Supervising Art Director Fred Palacio

During pre-production, one of the key ideas here was to show how the characters were trapped in the city, isolated from the external world. The snow here is the first lethal weapon that killed most of the population, but something else is happening. A barricade along the Puente Saavedra shows that something else is happening, something more extraordinary. This keyframe shows the character isolated against all the odds, the snow, the loneliness, the urban chaos. 

One of the most important things working on the project was to have the vision of the people who live there when this is happening. The Client and the novelist were from Argentina where the film is played. So the first step for authenticity was to become immersed in the Argentinian world. Diving into memories of the city I visited and merging with an exact location, walking through street views online. Finally, translating the situation into a frame, one by isolating the character, but also using the bridge to undermine his power, the point of view and camera position is determinant to sell the situation of the character. 

The resilience to overcome the giant wall made of all sorts of human-made things to suggest the Alien presence, even the sign in the bridge is a message to the viewer translating “everything has a prelude.” The element here needs to reflect how an ordinary man in an ordinary world resists all the extraordinary events and obstacles. The green bag means a forward action, the red light tells not to go back, the perspective of the bridge points back to the car and another figure hinting to cohesion…all these elements tell something about the story but also about the character’s attitude toward those obstacles.

Art Director Amy Beth Christenson

This is an early study for a specific neighborhood in Buenos Aires, just after the snowfall, where Juan is discovering the aftermath. I worked to position cars and people so that it conveyed a sense that what happened was sudden and unexpected. I researched the original comic quite a bit, and also did a lot of research to make sure that the specific neighborhood was accurate so that it felt very real.

I like the sense of a rosy pre-dawn, almost peacefulness to the scene, which is a contrast to what has happened. Looking at the day-to-day life images of people, and thinking about what it would look like if they were taken mid-stride, gave me ideas, like a woman walking her dog, people carrying groceries, etc., which helped the images feel more eerie.

I was on the project just for the very early initial concepts, specific to the immediate aftermath of the snowfall, and what those moments might look and feel like, and didn’t iterate beyond these. At these early stages, I wanted to get ideas for lighting and composition down early, and worry about details later.

Art Director Tyler Scarlet

This piece depicts alien creatures that are about two feet tall and who can work in a pack. The client really liked the look of microscopic dust mites, so I used that as a starting point and expanded from there. They responded to different elements from my first round, so I worked on combining the hard-shelled version with one that looked similar to a dust mite. The next step was to show it in action. I explored concepts of it attacking people, wrapping bodies in its web, and dragging them away. They are also scavengers so I did an illustration showing that as well. 

For the first pass I wanted to give the client a range of different types of creatures while still fitting the brief of a six-limbed dust mite-like creature. One version was very close to a realistic, large dust mite, another version had a hard shell, jointed legs and claws at the end of its limbs to grip onto its prey, and the third version was more aerodynamic and looked like it was built to move fast. I like how it looks when it’s coiling its web around its victim! [laughs]

This client was one of my favorites I have worked with. They came to every meeting with such excitement, passion, and appreciation. 

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See the complete gallery of concept art from The Eternaut here on ILM.com.

Learn more about the ILM Art Department.

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The BAFTA Film Awards announced their 2026 nominees today, and artists from Industrial Light & Magic have earned two nominations in Outstanding Visual Effects for their work on Frankenstein and The Lost Bus.

ILM visual effects supervisor Ivan Busquets joins fellow visual effects supervisors Dennis Berardi and Ayo Burgess and model effects supervisor José Granell for director Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.

And for The Lost Bus from director Paul Greengrass, ILM visual effects supervisor David Zaretti joins production visual effects supervisor Charlie Noble and special effects coordinator Brandon K. McLaughlin.

Additionally, ILM contributed to other Outstanding Visual Effects nominees Avatar: Fire and Ash and F1.

Congratulations to our ILM nominees! The 2026 BAFTA Film Awards will be held on February 22 in London. Read the full list of nominations here.

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Read more about The Lost Bus here on ILM.com:

Rendering a Rescue: ILM’s Dave Zaretti on the Visual Effects of ‘The Lost Bus’

The post ILM Earns 2 Nominations at the 2026 BAFTA Film Awards appeared first on Industrial Light & Magic.

Nominations for the 98th Oscars were announced today in Los Angeles, and Industrial Light & Magic contributed to all five nominees in the Best Visual Effects category: Avatar: Fire and Ash, F1, Jurassic World Rebirth, The Lost Bus, and Sinners.

Artists from Industrial Light & Magic earned two nominations in the category.

For Jurassic World Rebirth, our ILM nominees include production visual effects supervisor David Vickery, animation supervisor Stephen Aplin, and ILM visual effects supervisor Charmaine Chan, along with special effects supervisor Neil Corbould.

“Still wrapping my head around the Oscar nomination for visual effects on Jurassic World Rebirth,” Vickery tells ILM.com. “I’m immensely proud of the work. Thank you to everyone who voted for us, but above all – well done to everyone who poured their hearts, souls, and creativity into this special project. You all deserve this!!!”

Aplin adds that “this nomination is such a fantastic reflection on the hard work and dedication the entire ILM team has contributed to the visual effects of Jurassic World Rebirth. Personally, my passion for this craft was jump-started after watching the original Jurassic Park when it first came out in theaters, so getting to play in that world and receive such a fabulous honor is a dream come true. Thank you, and congratulations to all nominated in this category.”

“To be nominated for our visual effects on Jurassic World Rebirth is an absolute honor,” says Chan. “Like so many in this industry, the original Jurassic Park was the film that made me believe the impossible is possible. That motto rang true across our global ILM teams as they passionately created stunning imagery to bring Gareth Edwards’ vision to life. ​I am incredibly proud of what we accomplished together and thank the Academy for this recognition.”

For The Lost Bus, ILM visual effects supervisor David Zaretti has been nominated along with production visual effects supervisor Charlie Noble, beloFX visual effects supervisor Russell Bowen, and special effects coordinator Brandon K. McLaughlin.

