Marc Thorpe, a visual effects artist, model maker and puppet engineer who worked on the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies, died November 24 at age 77 due to Parkinson’s Disease. His passing was shared by daughter Megan Feffer via Facebook, who noted that Thorpe had been living with his diagnosis for 30 years but more than anything “would want to be remembered for his art.” Both artistically and technically minded, Thorpe also created the popular Robot Wars concept in the 1990s.
Born in San Francisco, Thorpe graduated from UC Davis in 1971 and received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for his inventive “behavioral sculpture” dolphin training project at Marineland in Florida.
He turned his inventive mind towards the movies when he joined Bay Area VFX institution Industrial Light & Magic in 1979, where he served as chief model maker and animatronic designer for many Lucasfilm features — including the second and third Star Wars chapters, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and the original Indiana Jones trilogy. Thorpe spent his last three years with the studio group, 1991-1993, coming up with toys for the now defunct LucasToys division of Lucasfilm.
In addition to these smash hit franchises, his film credits also include 1981’s Dragonslayer (with the wonderfully inscrutable title “dragon assistant”), horror classic Poltergeist (1982), Joe Dante’s Explorers (1985), cult sensation Howard the Duck (1986), *batteries not included (1987) and Oscar winner The Hunt for Red October (1990).
Thorpe left Lucas to launch Robot Wars live events, which he described as “a festival of destruction and survival” on his website. Later brought to television, these shows invite robotics teams to create fighting machines that would go toe-to-toe, or bolt-to-bolt, in radio-controlled battles.
With an eclectic blend of passions for art, performance and engineering, Thorpe continued to pursue creative opportunities in spite of his diagnosis, spanning art installations, personal projects, consulting and toy/entertainment concept creation. He was the subject of a one-man sculpture show at Art Thou Gallery as recently as 2017.
Thorpe is survived by Feffer and two grandchildren. You can learn more about his life and work at his official website, marcthorpe.com.
[H/T Deadline]
