Disney+’s ‘Ahsoka’ has earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Season or Movie, further solidifying Richard Bluff’s reputation as one of the industry’s leading VFx supervisors. Bluff, who already has Emmy wins for his work on ‘The Mandalorian’ and ‘The Book of Boba Fett’, brought his leadership and skillset to ‘Ahsoka’, ensuring that this highly anticipated series lived up to the legacy of the Star Wars franchise.
The series follows Ahsoka Tano (played by Rosario Dawson), a character first introduced in the beloved animated series ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’, as she navigates a new set of challenges in the galaxy. With high expectations from fans who grew up with ‘The Clone Wars’ and ‘Rebels’, Bluff and his team were tasked with making these characters and environments feel as authentic in live-action as they did in animation.
The nomination is particularly special, given Bluff’s long-standing collaboration with Dave Filoni, who originally supervised ‘The Clone Wars’ and is the executive producer for all Star Wars animated series. The VFX work on Ahsoka expertly combines practical effects with advanced CGI, crafting new worlds that honor the beloved characters from ‘The Clone Wars’. Under Bluff’s supervision, several companies contributed to the 4,000 plus VFX shots, including ILM, Hybride, and Digital Domain.
“We were proactive about photographing real environments that would drive what the environment looked like,” shared Bluff. “This approach brought us all together, focusing on the same expansive visual.”
Richard Bluff spoke to Awards Focus about the complexities of adapting beloved animated characters for live-action, some of the new techniques used to craft CG scenes that are grounded in reality, and the character that was the most challenging to bring from the popular animated series to live-action.
AF: Congratulations on the Emmy nomination! With the high expectations surrounding this series, especially from both traditional Star Wars fans and those who grew up with ‘The Clone Wars’ and ‘Rebels’, how did you approach bringing these beloved characters, environments, and worlds to life? What were the initial discussions and guiding principles in making this series feel authentic and familiar to fans?
Richard: One of the wonderful things about working on these shows is the visuals that Dave can describe from his head, and the sketches he provides allow Doug Chiang and his art department to create hundreds of images that bring the show to life. One of the hardest parts was bringing these characters into live action. Dave already brought Ahsoka in from ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 2. Dave and Doug, working together with the costumes and the actors’ performances, brought those characters to life without requiring visual effects. For me, the challenge was making sure the shows didn’t feel small. The artwork and designs that Doug provides show what this world needs to look like, but we were confined to several stages at the time in Manhattan Beach, our LED stage, and a small exterior back lot. The worst thing is for Star Wars to feel small or boxed in, so we partnered with the DPs to ensure the lighting didn’t box us in. The DPs we worked with were so talented that this was not a concern once we started working together.
We were proactive about photographing real environments that would drive what the environment looked like. For example, Peridea looked very much like Scotland. Andrew Jones went to Scotland months before to photograph potential locations and inspirations for the movie. Once Dave decided on the right visual and Doug designed around those images, we sent a team to Scotland to canvas the entire area. This allowed us to bring back the imagery and work with the DP to communicate the lighting. For the exterior environments, we had to silk the entire backlot in LA. We also talked to the Greens department. Richie (Richard Bell) and Andrew Jones looked at all the grasses to prep materials in advance for set dressing. This approach brought us all together, focusing on the same expansive visual.
AF: What techniques and references did you use to create some of the many creatures that populate the world of ‘Ahsoka’ such as the Noti, howlers and the large flying whale-like purrgils?
Richard: The purrgils were originally designed in the animated shows before us, so we leveraged what was already there. It’s almost second nature to Dave, Doug, and us in visual effects to ground something in reality, whether it’s blatantly obvious or not. For example, with the howlers, Dave needed to transport his characters across the environment without relying on another speeder or vehicle. He wanted them riding a creature that blended with the environment. A wolf-type creature fit well, but being Star Wars, he brought a level of design that took it beyond the familiar. The face has crocodile features, making it believable.
For animation tests, we leveraged horses so the actors could ride them, requiring a slight change in the anatomy of the legs for better jointing. We always try to ground things in reality, giving the audience something familiar to hold on to.
AF: With only about a year between each Star Wars series you’ve worked on, how has technology advanced, and were there any new innovations used for Ahsoka compared to earlier shows?
