Colin Cantwell
Colin Cantwell died on May 21 at his home in Colorado at the age of 90. His name to most of him may not remember much, but it is his lifelong work that has left a trace in the imagination of each of us. Conceptual artist and director, in fact, he has worked for decades in the American film industry, giving us some of the aesthetic achievements that have shaped our imagination and entire genres such as science fiction. His vast curriculum, in fact, includes the special photographic effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey, dialogues within Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the graphic design of WarGames computers. But most importantly, Cantwell will forever go down in history for having conceived the designs of several Star Wars spaceships, most notably the Black Death.Born in San Francisco in 1932, Cantwell had a degree in animation at the University of California, Los Angeles, and was later sent by the legendary American architect Frank Lloyd Wright to attend its School of Architecture. For various walks of life, then, he found himself working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, conceiving in particular educational programs for the public, and in this capacity he was invited in 1969 to act as a direct consultant that the CBS network had set up. to tell the story of the moon landing. From there then the love for the screen never stopped, but the man also delighted with other means: in the course of his life, in fact, Cantwell also wrote two science fiction novels entitled respectively CoreFires 1 and CoreFires 2.
But his greatest legacy will remain precisely the galactic vehicles of Star Wars: it was George Lucas himself who contacted him, after his work for 2001: A Space Odyssey, to ask him to create the Black Death. At the beginning, the lethal weapon of the Empire should have been a perfect sphere but the difficulties of realization pushed Colin Cantwell to propose that kind of circular depression that still today makes it so iconic. Although all of his prototypes were later reworked by other artists and designers, Cantwell also provided the original designs for the X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Star Destroyer, Tantive IV (which should have been the original Millennium Falcon) for not to mention the landspeeders and sandcrawlers. In short, it is difficult to imagine a man who, with his ideas, has sculpted the appearance of this distant galaxy in a more decisive way.
Colin Cantwell, who designed the Death Star for Star Wars, died at the age of 90
He also designed many of the spaceships for SW and other movies.
Colin Cantwell, who designed spaceships for the Star Wars movies, has died. The designer was 90 years old and died at his home in Colorado last Saturday.
Cantwell's partner, Sierra Dall, confirmed the sad news. Cantwell designed Star Wars' most important spaceship, the Death Star. In addition, he created prototypes of the X-wing Starfighter, TIE fighter and other ships.
Colin also worked on other films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and others, writes The Hollywood Reporter.
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