Star Wars Artist Month has seen artists come from all sorts of backgrounds, and from all over the world. Today’s featured artist is Giancarlo Bockos: a pillar of the Star Wars fan community. His experience in design has given him a creative eye on everything from the visual arts to prop-making and costuming. His creative mind has pushed him to a wide array of mediums all in the pursuit of creative expression.
Giancarlo is an Italian Industrial Designer with 20 years experience in the product design field. Born and raised in Perù, he moved to Italy in his teens and has been working in the US for almost 10 years now.
Star Wars has always been a big part of his life. His first memories of anything Star Wars related was talking about it with his Kindergarten friends, wanting a 12” Darth Vader because the lightsaber was just like the one in the movie (not the “weird” one in the small scale Kenner figure). This attention to detail would reflect years later on his passion for props.
Drawing, model making and building LEGOs as a kid fed his passion for the saga. This led to Giancarlo to all kinds of new roles: amateur comic artist and caricaturist, prop and costume maker, 3D modeler and designer. And drawing characters and vehicles off the Kenner toys catalogs turned into drawing comic strips and illustrations
Giancarlo was part of the editorial staff of the biggest Italian Star Wars website in the late 90’s : guerrestellari.net, Just when Star Wars was coming back he worked with his brother, Piero, on digital comic strips to populate the far art pages of the website. Later some of these strips were published in the “Star Wars Alliance” Italian fan club magazines, as well as in the short-lived Italian publication of the Star Wars Insider magazine.
Costuming
In 2003 Giancarlo and his brother joined the Fighting 501st Legion costuming organization, and have used their art to help the organization ever since. You might have seen the “V-Twins” at Star Wars events like the 1997 Special Edition release, the 2007 501st Rose Parade Spectacular (including the Documentary Star Warriors), or even in a cameo as the Jedi Council guards in the hit fan film Dark Resurrection.
Between them, the V-Twins have created dozens of logos, patches, pins, illustrations, posters, flyers, and caricatures for the Legion’s many Garrisons and members around the world as well as for other Star Wars fan organizations. Some of these include the Static Burst logo (501st online magazine), caricatures for the featured interviewees, the Galactic Academy logos and characters, patches for R2-KT, merchandising for the Italica Garrison as MBO, and many posters, logos and merchandising for Italian Star Wars fan events.
One of the highlights of Giancarlo’s 501st history was being part of the Rose Parade as a Biker Scout.
“This was one of the greatest experiences one could aspire to! On top of that my brother and I were able to meet George Lucas and hand him a copy of our Star Wars strips collection book!”
Propmaking
Building a LEGO X-wing and ED-209 as a kid, a self-designed paper Thunder Tank and a Ghostbusters Proton Pack for his brother led to prop making and his Industrial Design career. Discovering that the modelmakers at ILM during ANH were Industrial Design students made him appreciate his career path even more.
His love and knowledge of Star Wars and his passion about costume accuracy (remember the Vader lightsaber toy?) worked perfect with his 3D modelling and rapid prototyping professional skills. He’s been designing and printing parts for almost 20 years, way before 3D printing was a mainstream tool
Today Giancarlo still creates Star Wars art for himself or friends, t-shirts, merchandising, and more. He will admit he’s got way too many hobbies, including fixing up old motorcycles in his garage.
IG: the_vtwins
FB: The V-twins
Many thanks to our partners at Jedi News, Fantha Tracks, Rebel Scum, Force.Net, and Bantha Bricks for supporting SWAM 2020 and sharing our posts. What a great way to share the magic of the art community! Check them out and see just how big the galaxy really is!