“Wow! What an honor to be recognised by the Academy for the work we did retelling the story of Paradise,” Zaretti tells ILM.com. “I’m so proud of the whole team for their hard work and creativity. It was a great experience to work with Paul Greengrass, helping him do what he does best. Given the quality of the visual effects across the board this year, it feels extra special to make it this far.”

Congratulations to all of our ILM teams for their work on this year’s nominated films, and best of luck to our ILM nominees!

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Read more about Jurassic World Rebirth and The Lost Bus here on ILM.com:

“What Do We Have To Do To Make it an 11 out of 10?”: Visual Effects Supervisor David Vickery on ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’

Rendering a Rescue: ILM’s Dave Zaretti on the Visual Effects of ‘The Lost Bus’

The post ILM Contributes to All 5 Nominated Films for ‘Best Visual Effects’ at the 98th Oscars appeared first on Industrial Light & Magic.

By Clayton Sandell

Light Cycles, Super Recognizers, and Programs roar off the Grid and into the real world for the first time in Tron: Ares (2025), a four-decades-in-the-making moment that challenged Industrial Light & Magic to deploy a full creative arsenal to make the impossible real.

ILM’s David Seager served as the production visual effects supervisor for the third entry in a franchise that began with the original 1982 film Tron and continued with 2010’s Tron: Legacy. The first Tron movie follows the adventures of software engineer Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), who is trapped inside a neon digital realm where computer programs appear as human avatars.

Then-nine-year-old Seager became an instant Tron devotee. “I was very excited when this opportunity came along, so I definitely jumped at it,” he tells ILM.com. “Tron, for me, was right up there with the Star Wars franchise and many of those types of films.”

Directed by Joachim Rønning, Tron: Ares stars Jared Leto as the titular hero, a sophisticated Master Control Program reporting to Dillinger Systems executive Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters). Ares is billed as the ultimate soldier and the first artificial intelligence being – or construct – to appear in the real world. But outside of the Grid, Ares can only live for 29 minutes, sending Dillinger and rival company ENCOM on a quest to find Flynn’s long-lost Permanence Code that will extend a construct’s lifespan. When ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) discovers the code first, Dillinger dispatches Ares and his second-in-command, Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith), to track her down and steal it.

Inspired by Modern Tech

Inside a massive Dillinger complex hangar, Ares and Athena– along with their Light Cycles – are brought into physical form by an array of rapid-firing red particle lasers attached to robotic arms.

“Using lasers to get to and from the Grid has been part of Tron since the beginning,” Seager explains. “So we knew there was going to be a laser component to it. But also, I thought it was a great opportunity to show that the Dillinger company isn’t making games anymore. They’re more a part of the military-industrial complex, so it was always important that it had an industrial feel.”

During preproduction, design inspiration came from a 3D printer purring away in the art department. “It was in one of our meetings where we just happened to look over, and there was a print in progress,” recalls Seager. “And it had the support structure surrounding it, this kind of ‘jig’ structure, as we called it.”

Incorporating the concept of 3D printing helped ground the sequence in a visual language people are familiar with, Seager explains. There’s even an added storytelling flourish when the mass of rough, excess jig pieces builds up and suddenly collapses, exposing the object underneath. “We wanted it to feel messy, and then it just falls away, and there’s the creation. It was one of those happy accidents,” Seager says. “It became a really great reveal.”

Cycles and Walls of Light

Riding their Light Cycles at high speed through nighttime city streets and across bridges, Ares and Athena pursue Eve in a sequence largely shot on location in Vancouver, Canada. “It became very evident that we all wanted to go shoot as much as possible on location,” Seager recalls. “You get a million little things that happen organically.”

On set, modified Harley Davidson electric motorcycles stood in as proxies for the Light Cycles, outfitted with practical lighting to cast realistic reflections and glow onto the wet pavement. “It became our job in visual effects to go in and replace the proxies that we created for the Light Cycles,” says Seager. “We had to replace 100% of them.” The special effects department also built hero versions of the Light Cycles for shooting close-ups of the actors, either against a blue screen or an LED screen.

During the chase, the Light Cycles emit a signature Tron element in their wake: lethal ribbons of reddish, semi-transparent light. The challenge, Seager explains, was making the light walls work visually in a non-Grid environment.

“That was more traditional look development work – adjusting the amount of refraction, reflection, and brightness and those types of things,” according to Seager. “There’s a little bit of heat distortion. We want it to feel hot. And because it was very easy for it to feel glassy, and there’s a certain brittleness that comes with glass, you’re like, ‘Oh, we don’t want that.’”

In one of the film’s most memorable shots, a light wall slices a police cruiser into perfect halves, an effect that uses a combination of practical and digital techniques.

“That was a real car,” Seager reveals. “The special effects team was like, ‘Oh, we could build this!’ So they took a car and chopped it right down the middle lengthwise. It was a repeatable stunt, and there was limited steering they could do after the split. We ended up having to shoot it a couple of times, but the vast majority of what you see is the stunt that we shot. And then we have to go in and make the edges seem glowing hot – like it just got cut – and add steam and those types of things coming out.

“Light Cycles are to Tron like lightsabers are to Star Wars,” Seager adds with a smile. “I’m so proud of what we achieved in the Light Cycle chase.”

One of Seager’s favorite moments in the sequence is a Light Cycle sideways slide that pays homage to an iconic shot in the landmark 1988 anime action film, Akira. “I’m a lifelong anime fan and fell in love with Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga of Akira and was one of the first kids in town to obtain a VHS copy of the anime,” Seager says. “Needless to say, it is very rare to be able to work on a project that combines two influential films from your childhood.”

A climactic street battle between Ares’s and Athena’s armed Dillinger sentries features a weapon that proved to be one of the more challenging effects to pull off: the Light Staff.

