Creator of ‘Star Wars’ X-wing and Death Star Colin Cantwell dies at 90

Colin Cantwell has died. He was the person who designed the spaceships in the “Star Wars” movies. He was 90.

Sierra Dall, Cantwell’s partner, told The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday that he died at his home in Colorado on Saturday.

Cantwell made the first versions of the Death Star, the TIE fighter, and the X-wing Starfighter.

He also worked on movies like “WarGames,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Cantwell was born in 1932 in San Francisco. Cantwell studied animation at the University of California, Los Angeles before working on Hollywood films. He also studied architecture at Frank Lloyd Wright’s School of Architecture.

He worked on instructional programmes about flights at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA in the 1960s. During the 1969 moon landing, Cantwell collaborated with NASA to provide information to Walter Cronkite.

Cantwell is the author of two science fiction books. Sierra Dall, his partner of 24 years, survives him.