Star Wars: The Force Awakens - 10 Design Secrets You Probably Didn't Know

Another way used to keep the costs down on the original film (this time from the visual effects side of things), was to crib design elements from ready-made models (either those already used in the film or from pre-made kits). This approach ran through the whole trilogy to a rather extreme degree; the TIE Bomber model used in The Empire Strikes Back is a modified version of the commercially available Darth Vader TIE kit, something that was further modded to double as the ship that Captain Needa takes to Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer.

Obviously CGI was the predominant medium for model work in The Force Awakens, but the process of using pre-existing constructs to ease the design process was alive and well. One of the biggest and - once it’s pointed out - most blatant, was the taking of the side of a Star Destroyer and using it as the underside of the Oscillator. Hey, it’s all Empire kit after all.