In late 2017 my good friend and colleague Sean Hargreaves and I were recruited by Production Designer Darren Gilford to work with him at J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot productions, visualizing Star Wars Episode 9 as J.J. and writer Chris Terrio hashed out the new story for the movie. Being on-site meant that we were there to visualize ideas as they emerged, sketching rapidly so the writer and director could react on the fly.
Even at that frenetic pace, ideas were often abandoned before sketches were even finished, and countless cool visuals and great ideas ended up not even making it to presentation.
One interesting environment that did go through some development, however, was a crystaline-structured planet made of something akin to pyrite, but scaled to the size of mountains. Originating I believe from a painting of the planet from legendary matte painter and concept designer Yannick Dusseault, a number of us did variations on this concept for quite a while, surviving through several different plot scenarios.
In this one, our heroes would have been hiding out in an abandoned Jedi monastery or training facility on the barren planetoid. One persistent story point had them escaping through a natural labyrinth in the rock formation as they are discovered by the First Order. The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the image was flipped from its original composition. Can you guess the clue?