Wednesday, February 15, 2017

The Home of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru


I was flipping through a book on famous movie sets the other day and came across a section on the Tunisian film location for Luke Skywalker's home on Tatooine. I immediately felt nostalgic on seeing the iconic domed habitat, the moisture vapourators and Luke's battered landspeeder. So I thought I'd create a small vignette depicting the home of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, seen during quieter times, before galactic events changed everything.

I found these models as 3D files on Thingiverse and adapted them to my purposes. They were originally much larger designs, but I wanted something compact, so I scaled them down to something approximating a 10mm scale. 


Luke's landspeeder has been fiddled with a bit to make it thinner, elongated and somewhat stylized. I tried to keep to the salmon coloured paint scheme seen in the film.  




A few have asked why I didn't put in Luke or perhaps 3PO and R2D2. To be honest I've always liked set-piece scenes where the characters are not seen. Sometimes the absence of things says more than having them there. It gives the impression that something is happening out of sight, and so your mind naturally starts to question and provide a plausible narrative. Maybe Luke has just come home from checking on the farm's distant moisture condensers? Or maybe he's just said farewell to his friend Biggs and is now home for supper, trying to convince his aunt and uncle to let him join the academy. For me, the absence of characters makes the scene more compelling and interesting.  

 
Thanks for dropping by!

15 comments:

  1. Very nice Curt, I had not picked up on what this was until I just had another look.

    ReplyDelete
  2. A splendid piece of work and I remember as a small boy being particularly affected by Luke's discovery of the Stormtroopers' brutal work - it still brings a lump to my throat now.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Makes me want to run into Toshi Station for a few power converters...

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's some splendid work Curt.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Loved this, its a piece of my childhood. Can't understand how you didn't win the round with this???

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thank you for all the kind words everyone - it's very much appreciated!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Curt - that is a really charming vignette. I completely agree with you that "the absence of things says more than having them there." That sentiment reminds me of classic Chinese landscape paintings, which generally avoid showing people in order to heighten the poignancy. Anyway, fantastic work!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks very much Matthew! I'm a now a new fan of your work, after having visited your excellent Oldhammer site.

      Yes, Eastern landscape art often does a wonderful job in establishing mood. I also like when this is used by modern photographers/cine-photographers, where people are not required to be in-frame to establish the humanity (or inhumanity) of the image.

      Delete
  8. Awesome work. Getting great skill with the printer.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your comment! As long as you're not a spam droid I'll have it up on the blog soon. :)