Building a Complete Visual Dictionary

For the Episode III Visual Dictionary, Barnes created a cutaway view of cyborg General Grievous' brain. "I was asked to show a damaged part of the brain that had been shunted with electronics. I put the damaged part where it matched Warren Fu's artwork from the Visionaries story about Grievous' origins. What you see of the external Grievous in the illustration is a CG rendering from ILM. I built a full-size brain, with electrical contacts, etc., and we photographed it so that I could create a composite illustration. I created the cut-away view showing the brain and armor layers using the inserted photo of the brain sculpture composited with the other details that I illustrated digitally."

For the new Complete Visual Dictionary, Barnes was excited at the opportunity to explore some previously covered ground worthy of further description. "The new material makes the bound edition special in that it's more than just a combining of the original books -- it was a chance to incorporate information, at least for the Sarlacc, that came from sources outside the original film; novels, comics, etc."

Creating an all-new, elaborately-detailed Sarlacc model for the Complete Visual Dictionary, Barnes upgraded the creature's look with the new "beak" and additional tentacles seen in the Special Edition version of Return of the Jedi. "This model was really fun, because I got to go back and research everything that's ever been drawn or mentioned about the Sarlacc, and its possible interior, in other Star Wars books/comics/etc. It was then up to me to create the beast's innards so that they made some physiological sense and correlated with information from additional story lines. I had to make its interior structure consistent with the story of Boba Fett's fall into, and escape from, the Sarlacc, as well as with the work that other artists had done." This included illustrations of the Sarlacc's anatomy in the Star Wars Technical Journal and The Wildlife of Star Wars.

Constructed roughly in 1:72 scale, Barnes notes that there's an inch-tall Boba Fett within the Sarlacc, but you'll have to look carefully. "There are also other victims -- humanoids and animals in there. The entire model is about two feet tall, and is mostly painted Roma Plastilina clay, with a mixture of other materials for special details. This was the third time I got to sculpt guts, and I'm starting to like it -- the first was a concept sculpture for a transparent version of the opee sea killer from Episode I, and the second was Grievous' brain."