Ever wanted to draw Star Wars characters and vehicles just like the professional comic book artists? Star Wars illustrator Grant Gould explains with these easy-to-follow steps how to draw Ahsoka Tano from The Clone Wars. Steps 1-5 are drawn lightly with pencil. No pen, no dark lines. Finished lines and details will come at the end.
YOU WILL NEED:
Paper
Drawing pencil
Colored pencils
Colored pens
STEP ONE
Using a pencil, begin with very simple shapes. The goal is to create a framework and then build on top of that, slowly adding in more shapes and details. Start your drawing by creating a stick figure type of pose, using circles to indicate Ahsoka’s head, shoulders, hands, waist, and knees, and then add lines to connect them, as shown in the example. Remember, it’s best to keep your lines very light. This way you can easily erase and redraw them if need be.
STEP TWO
At this point, before we get too far with the over all pose, it’s a good idea to draw the outline of Ahsoka’s head tails. This was can make sure everything looks right in terms of size. You don’t want Ahsoka’s head to be too small in comparison to her body. She’s still a teenager, and proportions can help reflect a character’s age. Once you’re happy with the head tail outline, go in and add the little triangle shapes around her face, as well as ovals indicating where her eyes will go. They should be about halfway between the top triangle and her chin. Let’s also take this moment to draw a few simple lines and shapes to indicate where her belts and accessories will go.
STEP THREE
At this point it’s a good idea to start creating the outline of her body. No need to make anything too detailed right now — just quick, simple shapes and outlines to show you what her arms look like, legs, where the top of her boots are, etc. Again, make sure your pencil lines are very light — you don’t want to make anything too final yet; you may still want to make a few changes to your sketch.
STEP FOUR
Now you can start placing your smaller details, such as the stripes on her head tails and the diamond shapes on her leggings. This is also the perfect time to draw in a rough circular shape to indicate where her nose will be, and a little squiggly line for her mouth. Obviously these will be fleshed out a bit more in the following steps, but starting with simple, loose lines like this can really give you a nice feel for where everything should be. You don’t want to draw a perfectly detailed mouth, for example, and then realize you drew it a little too high on her face. It’s easier to start simple, figure out the placement of everything, and then go in and tighten up your detailed lines.
STEP FIVE
Just like the last step, we’re adding in a few more details, such as the markings on her face, the edges of her outfit, gloves, etc. You can also flesh out the shape of her belts a bit more, too, including her belt buckle and the little metal squares on either side of the buckle that hold her lightsabers when she’s not using them. Last but not least, go ahead and draw in the basic shapes of her lightsaber handles. Ahsoka has her own unique way of holding the sabers, so the pose I’ve provided reflects that.
STEP SIX
If you want to give your drawing a clean, finished look, you can add inks over your pencil lines. This can be done with a variety of pens or markers (personally I’m a big fan of Faber Castell’s artist pens). Just trace over the lines you want to keep, and when you’re done (make sure you let your ink lines dry), go ahead and erase the pencil lines.
STEP SEVEN
Now, using bolder pencil lines, you can use your lighter sketch lines as a guide, and essentially trace what you’ve created thus far. Having basic shapes and a rough sketch will help give you the confidence and skill to create a great looking final drawing. You can add in as many or as few details as you like, and if you want, you can add some shading, too.
STEP EIGHT
And here’s a color version that I created digitally in Photoshop. You can use markers or crayons or whatever you like. However you decide to finish your drawing is completely up to you!
Ever wanted to draw Star Wars characters and vehicles just like the professional comic book artists? Star Wars illustrator Grant Gould explains with these easy-to-follow steps how to draw Qui-Gon Jinn. Steps 1-5 are drawn lightly with pencil. No pen, no dark lines. Finished lines and details will come at the end.
YOU WILL NEED:
Paper
Drawing pencil
Colored pencils
Colored pens
STEP ONE
Drawing lightly with a pencil, create a simple framework.
STEP TWO
Using his shoulders and elbows as a guide, draw the outline of his robes.
STEP THREE
Roughly sketch in the main edges of his clothing, hair, and lightsaber.
STEP FOUR
Add more detail to his outfit and lightsaber.
STEP FIVE
Now you can focus on the head. Use thin lines to show the flow of his hair. Take note of his mustache, beard, forehead, nose, and other details that make Qui-Gon unique.
STEP SIX
At this point, you should have a fairly detailed pencil drawing. Once you’re happy with how it looks, you can go over your lines with pen, marker, or heavier pencil lines.
STEP SEVEN
Color your drawing, too, if you want. It’s completely up to you!
Ever wanted to draw Star Wars characters and vehicles just like the professional comic book artists? In this step-by-step series, Star Wars artists and illustrators show you how to draw some of the most beloved characters in the saga.
Star Wars illustrator Katie Cook explains with these easy-to-follow steps how to draw the cute Jedi younglings — Nautolan boy Zinn Toa, Gungan girl Roo-Roo Page and Rodian boy Wee Dunn — from the “Children of the Force” episode in Season 2 of The Clone Wars.
Steps 1-4 are drawn lightly with pencil. No pen, no dark lines. Finished lines and details will come at the end.
Step One:
Start by lightly drawing your basic shapes.
Step Two:
Lightly begin to rough in some more of the bodies and head shapes.
Step Three:
Now that you have the basic forms roughed in, you can start adding more detail like facial features and hands.
Step Four:
Start adding your final details on the face and clothes. Your pencils are done!
Step Five:
You can use any pen or marker that you’re comfortable with. I use Pigma Micron Pens, but any good black pen or marker will work great! When your ink is dry (and make sure it is!) you can erase all your pencil lines and you’ll be left with nice, clean black lines.
Step Six:
Color, color, color! You can use markers, crayons, colored pencils or even your computer! This drawing was colored using colored pencils.
