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The Enforcer Droid.

The interesting thing about the new droid is that he was an Imperial droid clearly designed for evil reasons. It seems that in some form the Empire had Super Battle Droids, more or less. I’ve been told he’s essentially reprogrammed to help the rogues handle their mission. We finally got a solid look at the new droid sidekick character in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story recently. This is the droid that will be played by Alan Tudyk. I am really jazzed about the the look as it is really solid design work and he’s really rad. He’s kind of the opposite of BB-8. This guy looks scary but also has eyes that from certain angles convey a little bit of sadness and he’s bipedal.

It isn’t easy trying to describe a droid. This description is going to be my best attempt at describing something I don’t have in front of me. I would like to try and sketch it but I don’t think it would do it justice. If description and quick sketches annoy you, this is going to be the article for you, unfortunately. This is the best that could be done under the circumstances.

His face is not unlike the Iron Giant in essence. My first impression was that the eyes kind of remind me of the Iron Giant. He looks a little more like EV-9D9, too, since he’s a Star Wars‘d–up design. Yeah, it looks like Iron Giant and EV-9D9 made a baby and he was really big, scary, and sort of dark in color like a Super Battle Droid (almost gunmetal in color, but darker).

The droid’s eyes just have two circles that light up. The cranium is really smooth but the mouth area and the underpart of the cranium is very techno with lots of little details that contrast well against the smooth cranium and the under part goes down into a mouth piece (that kind of shapes down into a mouth piece like General Grievous but way less skull-like). The mouth doesn’t move. It is almost like a speaker mouthpiece. When his head turns a certain angle, his cranium shape kind of reminded me of Robocop because he’s a dark color and the shape of the head stands out with the lit eyes and you really can’t get a good look at the mouth and under head parts with the shadow. If Iron Giant was the father and EV-9D9 was the mother, he’d have his father’s eyes.

His neck is a little shorter than the classic Battle Droid but it’s a similar design in terms of the way it connects to the body. His chest reminds me of Dengar’s armor but if it were fitted on a Super Battle Droid. On his shoulder he has the Imperial Cog symbol still, the same one on the TIE Pilot helmet. He’s barrel chested. The stature is not unlike Ralph McQuarrie’s designs for IG-88 (but he’s not that droid and the head is very different).

As I said, his chest has the same kind of style as Dengar’s armor especially the way the center design has a bullet shape to it (also similar to the Snow Trooper chest armor but imagine putting it on a Super Battle Droid).

He stands very much at attention. He doesn’t come off a super flexible. He doesn’t appear to stand with attitude, as he’s just a robot. His arms hang very stiff at his sides and the hands come all the way down to his knee joints. His hands are very long with fingers, but I couldn’t tell if he had a thumb or not (I’m guessing he does). I also think he has a red light where the torso meets the pelvis, almost like where a belt buckle would be, but I wish I had a longer look at the robot.

As you can no doubt guess, I see a lot of the classic Super Battle Droid in the Rogue One droid but as I said, he has a neck and he’s a little thinner these older droids:

The design fits in the A New Hope era perfectly. It feels like what the Super Battle Droid would have become had the Empire continued the design and it evolved. The jump is not unlike the Clones to the Stormtroopers. The design gets really 1970’s science fiction in the best possible way.

Amanda and I quickly sketched what we thought the droid looked like as we helped one another remember details:

I wish we could have spent time with the various photos we saw to really capture the detail but this as good as we could do on the spot. I considered trying to take this and make it really well done but I am afraid it would add too much and lose the spirt of what we’re trying to convey.

Hopefully this just sets the tone for what to expect. The real design is going to please Star Wars fans, I think. What we saw was not concept art, but the actual droid. Hopefully he’s revealed soon.

Soon we should have details on the hover craft troopers. Rogue One is going to be really awesome.

Minor Clarification: I would say the enforcer droid is about 8ft tall.