scienceetfiction:

Early concept drawings by Ralph McQuarrie

“George said he wanted a costume that would flutter in on the wind, sort of a dark guy in a black cape with a big helmet, like a Japanese warrior — maybe with black silk over his face or something like that,” McQuarrie recalls. “But the script had Vader crossing between his spaceship and the Rebel Blockade Runner and breaking into that spaceship from outer space, burning his way through a wall so he and his stormtroopers can come charging into this hallway. I thought, ‘Gee, Darth Vader has to function in a vacuum,’ so I suggested to George that [Vader] might have some sort of spacesuit to enable him to survive this trip through the vacuum, and George said, ‘Well, okay, give him some kind of a breathing apparatus.’ So along with the big helmet, I put a mask on him.”

“In my drawings, there wasn’t any particular thought to his scale, and I thought he looked like a little, hunched, evil, ratlike person,” McQuarrie explains. “Of course I liked my original design, but the guys on the English crew who made the costumes took it over and came up with a good idea — the concept of this huge, towering figure you had to look up at. I think that the big, tall, gigantic look was pivotal. It worked well in the film, so it’s hard to argue with.” (via a 2004 article)

George Lucas liked the mask and it became a part of Vader’s regular costume. The storyline was developed to explain this costume and Vader became a cyborg.  

theartofanimation:

John Watkiss