Here’s something you may or may not know about the director Gary Godardlive-action film adaptation of Masters of the Universe. Legendary Star Wars conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie he was initially involved in creating the designs for the film. He did it as early as 1984 during a hiatus in his work for Cocoon.
The projects he created for the film were mostly unused and it’s a shame because what he created was amazing! This is the version of He-Man that all fans like me were hoping to see!
Gary Goddard previously shared a good amount of details about what it was like to work with McQuarrie and offered some insight into the projects. You can read it after seeing the concept art!
We dive into all the details about making Masters of the Universe in an episode of our Secret Level podcast, and you can listen to it here!
The following is from Goddard:
“When I was directing MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE and we were just starting conceptual ideas, John DeCuir (CLEOPATRA, KING & I, HELLO DOLLY, GHOSTBUSTERS) was the first person who signed up to start the conceptual work. I was hoping to involve Ralph, but at the time he had signed on to produce Ron Howard’s COCOON and was not available. Then, after about three weeks into MASTERS, Ralph called and said, “Cocoon has been put on hold. It might take a week, it might be a month, it might not pick up at all. You still want me to work on Masters as I’m available. , but if I’m called back to Cocoon, I’ll have to honor that contract. ‘ So I said yes, get on board. So Ralph joined us, but as it only turned out for about three weeks when Cocoon went back to active pre-production and had to come back. But in those three weeks, Ralph has I did some interesting design work. With his passing last week, I went digging into my old MASTERS file and found these. I thought fans would like to see them because they have never appeared anywhere before, at least not for how much do i know.
SKETCHES – Masters of the Universe “Normally Ralph used to do the miniatures first, to get an idea of the world and the characters. These are some initial sketches for the “world” of Eternia and some of the inhabitants in there. We talked about “robotic sentinels” at the beginning because Mattel had stated in the beginning that He-Man “could never hurt people”, so this drove the idea of creating an army of “robot sentinels” that they would spark and explode if hit, rather than “die”. The female shown was Evil-Lyn’s first sketch idea. At first there was an idea for a “cute robot” that I killed because there were tons of cute robots on TV and in movies back then and I didn’t want to have another one.
VEHICLES – Masters of the Universe “In the first version of the script, and for Mattel, they hoped to see a series of projects with“ toy ”possibilities. Ralph began drawing some ideas based on some existing Mattel models for toys, then began to veer more towards an approach that based flying jets more on bird-like shapes, as highlighted in the center of this sketch series.
PLACES – Masters of the Universe “These are other miniatures that show the first ideas for the opening sequence. We had to be on Eternia and at the beginning I wanted to give the sense of a real “world”. Various shots would show different aspects and “terrains” within Eternia, which would eventually lead to GREYSKULL CASTLE. In my mind, the idea of bringing the Eternians to Earth was taken for granted due to the budget and this was the script I had signed to make. But I was hoping for a sequel that we would go to Eternia, and my thought was that the world of Eternia should be as interesting as anything in THE LORD OF THE RINGS (books of course) or the world of Star Wars Movies. But to be different, I was pushing more towards a Tolkien-style world for Eternia.
BAD GUYS – Masters of the Universe “Once the miniatures were unraveled, Ralph and I would talk and he would take things to the next level. Here we take a look at Evil-Lyn (and several variations) and one at Skeletor. In this, I was playing with the idea that SKELETOR could actually have a SKULL MASK that was shaped to instill fear in people. Below, as with The Phantom of the Opera, and with Doctor Doom and later, Darth Vader, is a scarred human whose face had been severely disfigured and scarred in some accident or battle long ago. So this was a SKULL MASK with a helmet. Eventually we decided it was too “Darth Vader” and even Mattel was of the opinion, probably rightly so, that Skeletor had to be SKELETOR, ie a SKULL with the ability to speak on an otherwise perfectly healthy male human body.
GOOD GUYS – Masters of the Universe “The first character designs for He-Man, Man At Arms, Teela and what would become GWILDOR, the character I created to take over from ORKO. In the days leading up to digital animation, the idea of bringing ORKO or BATTLE CAT to life in a live action world would have meant stop motion animation and a great deal of painstaking effects work. As this was done on a tight budget ($ 17,000,000), the idea of having a BATTLE CAT or ORKO was out of the question. But of course, by bringing them to Earth, we avoided any accusations of taking them out of mythology: they simply didn’t make the leap to Earth. In retrospect, it would have been very nice to have Battle Cat in that initial fight in the Throne Room and to have brought him back to the scene where our Earth teenagers say goodbye and go home. Ralph was still working on that cute little robot that I kept telling him was no. And these initial studies were largely based on Toy designs, and I was pushing Ralph to move away from that and start inventing our own designs for the film. “As we continued the development of the project, Ralph worked on some initial sketches for Castle Grayskull. In this case, I wanted the castle to be based on the iconic version of the animated show, but I also wanted it to be based on reality. His initial miniatures were very good.
Vehicle “He was also working on ideas for vehicles, although these initial ideas – as you can see – were based on toys. I told Ralph we had to veer away from any toy-like vehicle. I wanted to create our look and feel. Once again, we were in a world where sword and sorcery fantasy freely mixed with high-tech futuristic technology. There were swords and blasters, and there were medieval castles side by side with high-tech vehicles. With that, we decided to take some liberties, and yet to find something new that would be based on the world we were creating for the film and not on pre-existing toys. We have created a mix of flying warships and unique air discs.
“The whole final sequence, when we brought Skeletor to Earth, was supposed to be a huge ‘aerial chase’ through the skies of our suburban city. The key to this sequence is the idea I had for flying saucers and flying saucers.” Air Centurions “who would chase He-Man through the streets and over and around the rooftops. At this point I was still selling this idea to the producers and the studio – it wasn’t in the script yet. But Ralph got what I wanted right away. his earliest pen and ink miniatures, there was a grace to the figures: he really had a great sense of staging and design. Air Centurions were an elite part of Skeletor’s army and needed to have a military atmosphere about them. Ralph and I met a couple of times and discussed the idea and, at some point, Ralph would make some color representations of the Air Centurions in attack mode over a suburban city na. But then he got the call to go back to Cocoon, and we never got those color renders, much to my disappointment. But we got these great miniatures and preliminary designs (see Post 2 by Ralph McQuarrie and MoTU), and later Bill Stout would use them as the basis for the final version of the film. The interesting thing about MASTERS is that we initially had John DeCuir, Sr., but then another movie started, which he signed up for. And we had a hiatus in our schedule from the moment we started (in 1984) to the moment we actually made the film (1986) – when the project moved from Warner Brothers (of which Howard Kazanjian would be the producer). to Cannon. Once we were fully funded, Bill Stout became the key concept designer, initially becoming the production designer. Bill brought Moebius for some key element concepts and costumes, and Claudio Mazzoli contributed a lot with conceptual art as well.
But Ralph was in there right at the start. Working with Ralph, albeit brief, was a pleasure. Absolutely professional and easy to work with, it has always been a positive experience when we met to discuss sketches and conceptual ideas. In the three weeks we spent together at Masters, we were able to scratch the surface of things. But there is no doubt that sketches of him, simple as they were, helped me sell the whole idea of the “hunt in the sky” between the Air Centurions and He-Man. And it’s hard to imagine the film without this exciting chase sequence that provides the climax to the second act.
This latest pencil drawing by Ralph is my favorite: a lone air centurion, on a sleek, streamlined disc, ready for battle.
What do you think of McQuarrie’s concept art for Masters of the Universe?
Via: Filmsketchr
by Joey Paur
Source: Geek Tyrant
