8 Early Star Wars Character Designs You Won’t Believe

Many of the most popular Star Wars characters are the stuff of cinema legend, instantly recognisable to billions the world over.

Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock on Tatooine for the last 40 or so years will be able to pick out the likes of Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and Jabba the Hutt in a galactic identity parade, but many of these famous creations looked quite different when they were conceived on paper.

Did you know that Yoda almost resembled a garden gnome, Stormtroopers might have wielded Lightsabers and the Ewoks would have walked on long skinny legs had series creator George Lucas stuck with the original blueprints?

Concept art depicting early character sketches from all seven of the main Star Wars movies has surfaced in the years since they arrived in cinemas, giving us a glimpse at the weird and wonderful galaxy far, far away that might have been.

So here are eight of the most bizarre early Star Wars character designs that were hurled into the recycle bin during the development process... The Force obviously wasn't strong enough in these ones.

Star Wars: Episode I villain Darth Maul went through numerous guises before artist Iain McCaig settled on his final design... and some were a load of Phantom Menace.

The demonic-looking Sith was originally envisaged as a zombie-like foe with a bowl of red spaghetti tipped over his head.

Apparently McCaig dreamed up this hideous creature up after Star Wars head honcho George Lucas told him to "draw his worst nightmare". How does the artist sleep at night with things like this haunting his imagination?

Darth Maul's evolution from here is detailed at Film Sketchr, which explains how the approved design was based on the illustrator's second-worst nightmare - clowns.

McCaig took a photo of David Dozoretz from the animatics team and superimposed a series of patterns across his face before adding horns and lurid red flesh.

Although Maul's final appearance is unsettling, what's scares us the most is that fact Jar Jar Binks made it through this stringent approval process.