“It’s the fun new weapon that was introduced in our film. The idea is a staff that you could fight with, and the ends emit a white ribbon four or five inches wide,” Seager explains. “We came up with the idea that you’d have this almost dial-up lifespan, so the light ribbon could last a second, or two seconds, or five. We knew Joachim always wanted them as long as possible, but there were times when they had to go away.”

The Light Staff fight required complex coordination between the actors and stunt performers on set, but the frenetic pace of the action sometimes created unavoidable visual conflicts. “I’d be sitting there going, ‘Wait a second, if they swipe like this and then they run forward, their head just hit the thing,’” remembers Seager. “You have to almost think in terms of, ‘Oh, I need to duck under this.’ I think everyone did a great job of trying to choreograph the fights.

“We got as close as we could during shooting,” Seager continues. “And then in postproduction, we went in there and started tracking the staff and emitting the beam from it. We just started going, ‘Oh, there’s a problem there.’ And you just have to go try other things.”

Seager says some fun and unexpected ideas also popped up during shooting. “The stunt team came up with the idea of characters making a light ribbon and using it to jump off of,” he says. “So there are cool moments where Ares basically creates terrain for himself.”

Another visual quandary came with the Super Recognizer, a massive flying security transport that Athena pilots into the city as she searches for Eve. “The design work was beautiful. I think our biggest challenge was how big it was,” Seager says. “We had our LiDAR and survey data of real Vancouver streets, and when we put those two together for the first time, we’re like, ‘Okay, the Recognizer doesn’t fit into any street.’

“There’s a fair amount of digital surgery where we had to kind of wipe the city away because if you make the Recognizer too small, the threat goes away,” continues Seager. “So we were trying to find that balance. But the main work we did there was trying to find ways to make it fit.”

Enter the Grid(s)

Much of the look of the ENCOM and Dillinger Grids is inspired by designs established in Tron: Legacy by production designer Darren Gilford, who returned for Ares.

“The Dillinger Grid – the red one – definitely followed the aesthetic of Tron: Legacy with a dark, shiny, almost wet look to it. It’s atmospheric, and it has a stormy feeling,” says Seager. “Darren always talked to me about that Grid being inspired by circuit boards.”

For both Grids, the production built a combination of complete and partial sets on a Vancouver soundstage. “Most of the big sets that we built were for the Dillinger Grid,” Seager says. “There were two major red rooms. One we called the ‘extraction’ room, which is where Eve is printed into the Grid and where Ares later escapes. And then there was what we call the ‘regeneration’ room.”

Seager credits the production art department for crafting beautiful, practical sets that, in many cases, only needed minimal digital enhancement, like adding ceilings or extending walls. “Early on in the show, I took some pictures as we were building the set and doing walkthroughs, and I sent them to one of my fellow ILM supervisors because they were very pretty. And they were like, ‘Oh, that’s great looking concept art.’ I was like, ‘That’s not concept art!’” Seager laughs.

For a sequence in which Ares and his team infiltrate the blue-tinted ENCOM Grid, ILM took on extensive digital world-building. “That was a little more traditional blue screen work,” says Seager. “We built minimal floors and then expanded from there because the characters had to cover a great distance. We built the staircase that we could shoot against, but in post, we did the rest of the environments.”

Seager explains that the ENCOM Grid also offered a chance to break from a traditional nighttime look to portray a more daylight setting. “We just wanted it to feel thematically brighter,” he says. “It’s the sunny, good-guy Grid. It’s still overcast, but it’s not quite darkness. That has its own challenges because light lines look great when it’s dark out, but if you turn the lights up and also have a competing bright scene, now you’re trying to make the bright light lines work.”

Still hunting for the Permanence Code, Ares is transported inside Flynn’s original server,

providing audiences a nostalgic visit to the relatively primitive digital landscapes of the 1982 classic. “It was a lot of fun, and I actually consider it one of the more challenging developments on the show,” explains Seager. “ ‘Challenging’ usually means ‘big, big, big.’ And this one was challenging going the other way. It’s stripping away, it’s simplified.”

Executing the retro look of the Flynn Grid fell to the team at Distillery Visual Effects in Vancouver, which worked to incorporate updated versions of the distinctive visual artifacts from the 1982 film, like flickering faces, desaturated skin tones, and backgrounds marked by noticeable “frozen grain.”

“In visual effects, if you have frozen grain, your shot is broken,” Seager notes. “In our shots, we intentionally added frozen grain to the background to try to make it look that way. The light suits built by WETA Workshop were immaculate, but we actually made them kind of flicker and the edges kind of wobble because we wanted to have a little bit of a hand-rotoscoped feel.”

Seager says the Flynn Grid is loaded with Easter eggs – including an appearance by the binary guide known as Bit – that he hopes fans will pick up on. One of his favorite throwbacks can be seen as Ares takes control of a classic yellow Light Cycle and follows Bit off the Game Grid through the same jagged hole used by Flynn and his companions to make an escape back in 1982.

“We went in, and we looked at that exact break pattern. True fans hopefully can see that it’s the one they made 40 years ago,” Seager says.

Opening the Complete ILM Toolbox

ILM Stagecraft’s LED volume technology proved invaluable for scenes set in very different exterior and interior environments. Assembled on a soundstage at Mammoth Studios near Vancouver, the volume completed the snowy landscape around a remote mountain station in Alaska, where Eve and her partner, Seth Flores (Arturo Castro), use the Permanence Code to assemble an orange tree in the real world.

“There were also two offices. Dillinger’s office, which overlooks the transfer bay, was built maybe 16 feet up, then we hung LED screens outside the windows. And the scene out there was a fully realized 3D version of the transfer bay,” Seager says. “The ENCOM office set also had an LED cityscape when you looked out the windows.”

The production employed the same volume ILM used for season one of the Disney+ series Percy Jackson and the Olympians (2023-present). Scenes inside the Grid featuring Ares speaking with Julian Dillinger’s digital visage utilized MEDUSA, the Academy Award-winning facial capture system developed by ILM and Disney Research Studios. For action scenes, ILM FaceSwap tools were used extensively to put an actor’s likeness onto a stunt double.

