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Ketwol[3] was a Pacithhip who met with the Devaronian[1] Kardue'sai'Malloc[4] and the aged Defel[1] Arleil Schous[5] over a jigger of Merenzane Gold in a booth at Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina in Mos Eisley spaceport on the planet Tatooine[1] in 0 BBY.[6]

The Lamproid[2] Dice Ibegon[7] also sat with the trio at the table, and Ketwol spoke to[2] her[7] in Shimiese while she spoke Lamproid[8] shortly before[2] the local moisture farmer Luke Skywalker was thrown in to the table next to the group during an altercation with the criminals Ponda Baba and Doctor Cornelius Evazan.[1] Ketwol had mottled gray skin and blue eyes. The Pacithhip wore a red robe over a tan shirt while at the cantina.[2]

Behind the scenes[]

Special edition addition[]

"I received artwork from Skywalker Ranch and started sculpting the head and shoulders out of water based clay the same day. It was a very fast project, with the final rubber and foam puppet being complete in just over a week. At the time, I was pretty much on my own doing this project."
―Howie Weed[9]

Ketwol first appeared in the 1997 Special Edition re-release of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. Full body concept sketches for the character were created by Terryl Whitlatch on December 13, 1995,[10] who gave the alien a large rounded body with tiny legs since they were only going to be seen from the shoulders up.[11]

KetwolPuppet

Ketwol was a highly detailed rubber and foam puppet created by Howie Weed for the Special Edition re-release of A New Hope.

The sketches were sent to the creature shop at Industrial Light & Magic in San Rafael and were one of the first hints that Howie Weed and others there got as to the scope of director George Lucas's plans for the changes being made in the re-release.[12] Weed, who was lead creature designer for the Special Edition, began sculpting the head and shoulders for Ketwol out of water based clay the same day he received the sketch, which was the first to have been approved. Working mostly alone at this early point in the Special Edition development, Weed completed the project quickly in just over a week and produced a rubber and foam puppet.[9]

Once the puppet was finished, several takes of it were shot on the main stage at San Rafael over a couple of hours. During filming, John Knoll noticed that the back of Ketwol's head looked like another alien and suggested they flip it around and film the other side as well. Wardrobe supervisor Anne Polland then pulled together a new Tatooine-appropriate outfit that included a turban to hide Ketwol's trunk and tusks while Mark Siegel created a makeshift hookah pipe with a tube that allowed smoke to be blown through. They then shot footage of this new alien, which would later become known as Melas the Sarkan.[12] The footage of the highly detailed Ketwol puppet was then digitally inserted into a shot from the cantina scene, replacing the character Lak Sivrak,[11] whose off-the-shelf mask had long bothered Lucas.[13] The original audio intended to be Sivrak growling was left unchanged in the scene.[14]

Identification[]

In the current Star Wars canon, Ketwol was first identified on a digital card released on the Star Wars: Card Trader app in 2017.[3] The character's name originated in the Star Wars Legends continuity, where it was first used in the Star Wars Trilogy Sourcebook, Special Edition, a 1997 supplement for Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game by West End Games.[15]

Appearances[]

Sources[]

Notes and references[]

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