Ever wanted to draw Star Wars characters and vehicles just like the professional comic book artists? In this step-by-step series, Star Wars artists and illustrators show you how to draw some of the most beloved characters in the saga.
Star Wars illustrator Jessica Hickman explains with these easy-to-follow steps how to draw Cad Bane’s techno-service droid, Todo 360, from Season Two of The Clone Wars.
Steps 1-3 are drawn lightly with pencil. No pen, no dark lines. Finished lines and details will come at the end.
Step One:
First draw the basic shapes for Todo’s body. The head is basically a box, with a smaller box for the upper body, and circles for the lower body and feet.
Step Two:
Next put in the placement of Todo’s eyes, arms and legs. The perspective of the head can be a bit challenging, so take your time and don’t get frustrated. If you have some boxes at home, look at those for reference. Looking at tires on your family car or on toys are good references for Todo’s feet too. Keep your pencil marks light so you can erase any mistakes you make.
Step Three:
Once you’re happy with the drawing, make sure to tighten up the lines in preparation for inking and coloring. I like to color with markers, but you can use anything you want — crayons, colored pencils, and even the computer. You can even make copies of your finished pencil drawing to practice using different coloring media.
Step Four:
Now we get to color! Todo is very easy in that he is a gray droid. I colored him with gray markers, and once the first layer dried, I went over it again in some parts to add shading and dimension. Don’t forget his yellow eyes. I wait until the markers are completely dry, then I go over it with black ink outlines and add some white highlights. Be sure to sign your artwork before you show it to family and friends!
Ever wanted to draw Star Wars characters and vehicles just like the professional comic book artists? Star Wars illustrator Grant Gould explains with these easy-to-follow steps how to draw Undercover Obi-Wan. Steps 1-5 are drawn lightly with pencil. No pen, no dark lines. Finished lines and details will come at the end.
YOU WILL NEED:
Paper
Drawing pencil
Colored pencils
Colored pens
STEP ONE
Drawing lightly with a pencil, create a simple framework using basic shapes like circles, lines and triangles.
STEP TWO
Create a rough outline that shows the placement of his legs, arms and guns. You can also add two mirrored triangle shapes where his eyes and mouth would be.
STEP THREE
Let’s flesh out his weapons first. Start with basic shapes and then add in details when you’re ready.
STEP FOUR
Now you can focus on his helmet. Draw the visor first and then add the three circles near his mouth area, then move on to the remaining details.
STEP FIVE
It’s time to create his outfit and equipment, and don’t forget about the hands.
STEP SIX
At this point, you should have a fairly detailed pencil drawing. Once you’re happy with your masterpiece, you can go over your lines with pen or marker, or heavier pencil lines.
STEP SEVEN
You can color your drawing, too, if you prefer. It’s completely up to you!
If the 1958 film The Seven Voyages of Sinbad had a toyline, Phil Tippett would not have followed his particular career path. Or so he theorizes upon reflection of the film that influenced him the most. “I would have probably been completely satiated and saturated, and completely happy.”
Instead, the movie stuck with young seven-year old Tippett, specifically the amazing stop-motion animation by the legendary Ray Harryhausen. “I saw it at the Oak Theater on Solano Avenue in Berkley, and it just completely changed everything. It zapped me like a bolt of electricity. I wasn’t the same after that. I just could not figure out how these amazing creatures were brought to life, but I really liked it.”
It was a time before movie websites, before online and television documentaries that went behind-the-scenes, before entertainment programming dedicated to peeking past the curtain of movie magic. “That thing percolated in the back of my brain for many years,” says Tippett, “It was probably in the early ’60s that I ran across a Forrest Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland publication. In that was a very small article and a few pictures on Ray Harryhausen, and how he achieved the stop-motion effects.”
From such slim sources, Tippett was able to piece together the magic behind the craft. Stop-motion animation takes advantage of the persistence of vision and the frame-by-frame nature of motion picture film. Moving images are actually a succession of 24 still frames shot in a second. By shooting an inanimate puppet or subject one frame at a time, and moving it slightly between shots, a skilled animator could create the illusion of life. Harryhausen had been awed by the original King Kong, featuring the animation of Willis O’Brien. Tippett would follow a similar path, where the movie magic glimpsed as a young boy would lead him to become a pioneer and effects veteran in his own right.
“When I was 11 or 12, I mowed a lot of lawns and bought a little Keystone 8 mm camera. I would set it up in the garage or in my room, on a little table, and just started animating clay or pipe cleaners or whatever I could find. When G.I.Joes came out on the market, it was like, ‘Wow!’ They were so articulated that you could do a lot of stuff with them.”
These little experimental films didn’t see much play beyond Tippett’s parents or his friends, but they were a helpful introduction to the time-consuming and tedious craft. These miniatures required subtle manipulations 24 times just to capture a single second’s worth of motion. “It was very expensive and it took forever to shoot. You’d send the stuff off to Eastman Kodak, someplace in Rochester, and you’d have to wait three weeks to get it back, and you never knew what you were going to get.”
Tippett continued to experiment, finding escape in his little films. “One afternoon, on some terrible science fiction show on TV, there was a guy being interviewed on the show that made a stop-motion movie. His name was Bill Stromberg, and I was able to get in touch with him. He was about 25 years old, and a hobbyist at the time. He made movies on the side, so I became his helper. I would go over to his house every weekend and help him make his 16 mm short films. That provided me with more of a structure and some kind of mentorism.”
This led to contacts in the film industry, but at the time visual effects pictures were few and far between. Studios had closed their effects shops as films became increasingly reality-based. Much of the real experience in visual effects could be found in outfits like Cascade Pictures, which focused on commercial work — accounts like the Pillsbury Doughboy and the Jolly Green Giant. Here, Tippett began his professional work, and would meet a camera operator by the name of Dennis Muren who would also go onto big things. Though none could predict just what lay beyond the horizon.