The Home Team Advantage

Work on Tron: Ares was primarily divided between ILM’s Vancouver and Sydney studios, with additional contributions from Distillery Visual Effects, Lola Visual Effects, Image Engine, Prologue, GMUNK, Imaginary Forces, and OPSIS. Seager, who lives in Vancouver, says having Tron: Ares shoot in his home city provided a rare opportunity for the ILM team to observe the production process up close.

“For the artists, it’s huge,” Seager insists, “because it’s really hard to get experience on set for up-and-coming talent. We had a great relationship with the production team, so I was able to bring a lot of the folks out to get their first-ever on-set exposure. We tried to take advantage of that as much as possible.”

Seager adds one more Vancouver factoid: When an F-35 fighter plane slams into the Super Recognizer, the massive craft crash-lands in front of a building that in real life is only half a block from ILM’s Vancouver studio.

Now You See Him, Now You Don’t

Tron: Ares contains just over 2,100 visual effects shots, but Seager says there’s one illusion the audience will never notice. Early in the film, Dillinger introduces Ares to a group of shareholders. Appearing for the first time inside a Dillinger Systems Amphibious Rapid Response Tank, or DART, he wears a black Light Suit with glowing red accents and a highly reflective helmet hiding his face.

But when the scene was first shot, Jared Leto was not wearing a helmet at all.

“An idea came in postproduction to have him be this faceless automaton that reveals at the right moment,” Seager says, explaining that it was up to digital artists to craft a highly reflective CG helmet from scratch, matching it perfectly with the Light Suit and practical environment. Adding to the challenge: Leto had long hair that needed to be painted out of every shot.

“I don’t think people will ever know the work we did,” remarks Seager. “The camera is inches from his face in some of the shots where we had to track the helmet in there. In that entire scene, those helmets are all digitally added shot-by-shot.”

End of Line

Seager has much praise for the hundreds of artists and collaborators who made working in the Tron universe such a rewarding challenge, and especially director Joachim Rønning.

“Paramount to Joachim’s vision was that he never wanted this to feel bigger than life. It’s really easy to toss a lot of gimmicks at something set in the real world, and all of a sudden it starts to not feel as grounded. So it was trying to find that sweet spot where it felt like you could believe you’re watching from the street corner.”

Instead of watching from a distance, however, Seager found himself at the creative center of the Tron universe, drawing on 40-plus years of fandom to help bring the latest chapter to the big screen. “It was a dream come true,” he says.

Read more about Tron: Ares here on ILM.com:

ILM’s Jeff Capogreco and Jhon Alvarado Take Us Into the Grid of ‘Tron: Ares’

Inside the ILM Art Department: ‘Tron: Ares’

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Clayton Sandell is a Star Wars author and enthusiast, Celebration stage host, and a longtime fan of the creative people who keep Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound on the leading edge of visual effects and sound design. Follow him on Instagram (@claytonsandell), Bluesky (@claytonsandell.com), or X (@Clayton_Sandell).

The post The Grid Hits the Streets: ILM’s David Seager on the Visual Effects of ‘Tron: Ares’ appeared first on Industrial Light & Magic.

Lucasfilm announced today that after 14 years of leading the studio, President Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down from her role. Kennedy will return to full-time producing, including the studio’s upcoming feature films The Mandalorian and Grogu and Star Wars: Starfighter. 

Dave Filoni, who worked closely with creator George Lucas to build the Lucasfilm animation department on Star Wars: The Clone Wars and helped launch Star Wars live-action series alongside Jon Favreau on The Mandalorian, will take on creative leadership of the company as President and Chief Creative Officer and Lynwen Brennan will serve as Co-President. 

Their close collaboration and more than 30 years of combined senior executive experience will carry Lucasfilm into its next chapter of storytelling, with a strong foundation of creative vision and operational leadership guiding the studio forward.

To read the full announcement, visit StarWars.com.

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The post Lucasfilm and the Walt Disney Studios Announce Leadership Transition appeared first on Industrial Light & Magic.

By Jamie Benning

There is a moment early in F1: The Movie (2025) when the film quietly makes a promise to its audience. Before we have settled into the present-day story, and before we have learned the rhythms of the modern races, we are pulled back into the past, into the memory of a catastrophic crash that defines Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) long before we meet him. It is a short sequence, but it carries the same burden as the first dinosaur reveal in Jurassic Park (1993). If the audience does not believe this moment, everything that follows becomes harder to land.

That opening crash is not simply exposition. It is the film’s tonal contract, shaped quietly by Industrial Light & Magic, with more than a little help from the real-life, near-fatal crash of racing driver Martin Donnelly at Jerez in 1990.

ILM visual effects supervisor Eric Leven described the challenge in clear terms. “Motorsport fans have watched countless hours of real racing footage, so they instinctively know when something feels wrong. A film, however, cannot simply document reality. It has to reshape it into something emotional and cinematic. Accuracy alone is never enough.”

I have worked in Formula One television production for more than twenty-five seasons, and when the Donnelly sequence began as I watched the movie, I recognized the real-world imagery within a second. Almost immediately, that recognition dissolved, and I found myself inside Sonny’s memories. I wanted to understand how ILM helped achieve that transition and set the tone for the entire movie.

Dreaming in VHS

The conceit of the opening sequence is simple and effective. Sonny dreams in VHS. Editorial had mocked up an early version of the look, but everyone knew how unforgiving that format could be.

“Everyone knows exactly what real VHS looks like,” says Leven. “And if it is just a tiny bit off, you can tell that it was done in post or that it is not real VHS.”

Rather than rely on digital simulations, ILM turned to genuine analogue artefacts. Leven had digitized old family VHS tapes, complete with dropouts, noise, and tracking errors. Those became the foundation of the sequence.

“We were able to lift glitches from real VHS tapes,” Leven explains. “Our compositing supervisor, Heath Kranak, put that material together and mimicked the rest of the VHS look with the color desaturation and low fidelity and it matched perfectly. It was a really, really fun sequence to work on.”

