Swimmingly good
Art Direction + Retouching
In 2019, my aggregate experience of photo editing, post-production team management, and creative direction led to an Art Director position in the famed Industrial Light & Magic Art Department (LucasFilm). I lead a small team of digital artists in the Image Unit, recreating the CG and other FX on the unit photography from Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, The Mandalorian, Skeleton Crew, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, Boba Fett, The Acolyte, to both seasons of Andor, as well as archival Star Wars Saga unit photography. We also prepared hi-res poses of spaceships, planets, creatures and light sabers. Note: while I am the art director, I am also retouching and comping along side my team. Our handiwork can be seen in magazines, fan book compilations, toy and cereal boxes, billboards and bus stops.
Art Direction
I.L.M. Image Unit
My second day on the job I was tasked with taking out the set pieces and adding light sabers to this Vanity Fair photo spread by Annie Liebowitz, who was invited down to the set.
A
When LucasFilm Burbank Headquarters was remodeled, I was tasked with using scans of 35mm unit photos taken on The Empire Strikes Back set in 1979.
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I went to work stitching sub-par grainy unit photography images into a Degobah world which had never been seen before. Then making it high quality enough for an Executive LucasFilm hallway.
It was slow going to get the pieces of different scans to match. It took us until the 10th version before we even had something like the final layout. Versions A and B, here, are early layouts.
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The finally we decided on the layout, the color temperature, the grain and the look before the image below was approved. It currently graces the hallway in LFL Burbank and is 10' tall.
B
Final
Image Unit used almost a dozen different studio and unit photo images to construct this final image for Empire Magazine for The Mandalorian, Season 3.
Nothing more nerve-wracking than recreating the look of LucasFilm's Dave Filoni's most prized creation, Ahsoka, in hi-res. So you finesse the saber-look and skin color and cross your fingers. Dave approved.
You have to be flexible. The Empire Magazine team came to us for help, and we obliged them with these images for the collector's issue covers for the (then) upcoming Episode 9 movie event.
Unit Photos
Just a taste of what we do.
We had the honor of replacing the the old visual effects on the unit stills from episodes 1, 4, 5, and 6. It was mind blowing and humbling to be able to update these images for the Star Wars archive. We worked with the legendary John Knoll to fine tune our new look.
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You learn a lot about making a saber in this job. It's complicated. Also, star fields (outside the emperor's window) are a particular thing. Actually, everything is particular when ILM is involved.
Mandalorian, Season 1: Thing is, you have to figure out how to make the effects in Photoshop. CG applications are too low resolution for print, which is why Image Unit exists. And CG artists by-and-large don't know Photoshop. Who knew?
Star Wars - Rise of Skywalker -- Two things: it's hard to make a muzzle blast from scratch. Also, it's cool to know that J.J. Abrams approved your image.
This ensemble wide shot never happened in the movie. But it feels like it did. So you get a few raw images from a set photographer and then you get a movie clip to match it to. That's it. This shot involved four unit photos and a lot of huddling with the CG Supe.
This is one of the coolest baddies in Ahsoka, season 1. But, man, it was a lot of heavy lifting to remove that greenscreen, find enough hi-rez forest to fill it in, create the saber-look and finish all the color, and paint in the interactive light.