“I was finishing my B.A. in Art at UC Irvine, doing some work in the gallery when one of the guys I was working with had been in the Navy with Richard Edlund,” Tippett recalls. “He said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this friend that’s doing this movie, and he needs some help, and I’ll have him give you a call.'”
That call was recruiting camera operators for an upcoming space fantasy film helmed by George Lucas. “One thing led to the next. Richard hired Dennis Muren, and Dennis hired Ken Ralston and then it all just kind of began, like a snowball rolling down a hill.”
And Then Came Star Wars
Thus Industrial Light & Magic was first started, though Tippett initially wasn’t part of the team since he wasn’t a camera operator like those initial hires. But when word came that Makeup Supervisor Stuart Freeborn could not complete the Mos Eisley Cantina sequence in England, ILM grabbed the baton and Tippett was hired as part of the second unit creature crew.
“George wanted to set up a little unit and shoot a bunch of insert work, and that’s how we met. We threw together a shop under the guidance of Rick Baker, and it was a bunch of stop-motion animator guys like Doug Beswick, Laine Liska, Jon Berg and myself. We had about eight weeks, and we banged out a bunch of masks,” recalls Tippett.
When you watch the cantina sequence, pay special attention to the close-up shots of creatures in booths. Those were shot months after principal photography of the rest of the bar, when time could be devoted to create more outlandish aliens. “It was very informal and a lot of fun. We got a bunch of the people that built the suits and performed in them,” says Tippett. “I was the lead band guy, and I was the cyclops thing. And then there were two blue bubble-headed guys that were arguing; I was one of those. There was a thing that had kind of a yam-nose. And then there was a…. I don’t know what. It looked like a big tapeworm or something. That’s all I remember at the moment.”
It was during one of Lucas’ inspection tours of the cantina inserts that he happened across a little stop-motion puppet of Tippett’s, a long-necked hulking lizard humanoid with a natty vest. “He saw it and said, ‘hmm… you guys do this too?'”
Lucas was stuck with how to do the holographic chess sequence. His initial plan was to shoot actors and composite them as holograms, but a recent science fiction movie had done a similar effect. “George didn’t want to duplicate something that had just come out, so he thought doing stop-motion for the hologram would be different and a more fun way of achieving the effect. So, he hired us to do that.”
Tippett’s model, dubbed the Mantellian savrip years later by the Expanded Universe, was the first piece. It was a pre-existing model that he had crafted years ago. He and Jon Berg worked diligently to craft the rest of the players over little more than a week. “They were very simple sculpy and aluminum wire, or we just wrapped foam rubber around aluminum wire and brought them in to shoot.” The holographic chess scene was one of the last ones completed for the film. “They were having their final crew party at ILM. Everybody was partying it up and screaming and Jon and I were in the back still animating these toys,” says Tippett.
With Star Wars wrapped, few involved in the production could have known what to expect. But having worked on the last great unknown component of the visionary film — the groundbreaking visual effects — many of the ILMers had more than an inkling of what was to come. “I remember watching the dailies of the bar scene and the chess scene, and even though there was no temp track and it was just production sound, and it was the Van Nuys facility’s projection room, which was really ’60s-ish — just a bunch of overstuffed chairs that kind of smelled like wet dog — we just immediately knew. I mean, you could just say, ‘Wow. This is the picture we’ve always wanted to work on since we were kids.’ It was just so clear that it was going to be cool.”
After the immense success of the first Star Wars, many of the charter ILMers were brought back, this time to a new facility north of San Francisco, to blaze new ground in the much-awaited sequel, The Empire Strikes Back. Whereas Star Wars revolutionized the art and science of motion control and traveling matte compositing, Empire was set to push the envelope of Tippett’s first love, stop-motion animation.
“It was Dennis Muren who really pushed for using stop-motion for the AT-AT walkers, because there were a number of designs that Joe Johnston had drawn up for wheeled vehicles and various other things that could have been remote-controlled. Dennis and Joe really tried to steer George in the stop-motion direction. It took a little bit of time to assess whether there were enough skilled people out there who could do it,” says Tippett.
Tippett worked on the development of the tauntaun — the very first living creature seen in Empire. The need to get fluid, life-life movement in a creature that wasn’t a machine, wasn’t a hologram, but instead a living animal meant that new technologies had to be explored. Also, the creature was to be composited into a moving helicopter shot, which required the animation to sync up to a background plate with shifting perspective.
“I think Doug Beswick built a preliminary tauntaun armature, and we did a rough mockup of the creature,” recalls Tippett. “We developed a track with a pylon attached to the puppet, in order to graph the motion control of the shot. It was very limiting, because you had this support rod so you couldn’t work the object in free space like you could a stop-motion object. You had to move everything around this rod that it was on.”
Though the AT-ATs were afforded some abstraction by virtue of representing non-living machines, they proved troublesome not only for their size, but their intricate design. “They were very complicated engineering problems that Jon Berg needed to solve, because all of the joints were actually exposed. Most stop-motion puppets have articulated skeletons that are embedded deep within the rubber, so they merely have to be functional, but not visible. Jon had to design this series of joints that would work and that had very complicated compound moves, angles, and invent a number of different stop-motion joints that would work with Joe’s design. He had a great deal of internal mechanisms so that if you move the leg, it would automatically move pistons so you wouldn’t have to hand-animate them — the pistons would drive themselves.”
After Empire, Tippett and Muren would work together to further advance stop-motion with go-motion, a technique developed for Dragonslayer. One inherent drawback with stop-motion is that the camera is taking still images of a static object. When this plays back at 24 frames per second, there is a perceivable jerkiness to the image, since the crisp quality of 24 unblurred images creates a staccato-like flicker. Go-motion endeavored to introduce motion blur on the subject, by adding computer-controlled motors to the armature, to move the creature slightly while the camera shutter was open.
