Iain McCaig: A Creative Journey from Star Wars to Smalltown Tales

It all begins with concept art. Every character, world, and galaxy far, far away is the fruit of the imagination of incredible artists that is conceptualized onto a blank piece of paper or screen, and eventually takes on a life of its own in a multitude of mediums, especially TV and film. For Iain McCaig, concept art is just one way of expressing his unstoppable creativity; storyboarding, screenwriting, directing, you name it. It is undeniable that his work has shaped the entertainment industry for over forty years in many ways, especially the Star Wars franchise. From his early collaboration with George Lucas in the prequels, which led to the iconic looks for Padmé Amidala and Darth Maul, to his quest for uncovering forty-four years of unpublished works, McCaig revealed a glimpse of his creative journey.

“I get so excited. It’s very hard to stop drawing. I just draw; I draw lots of things, anything. From noon until four in the morning I draw. I just can’t stop, but if you don’t stop now you’re losing tomorrow, so I force myself to go to bed. But I’ve done five days and five nights in a row back in my youthful days [laughs].” Iain McCaig’s insatiable desire for exploring his imagination eventually brought him to Star Wars–which the film artist confessed was not part of his life until he was in art school. His early inspirations were authors Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Frank Herbert (the book Dune changed McCaig’s life), but also legendary artists Frank Frazetta, Norman Rockwell, James Bama, Arthur Rackham, and Moebius–some of whom were shared interests with George Lucas. When he submitted his portfolio to Lucasfilm, Lucas and design director Doug Chiang saw something within the several drawings and paintings that aligned with the vision for the prequels, which eventually led McCaig to join the concept design team alongside Terryl Whitlatch: “When I got to Skywalker Ranch, Doug Chiang and Terryl Whitlatch had been working on [The Phantom Menace] for almost a year. The walls were just wallpapered with Terryl’s creatures and Doug’s spaceships, planets and droids, and I thought, ‘What am I gonna do?’ Then I noticed there were very few drawings of the main characters—the human characters. But people, for me, are the best fantasy creatures. Yes, I can add floating droids, horns and wings on things and make you think you’re seeing horror or science fiction. But really, it’s just people; people are the most wonderful creatures in the world to me. So I got all the main characters and their costumes and then Terryl and I played ping-pong with some of the aliens, although Doug designed Watto and the original Neimoidians … It was a really fun team up on that movie, and for a while it was just the three of us. Then storyboarding began. Doug and I assembled and oversaw a large storyboarding team and wow, what a race that was; it was great! It had the same vibe as a really great Jazz band, instinctively knowing when to fall back and support, or step forward and solo.”

Iain McCaig praised George Lucas’ resourcefulness, revealing that his unique way of directing inspired him to really open his creativity. “He typically doesn’t give a lot of direction. I like to think he was empowering you to use your own imagination. It was also important to let the artwork speak for itself—you don’t pitch your ideas to him. We would pin it up on the walls or lay it all out onto the table (often crammed full of drawings and sculptures), and his genius is that he could come in, take this one and that one the head of this and put it on the body of that … and magically, somehow, it looked as if it had always been that way. You never wondered if it was or wasn’t Star Wars. George [Lucas] is, hands-down, one of the best editors and best choosers I’ve ever known,” McCaig explained. Lucas utilized two stamps to select the concept art, ‘OK’, and ‘FABULOSO’ (it is rumored that there once was an ‘IT SUCKS’ stamp, but disused because artists were threatening to jump off the roof ). The former indicated that maybe it was in the movie, the latter a definite ‘Yes’! Most of Padmé’s concept art was ‘FABULOSO’, although the Darth Maul iconic black and red design was just an ‘OK’, which surprises Iain McCaig to this day.

Although McCaig’s art and imagination was key for creating many characters in the beloved galaxy—Anakin, Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Mother Talzin, Rey—arguably the most iconic ones were Padmé Amidala and Darth Maul–whom the artist holds dear to his heart. After all these years, these characters have come to life from his drawings into live-action, animation, and many more mediums. He shared, “It feels exactly like being a dad. You know, you had something to do with their creation and with raising them, but then they go out into the world and become their own thing. You just stand back and marvel at all the other stuff that was inside them that you didn’t know was there, coming out now because of their interactions with the rest of the world. You feel honored to watch what they become. One of my favorite moments with Padmé and Darth Maul was the Halloween that The Phantom Menace came out, because in the US those were the most popular costumes. So I would go in the streets and there’s all these little tiny Darth Mauls and Padmés walking around, trick-or-treating. You just wanna go, ‘Oh, my children!’ [laughs].”

