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Dave Filoni on Star Wars: The Clone Wars
By Fred Topel | Image property of LucasFilm
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Dave Filoni Directs The Clone Wars
"Knowing with the time we had and the speed we were going to move at, I instantly knew that photorealism wasn't an area that we were going to go to," said director Dave Filoni. "That, as George said, already had been covered massively in the live action features. I came from a 2D animated background where we use design and shape and color to just make animated characters all the time. I wanted to apply that type of thinking to the computer animation, which largely, even a lot of big features that are done in computer animation are all very, the goal is photorealism. That wasn't really interesting to me because I come from such a 2D drawing background."
Lucas agreed with Filoni and they bonded over the artistic possibilities of the new approach. "We talked about sculpting with light and shadow and that's where you get the angles on the characters faces. I was aware, and really afraid, of the kind of lifeless CG that you can wind up with that I read about often in the press when people see a movie. So I thought by having artists hand paint a texture all over the characters, that that would somehow keep the spontaneity that an artist provides, a fallibility, a flawless feeling of a little bit of painterly-ness on everything, even right down to the eye balls, so it kind of came together with this new technology and my thinking from an older style."
A versatile artist already, Filoni could easily adapt the computers to his style. "In the end, the computer just becomes another type of paintbrush or drawing pencil. Sometimes I draw in pencil, sometimes I draw in sharpee. No one complains about the difference there, so now we have a new tool. We use the computer and you see more and more artists now using that technique, using that device to create all kinds of paintings and drawings. So I think you're going to see a big outburst of that in animation as well over the next few years."
The Clone Wars introduces new characters into the Star Wars universe, such as Anakin's padawan Ahsoka, and a new villain, Ventress. "Ventress was a character that was actually developed for early concept art of Attack of the Clones. There was the idea that maybe the Sith apprentice, the new one after Darth Maul would be a girl. That got abandoned eventually in favor of Count Dooku, Christopher Lee's character, but the concept art existed. The comic books and novels on the Clone Wars that were done before had utilized that character, that concept art and created this new character, the Ventress. So when it came time to develop the idea of the Clone Wars as a series, we thought, well, that's a big fan favorite character. Let's draw her out."
Star Wars: The Clone Wars will hit theaters on August 15th.
For stills, posters and more movie info, go to the Star Wars: The Clone Wars Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of LucasFilm
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