The result does not feel stylised. It feels remembered and slightly damaged. The fragility it imparts is central to the emotional impact of the moment.

Rebuilding History, Donnelly, Senna, and the 1990s

Texture is only one part of the illusion. Many of the elements that appear in the Sonny Hayes crash exist because ILM reconstructed them digitally. The sequence blends archive racing footage of Martin Donnelly with new photography shot at the F1 legacy circuit Brands Hatch. Crucially, the archive was not something to be polished. It was the aim.

“The archive footage was the target look we were going for,” Leven says. “That became our roadmap for what the other footage needed to look like.”

The new material had to bend toward the old. Stand-in cars did not match the shapes and proportions of early 1990s Formula One vehicles, so ILM made significant changes. “To me it looked like a Formula One car from the 1990s,” Leven notes. “But people said, no, the air scoop is different, and the tires are a little bit fatter. So we ended up replacing Senna’s car in its entirety.”

Branding needed the same attention. Logos removed on set were later reinstated for reasons of authenticity. “At that time they had Marlboro advertising,” Leven recalls. “So we added those logos onto Senna’s car and on some of the billboards.”

Playing With Recognition

For viewers who know the real Martin Donnelly crash at Jerez in 1990, there is an immediate flicker of recognition when the sequence begins. The angles, trackside details, and violence of the moment feel unmistakably familiar. Yet within seconds, that certainty slips.

The yellow car remains, but the driver is no longer Donnelly. The incident has been reframed as Sonny Hayes’s defining memory, and from that point on, the sequence belongs to the character rather than history. ILM is not inserting new material into archival reference. It is reconstructing a memory, taking an incident that fans may hold vividly in their minds and reshaping it so the audience feels both recognition and unease.

That approach extends beyond the car itself. Although the sequence was shot at Brands Hatch, ILM removed contemporary details, replaced the environment, added period-appropriate crowds, and regraded the landscape to resemble the Spanish circuit of the early 1990s. For seasoned Formula One fans, this is where the spell takes hold. They recognize the shape of what they are seeing, but begin to question its ownership.

The Crash That Is Not There

One of the most dramatic shots in the sequence, the car losing control and heading toward the guardrail, appears to be captured entirely in camera. In reality, it is almost fully digital.

“The crash was shot as the camera car was driving normally around a curve,” Leven says. “At a certain point, we took over. It basically became a full CG shot because we needed to replace the entire background and make it look like it was crashing into the guardrail.”

Once ILM replaced the environment, the car needed work too. “We needed to vibrate the wheels and make it look like he is going off the road,” Leven explains. “One of the wheels goes askew. Maybe 90 percent of the car was replaced.”

Even the driver’s hands on the steering wheel were animated later to make his struggle more believable. The goal was never pure spectacle. It was to make the audience feel the loss of control while subtly layering in the foundations of Sonny Hayes’s early racing story.

Daytona Nights

If the opening crash sequence sets the emotional foundation, the Daytona material sets the film’s visual rhythm. Once again, the work begins with practical filmmaking. “Joseph Kosinski was all about shooting as much as possible for real,” Leven says. “Let visual effects help only where you cannot get exactly what you want.”

Units captured a wealth of footage and reference, from headlight sweeps to subtle brake behavior. This allowed ILM to integrate story beats seamlessly into authentic environments.

When the narrative required Sonny to be surrounded by several cars as he exited the pits, ILM added those cars. When positional indicators on the sides of vehicles needed to reflect a different moment in the story, ILM updated them.

“It is great to be at ILM where you can say, ‘Absolutely, we can do that, and it will look seamless.’ We had a lot of fun adding all kinds of little details,” Leven says.

When the script asked for Sonny’s competitors to have mechanical failures, the same principle was followed. ILM kept real sparks and flame bars where possible, added smoke and oil when required, and extended practical effects only where the story demanded it.

In some cases, that meant going far beyond enhancement. Entire vehicles were replaced or rebuilt in visual effects when the practical footage could not deliver what the story required. Stand-in cars became different models. Background vehicles were added wholesale. In certain shots, only fragments of the original plate remained once the work was complete. It was not about spectacle, but precision. The cars had to behave correctly, brake at the right moment, shimmy under deceleration, and sit convincingly within the real racing environment.

Fire, Fabric, and Pixels

ILM’s work also appears in some of the film’s most intense moments, including the crash that engulfs Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), the rival driver to Pitt’s Sonny Hayes. “There is a shot where you see his whole back,” Leven says. “On the day, it was just a bright white driving suit. We made it look burned and added ash.”

It is painstaking but important work, and most of it is invisible to the audience. But it matters because tire compound colors carry meaning. In Formula One, the colour markings on a tire indicate the compound being used, which in turn signals grip level, durability, and race strategy. For fans who understand the language of racing, those colors instantly communicate how hard a driver can push and how vulnerable they might be at that moment. If the color is wrong, the story beat is wrong, even if it only occupies a couple of pixels on screen.

The Myth of “No Visual Effects”

There is a recent marketing trend proclaiming that certain movies use very little or even no visual effects. Leven finds this both complimentary and misleading. For him, visual effects are simply one of many tools that support the filmmaking process.

“Obviously, we are using visual effects, and obviously we try to make them as seamless as possible, and that is what makes it amazing,” Leven says. “Though I would not mind if people could talk about how scenes were shot for real, but also used visual effects, and actors, and props, and sets. It’s all part of the filmmaking process.

“It is great when people watch the movie without noticing any visual effects. Ideally, nothing takes them out of the moment,” he adds.

Why Filmmakers Come to ILM

Leven is clear about what ILM offers when filmmakers come to the studio. “We have such a rich history,” he says. “When filmmakers come to ILM, we want them to be comfortable knowing we share their vision. We are all filmmakers here, and we want to push the boundaries on every project to create incredible imagery.” 

