “When I rewatched E.T., the strongest element I saw was the rooftop shapes,” Scholl says, just a hoverbike ride away from the forest and adventure.
In pre-production, the sprawling landscape was laid out in the Unreal Engine with help from Industrial Light & Magic, so directors could scout their locations in virtual reality. “We wanted to have the classic Star Wars forest and not emphasize that we're on an alien planet,” Scholl says. “This is their home. They're used to it. It is more about the sense of wonder that there's something out there.”
Aboard the Onyx Cinder
Once our heroes discover that what Wim thought was a Jedi temple is actually a ship, the Onyx Cinder quickly becomes something of a home away from home. The designers knew they had to create a unique silhouette that also paid homage to other Star Wars ships, taking great care to incorporate decorative elements from previously established pirate ships in The Mandalorian season three. “Space ships are really hard because we treat them like characters. They need personality,” Chiang says. “And the Onyx Cinder had to be our version of something that was very magical in terms of both design and form for the story. And we wanted to go for a unique silhouette.”
Like the Millennium Falcon, the cockpit sits off to one side of the ship, although this version is wider to allow for the full crew — including Jod (Jude Law) and SM-33 (Nick Frost) — to fit inside all at once. “It's rugged. I mean, it looks like a junker. And that was on purpose,” says Chiang. “We wanted personality. We wanted this ship to be really interesting and really powerful because when the kids discover it, it’s upside down and the big reveal is the surprise as it turns over. That's the beauty of working with Watts and Ford; they love these visual tricks to keep the audience off balance, but then when you discover what it is, you get the joy of, ‘Oh wow, this is a really cool spaceship!’”
The six engines on the outside of the ship accommodate that rotation, while the black and white stripes on the hull lean into its pirate past, helping to visually tie the ship to the rest of the fleet from The Mandalorian. “In season three we had this cruiser with these very distinct zebra stripes, and it created a foundation for our pirates in our series,” Chiang says. “The starting point was ironclad armored warships of the Civil War from 1860,” adds Scholl. “We came across this black and white image that shows these steam-powered ships. They look like stealth ships because they're just these blocks with these beveled handles of thick armored steel.” The shape became the inspiration for the nose of the Onyx Cinder. “The other elements that are classic Star Wars when you look at this is kit bashing,” Scholl adds. “The way the surface has a lot of detail, things that give it scale. We have two classic circle gunports there. We've got the big loading ramp and the engines that are mounted on the top and bottom of the wings.”
Inside, designers and set decorators added crates, barrels, netting, and ropes to dress the 1:1 soundstage set that could also be flipped upside down, complete with long hallways of up to 150 feet each giving the characters plenty of room to run around. “You can't build two sets, one right side up and one upside down,” Scholl says. “We had to come up with a smart way of being able to have some key elements in the set that we could rig to be on the ceiling or on the floor, and the rest was symmetrical.”
“It was really important to Jon Watts that there was this magical moment when they go in the cockpit and they almost see the front windshield as a mirror,” Chiang adds. “Wim sees his reflection, and he doesn't know that he's in a spaceship yet. When the ship actually starts to flip over, that becomes the front windshield, which had to be flat so we could get that effect.” To further camouflage the true nature of Wim’s discovery, the seats were crafted to fold down, obscuring their shape. “That created a lot of challenges,” Chiang says. “Oli and I had to be very clever in terms of the design so that when it's right side up, it's still the same footprint.” A retractable control panel completed the effect for the cockpit, while elsewhere on the ship the team defined the hallways with distinct buttresses that could be shifted from the floor to the ceiling to complete the flipped-over effect.
The wretched hive of Starport Borgo
The first stop on this new adventure: the pirate haven of Starport Borgo! Carved out of an asteroid and overlooking a shimmering blue nebula, the design evokes nautical elements and a seaside dock. “There's literally a boardwalk on the front edge,” Scholl notes, alongside floating piers that tether massive visiting ships. “We laid out the ships as if they're floating on water,” adds Chiang.
Like a medieval city fortress, different levels are carved into the rock, narrowing as the design ends in the lower-level caves where the brig keeps scoundrels and rogues under lock and key. Set decorators added barrels and other fine details to give the port its bustling feel. “You see crates with exotic creatures instead of chickens,” says Chiang. “All those things help build this world out. Port Borgo was a really fun and challenging environment. It took a lot of development to get here, but I think it hits all the right notes.
“One of the challenges for us is we've seen so many starports and smugglers’ towns, and we wanted ours to be distinct,” Chiang adds. “Instead of putting it out in space, we put it into a nebula so you have this beautiful blue light that simulates and invokes water. And that was really important because if you look at the design of it, it's carved out like a bay. And it's very specific because we're trying to hint at things that we may instinctually know, but may not quite identify at first viewing. And if you look at films like Pirates of the Caribbean, the island hideouts are very specific. It's configured the same way. And the lighting was really critical because that blue gave you that feeling of water without being water. It's supposed to be hidden. It's supposed to be protected.”
Instead of rowboats, designers created bubble-like dinghies, including one operated by a Teek. “Those floating taxis were really important because the analogy in our world is that these are rowboats going from the pirate ships to the dock,” adds Chiang. “We gave them this really interesting quality so that they look very delicate and you can see the passengers inside. It's taking something that's very classical in terms of what we're familiar with, and then just changing it to be a little bit more exotic. I love when we can do that because I think that the magic of Star Wars is to reference something that we're very familiar with, but then we turn it on its head.”
Watch all new episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew every Tuesday only on Disney+.
