Concealed wires, mirrors, simulated smoke or snow, and so on. Special effects are real life mechanical tricks that take place in front of the camera often known as practical effects. Historically filmmakers have made a distinction between the two. He had to have colour to distinguish him from another robot, so I found places to put blue. And he had to have lights, and lenses to see through. I knew he had to have a lot of little gadgets - that he was kind of like a Swiss army knife. I put little panels on him and places for arms to come out. Which sounded pretty interesting, but very difficult to do in reality. He just leaned into whatever direction he wanted to go in, and spun his single wheel, which is really a sphere. He could go any direction - he had gyroscopes in him, so that he didn’t fall over. The first (one) had a spherical bottom, like a ball bearing that would roll around. This was basically impossible to execute technically in the 1970s, but of course has some interesting parallels to BB-8's design from 2015. The character below left looks somewhat similar to the final robot, but the minimalist character below right is particularly intriguing since it was designed to roll around on a single large ball bearing. McQuarrie's earliest sketches of R2-D2 are fascinating in retrospect.
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