The Mandalorian – Season 1

Project

Mar 3

Scaling Virtual Art Departments Across Star Wars

The Mandalorian Season 1 marked Lucasfilm’s first leap into virtual production, and we were proud to help lead the environment design. Safari and I ran the Virtual Art Department, bridging traditional production design with Unreal Engine workflows.

We worked closely with Production Designer Andrew Jones, and DP Greig Fraser to develop and lead the virtual art department process, introducing and guiding directors, producers, and designers through virtual sets in and out of VR. What started as a VR proof-of-concept grew into a working pipeline supported by new teams in later seasons.

Contrary to later seasons, where we delivered final pixel sets, the first one was focused on high-quality previs environments designed for VFX handoff, but with the direction coming from the production designer. These were built in Unreal Engine but fitting of a traditional VFX rendering and physical production pipeline, a major step toward what ICVFX would become today.

Our final deliverable included a printed VAD Bible, used on set as the primary reference for what each scene should look like.

To follow our journey with Lucasfilm, check out the links below:
– The Mandalorian Season 2
– The Book of Boba Fett
– The Mandalorian Season 3
– Obi-Wan Kenobi
– Ahsoka
– Skeleton Crew