S-03 Walkers Genesis | My Walker Project

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Walkers Genesis

Only four months had passed since the premiere of Star Wars on May 25, 1977, and the film's phenomenal global success was already opening the door for producer George Lucas to continue building the franchise he had always dreamed of. It was on September 21 of that same year that Lucas officially signed a contract with 20th Century Fox to produce the second installment of the saga. At that time, the sequel had no official title and was simply referred to as "Star Wars II."

20th Century Fox president Alan Ladd Jr. with George Lucas during the filming of Star Wars, circa 1976.

Drawing from a collection of notes and ideas he had previously jotted down in his notebooks, George Lucas was already imagining the settings and worlds where the new story would take place. One of these was a frozen planet that would serve as the location of a hidden Rebel base—and the site of an epic snow battle against the Empire.

As early as September 1977, Lucas began assembling key members of the original creative team behind Star Wars to start work on the film’s design and the development of a first draft script. Among those brought on board were Joe Johnston and Ralph McQuarrie, both of whom had played vital roles in the first film as conceptual designers, illustrators, and storyboard artists.

Joe Johnston's early designs for the battle tanks on the frozen planet Hoth. (December 1977)

In December 1977, Joe Johnston was struggling with the concept of using a traditional "tank" design for the Empire’s ground assault vehicles. He felt it would be impossible to convincingly disguise the fact that these supposedly alien machines were, at their core, just modified versions of conventional Earth vehicles.

As an alternative, Johnston proposed a two-legged, armed walking vehicle—a design that felt more original and fitting for the Star Wars universe. George Lucas liked the direction but pushed for something even larger and more imposing.

Around that time, Joe Johnston came across a promotional brochure that a friend had shared with him. It was a marketing publication produced by U.S. Steel in the early 1960s, featuring a series of full-color concept paintings illustrating “what steel will be used for in the future.” The artwork had been created by none other than Syd Mead, the visionary industrial designer.

One particular painting caught Johnston’s attention—it depicted a four-legged walking truck. Although it wasn’t designed as a military vehicle, but rather a futuristic transportation concept, Johnston saw potential in the design. He imagined removing the truck bed, replacing it with an armored body and a head, and transforming it into a formidable combat machine. That moment became the conceptual birth of what would eventually become the AT-AT Walker.

"George Lucas and Gary Kurts knew at the outset that there was going to be a snow battle, and they knew we were going to have armored speeders. But they hadn't really decided on what kind of vehicles the Empire would have or how they were going to do it. At first they considered using existing tanks from the Norwegian army, redressing them to make them look alien. I did a bunch of sketches using the tanks as a basis."

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"I do recall a number of different ideas about what the Imperial snow walkers could have been. At one point they were gonna be radio-controlled wheeled things and other times they were gonna be more like tractor tanks. I think it was pretty much Dennis Muren who was instrumental in advising George Lucas to attempt to do something quasi-animalistic. I think Joe Johnston was very much behind that as well. The rationale was that the artifacts of stop-motion animation, a mechanical or strobing look, would still be okay..."

2 legged Walker design Joe Johnston 1977

1969 Walking Cargo Vehicle painting by Syd Mead for the US Steel Company

Joe Johnston Conceptual Artist/Designer & Visual Effects Supervisor.

Phil Tippett "Stop-Motion" Animator & Creature Designer

Johnston was also inspired by something he would seen on TV, the General Electric Walking Truck by Ralph Mosher (1968).

“The walkers were inspired by War of the Worlds more than anything else,” Lucas says. “Where the Martians walked in machines like giant spiders. I was trying to come up with a way of making this battle different.”

1968 General Electric Walking Truck by Ralph Mosher

With George Lucas approval on the walker changes, Johnston took Mead's design and started militarizing it, giving it guns and a separate head. He also used copies of some design sketches made by Ralpgh McQuarrie as an added influence. During the selection process, George Lucas, Gary Kurtz, Ralph McQuarrie and Johnston gathered in a room. Lucas would extract a few sketches from the batch and comment on the design features he desired. Eventually the final design of the snow Walker was realized.
At the end, it was more or less left up to Joe Johnston. It amounted to a few sketches. Ralph McQuarrie, at that time, was going to England to do some paintings and full-size sets, so he wasn't too involved in the end of the design phase. The walker we could see on the screen is basically Johnston's design, with some borrowed elements from the original Mead's painting.

Revised walker concept by Johnston Jan19

Joe Johnston's revised walker concepts
January 1978