Life-sized Chewbacca Bust – Signature Edition

“The cantina sequence in Star Wars immediately captured my imagination in 1977. The scene not only introduced a galaxy of aliens, but was our first glimpse at Chewbacca, an enduring character who’s fascinated me for years! In my professional life, I’ve been fortunate to work on a number of Chewie related projects, from restorations to re-creations, and have studied various versions of the character up close and hands-on. I’m so excited to be able to bring that experience to our work in our new Custom Character Studio and hope that fans can see the love and care that went into this tribute to one of my favorite characters!” Tom Spina (Regal Robot founder).

Our new Life Sized Chewbacca Bust – Signature Edition is being offered in an extremely small edition of no more than 50 pieces. Each will be hand produced by our New York artists. Great care was put into developing each aspect of this life-sized bust, from the original sculpture, details like the teeth, palate and eyes, to the specific hair colors within the fur.

Working with an original foam latex face produced by Stuart Freeborn, who created Chewbacca for the original films, we used both digital technology and practical effects artistry to bring this character to life. While sculpting the head in clay, Tom Spina approached this as we would a restoration, maintaining as much of the original subtle style of detail and texture as possible. Castings of original production teeth were carefully re-tooled and cast in translucent resin for use in this bust, and lineage like that helped us to be extremely authentic to the original movie masks.

The spark of Chewbacca’s personality comes through in the hand sculpted eyes, a slightly opened mouth and just a touch of head tilt. Even details you can barely see, like the palate and tongue cast in a soft silicone, add layers of detail to the 1:1 bust. Each cast head is then hand painted by our artists with several layers of color, matching the specific look of Chewie’s skin tones in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. 

And then, of course, there’s the fur! Two FX-style modacrylic blends were crafted with hands-on access to an original trilogy mask and suit, which were then reproduced by the same shop that has created the fur for film Wookiees in the past. Four different hair colors make up the gray sections, and five are within the brown. Additional hand blending comes into the mix when our artists hand apply the hair on the face of each Chewbacca bust, a little at a time, just as Freeborn did with the original masks. And, of course, every bust gets a final trim and style before it leaves our studio!

We’re proud to present this faithful 1:1 recreation of everyone’s favorite Wookiee and are looking forward to seeing it in the hands and homes of discerning Star Wars collectors!