This technique was incorporated into Return of the Jedi, but by the time that film started pre-production, Tippett was surprised to find himself named Creature Supervisor. Instead of animating creatures, he would be designing aliens, much like his initial role in developing Cantina creatures. For Jedi, Tippett’s Creature Shop at ILM produced all the aliens except for Jabba the Hutt and the Ewoks, which were built in England.
“It was by executive decree,” he recalls with a laugh. “I am stop-motion animator, not a rubber guy, but they figured I could do it, so I did. We initially started off doing quite a few design maquettes. We didn’t see a script at all at that point. George just had us make stuff, and he would come in every two weeks or so and look at what we had done. He’d would integrate particular characters into the script, so it gave them a particular function — the next week, he’d come back and say, ‘Okay, this guy’s playing the organ and this guy’s singing, and this one’s going to be an admiral,’ and so on.”
Though the Creature Shop didn’t fabricate Jabba, Tippett’s team was instrumental in designing the loathsome slug. “At the time Nilo Rodis-Jamero, Joe Johnston and Ralph McQuarrie and I were all working on different ideas. All the work they did was in 2-D drawings, and I did a bunch of 3-D maquettes.” Initial designs varied from humanoid to a bloated queen termite, but the defining direction came from Lucas invoking a cinematic classic.
“He said to make him look like Sydney Greenstreet in Casablanca,” says Tippett. “I think at one point, we even gave him a fez.”
Such light-hearted gags helped the team manage the stress inherent in developing over 80 creatures for the film. The flippant humor turned up in a lot of the creature names. “Well, the thing just looked like the calamari appetizers we were having, so we started calling them Calamari Men, and that became Mon Calamari.” Other creature names — like Klaatu, Nikto, and Barada, Hermi Odle, and Ephant Mon have similar irreverent origins visible to those who look closely.
The Digital Revolution
After finishing his stint at ILM, Tippett was one of many alumni who went out on his own to follow his own projects. He formed Tippett Studio in 1983, based in Berkley, California. There, he continued to bring his animation talents to a number of fantastic creations, notably the ED-209 robotic sentry in Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi classic RoboCop.
Tippett had inherited the mantle of stop-motion animation wizard from Harryhausen. So much so, that when Steven Spielberg began work on his tyrannosaurus rex of dinosaur-movies, Jurassic Park, Tippett was recruited to handle the bulk of dinosaur effects, with some experimental digital dino-work by ILM planned for other, specific needs.
“All the dinosaurs in Jurassic were going to be pretty conventional, using stop-motion and rod puppets, and then relying a little bit on computer graphics for some of the stampeding herd scenes,” says Tippett. “As we were developing it, [ILM Visual Effects Supervisor] Dennis Muren was able to get some R&D; money at ILM, and worked up a few tests.”
Those “few tests” led to a watershed moment in the development of digital visual effects. There, in a darkened screening room, the creators of Jurassic Park saw the future unfold in a test shot of a lumbering tyrannosaurus rex, completely digital, stalking across a Marin County background. In a much-repeated anecdote, Spielberg turned to Tippett and declared his beloved craft of stop-motion animation … “extinct.”
“Steven said to me, ‘how do you feel, Phil?’ I said, ‘I feel like Georges Méliès!'” Tippett recalls, mentioning the father of visual effects of the early 1900s. “Everything that I had ever worked towards and loved as a kid was just in the trash can. There was a little bit of the new gunslinger vs. old gunslinger mentality with the CG guys. ‘We’re the new kids on the block,’ and I fell for it! I thought to myself, ‘I don’t have a clue about sitting down at a computer monitor and clicking at a mouse all day long and typing stuff out — it just didn’t look like a job for me.”
Many visual effects companies did not survive the digital revolution, having failed to prepare for the coming tidal wave of computer-generated solutions that would wash away old mechanical and photochemical processes. “I got really sick. My world came crashing down. I got pneumonia. My doctor made me go to bed,” Tippett says. But he sprung back, and instead embraced the opportunity to set some firm footprints in this new territory. “In that time, it became clear that George Lucas, Steven and various people involved wanted me to stay involved with Jurassic Park.”
Computer generated imagery was nothing new in the early 1990s. For almost 15 years, there had been some experimental innovation. Computer animation wasn’t about characters and stories yet, but instead existed to solve problems like reflections, ripples, and procedural rendering. Those most schooled in making a computer simulate reality weren’t schooled in imbuing inanimate subjects with vitality and motion, and vice-versa.
“Most of the work that the computer graphics guys were doing at the time was, on some level, theoretical,” explains Tippett. “It wasn’t bound to conventions or the physical realities of gravity, because it never needed to be. That education didn’t exist. Up until that point it had been a lot of flying logos or things like that. Dennis had been working more on hallucinogenic kinds of things — the stained glass man (in Young Sherlock Holmes) or the water-snake in The Abyss, or even the metal man in Terminator 2.
“Now these things had to be really concrete and perform with a kind of instinctual projection. Weight and mass and acceleration and deceleration and intentional issues of eyelines and things like that became extremely important.”
To bridge both disciplines, Tippett’s team assembled a hands-on solution for the computer world. Further hindering the paradigm shift from physical to digital was that computer animation applications at the time weren’t very user-friendly. The newly crafted “digital input device” made the computer work far more closer to the “just for fun” stop-motion films of childhood.
“I think as a consequence of CG still being in its infancy, Dennis felt uncomfortable about putting all his eggs in one basket and wanted to co-evolve and cross-blend stop-motion animation with the CG stuff,” says Tippett. “So Tom St. Amand and Blair Clark built these big stop-motion puppets that each had optical encoders on them that ran into the computer, and that was the initial way of inputting both the raptor-attacking-the-kids scene, and the T-rex entrance.”
