The Wildlife of Star Wars: A Field Guide

by Terryl Whitlatch and Bob Carrau

Book Overview

Now in paperback, this deluxe field guide offers a unique look at the creatures that populate the Star Wars galaxy. Packed with hundreds of detailed and colorful illustrations of exotic entities in a wide array of habitats--from the ice fields of Hoth and the pastures of Naboo to the concrete jungle of Coruscant--this entertaining and comprehensive classic also provides information on the mating habits, feeding patterns, and defense mechanisms of...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811847365
• ISBN13: 9780811847360
• Release Date: September 2010
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (CA)
• Length: 175 Pages
• Weight: 2.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 9.9" x 12.1"

Customer Reviews

Genius

I bought this book not because i am a starwars fan but because i am a fan of conceptual design of creatures and species. Starwars has some of the best conceptual designers in the business. This bookcase shows an enormous amount creatures from the star wars saga. The species have information about each species; from how they breed to how they fight. Every single page has amazing art front and back. This a book i could not live without.

The Wildlife of Star Wars

The drawings in this book are very amazing. The creatures in this book can keep you reading for hours. I would suggest this book to anyone who likes Star Wars

A MUST-HAVE!

Not only is this tome THE book of the year -- if not the decade -- for Star Wars enthusiasts (such as myself), but it will also go down well with biologists (such as myself).Extremely well thought out, the authors draw parallels with animals found on Earth to make the creatures of the Star Wars universe realistically believable. For example, the size relation of the nuna's egg to the adult female is also found in the kiwi, and the multiple embryos coming from that single egg are similar to the multi-spawning eggs of some parasitic wasps. The similarities between banthas and elephants are copious, and the mouth-breeding behaviour of the opee sea killer will be familiar to any avid aquarist.There are also many wonderful and enchanting "background" details in many of the drawings, like Bib Fortuna looking to purchase a Nightsister's rancor, an Ewok being carried off by a condor-dragon, and some Tatooine anoobas picking over the remains of the late podracer Teemto Pagalies (those are DEFINITELY his goggles).The book is arranged in chapters by planet. (Naboo has three chapters for its various macroenvironments: terrestrial, deep aquatic, and swamp.) The ecologies of the worlds and the niches of the native creatures are all highly detailed and superbly explained. Great care and effort was put into expanding the range of Star Wars wildlife knowledge, using conceptual sketches and some apparently original animals to flesh out the bestiary to a fantastic extent. The images of the creatures themselves are -- and I have NEVER before used this term outside of describing food before, but it is now necessary -- sumptuous. The people responsible for the content of this book deserve to win awards. Lots of 'em.Understandably, there are a few creatures which push the credibility envelope, such as the thrantids and practically anything over 40 meters in length. But they're all still nifty, and even the mind-boggling space slug was given a decently credible internal anatomy. And considering that here on Earth, there are bacteria which live miles below the crust, eat rock, breathe iron, and excrete gold, a little leeway for plausibility is permitted. };DThis would not be a Star Wars book review without the requisite (complaining) that any such work seems to engender. So here it is. The book's too short. It would have been nice to learn more about the creatures that were marginalized, like the oft-mentioned but never focused-upon snapping bivalve nyorks of the Naboo swamps and the tiger-striped giraffe-like creature which appears in the endpapers and at the Coruscant Livestock Exchange and Exhibition; an animal which is visually arresting, but not even so much as named. There are a few beasts in the size-comparison endpapers which do not appear in the text (which is a shame, because they look quite interesting), such as the fin-backed, tusk-jawed crocodile-thing at the front of the book. While variant species of bantha, krayt dragon, thranta, mynock, an

The Wildlife of Star Wars

From the fertile imaginations of Whitlatch and Carrau comes this immense coffee-table book. This book is a detailed bestiaryof the living creatures that inhabit the planets of George Lucas's Star Wars saga. Rendered beautifully in color and formatted in the style of a naturalist's field journal. the book showcases animals seen in the films and (finally) givesimages to other creatures formerly only described in print.Mating habits, social interractions, hunting techniques, andlife cycles of Banthas, Dewbacks, Rancors,and Kadus are shown.As well as others who only made brief appearances or just named in print such as: Womp Rats, Nerfs, or that trash compacter Monster (Dianoga) which I finally saw what that eye belonged to.Fauna are represented planet by planet and each new world givesa brief but informative introduction on the ecosystem. This lavishly illustrated and beautifully rendered book makes aexcellent companion to the Illustrated Star Wars universe. As well as the books of the conceptual art. For any fan this is anessential volume and a most welcomed addition to one's personallibrary. A pity that George Lucas does have an introductorystatement printed to acknowledge or at the very least give kudos to the splendid work Terryl Whitlatch and Bob Carrau have done in giving form and life to the creatures that inhabit his universe.