Speaking of children, Iain McCaig’s passion for art was so strong (in the Force) that it inspired his own daughter, Mishi, who collaborated with her dad on over fifteen films as a concept artist. He shared a fun moment that happened during the development of Return of the Jedi’s Special Edition: “There was going to be a new blue Twi’lek dancer (Lyn Me), and George [Lucas] wanted her to be dressed only in black straps. He approved [my concept art] but when we sent it down to ILM, they took one look at the straps and went, ‘That will never stay on her’. So I went home to my daughter and said, ‘Help!’ We took one of her Barbie dolls and some black tape, which we folded over to make straps. When we wrapped it and put up the arms it would fall off … we did that for hours. Then finally my daughter got it to work. We sent the doll to ILM and they copied the design for the Twi’lek. Lucasfilm wanted to put the doll in the archives but, you know, it was my daughter’s favorite doll, so I made them give it back.”

In the post-Lucas era of Star Wars, Iain McCaig continues to be a key consultant for the franchise, working on The Force Awakens, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Galaxy’s Edge Theme Park, and many more projects–including the limited Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi and the epic publishing initiative The High Republic. When asked what project he is most proud, of McCaig said, “The next one”, which is a tribute to his never-ending creativity. The majority of his life nowadays is committed to taking forty-four years of sketches, paintings, and stories and releasing them as books and films. Smalltown Tales, his latest collection of twelve illustrated ghost stories, is a product of this initiative–from a vampire who feeds on your abilities and dreams to a bell-ringer who finds an apprentice to release the evil spirits on Halloween. He shared, “The reason I wrote Smalltown Tales is because seven years ago I had a nearly fatal heart attack and almost didn’t come back. When I did come home, I realized my flat files were full of over forty years of mostly personal artwork that people have rarely seen and would have been lost. So I spent six months assembling sketches in a book (Once Upon A Time In The Sketchbook, by Design Studio Press). Then I turned to my closet, where more than forty years of would-be novels and screenplays live that have never been published. Every one of those would have died with me. Well, not on my watch! So I’m dedicating the rest of my life to getting every one of those stories out of the closet and published or produced. Of course, if I do them all as originally planned—novels and feature films—it will take me until I’m around 150 years old. So I took a dozen or so and re-wrote them as short stories. When I did, I noticed that they all seemed to take place in the same town, just at different times. Sometimes it was as far back as 65 million years ago, other times it was 200 years in the future. I gave it a name—Smalltown—and let the stories interconnect. The boy from The Smalltown Vampire, for example, has five other stories, right through to the end of his life. So do all the other characters. They’re all part of Smalltown history, and in my head they’re real people. I plan to write all of their stories, and film some of them too. It’s a very special place, Smalltown—a place I know better than anywhere on Earth, though I have never been there. Think of it as Norman Rockwell or Lake Wobegon, with monsters.”

Interestingly enough, the seminal story, The Smalltown Vampire, started life as a short story but was eventually rewritten as a screenplay and pitched as part of a streaming series, but because of other factors the series never happened. However, Iain McCaig revealed that he has plans to film the tale in the near future. “Smalltown Tales is an unreliable autobiography. I did everything in that book, or I met someone exactly like the characters in my book. The Smalltown Vampire began when I was six, when my brother and I found a working harpoon in a giant dirt pile behind our apartment. At the time, I was collecting Famous Monsters magazines, and was convinced there were monsters roaming the land. Time to hunt them down, I thought (and thank god, didn’t do)! But I’m also the Smalltown vampire himself, because I noticed that sometimes people would look exhausted after I spent time with them, and I wondered, ‘Am I sucking out their energy?’ So that story is about me hunting myself,” Iain McCaig explained.

The film artist confessed that, unlike his vampire counterpart, he doesn’t actually want to live forever, despite his never-ending creativity. “I love stories, but stories need endings. It seems to me that if you don’t have all the time in the world, then what you choose to say and do in your life seems to matter more.” He concluded by giving a word of advice to aspiring artists: “The one truly unique thing you have to offer the world is who you are. You have to be really brave and honest to share that with an audience, and learn your craft well enough to be able to say it. But if you can do that, you can do anything.”

McCaig teased that he has several works coming up soon, including a sequel to Shadowline and The Art of Star Wars: The High Republic (Volume II). Make sure to pick up your copy of Smalltown Tales today!