Star Wars: Caarita | Watch Beast (2003)
Expanding the World of Star Wars
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I was weaned on Star Wars as a small child, and easily my entire pre-teen life was spent deep in the movies and media. I had on occasion done some of my own fan-art, essentially, of Star Wars stuff even while working professionally. In 2003, I began working on a few of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game books that Wizards of the Coast was putting out at the time. This book was, I think, a sort of “Monster Manual” as Dungeons & Dragons players would be familiar with. I never played the Star Wars RPG and don’t have a copy of the book here, but that’s how I remember it. Some of the creatures appeared in the films, others seemed to be expansions of the bestiary. So it was with these two creatures, as far as I’m aware.
Assigned as Caarita, I find no reference to it online—there is a Carrite in the extended universe but it’s not this. So I wonder if it was renamed. In any case, this tall mammal (I think) was described as having a long tongue like an anteater. I began my explorations with a tiny sketch just trying to establish the proportions of it.
It has strong rear legs which enable it to stand on its hind legs to reach high into trees, and long front legs to keep it from needing to do so often, rather than a giraffe’s elongated neck, which can also get the job done for reaching high. My first attempt at a sketch showed it reaching up and leaning onto a tree as it seeks out sustenance higher up still.
I don’t recall anymore how many of these world-building details were given to me or what. I I think it was the case that they preferred a more straight on and aggressive portrayal, so I decided to redraw the creature in a hunched pose which altered its anatomy somewhat. It was the better sketch, certainly.
These Roleplaying Game spot illustrations, such as this, didn’t pay very well. They were infill work between projects, mostly. There was usually quite a bit of it to be found back then, and if you worked fast it could be worth it, but I don’t work fast enough.
Consequently, the paintings were as small as I could make them and retain most of what I wanted. Which was in itself a nice change of pace.
WATCH BEAST
Similarly, this other creature was one that I wasn’t familiar with, though I understand it had an earlier version in an earlier version of the roleplaying game. Once again, I don’t recall the original description, but possibly I was given habitat information and such as my rough initial sketch also includes some environment. In this case, the crude sketch seems to indicate scale?
And once again, I re-concepted the piece without environment, with a more compact and intimidating portrayal.
The final painting was likewise compact in size. Called Watchbeast, one word, the creature makes an appearance in the Star Wars Assault mobile game, but there its portrait was re-drawn by someone else. As of this writing, however, my version remains the (uncredited) portrayal for this creature in the long-running online Star Wars wiki, so that’s cool, I guess.
