BLOCKING: Struzan's Head Overlay

Through looking at more of Struzan’s works, I noticed a pattern in a lot of his compositions: when layering on head over another, the head usually overlays over the cheekline/jawline in order to keep the center of the person’s face clear.

Below we see on the left, Struzan’s original comp with Indy’s upper cheek obscured. For the final comp on the right, we see how Struzan wanted to keep that area unobstructed to keep Indy’s face more legible:

In the examples below, Jabba overlays Han’s chin and Anakin overlaps Qui-gon’s jawline:

In the examples below, the Emperor overlays on Vader’s jawline, and Hank’s jawline in the image on the right as the same occlusion:

The Struzan example below shows a double jawline occlusion:

And in this Star Trek example below, we see a head is faded out over the main character’s face so that only the cheek/jawline is obscured.

EXCEPTIONS

As with any Struzan strategy, there are always exceptions from the man himself. Below, we see a stormtrooper overlaying Tarkin’s lips, nose and eyelid: