Thanks to io9 for pointing me to Michael Heilemann’s Flickr set where he has assembled a batch of early storyboards from Star Wars that were made available on StarWars.com’s Hyperspace Insider supplement. He has arranged them in such a way that you can also do a little comparing of old vs. new.
The set ranges in images from Star Wars, to Empire Strikes Back as well as Return of the Jedi. As you can see from the image to the right that is what Darth Vader originally looked like in a shot where he is fighting against the Rebellion in his Tie-Fighter outside the Death Star in the original film. There are definite similarities to the actual Vader, but the differences are pretty cool to look at.
The most drastic change, however, is the look and design of the Millennium Falcon (called only the ‘pirate ship’ in early stages), which was originally only half the ship it came to be. I have included the three different phases below for you to compare. You can catch the entire set of images right here.
