his esteem for McQuarrie's work. McQuarrie has said of his work on Star Wars, "I thought I had the best job that an artist ever had on a film, and I had never worked on a feature film before. ... I still get fan mail — people wondering if I worked on Episode I or just wanting to have my autograph." McQuarrie designed many of the film's characters, including Darth Vader, Chewbacca, R2-D2 and C-3PO and drew many concepts for the film's sets. His production painting of R2-D2 and C-3PO wandering in the desert on the planet Tatooine was the first to be completed. His early concept for C-3PO was visibly inspired by the Art Deco Maschinenmensch robot from Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis. The painting had a particular impact on actor Anthony Daniels, who was about to turn down the part of C-3PO; "He had painted a face and a figure that had a very wistful, rather yearning, rather bereft quality, which I found very appealing," stated Daniels, and the appeal of McQuarrie's image convinced him to accept the role. At Lucas' suggestion, McQuarrie designed a breathing apparatus for Darth Vader to wear. In an interview with Star Wars Insider Magazine, McQuarrie stated that Lucas' artistic direction was to portray a malevolent figure in a cape with samurai armour. "For Darth Vader, George [Lucas] just said he would like to have a very tall, dark fluttering figure that had a spooky feeling like it came in on the wind." McQuarrie noted that the script indicated that Vader would travel between spaceships and needed to survive in the vacuum of space, and he proposed that Vader should wear some sort of space suit. Lucas agreed, and McQuarrie combined a full-face breathing mask with a samurai helmet, thus creating one of the most iconic designs of space fantasy cinema. A 1975 production painting of Darth Vader engaged in a lightsaber duel with Deak Starkiller (a character prototype for Luke Skywalker) depicts Vader wearing black armour, a flowing cape and an elongated, skull-like mask and helmet. Its similarity to the final design of Vader's costume demonstrates that McQuarrie's earliest conception of Vader was so successful that very little needed to be changed for production. Working from McQuarrie's artwork, the costume designer John Mollo devised a costume that could be worn by an actor on-screen using a combination of clerical robes, a motorcycle