With this as a starting point, there was still a lot of learning and unlearning in CG animation. “The computer had this function at the time, describing the animation as an analytical curve that ends up looking like a map of the British underground railway,” says Tippett. “And if you looked at this analytical function curve and saw what a conventional computer graphics guy was doing, you’d see something that was very, very pretty and very precise and very mathematically worked out. As a result, all the animation looked very smooth, and very boring. What the stop-motion guys were doing was adding these odd spikes and jags to that curve whenever a creature’s elbow connected to the ground. Initially, some of the technical people were saying, ‘that function curve doesn’t look right!’ True, but the movement looked right.”
This reintroduction of natural chaos, which Tippett called “breaking it,” led to amazingly realistic animation, and garnered ILM and Tippett an Academy Award for their work on Jurassic Park. Rather than throw in the effects towel, Tippett Studio began ramping up their digital expertise, first with small projects like Tremors 2, and eventually graduating to full CG spectacles. Starship Troopers was Tippett Studio’s landmark foray into massive swarms of computer-generated performances.
Hero of the Federation
Though manipulating puppets and pixels is an entirely different discipline than directing a live action movie, Tippett’s VFX-background was of great help as he cut his directorial teeth with the straight-to-video thriller Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation. A sequel to the big-budget big-screen Paul Verhoeven film of 1997, Troopers 2 scales down the galaxy-spanning war epic to a single outpost, and a small group of soldiers holding their fort against innumerable warrior bugs.
But there’s little safety within that concrete bunker, as a new type of bug makes distinguishing friend from foe a very deadly game.
Collaborating with longtime associates, Producer Jon Davison and Screenwriter Ed Neumeier, Tippett knew this Starship Troopers adventure would be a departure from its theatrical predecessor.
“We had been trying to develop various projects unsuccessfully in Hollywood, because they were all too weird and nobody wanted to do them,” says Tippett. “Jon got the idea of seeing if there was any likelihood or interest in Columbia/TriStar Direct-to-Video’s part in doing a sequel to Starship Troopers.”
The original film had a budget of about million dollars, but only grossed about half of that once it ended its theatrical run. A big movie follow-up wasn’t feasible, but there was still life to the continuing stories of fascist Earth forces battling against terrifying insect infantry.
“Sony was definitely interested in keeping the franchise alive, if we did it for a rock-bottom amount,” says Tippett. Davison, Neumeier and Tippett came up with a single-setting story that exchanged epic battle scenes for psychological terror and claustrophobia. Tippett likens the differences between original and sequel as the inverse of Alien and Aliens. It’s smaller, but scarier.
Production-wise, though, a smaller production with a tiny budget is much less frightening to the executives tasked to bankroll it. “The administration is always worried if they’re spending million, and everything gets so micromanaged that nobody’s has any fun,” says Tippett. “What we wanted to do was get back to our ancient Roger Corman-style filmmaking roots and just make the picture. The bad news is that you don’t have any money. The good news is that you don’t have any money. So all you can do is the best you can with the resources that you’ve got — and that really frees you up. So our deal was, let us make our movie and don’t micromanage us.”
The final budget was well under million dollars — a fragment of what a typical non-VFX theatrical drama costs. Pricey film stock and development costs were curtailed through the use of 24p HD-cameras, the same style of digital cameras used to capture Episodes II and III. The biggest budget-stretching boon was the production’s abilities to use hand-me-down wardrobe from the first film — quality armor and uniforms that were ready to use. Though, as Tippett recounts, the mixture of costumes and camera almost proved to be a derailing setback on Troopers 2.
“We had done all our camera tests with a different camera, and a week before the start of shooting, it came down that we had to use a Sony camera, so we had to re-do all of our tests,” says Tippett. “We’re relighting and retesting the costume, and Christian Sebaldt, the Director of Photography, starts freaking out. All these horrible moiré patterns were emanating all around the costumes. It turned out the lines of resolution in the cameras and the weave of the fabric in these costumes created these ridiculous patterns.”
Down to the wire, the production had to remake all the costumes in time for the first week of shooting. Though on-camera, the costumes passed muster, they failed a few key quality tests as action garments. “The first things we were doing were all these action scenes. All the troopers start to run, and all the crotches rip out of their pants. So everyone was putting gaffer’s tape on people’s crotches the first day of shooting,” Tippett laughs. “That’s a pretty typical stupid story.”
Such character-building war stories aside, Tippett was able to navigate the first-time director waters by applying what he had learned from working with a number of award-winning directorial heavyweights. “I would meet with Paul Verhoeven every month or so and go over production strategies. He was my mentor on the show. My memory of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard and all these guys was that they were extremely inclusive. What they’ll do is invite you into a project to do your best work,” he says.
“I found that the more experienced the director was, the easier it was to work with him. The less experienced the directors were, the more horrible it was to work with him. Primarily because they were freaked out and worried,” he continues. “But I had seen that in action. Coming from a visual effects, you really get to cradle-to-grave these projects, and you’re working right from the beginning with the writer all the way through to when they’re striking the release print. So, you get to see the whole process and it’s not a mystery.”
Low budget-necessity proved to be the mother of production-invention in solving a number of challenges. It wouldn’t be Starship Troopers if the soldiers couldn’t use guns, but working weaponry proved to be a budget-buster. “In the first Starship Troopers, the budget for guns and ammo alone was like .5 million! That would cancel the picture right there, but I remembered this thing that Craig Hayes had devised when we were doing Robocop. I needed to have the ED-209 blast his guns with interactive lighting. Craig designed this rig with these little flash tubes that I was able to put into the barrels of the stop-motion character. It worked out great, so we used a similar idea. We manufactured these guns designed by Blair Clark, and one of our cameramen Frank Petzold put this quartz flash in the barrel. Because we were shooting HD, we were able to shoot with a shutter speed that would blow everything out.”
Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation boasts a modest 125 visual effects shots designed for maximum impact. Whereas the first film was a spectacle, this one is more of a gruesome horror picture, with the creature design and execution handled accordingly.
“On the horror side of things, the less you know and the more that is left to the mind and the unconscious, the better,” says Tippett of his creature-design philopshy. “It’s better if things are kept in the dark. But when it comes to spectacle, you have to try to give the things a lived-in sense of history. You have to have the thing explain itself without any explostion to make it feel like it’s actually been a real lived-in thing with an evolutionary history of its own. So that they don’t just feel like they’re designed by some cool designer who gave it a modeler and just said, ‘hey, make this and put it in a movie.’ A lot of times things fail because people are just making decisions based on things that look cool, but they’re not total concept planning.”
As far as the directorial debut experience goes, Tippett doesn’t seek to mystify the process. It seems clear-cut to him. “I figured if we have fun making this picture, then some of that will leak out into the finished product, and people will have fun watching it,” he says.
Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation is now available on DVD from Columbia/Tri-Star. It is rated R for violence, sexual content and brief language. Phil Tippett is also one of the dozens of behind-the-scenes talents interviewed on the supplementary material found on the Star Wars Trilogy DVD, due out September 2
This Article was Originally posted 2022-10-07 16:17:29.
The world-renowned artist speaks to StarWars.com about his new collaboration with Sideshow and Lucasfilm.
There can be beauty in decay. Daniel Arsham has won fans around the world by making this idea an art form all his own: he creates sculptures, often pulled from pop culture iconography, that look as if they’ve been found on the ocean floor after thousands of years, crystals forming throughout. And he sees a connection there with Star Wars.
“George Lucas’ version of the future felt real. It felt worn out a little bit, and this was very different from [typical] depictions of spacecraft and even aliens or other characters,” he tells StarWars.com. “So I feel that my future relic or future archeology series has some similarities with that.”…
As I said in the previous post, the format changed for the Episode Guides, so I have created a Featurette covering clips and interviews from The Clone Wars – Season 6 so I hope you enjoy them (bit short tho’).
Expect the same for the rest of the Seasons and expect Season 7 soon.
The Clone Wars Episode Guide: Season Five – Part 3
As I said in the previous post, the format changed for the Episode Guides, so I have created two Featurettes covering clips and interviews from The Clone Wars – Season 5 so I hope you enjoy them.
Expect the same for the rest of the Seasons and expect Season 6 soon.
The Clone Wars Episode Guide: Season Five – Part 3
The Clone Wars Episode Guide: Season Five – Part 2
As I said in the previous post, the format changed for the Episode Guides, so I have created two Featurettes covering clips and interviews from The Clone Wars – Season 5 so I hope you enjoy them.
Expect the same for the rest of the Seasons and expect Season 6 soon.
The Clone Wars Episode Guide: Season Five – Part 2
The Clone Wars Episode Guide: Season Five – Part 1
As I said in the previous post, the format changed for the Episode Guides, so I have created two Featurettes covering clips and interviews from The Clone Wars – Season 5 so I hope you enjoy them.
Expect the same for the rest of the Seasons and expect Season 6 soon.
The Clone Wars Episode Guide: Season Five – Part 1
As I said in the previous post, the format changed for the Episode Guides, so I have created two Featurettes covering clips and interviews from The Clone Wars – Season 4 so I hope you enjoy them.
Expect the same for the rest of the Seasons and expect Season 5 soon.
As I said in the previous post, the format changed for the Episode Guides, so I have created two Featurettes covering clips and interviews from The Clone Wars – Season 4 so I hope you enjoy them.
Episode No.: 65 (Season 3, Episode 21) Production No.: 316 (Season 3, Episode 16) Original Air Date: April 1, 2011
“Without humility, courage is a dangerous game.”
Written by Bonnie Mark
Directed by Dave Filoni
Cast:
Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka Tano
Gwendoline Yeo as Kalifa
Matt Lanter as Anakin Skywalker | Ratter
James Arnold Taylor as Plo Koon | Kat Moll | Lagon
Dee Bradley Baker as clone troopers | TZ-33
Sunil Malhotra as Jinx
Zach Hanks as Garnac
Richard Green as Lo-Taren
Cam Clarke as O-Mer
Kevin Thoms as Dar
Matthew Wood as battle droids
Tom Kane as narrator
Synopsis: Ahsoka and a group of abducted younglings find themselves trapped on a Trandoshan moon, prey in an elaborate and cruel hunt. The forlorn younglings have lost all hope, despite the best efforts of their spirited leader, Kalifa. Ahsoka rallies them to defend themselves and strike back against the Trandoshan, an effort with deadly consequences.
New Characters: Kalifa, Garnac, Dar, Jinx, O-Mer, Lo-Taren, Smug, Kat-Moll
The Jedi “cookie” at the start of the episode references “a dangerous game,” which is a nod to the 1924 short story, “The Most Dangerous Game,” by Richard Connell. The story is about a Russian hunter who stalks a big game hunter on a Caribbean island. It has been adapted to film and television many times.
This episode sees the return of Plo Koon’s Wolfpack clone troopers, led by Commander Wolffe, and featuring troopers Comet, Sinker and Boost.
Trandoshans are the same species as Bossk, the bounty hunter seen in Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back and in The Clone Wars Season Two’s three-part finale. The species name Trandoshan was established in a 1989 roleplaying game book, Galaxy Guide 3: The Empire Strikes Back, which also revealed that big game hunting was common in their culture.
The original script had the hunt take place on Dosha, the Trandoshan homeworld. It was later moved to Wasskha, a moon.