The production of F1: The Movie was notably smooth from ILM’s perspective. “There were no problem shots,” Leven says. “It was just executing a plan.”

The work was shared between the San Francisco and Mumbai teams, with each location taking ownership of full shots from start to finish. This created a genuine around-the-clock workflow that supported the film’s editorial pace.

The Tone Is Already Locked In

By the time we leave Daytona, the film no longer needs to ask for the audience’s trust. The visual language has been established and proven. The speed feels credible. The danger feels earned. The emotional weight of the story is already in place.

That trust is built on work the audience will rarely notice. VHS glitches lifted from real tapes. Crowds added to empty grandstands. Tire markings adjusted by only a couple of pixels. A racing suit digitally burned to reflect the impact of a crash. Cars are rebuilt so subtly that the original plate becomes almost invisible. All of it supports the story without ever interrupting it.

The tone, the thing that convinces us this world is real and worth investing in, is established quietly by artists whose success is measured not just by what the audience sees, but by what they never question.

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Jamie Benning is a filmmaker, author, and podcaster with a lifelong passion for sci-fi and fantasy cinema. He hosts The Filmumentaries Podcast, featuring twice-monthly interviews with behind-the-scenes artists. Visit Filmumentaries.com or find him on X (@jamieswb) and @filmumentaries on Threads, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

The post Building Belief at 200mph: ILM’s Invisible Work on ‘F1: The Movie’ appeared first on Industrial Light & Magic.

The Visual Effects Society announced the nominations for their 24th annual awards ceremony, and the creative teams from Industrial Light & Magic earned 16 in all. These include overall nominations for Jurassic World: Rebirth and The Lost Bus in Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature, Sinners in Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature, and Andor in Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode.

ILM’s work was celebrated across a wide range of categories, with ten individual productions recognized, including Andor, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Jurassic World: Rebirth, Lilo & Stitch, Severance, Sinners, Superman, The Lost Bus, Tron: Ares, and Wicked: For Good.

The VES Awards gala will be held on February 25, 2026 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.

Congratulations to all of our ILM nominees!

—

Read more about these productions on ILM.com:

“Like Eating an Elephant One Bite at a Time”: TJ Falls and Mohen Leo on the Visual Effects of ‘Andor’ Season 2

“Let the Experts Be the Experts”: TJ Falls and Mohen Leo on the Visual Effects of ‘Andor’ Season 2

Assembling a Starfighter: Exploring ILM’s Role in Creating the TIE Avenger from ‘Andor’

“What Do We Have To Do To Make it an 11 out of 10?”: Visual Effects Supervisor David Vickery on ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’

Inside the ILM Art Department: ‘Lilo & Stitch’

The Invisible Visual Effects Secrets of ‘Severance’ with ILM’s Eric Leven

How ILM Helped James Gunn’s ‘Superman’ Soar with High-Flying Visual Effects

Inside the ILM Art Department: ‘Superman’

Rendering a Rescue: ILM’s Dave Zaretti on the Visual Effects of ‘The Lost Bus

ILM’s Jeff Capogreco and Jhon Alvarado Take Us Into the Grid of ‘Tron: Ares’

Inside the ILM Art Department: ‘Tron: Ares’

The post ILM Earns 16 Nominations for the 2026 VES Awards appeared first on Industrial Light & Magic.

By Jay Stobie

Directed by Joachim Rønning, Disney’s Tron: Ares (2025) breaks the barrier between the physical and digital realms, as the Master Control Program known as Ares (Jared Leto) rebels against his creator, Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), and seeks the Permanence Code that would allow him to achieve a lasting existence in the real world. Ares finds an ally in Dillinger’s corporate rival, Encom executive Eve Kim (Greta Lee), whose empathetic nature is a stark contrast to the ruthless disposition of the Dillinger Systems leader. From the Grid’s luminous avenues to their concrete counterparts in our physical reality, Tron: Ares brims with astonishing visual effects that support its characters on their tumultuous journeys.

With Industrial Light & Magic’s own David Seager serving as the production’s overall visual effects supervisor, ILM proved uniquely suited to spread the visual effects work across its global studio sites in Sydney and Vancouver. Operating from the Sydney studio, ILM visual effects supervisor Jeff Capogreco (Jurassic World [2015]; Avengers: Infinity War [2018]; The Mandalorian [2019-23] and ILM animation supervisor Jhon Alvarado (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves [2023]; Alien: Romulus [2024]; Star Wars: Skeleton Crew [2024-25]) sat down with ILM.com to discuss their behind-the-scenes insights into all things Tron: Ares.

Tron’s Legacy

“On TRON: Ares, I was the visual effects supervisor for ILM’s Sydney studio, and my partner in crime was ILM associate visual effects supervisor, Alex Popescu,” Jeff Capogreco shares with ILM.com. “Early on, we made a conscious decision to have two technical camps going at one time, and each of us took on different roles and responsibilities. As the ‘grandpa’ supervisor, or ‘Papa Jeff,’ I worked with Alex to make sure things ran smoothly. The Sydney studio did just over 800 shots, which I believe was the biggest show to date that our studio had delivered, so it was a proud milestone.”

Capogreco’s love for the Tron franchise stretches back to its initial cinematic installment. “I’m old enough to say that Tron (1982) was one of the first movies I ever watched on VHS. My father was really into technology, and having a VHS player was a status symbol in Canada in the 1980s,” Capogreco beams. “I was probably six or seven and didn’t fully understand what was happening in the movie, but it was spellbinding. I was fascinated by Tron, and that led me to want to do visual effects. What Tron did to me, I hope Tron: Ares does to other people.”

ILM animation supervisor Jhon Alvarado’s own affinity for Tron took off with the release of its sequel, Tron: Legacy (2010). “For me, Tron hit home when Legacy came out, primarily because of the visuals and the soundtrack,” Alvarado remarks. “I loved the marriage of the two elements and how well they came together. When Tron: Ares came up for ILM, I knew I had to be on it. We’re here for movies that take us into these awesome worlds, and Legacy delivered with its sound, music, and visuals. When Tron comes in, you know it’s Tron. It has an aesthetic that you can’t get in any other film.”

