Star Wars Hasbro designer chats about the Celebration Europe exclusive Kylo Ren figure.

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Earlier this month, Star Wars fans from around the world got exclusive toy sneak peeks at Star Wars Celebration Europe in London. Several merchandisers, including Hasbro unveiled one of its new Star Wars action figures, one of which was only available only at Star Wars Celebration at the Forbidden Planet toy booth.

 

Hasbro’s Black Series action figures and vehicles have become highly desirable and none more so than Star Wars exclusives. One of the exclusive figures featured was a mask-less Kylo Ren, complete with the burned out shell of Darth Vader’s helmet. This exclusive convention only exclusive figure will most likely become rare and very valuable because of its unavailability anywhere else. Although, the Kylo Ren figure could end up going retail soon, it may be without a lot of those cool accessories.

 

Diymag.com caught up with Hasbro’s Star Wars Designer, Steve Evans at Celebration Europe to talk about the exclusive Kylo Ren figure and spoke more on our recently covered Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Jyn Erso action figure.

 

DIY: Why was Kylo Ren chosen as the character for the Limited Edition Show Exclusive at Star Wars Celebration Europe this year and what is it about this particular figure that makes him different from previous Kylo Ren Black Series action figures?
Evans: Kylo is really angry and as he progresses through the story he gets more and more frustrated. He did the deed with his father and the figure came a little bit from this moment [indicates to box cover image] it’s kind of like: “Traitor! That lightsaber is mine…” We thought what can we do? We hadn’t done an unmasked Kylo in 6inch and the scene is so great with him, Rey and Finn we thought let’s start there, let’s do an unmasked Kylo. Easy concept to understand, one that fans had been asking for, one that we can deliver. We had the scan of Adam Driver – we get the actors 3D scanned – but we thought that’s not enough, how do we make it a little bit special? So first of all we had swappable helmet and head, the head pops off and the helmet pops on. Usual lightsaber but it was this [melted Darth Vader helmet], it’s worth its weight just in terms of what it mean,s of what it symbolises. So again, we had scans of the actual prop of the Vader melted mask and we thought he should definitely come with that, it’s an exclusive and then we were like it’s still not exclusive enough! We’d been playing around with the idea of props, sets, scenarios…we really love the scene with Hux where he’s addressing the First Order on Starkiller Base and screaming blue murder about the end of the Republic. So we took that idea just to create a little bit of a First Order banner, it clearly matches our design aesthetic for Black Series with the red and black and it kind of symbolised what he stands for. We thought he’s kind of symbolised by the Vader crushed helmet and this kind of red regalia and the black and red is really stark, it matches Black Series, it matches him. Add distressing because Kylo is not a clean cut figure, he’s a broken character, he’s distressed emotionally and physically so it just made sense.

 

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DIY: How limited is this particular figure?
Evans: I don’t know the exact number but it’s way, way less…

DIY: Fans have to get tickets every day just to buy one?
Evans: So, we’re giving out a thousand a day because we know they’ll sell out, we have a certain amount that we can do.

DIY: Once it’s gone it’s gone?
Evans: In this format, yes. We will be bringing him to retail without a lot of the accessories but fans will be able to buy the unmasked Kylo same as he stands there but we wanted to do something special for Celebration.

DIY: Once again, the villain is ridiculously popular, why do think that is?
Evans: Because we’re all flawed. The heritage is interesting, him being Darth Vader’s grandson and the relationship with Han so he’s almost like a perfect bridge from the old trilogy to the new trilogy and is the one that we know about. There are similarities with Vader, when he takes the helmet off and shows the person underneath. He’s very ‘today’, he’s confused, he doesn’t know what he’s doing and that’s kind of a little bit reflective of today’s society. He’s a great actor and has a very specific voice, it’s instantly recognisable, very iconic looking.
Star Wars has always been about the bad guys as much as the good guys I think and the fact that the bad guys become good and the good become bad, everything is grey within the story, what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad.

DIY: Let’s talk about the evolution of action figures, the level of detail on the original 70s and 80s trilogy figures is nothing in comparison to these. As a kid did you ever imagine you would end up here?
Evans: Technology itself has moved on, we get the characters scanned, there are 3D scans so when they go on set and they’re acting they come off and they are scanned and we use that data to start sculpting. So all our sculpting is in digital, even 5, 6, 7 years ago it would be wax hand crafted which is the same as they did back in ‘77. I actually work with a guy, Mark Boudreaux, who’s on my team and worked on the ‘77 products, he’s been doing it 40 years and he’s been on every single Star Wars movie ever. So he’s in the team and we have young mid-twenties people in the team, it’s the perfect melting pot of old and new which I think is what the new Star Wars trilogy is about. I was a big fan, I still have a lot of the old figures myself, my personal collection and I have all of the ones that I’m doing now.
It’s just evolved, the technology is there, change of size. Black Series 6inch is extremely popular, we still sell three and 3/4 inch with limited articulation as we know. A lot of people here at Celebration are my age, early forties but there are also a lot of kids of 5 and 6, the principle is while I know there are a lot of collectors that still want the three and 3/4 inch figures it is really about targeting children in play and installing that love, that base of fandom at that age. And of course they buy two potentially because kids create stories and rather than have one at double the price I’d rather kids be able to buy two and start playing and start living out that world. So the 6inch became a natural progression where we could get better likeness, the same amount of articulation. So the 6inch is collector focused and the three and 3/4 inch are kid focused but I still collect them and I know a lot of collectors that still collect them because they’re almost retro.