Richard: It’s always advancing, of course. We’re always learning from past shows. One of the things I would highlight is everybody’s pretty familiar with how we executed Luke with one of our third-party vendors at the end of season two of ‘The Mandalorian’, and then on ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ when we brought Luke back for many more shots. ILM really pushed the technology of face swapping, using archived imagery from the original movies to build a face that could perform how the standing actor was performing on set for us.
As we got to ‘Ahsoka’, we reached a point where we didn’t need massive data sets anymore. What we could do is go in almost with a scalpel, work with the actors, and discuss what we needed to capture specifically for a big stunt that the stunt performer was going to execute. Then we’d be able to talk to the actors like Rosario or Ray and note that we want to bring you in the same light we just performed the stunt in. We have this new camera rig we developed after ‘The Book of Boba Fett’; we have six cameras or more. We’re going to go in there for two minutes; you’ll do a very quick range of motion with expressions. We’re going to capture that data in this very specific moment, in this specific lighting, and for us, that will work just for this one stunt. And then we move on to the next thing.
So we really evolved to the point where the stunt performing face swaps, something we’ve done in visual effects for 20-30 years, has become a fairly standard process that can be executed very quickly on the majority of shots—not all of them, but the majority.
AF: Among the 4,000 plus VFx shots for the series, do you have a favorite?
Richard: The scene I never got tired of watching ILM develop was the scene in episode two when Phantom II, the very small vehicle that was in pursuit of the engine. It was flying outside the atmosphere, intercutting with Ahsoka fighting Marrok. For me, that was classic Star Wars—two different battles taking place of contrasting styles, intercut with wonderful sound effects and music. I never tired of it because it’s the kind of work where, particularly when they were flying up chasing the engine, it was all CG so what can we do to make it feel as real and familiar as possible.
The CG camerawork the animators did, things like letting the vehicle slightly get out of frame or overtake the vehicle, added imperfections that made it familiar to audiences. It’s like watching ‘Top Gun’ or a real car chase. We tried to put that into our CG work to continue raising the bar of what we think is grounded and real.
AF: How do you guide actors who are new to the Star Wars universe, especially those less experienced with combining practical and visual effects? What kind of training or direction do they receive to deliver convincing performances?
Richard: A lot of that comes down to Dave and the episodic directors and how they interact with the actors. One of the things we do on this show, which is a wonderful tool, is the fact that Dave and Jon [Favreau] on ‘The Mandalorian’ shows create full story reels. They pre-vis the entire season out. Not all of it is The Third Floor’s pre-vis, whom we’ve worked with for many years, because the stunt performers often replace sections of the show with their own recordings of the actual fight as they rehearse it. But once you have that and once the actors can see what’s happening in the sequence, especially during dogfights and performing in the cockpit, they understand what they’re reacting to, which is important. When working with Steven Tom, our technical supervisor who also works on set with me, we often take a complex visual effects shot and break it down with the DP. We back out of the pre-vis motion into a camera, even if it isn’t supposed to be on a camera. For example, if you’re photographing a stationary object and then move the camera on the dolly to the back of the vehicle, it looks like it’s accelerated out of frame.
Showing the actor what’s happening and why helps inform them, for example, when to tense up on the bike because they’re about to accelerate. They don’t know that’s going to happen because they’re on a stationary pedestal, and it’s the camera’s timing that will do all of that. Once we provide these visuals and the pre-vis, they can work with that and understand what they’re reacting to and how we’re piecing it together in post.
AF: Which characters were the most challenging to bring to live action compared to their animated versions?
Richard: They all bring their own challenges. The one character we paid special attention to because he was going to live as a CG character for much of the show, although we did have a practical version, was Chopper. The thing about Chopper of course, having watched all of ‘Rebels’, is there is so much of Chopper featured in the series that you really want all the animators to watch it so that, before they tackle a shot, they feel like they know that character.
We weren’t reinventing the character; we wanted to take the animated character and bring it into the live-action world, making sure it was grounded but brings all the same character through. We encouraged all the animators to spend time watching the show. We even met with the animators who worked on the ‘Rebels’ animated show. Our animation teams got together so they could impart to our team how they animated the character, what the pitfalls were, what he can do, what he can’t do, how often he would do certain things, and how Dave reacts and directs, in animation, that particular character. We aimed to provide Dave with a smooth transition for a beloved character of his, whom he also voices.