An Animation Approach

Turning to his tenure on Tron: Ares, Alvarado supplies an overview of what his duties entailed. “As the ILM animation supervisor, my work on the show covered quite a bit. I was involved in shot design and creating shots for the film. We’d receive sequences with a rough previs of what the idea would be, but once the previs was put into the cut, I’d occasionally get blank frames with descriptions of what was supposed to happen. My job became interpreting them, taking the shots that the director had in mind, and Tron-ifying them while making it all feel believable and realistic. I had to think like a cinematographer so that, even when the shots were full CG, they appeared as if they were filmed for real.

“I developed several vehicle animations, as well,” Alvarado continues. “For the light skimmer chase sequence, I partnered with our ILM animators to figure out the style and movement of how these vehicles skim through the water. We examined speedboat references so we could get the water spray right.” Alvarado’s mission extended to the laser printers that enabled Grid-based vehicles to be constructed in the real world. “We designed how the laser moved and collaborated with the rigging and effects departments to choreograph the printing. We had rigs which let us play with how the laser looked, its size, and where it was pointing.”

Alvarado selects a brawl between Ares and an army of Encom’s own Programs as another pivotal scene for his animation team. “We created digital doubles during the fight sequence where you see Ares being attacked by soldiers. At ILM, we have tools that permit us to get motion capture data integrated quickly, so we choreographed the movement alongside our animators and internal mo-cap team. I believe the filmmakers originally had a stunt performer do it, but he was only fighting maybe two or three guys, and the rest was air-fighting.” Along with adding in flying discs that caused the deresolution of Ares’s opponents, Alvarado’s team had a hand in mapping out the timing of each character’s ‘derez.’“

Scene management was important on Tron: Ares, especially for the light walls,” Alvarado notes. “In terms of animation, my role varied. People often associate animation with characters and creatures, but we’re also figuring out the timing, the choreography, and the cinematography so that we deliver a nice flow of the sequence to the director. Once that’s established, we pass it on to Jeff and all the other departments to use as a base to build upon.”

Going Into the Grid

Designing the Dillinger Systems Grid proved to be a monumental task for ILM’s Sydney studio. “We had a fantastic production model given to us from the client side that was visualized in real time with a neat flythrough,” Capogreco states. “That provided the basis of what we called the Motherboard, or the main facility that overlooked the whole Dillinger Grid. Once we started getting the Grid into shots, we realized it wasn’t nearly big enough for what Joachim wanted. We did a test where our layout folks put the characters on a light skimmer and drove them from one end of the Grid to the next. It turned out to be about four times too small, because they’re moving so fast. We ended up increasing the original size by a factor of two-and-a-half. It’s massive!”

Seeking to furnish the Grid with “scale and purpose,” Capogreco researched ports and military facilities as a way to subtly infuse features that would cause audiences to recognize distinct areas, such as factories and military zones, within the Dillinger Grid.

ILM relied on its expertise to know when it had to dial back the intricacy to fit the film’s setting. “Tron has a design language that’s all about shape and form – it’s not about being very busy. What I mean by that is, when you’re down at the water level, there’s an incredible amount of complexity that’s put into each shot. Every shot, to a degree, had to be designed,” Capogreco outlines. “We needed to translate what people see in the real world into Tron-like assets. What does a buoy look like in Tron? What about a crane or a shipping container?”

While the appropriate level of detail was required for scale at the surface perspective, Capogreco relays that “when we were up high, it became too busy and noisy, with many moving dots. So, we actually built two Grids. One sufficed for the wider views and was a more simplified version. Our team went in and hid much of the noise, guaranteeing the audience would at least see the shapes and silhouettes. When you’re down at water level, the geometric resolution needs to increase. Every section of the environment was fairly unique and required a huge design process to support the narrative.”

The Face of a Foe

Another key Grid-related component deals with the holographic avatar that Julian Dillinger projects to communicate with Ares within the Dillinger Grid. “They filmed Evan Peters saying Julian’s lines, and then we used ILM’s MEDUSA tool to generate a perfect match of Evan’s performance to incorporate into our asset,” Alvarado remembers. “Joachim and Dave asked us to experiment,” adds Capogreco, “so we tried making the eyes brighter, having no eyes at all, playing with the wireframe, and evaluating how much we wanted to see of Evan versus seeing the avatar of Evan.”

After numerous creative back-and-forths, ILM opted to stick closer to the original concept art that inspired the face’s depiction. Speaking to the experimental process, Capogreco notes, “We eventually did a cross-blend between a human skull and Evan’s face, which was important to the director. We wanted the mouth, nose, and brows to be genuinely Evan, but we also wanted to bring the creepy, evil avatar side out.” Alvarado adds, “I analyzed Evan’s eyebrows so the avatar would resemble him. Evan has a very specific and strong brow shape, but because the hologram didn’t have any eyebrows, we had to manipulate the model to make the shape of the brow a little more like Evan’s.”

The Vaunted Vehicles

The production built a life-sized light cycle that helped define that particular vehicle’s mechanics, but other assets – such as the light skimmer, jump jet, and drones – left room for ILM artists to rely upon their imaginations. “We studied speedboat footage for the light skimmer in an effort to get its rooster tail to match the reference,” Capogreco explains. “Finding something you can anchor to is a terrific starting point for visual effects, and then it evolves. What can we do to make this weird? I welcomed ‘weird’ in dailies. The weirder the comments, the better. It was fun to experiment in that playground. If you pause on frames in the movie, you’ll see that the flares actually have texture – they have Grid patterns. Usually, when water is on a lens they’re circular, but one of our ideas played with the notion that – when the splash hits the lens – we actually refracted cubes onto the lens.”

