Colin Cantwell, the man who designed the spacecraft in the Star Wars films, has died at the age of 90.

The Hollywood Reporter said that Sierra Dall, Cantwell’s partner, confirmed that he died at his home in Colorado, in the US, on Saturday.

Cantwell designed the prototypes for the X-wing Starfighter, TIE fighter and Death Star.

He also worked on films including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and WarGames.

Cantwell was born in San Francisco in 1932. Before working on Hollywood films Cantwell attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he gained a degree in animation. He also attended Frank Lloyd Wright’s School of Architecture.

In the 1960s he worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Nasa on educational programmes about flights. Cantwell worked with Nasa to feed US news reader Walter Cronkite updates during the 1969 moon landing.

Cantwell wrote two science fiction novels. He is survived by his partner of 24 years, Sierra Dall.