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from these were the droids i was looking for

2026.07.16

I got to thinking about the design language of Star Wars' "second tier" of droids, and some of their possible influences...

Open Photo Gallery

This is K-2SO, the sarcastic robot robot from Rogue-One - each had a pile of illustrations in a "data bank" section at the end.

I realized his design seemed kind of similar to "Monitor 5" from "Robot City", a series of YA novels set in Asimov's Robots universe.

I got thinking about the design of other "second tier" robots in Star Wars, like 2-1B (one of my honestly less fun figures, along with FX7)

And then there were the robots from "Jabba's Droid Torture Chamber"

Those droids always felt especially "puppet-y". I thought I saw them "live" (and moving?) at the Boston Computer Museum, but it turns out that was an exhibit of ads for Maxell's floppy disks... similar in vibe though!

Of course famously, 3-CPO had an inspiration as well -

- the Robot Maria from the 1927 movie Metropolis...

You see that evolution even more clearly in Ralph McQuarrie's concept art.