"Blue Harvest" (Star Wars: A New Hope parody)
COMEDY
Originally only meant to be a one-off regular 22-minute episode spoofing Star Wars, "Blue Harvest" quickly became recognized as something special during production and was expanded to an hour-long DVD release. Family Guy crew even flew up to Lucasfilm and screened it for the man himself, George Lucas.
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Click Image to Enlarge
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Original Rough Thumbnail
Clean Storyboard
Final Aired Episode
Click Image to Enlarge
Click Image to Enlarge
Click Image to Enlarge
Original Rough Thumbnail
Clean Storyboard
Final Aired Episode
Click PLAY to View Storyboard Animatic
Rough Thumbnails
You can tell a lot about a storyboard artist's thought process by looking at his thumbnails. Early discarded concepts are revealed. Initially we were drawing Brian's Chewbacca character as seven feet tall, as depicted in the first half of my rough boards. Eventually it was decided to keep him his regular Brian-size.
Click Storyboard Grid to View Full Sequence PDF
Clean Storyboards
When it came time to clean up our storyboards for this unique episode, the artists put a lot of extra love and care into the drawings. I went so far as to bring all my old 1970's Kenner Star Wars toy ships into the office and used them as model references. The Millennium Falcon ain't as easy to draw as you'd think.
Click Storyboard Grid to View Full Sequence PDF
Storyboards-to-Final Episode Comparison
While there was a lot of poking fun at the little quirks of the 1977 movie, we did take our responsibility of staying film-accurate to the space battle scenes very seriously. The computer modeled/3D-rendered space ships and Death Star shots look convincingly like they could have actually come from Star Wars.
Click Storyboard Grid to View Full Sequence PDF
"Blue Harvest" Script Pages (Death Star Approach sequence)
Probably the biggest fan on the show, writer Alec Sulkin's script is his love letter to Star Wars. He expertly navigates the fine line between homage and parody like Han Solo flying through an asteroid field. This episode was a dream come true for everyone who worked on it; we got paid to watch Star Wars!