Also in the original script, the Trandoshan hunting lodge was a ground-based camp. During the development of the episode, it was moved into the sky to make the idea that the younglings had never found it before more plausible Among the prisoners delivered to Wasskha with Ahsoka are a Snivvian named Katt Mol (his red-and-black jumpsuit is inspired by the classic cantina character, Snaggletooth), a Terrelian Jango Jumper named Lika (modeled after Cassie Cryar), a Selkath named Morgo (modeled after Chata Hyoki), and a Sakiyan named Vadoo. In the script, Katt Mol, Vadoo and a hunter named Simna banded together for survival. This footage was shot but had to be cut for time.
Lika gets shot by a burly Trandoshan named Sochek, whose amber-tinted goggles and cargo shorts are inspired by Walter Sobchak, a character played by John Goodman in the 1998 Coen brothers movie, The Big Lebowski.
The yellow feathered birds are called convorees (singular: convor).
The Trandoshan hunting pods are inspired by the classic Cobra Trubble Bubble flight pod toy from the G.I.JOE toyline.
Episode No.: 64 (Season 3, Episode 20) Production No.: 317 (Season 3, Episode 17) Original Air Date: March 11, 2011
“Without honor, victory is hollow.”
Written by Matt Michnovetz
Directed by Steward Lee
Cast:
James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan Kenobi | Osi Sobeck | Plo Koon
Matt Lanter as Anakin Skywalker
Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka Tano | K2-B4
Blair Bess as Even Piell
Dee Bradley Baker as clone troopers | Saesee Tiin | Admiral Coburn
Stephen Stanton as Tarkin
Tom Kane as the narrator | Yoda
Matthew Wood as battle droids
Corey Burton as Count Dooku
Terrence Carson as Mace Windu
Angelique Perrin as Adi Gallia
Synopsis: After their ship and only way off the planet is destroyed, Anakin and Obi-Wan must lead the escaped prisoners across Lola Sayu’s perilous landscape as Plo Koon commands a task force of four cruisers and their fighters through the Separatist defenses in a daring rescue. Even Piell is ravaged by anooba tracking beasts, but before he dies, he passes on his Nexus Routes coordinates to Ahsoka. When the survivors return to Coruscant, Ahsoka knows half the intel, and refuses to disclose it to anyone but the Jedi Council, while Tarkin refuses to hand over his half to anyone other than the Chancellor.
The Citadel combat scenario seen during the clone training sessions in “Clone Cadets” are named after the Citadel installation in this trilogy.
When escaping the crab droids, Commander Cody pulls a move that one of his clone troopers in Episode III will later do on Utapau — running atop a crab droid and gunning it down.
The Expanded Universe of Star Wars novels originally had Even Piell survive the Clone Wars only to be killed while as a fugitive in the early days of the Empire. Piell’s death in the Citadel Mission is the character’s true fate.
In the script for this episode, Osi Sobeck was to have been killed by Tarkin. Tarkin would have shot an unarmed Sobeck in cold blood, causing the Jedi to further question his honor.
When Saesee Tiin refers to “the Old Republic,” he is talking about the government that predates the modern founding of the Galactic Republic 1,000 years ago. That is a time of great strife and conflict, when the Sith battled against the Jedi.
Saesee Tiin’s starfighter has the same pattern on it as Ahsoka Tano, but in a different color. Likewise, Adi Gallia’s fighter has the same pattern as Plo Koon’s starfighter, seen in earlier episodes.
During the space battle, a clone trooper aboard an exploding Republic vessel lets out a distinct, high-pitched scream. This scream, called the “Wilhelm,” is an old sound effect that dates back to the 1930s, and appears in all six of the live action Star Wars feature films.
The Plo’s Bros gunship that rescues the strike team from Lola Sayu is designated a “space gunship”, with a sealed cabin and search spotlights mounted in the gunnery sockets.
The anoobas are actually a concept designed for Episode I by concept artist Terryl Whitlatch, who explored the sharp-toothed hound as a possible creature on Tatooine.
The cage the anoobas are kept in was visually inspired by the velociraptor cages in Jurassic Park.
Episode No.: 63 (Season 3, Episode 19) Production No.: 315 (Season 3, Episode 15) Original Air Date: March 4, 2011
“Anything that can go wrong will.”
Written by Matt Michnovetz
Directed by Brian Kalin O’Connell
Cast:
James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan Kenobi | Osi Sobeck | Plo Koon
Matt Lanter as Anakin Skywalker
Matthew Wood as battle droids | commando droids
Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka Tano | K2-B4
Stephen Stanton as Tarkin
Dee Bradley Baker as clone troopers
Blair Bess as Even Piell
Tom Kane as the narrator | Yoda
Corey Burton as Count Dooku
Terrence Carson as Mace Windu
Synopsis: With freed prisoners in their possession and the brutal warden attempting desperately to thwart them, Obi-Wan and Anakin search for a way out of the Citadel and back to Coruscant. The prison, however, has more traps, perils and pitfalls in store for them than they had imagined and they must work past their differences if they are to escape. Their bid to board their shuttle fails when heavy weapons fire destroys the escape craft. Trooper Echo dies in the blast. The escapees then flee to the caves and call for rescue from the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.
Seen several times throughout the Citadel are mouse droids, the same little boxy droids seen as messengers aboard the Death Star and Star Destroyers in the original trilogy, and on Mustafar in Episode III.
Anakin’s hopping on a STAP is an echo from way back in 2008, The Clone Wars animated story.
The entire sequence where Obi-Wan and Even Piell try to sneak around the landing platform when they emerge from the ventilation duct was originally shot on top of the citadel tower. It was later moved with minimal pickups to the landing area behind the tower, on the ground.