DIY: So clearly the level of detail costume wise and props on the 6” is great. Who do you have to answer to in order to get everything completely spot on?
Evans: The team that are in the Star Wars design team are all fans anyway so that’s the first gate and obviously we work very closely with Lucasfilm right from the very beginning of understanding what the story is and who the characters are, which characters we should do, getting reference whether it be scans or photography. Then obviously we work back and forth with them for approvals on concept sculpt, deco and paint applications and they see all the pre-production samples. So there’s stringent checking and approval all the way down. Technology helps us a lot. There’s still things, for instance cloth will only work in a certain way at a certain size, so to be able to get natural folds at 6inch is really tough. Some figures can handle that really well and others can’t. For example we’ve got Kylo here, his hood sits pretty well for a 6inch whereas we’ve got Jyn here with a wrap, that would be really difficult to do in that material to get it to look right, it would just kind of puff out. So there are still scale issues, challenges that we work with but it’s usually case by case. You try to get as much texture as you can but there’s only so much texture you can get and we supplement with plastic as well. It’s really about planning the whole thing and using PVC where it’s right and fabric where it’s right as well.

 

STAR WARS THE BLACK SERIES 6-Inch Jyn Erso Pack - oop

 

DIY: Speaking of Jyn Erso, actress Felicity Jones – who plays Jyn – was presented with the figure for the first time onstage at the Rogue One panel and she had a very positive reaction to it. That must be quite thrilling for you when you’ve worked on something this long and the person it’s modelled on is happy with the result…
Evans: Yeah it’s strange, it’s really weird. Because you see these people, they don’t know who you are and they have no idea that we’ve been looking at them really closely for months and months [laughs]. So to have Felicity have it in her hand and see them together is kind of surreal.

DIY: Do you get to see footage before the films are released or is everything based on photographs and scans?
Evans: It’s a mixture, we’re not shown the movie early at all really but there are certain parts of the story that are shared with us, obviously assets are shared with us. If parts of the story make the assets make sense they’re shared with us. Disney and Lucasfilm work really hard at revealing the story – even down to behind the scenes footage and trailers – they’re released to build that complete story and we’re part of that story. I mean we’re way, way down when we start releasing the toys but we are a chapter in that story and we have to be very respectful of that. But they don’t tell us more than we need to know and rightly so.

DIY: The release of the figures are staggered so nothing is given away before the film comes out. Have you had any moments when you thought something could be considered a spoiler?
Evans: Of course! There’s always this sort of contentious [issue] whether it be Rey with a lightsaber – which we’ve just released adding a lightsaber to the 6” figure – because prior to the movie we shouldn’t know that she takes the lightsaber. We want that moment where it flies out of the snow through Kylo’s hands into her hand to be, ”Oh my goodness!” to have that on a figure in the store would absolutely ruin that. So again we work really closely with Lucasfilm and say, ”What are the things we shouldn’t be doing?” to protect the story, to allow the audience to enjoy that experience. So there are always things that we’ll release after the movie.

DIY: Do you have a favourite figure?
Evans: In Black Series? I have to make sure I mention a figure that’s already out there! I really enjoy Ello Asty, I’ll be honest with you I enjoy those sort of secondary characters. I enjoyed the fact that there was an alien pilot and he’s really nicely sculpted, he’s got a really great mottling effect on the head. I like Rey as a character and what she stands for.

DIY: Obviously you can’t tell us much about the Rogue One figures but is there one you’re particularly excited about releasing?
Evans: Well I can’t really tell you anything and I can’t say whether we’re releasing them or not but from a character point of view obviously we’re releasing Jyn and that’s exciting. There are a lot of new characters, I really like the new Trooper designs, the Shore Troopers, The Death Troopers and all the different variations, it’s really nice to see them. I like army building and that kind of thing and building diorama’s and having the ability to potentially have lots of troopers is really cool.

DIY: Do you enjoy going back to the original trilogy characters as well? Is it cool to go back and say, ”Actually we can make this character more detailed”?
Evans: I think that’s the biggest challenge we had with so many characters. There are so many characters already in the Star Wars universe and there are so many new ones coming in. It is impossible to deliver all of them to all the fans, it’s just practically impossible. We obviously support the new entertainment with a good draft of characters and then you pepper in the classics. We just announced Ben and 3PO, so going back and doing some cool ones is really good and then we have fan votes for comic conventions which is really good fun as well. I like the variety. We’ll have a season where you kind of build everything for the entertainment and there are seasons where you can go back in and do some of the older characters and more unusual ones. It’s good fun!

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3 thoughts on “Star Wars Hasbro designer chats about the Celebration Europe exclusive Kylo Ren figure.

  • July 27, 2016 at 3:56 pm
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    Celebration Europe was such a let down. Not sure what Disney was thinking.

    • July 27, 2016 at 5:17 pm
      Permalink

      Yeah, comic-con made Celebration look like a joke.

    • August 11, 2016 at 10:02 pm
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      Did you attend Celebration?

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