Cantina Band is one of the illustrations I made for Star Wars back in 2018, and just like pretty much all the others, I loved immensely working on this.

I still remember the sense of wonder when, as a 5 years old, I watched Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan enter that wretched hive of scum and villainy, and for the first time show the sense of the diversity of races in the Star Wars Universe.

As it happened quite often reading the briefs I got from Fantasy Flight Games, I thought “whoooa, I get to draw this??”.

The illustration was quite straight forward, as I just had to depict Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes (did you know that was the name of the band? Now you do!) while performing.
I had to look up pretty much all the images of Biths available on the internet (did you know this was the race of the performers? Now you do!), as I didn’t want to just grab a screenshot from the movie and copy from that.

Anyway, here they are.

And if you want to have something stuck in your head while readning the rest, here’s the scene the illustration refers to.

Now, some random trivia, my nerds.

– According to the lore, the band was composed by eight members. When Luke and Obi-Wan enter Mos Easley’s Cantina, only seven are on stage, while one of them was having a break at the bar.

– Mos Easley’s cantina was actually owned by a Wookie named Chalmun

– the beverages served at the Cantina included Jawa Juice, Blue Milk, Tatooine Sunset, Yatooni Boska, Tatooni Junko and Hutt’s Delight.

– the fact that droids were not allowed inside the Cantina was not due to discrimination. Rather, since droids would not eat or drink, they would have taken the spot of paying customers, hence the ban.

– the Cantina Band scene went through a reshoot after the film was almost completed, adding a bigger variety of aliens inside the venue. However, the movie had already gone over budget by quite a lot, so to save some money on extras Lucas grabbed random employees from the office, including secretaries and accountants.

As far as the illustration goes, I would have framed it slightly differently, but the card had to include the graphic layout, so I had to leave some space to the right and at the top. This is why it’s cropped this way.

To keep a little bit of consistency, next time I’ll post another illustration I’m pretty happy with, which happens to depict Luke Skywalker and Boba Fett.

by Paolo Puggioni

2 Responses

1. Press inquiry by Tobias Jochheim says:

   November 26, 2022 at 15:11

   Hi Paolo, my Name is Tobias Jochheim, I am a Reporter and Nerd-in-Chief of Rheinische Post, a newspaper in Düsseldorf, Germany – aaand I’m working on a Story about the Greatest Band that never existed: Figrin D’An and The Modal Nodes. The Good News: I found your Illustration and Love it and would be honoured to Run it with my Story. The Bad News: There would bei nothing but a Credit (and, online, Link to your Site) and my eternal Gratitude in it for you. I am straining my editors’ patience a great deal by submitting this piece in the First place – it is, after all, a regional German newspaper 😀 – I have Zero Budget for “my” Sunday edition as a whole, let alone Personal obsessions I smuggle into my Work.

   Looking forward to Hearing Back, Best regards
   Tobias

   Reply
   • Paolo Puggioni says:

     March 11, 2023 at 11:41

     Hi Tobias, all rights are owned by Fantasy Flight Games and Lucasfilms, so they can’t be published without their permission.
     I’m telling you already that they won’t give permission, sorry about that.

     Reply