Obi-Wan’s line to Osi Sobeck, “I must say, you’re not at all what I pictured. Someone with such a soft voice,” is particularly ironic given that actor James Arnold Taylor voices both characters.
The monitoring devices along the walls of the Citadel seen in these three episodes are designed after similar devices seen aboard the Death Star in Episode IV.
The non-existent Separatist outpost that OOM-10 mentions as part of his bluff is Point Tarron.
To differentiate Lola Sayu’s hellish conditions from the lava planet Mustafar, its molten rivers are colored a bright yellow, to suggest sulfur. Given what sulfurous deposits smell like, it’s understandable Tarkin and Anakin hold their noses.
Episode No.: 62 (Season 3, Episode 18) Production No.: 314 (Season 3, Episode 14) Original Air Date: February 18, 2011
“Adaptation is the key to survival.”
Written by Matt Michnovetz
Directed by Kyle Dunlevy
Cast:
Matt Lanter as Anakin Skywalker
James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan Kenobi | Plo Koon | Osi Sobeck
Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka Tano | K2-B4
Dee Bradley Baker as clone troopers | torture droid
Blair Bess as Even Piell
Matthew Wood as battle droids | commando droids
Stephen Stanton as Tarkin
Anthony Daniels as Threepio
Tom Kane as Narrator
Synopsis: With help from R2-D2 and a squad of captured battle droids, an elite team of Jedi and clone troopers led by Obi-Wan and Anakin attempt to free a captive Jedi general, Even Piell, from an impenetrable prison. Despite orders to the contrary, Ahsoka Tano tags along, though she proves indispensable when the infiltration mission begins to evolve. Piell and his fleet officer, Captain Tarkin, as liberated from their cells, but now the fugitives must escape the Citadel itself.
New Characters:Even Piell, Osi Sobeck, K2-B4, OOM-10, Captain Tarkin
Osi Sobeck is a Phindian, an alien species that originated in the Expanded Universe, specifically the Jedi Apprentice series published by Scholastic, Inc. The species was first pictured in The Essential Guide to Aliens Species, published by Del Rey Books in 2001. Osi’s design hews closely to the art by R.K. Post.
For James Arnold Taylor’s characterization of Osi Sobeck, he performed the dialogue with pauses and inflection inspired by Christopher Walken’s distinctive speech patterns.
Ashley Eckstein, who ordinarily voices Ahsoka Tano, joins James Arnold Taylor, Matt Lanter, Tom Kane, Corey Burton, Cara Pifko, Phil LaMarr, and Gary Scheppke as the voice of a tactical droid. The droid, K2-B4, has been colored to match the Lola Sayu environment: purple and yellow.
K2-B4’s colors also work well as the droid’s name is a nod to crewmembers who are fans of the Los Angeles Lakers. When K2-B4’s animation model was created, the Lakers won the championship. Kobe Bryant’s number 24 translates to K2-B4.
The texture of the exterior Citadel walls is meant to be visually reminiscent of the Death Star surface when seen from afar.
During Season One, discussions about getting past droid scans led to Superising Director Dave Filoni and writer Henry Gilory developing the carbon-freezing tactic, though it never made it into an episode. Gilroy later used it in an Expanded Universe Clone Wars comic book story, The Shipyards of Doom. Its use in ‘The Citadel’ brings it to the screen.
Some of the smallest asteroids seen orbiting Lola Sayu are re-textured rocks seen floating over Mortis or Iego.
According to the screens in the Citadel orbital security stations, the Separatist shuttle that R2-D2 commands is an escort shuttle, class type B.
Even Piell is a Jedi Master first seen in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Piell’s short height and long ears caused many fans to speculate some sort of relation to Yoda (some called him “the pink Yoda”), but Piell is a distinct species: a Lannik. Though Even Piell is male, in the live action movie, he was portrayed by a woman: Michaela Cotrell.
Episode No.: 61 (Season 3, Episode 17) Production No.: 313 (Season 3, Episode 13) Original Air Date: February 11, 2011
“He who seeks to control fate shall never find peace.”
Written by Christian Taylor
Directed by Steward Lee
Cast:
Matt Lanter as Anakin Skywalker
Lloyd Sherr as Father
James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan Kenobi
Sam Witwer as Son
Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka Tano
Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn
Dee Bradley Baker as clone troopers
Tom Kane as the narrator | Yoda
Ian Abercrombie as Darth Sidious
Catherine Taber as Padmé
Synopsis: The Jedi remain stranded on Mortis, and the Son, aligned with the dark side of the Force, renews his efforts to convert Anakin as the Jedi prepare for a decisive confrontation. Anakin is stunned by images of his dark future. The Son promises him the power to avert this destiny.
The Father recognizes that the Son has broken the rules of time. He wipes Anakin’s memory of these future visions, and steals the Mortis Dagger to end the conflict. The Father impales himself, thus preventing the Son from stealing his power. The Son, stunned by this, is run through by Anakin. With all three Force-wielders destroyed, the imbalance in the Force disappears on Mortis. The three Jedi are transplanted back to the galaxy proper, apparently at the moment that they disappeared.
It is completely intentional that the Father is the only one of the three Force-wielders that vanishes upon his death as Obi-Wan and Yoda do.
The lava used in the Well of the Dark Side uses some of the same elements from Revenge of the Sith Mustafar scenes, according to effects supervisor Joel Aron
The very portable Jedi jumpseeders are based off a speeder bike concept drawings from Return of the Jedi.
Some of the concept design for the Well of the Dark Side was taken from early Ralph McQuarrie designs for subterranean levels of the Imperial Palace where Luke was going to face the Emperor deep within Coruscant in Return of the Jedi.
Ahsoka is wearing a re-purposed par of Hondo Ohnaka’s pirate goggles with the strap removed.
Hidden among the constellations etched into in the Father’s monastery is a wolf.
