Tag: solo

“One of the best bits was my daughter Eloïse’s contribution, who was one of the Cloud-Riders. You only get a very, very, very little glimpse of him. Eloïse is 11 now, but ever since I’ve been on Force Awakens — she was about six when I started on that — she would every so often say, ‘Dad, I’ve drawn you some aliens. Can you make them real? Can you draw them up better?’ Some of them I thought were really good. They were very simple drawings but the actual core idea was quite cool. Since The Force Awakens, I’ve occasionally taken some of her drawings, redrawn them in my style, and included them in our presentations. They’ll go up on a big wall, and J.J. [Abrams] or whoever the director is will go around and pick some aliens. I’ll go home and she’ll be like, ‘Dad, how’s my alien doing?’ And I go, ‘Well…it’s still on the wall.’ There’s a pyramid of choice. As it gets toward the top, things fall off and aren’t made, until we get to the final top row, as it were, which gets made. There’s a C list and a B list and then the A list. ‘Dad, how’s my alien doing?’ ‘Well, it’s on the B list.’ She’s like, ‘Okay, okay, okay.’ [Laughs] Then, ‘How’d it do today?’ ‘Well, sorry to say, it’s not going to happen. It didn’t make it to the A list.’ And she was brilliant about it. Given what I tell her about what I do, she fully realizes the precariousness of the whole thing. You know, when you go to see the final film and half the stuff we do is not in the film, she knows it’s not a given. So she’s very grown-up about it.

“This character, Auromae Iselo, really made it high up in The Last Jedi. Rian [Johnson] had picked him and he was getting close, and then he didn’t happen. And then I put him in again; I’d keep redrawing him and putting him in new costumes. I think I put him in a casino outfit for The Last Jedi. [Laughs]

“So on Solo I drew him looking like some cool bounty hunter, and he got picked! ‘Eloïse, he’s been picked! He’s been picked!’ She was really excited, but I said, ‘Look, Eloïse. Don’t count your chickens. Still not definitely going to be in the film even though he’s been picked. Don’t get your hopes up.’ Then the days go on, I was like, ‘Eloïse, we’ve made it! He’s been made, he’s been sculpted!’ She was really excited. ‘It’s the same performer that was in Pao, who I also designed, with Derek Arnold in Rogue One!’ And then, I took her to the cast and crew screening. You can see him twice: The first time in a huge wide of the space port and then very briefly at the end when he takes his Cloud-Rider mask off. And that was enough for her. She was really excited, she was so happy. And on top that, I’d also previously emailed Pablo [Hidalgo] of the Lucasfilm Story Group and told him the story I just told you. ‘Is there any chance that his name can somehow be based off Eloïse’s name?’ Her full name is Eloïse Aurora Mae, so he semi-anagrammed it into Auromae Iselo. Again, she was like, blown away by that.”

Let me tell you a little more about Qi’ra. She didn’t exactly look fierce. Why, I doubt she’d come up to the knee joint of a bageraset. But people don’t wind up with Crimson Dawn’s symbol on their wrists unless they they can handle themselves. And Qi’ra definitely could.

How do I know that? Because working at the Lodge I’ve seen about a thousand outlaws and bounty hunters, which means I got a crash course in body language – no matter how many limbs you have or what they look like.

I can tell if you’re armed, and if you’re used to being armed. A newbie walks around like the blaster on his hip weighs 10 kilos, but a veteran moves like the weight is nothing new to her.

Qi’ra carried herself like her blaster was an old friend.

And she had the manor of someone used to being obeyed. when she’d come to see me, she was always polite and professional. She never treated me or anyone else like a servant, ask for anything unreasonable, or try to shortchange old Tibbs. But whether she needed kod’yok steaks for Vos’s yacht or information about an overdue courier, Qi’ra expected to be taken seriously and dealt with quickly and fairly. She had a certain authority, I guess that’s the word. The kind you’d expect from a Crimson Dawn lieutenant …and then something more.

Qi’ra. Remember that name. Something tells me we’ll all hear it again.

Anyway, Qi’ra went off with Beckett’s gang and after that …who knows?

Midnight on Qi’ra, in Solo: A Star Wars Story: Tales from Vandor