Black Hole Robot Concept Art in Starlog #35
A few years ago I ran across an 1980 issue of Starlog magazine (Amazon.com search*) in a bin for a few bucks. Since Empire Strikes Back was the cover story — not at all shocking for a 1980 issue of a sci-fi magazine — I had to buy it. Well, inside was more than just old Star Wars pics and articles.
Check out this page of Black Hole concept artwork! Disney’s The Black Hole* never does get all that much coverage these days, but I still find the film quite enjoyable and Maximilian looks as awesome today as he did when I first saw the movie in 1980.
(My first times seeing the film were an abridged version that we had while living in Turkey. The movie was chopped down for home film; a lot of the film was cut and it was a few years before I had the chance to see the complete movie.)
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Too bad it’s a scan of a magazine printed in the 80’s. I imagine the artwork itself is breathtaking in person. There’s an innocent charm to it. Before someone decided robots all have to be humanoid.
I could really fall into the concepts here. The original version of Maximillian is amazing, he looks like he’d fit in with the cast of Silent Running, which is a good thing. And is that a cannon(s) in his chest? This draws thoughts of Converters and Gobots, functional, coming to form out of it’s engineering rather than it’s design. Very nice work, I think I’d like to see a toy of this, or equally the V2.
The version of him with the electronic connectors is amazing, like a floating wall of pain. I can really see where the final version evolved from here. The one in the movie was very nicely realised, but this could have been it turned up to 11. I need a toy of this, in a nice dark red with some wear and chromed blades. The arms could be independent of each other, he’d looking cool spinning them.
The guards really look very humanoid, which is cheaper in a movie production to just put someone in a suit than build working puppets and rigs, it probably had a very heavy infuence on what they could do overall. I don’t know how big or small a budget it had though, but that would have been a massive undertaking … I think.
I find I have loaded the movie on my monitor and here we go. 1980 is the future!
@Derek – Agreed about the electronic connector Max. I suspect they skipped that version because of how big and complicated it would have been to create.
Though it’s not like he came out an anything other than badass.
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140122160234/disney/images/d/df/Maximillian_Concept_Sketch_by_George_McGinnis_04.jpg