Solo: Corellia | Background
For the first background post, I wanted to talk about some of the work I did for Corellia, from Solo: A Star Wars Story. I worked with the Production Designer Neil Lamont and ILM Art Director James Clyne to develop the look of Han's home world, along with Vincent Jenkins and Will Htay.
The direction from Neil and James was heavy industrial, which I love to do, and thought it worked great for Han's home world. Lots of heavy pipework, rust and giant structures by an ocean. We wanted it to feel like constant construction was going on.
These concepts aimed to show the vast industrial scale required to construct Star Destroyers. The three stages of construction at the top of the image show a kind of timeline of the construction of one Star Destroyer.
One of the most important factors regarding the design of Corellia was the roads, due to Han's speeder chase of the opening scene. Developing how the 'islands' connected was vital in making sense of how the world worked.
Another important story aspect of the world was showing Han and Qi'ra's route toward the spaceport whilst being chased.
We also developed what the top surface of the islands might look like. Essentially, a labyrinth of metalwork, pipes and brutal forms. The title shot from the film ended up very similar to this concept, except much better!
Here’s a clip of how the scene turned out in the film:
