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A Different Steampunk Star Wars

Steampunk R2D2 and C3P0 by Mr Marcel E Mercado

Mr Marcel E Mercado sent word that he’d redone his MySpace page in a much more Steampunk fashion – and indeed, it’s easily the nicest looking MySpace page that I have seen (though it still tries to play music).  However, taking a gander through Mr Mercado’s work (he is an artist of no small talent) and I find that he has created his own series of Steampunk Star Wars images such as my favourite droid above!  Oh, and C3P0.  *chuckles*

Wonderful use of the glowing valves there, and you might want to take a gander at the other ones over at ImagineFX – recruitment posters for jodpur wearing Rebellion soldiers, brass masked Lord Vader, a heavily adorned Emperor and more.  Rather an unusual take, but the droids are easily my favourite.  Lovely work, Mr Mercado – you’ve got Steampunk down to a tee.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 10:39 pm by Tinkergirl and is filed under Steampunk Images.

  • Watchdog
    I am a long time fan of both Star Trek and Star wars and I love steampunk. Ever since I saw the first steam wars art here I have been thinking about taking the ultimate geeky showdown (star trek vs star wars) and doing a steampunk version as a comic. I only know of the one site for star trek (www.steamtrek.com), but there is plenty to work with if I try hard enough.
  • Yes indeed. We have put in quite a lot of thought on Steampunking Star Wars:

    http://www.brassgoggles.co.uk/bg-forum/index.ph...

    We threw out lots of ideas (and I even posted a quick script*) but ran into a lack of artists. If any are reading this and interested bump the thread or PM me via the forum. There is a lot of concept art knocking around but I think we can take things further than that.

    * I have a couple of longer scripts but until we can get pencil monkeys... ;
  • Caine
    I think Star Wars translates rather well to Steampunk...it wouldn't require much change even. You've already got fantastical walking robots, all they need are some steam and brass plating. Jabba's sailbarge would need very little work to fit in. Cloud City is conceptually perfect as is. Even the Death Star could be made steamy easily.
  • The art from the blog entry was part of a larger Star Trek Steampunk concept art thread that can be seen here:

    http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=47...

    There is some nice work there - I loved the Boba Fett. That X-wing fighter is also great.
  • I'd be very interested in doing a Steampunk adaptation of Kurosawa - the sticking point is always artist availability. I have a Samurai Steampunk comic story that was accepted a year and a half or more ago but artists are tricky to find - the current one seems to be MIA.

    I am going to get the new Criterion DVD release of the Seven Samurai (the print looks lovely) and that should get me all fired up. Anyone interested can drop me a line on the forum.

    Samurai 7 didn't really do it for me I'm afraid ;)
  • Star Wars is derivative of a who bunch of stuff, not just Hidden Fortress, and that's why it's a great movie. Despite his almost complete inability to write dialogue, and his lack of personal creativity, George Lucas did a great job at synthesizing his aesthetic and narrative influences on the first movie. There is a sort of steampunk version of Seven Samurai in Japan, in the form of a cartoon with steampunk elements.

    I think everything just looks better in steampunk, but the "nipples" on R2-D2 are a little weird.
  • Tinkergirl
    Indeed Mr Fantomas, however people are inclined to do variations on that which they know, and in the west at least Star Wars is better known than the Kurosawa masterpieces that it was deeply inspired by.
    It's entirely possible, however, that there have already been Steampunk variations of both the Seven Samurai and Hidden Fortress in Japan (as they are partial to their Steampunk also) but we have yet to find it over here.
  • fantomas
    ya...the problem with "steampunk starwars" is that starwars was basicaly a sci-fi ripoff of Kirisawa's "Hidden fortress".

    wouldn;t it make more sense to have a steampunk "hidden fortress"?
    or better yet a steampunk "seven samurai"?
  • I just saw this as well which some might be interested in...

    A Map of the galaxy where Star Wars takes place:
    http://www.thetrukstop.com/articles/2007/images...
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