by Tim Munro of the Weta Workshop
As a life long Star Wars fan, I jumped at the chance to be involved with the "As You Wish" helmet project. The Boba helmet has always been one of my favorite designs from the films. A simple, beat-up bucket with a killer paint job, whats not to like?
The story of how this helmet came to be goes something like this;
During a quick meeting with one of our senior concept artists, world renowned LOTR designer Daniel Falconer, I noticed a plain white Boba Fett helmet sitting by his computer. We had a chat about it, he showed me his concepts and, when he wasn't looking, I stole the helmet and ran away (giggling).
Starting with Daniels concepts, and after a conversation and a few hasty sketches with Sir Richard, we had something approaching a resolved design. I wanted to create some sort of "tip of the hat" to popular culture with ties to the Star Wars mythology. The result was "2012" A play on supposed Mayan doomsday predictions. So I made a "Mayanesque" temple based (loosely) on the Tik'al Temples in Guatemala. These temples may be familiar to Star Wars fans as they were used in establishing shots of the rebel base on Yavin at the end of "Star Wars: A New Hope". The entire helmet was textured to look as if it were some giant turquoise sculpture which has become an object of worship, complete with a temple built around it and a little "priest" overseeing his world.
In the making of the model itself, I need to thank Paul Van Oman, Alex Falkner, James French and Shari Finn for advice and pointers. Paint-shop maestro Johnny Brough for guidance and the sculpting talent of Gary Hunt for letting me steal one of his amazing little "priest" figures
Thanks very much for looking at, and hopefully bidding on this one of a kind item!
Tim Munro