“The light skimmer scene was heavily influenced by older Star Wars cinematography, especially the speeder bike sequence and the Millennium Falcon exiting the Death Star as it exploded,” Alvarado notes, in reference to Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983). “We used ILM’s work on Return of the Jedi as a reference and evaluated what made those scenes so special. You may notice that Skywalker Sound even added some of the speeder bikesque sound effects to the light skimmer in some of the shots [laughs]. There’s a lot of ILM’s DNA in Tron.” 

Although director Joachim Rønning wished to ground the drones that pursued the light skimmer in realism, he enjoyed Alvarado’s suggestion to have them rotate. “In the real world, the drones wouldn’t spin, but when Joachim saw them in the chase, he thought it looked great. It’s all about making everything fun for the audience.”The jump jet flown by Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) opened another creative door for the team. “

The jump jet design was never a practical build so it wasn’t as defined as the light cycle, so we were left to figure out how it would take off and fly. At first, the pieces didn’t move in an aesthetically pleasing way – it was too mechanical and simple. The director wanted the movement to be realistic, but he trusted us to make it look cool. So, we utilized tools we had originally developed for the Transformers films that let us dynamically move pieces around. When Athena gets in the jump jet, she presses a button and the pieces are sort of Transformer-y,” Alvarado professes. “Joachim loved it. If you analyze it, the movement of the pieces doesn’t necessarily make sense, but there is an element of believability to it.”

Assisting Ares

From the Grid to the jump jets and beyond, ILM delivered a visual effects extravaganza to Tron: Ares. However, while the vehicle assets and other prominent action sequences tend to receive the bulk of the audience’s praise, a significant portion of ILM’s assignment revolved around visual effects that are virtually invisible in the final cut. One example of this centers on Ares’s appearance throughout the beginning of the film. “For the entire Dillinger board presentation, Jared Leto was filmed without a helmet on. We were tasked with creating the visor that went over top of him. The decision to add a helmet onto Ares served the story and led to his big reveal moment,” Capogreco conveys.

The actor’s hair turned out to be a slight obstacle for ILM’s Sydney studio, as the team sought ways to cover up the parts that would have stuck out from under a helmet. “Jared had long hair that came over his costume, so we augmented parts of his collar and costume to tuck that hair back in,” Capogreco asserts. Alvarado concurs, recounting, “It also aided us in the early battle sequence, because that too was meant to be Jared Leto with no helmet. When the choice was made to use a helmet, we were able to go full CG with the character. When Ares stands up and walks over is Jared’s performance, but I don’t think people are able to tell that the other parts are full CG. Hopefully, they believe it’s a photographed suit!”

As with Julian Dillinger’s avatar, the filmmakers ensured that the Ares actor’s performance remained. “We wanted to keep Jared’s nuances in the close-up shots, but the digital double freed up Jhon for the wide and action shots,” Capogreco affirms.

A World of Work

As a global studio with multiple sites around the world, ILM spread its Tron: Ares responsibilities across its Sydney and Vancouver locations. “[ILM visual effects supervisor] Vincent Papaix and [ILM associate visual effects supervisor] Falk Boje at ILM’s Vancouver studio were wonderful collaborators, and Jhon often touched base with [ILM animation supervisor] Mike Beaulieu,” Capogreco underscores. “The wonderful thing about Tron: Ares is that the workflow was intended to be fairly autonomous, where we could do our own thing but still share our vehicle assets and digital doubles. Each studio took on different aspects of the film. It was nicely split out in a way that we could complement each other’s work.

“The deresolution – or the black sand effect – in the real world was an excellent example of that,” Capogreco continues. “Vancouver handled most of the end battle sequences, and they pioneered Ares’s time-out effect inside the Dillinger facility when we first see a Program turn to ash after 29 minutes. Subsequently, we handled the shots that were closer to Athena’s face by using the Vancouver team’s shot setups and adapting them to what they needed to be for the close-up.” The same held true for assets, which Vancouver required, that had been designed by ILM’s Sydney studio, such as the jump jet used for a shot where two guards land just before Athena and Ares square off towards the end of the film.

Capogreco broadly summarizes the delegation between sites, stating, “Vancouver covered the bluer and sleeker Encom Grid, and they owned the light cycle chase and the majority of the city work. On the other hand, in terms of the real world, Sydney had the mountain test site and the printing of the orange tree, as well as a substantial number of shots coming and going from the Grids. ILM’s Sydney studio was also involved with everything around the Dillinger Grid, even the on-set segment where partial sets were built. To film, they had to poke lights into the set, so we’d go in to top up the shots by augmenting roofs, set extensions, and other small cosmetic fixes here and there.”

“The biggest elements that the two studios collaborated on directly were the light walls and the tools to generate them,” Alvarado adds. “Even when we were dealing with different assets, we all needed to have light walls for the vehicles, drones, and staff weapons.” Capogreco delivers an additional shout-out to ILM StageCraft, saying, “ILM StageCraft was used for shots where you’re up in Dillinger’s office peering out. Sections of the office were built and filmed, so that’s all in-camera work. That and the mountain test site, which they shot on an ILM StageCraft volume before we went in and did extensions on top of that.”

Taking Pride in the Project

Reflecting on the project as a whole, Capogreco notes, “Without hesitation, I would say that Tron: Ares was one of the hardest shows I’ve done. Not just because it is such a crazy technical achievement, but because it pushed our creativity to the limit. Joachim Rønning and Dave Seager weren’t necessarily aiming for formulated shots. They were open to ideas from Jhon, Alex, and I. That’s what made Tron: Ares extra special – we went on a journey together to find the best possible shots. Joachim had a good eye for motion, and he challenged the ILM teams in Sydney and Vancouver. He kept us honest about having designs be as realistic as possible without sacrificing the ‘weird.’ He emphasized that, when you’re in the Grid, it’s okay to allow some stuff that’s strange.”

When asked for his thoughts on the film, Alvarado replies, “Although Tron: Ares looks real and we were going for realism, there is a large amount of it that is computer graphics. For example, the city that Vancouver built for the light-cycle chase and the fighter-jet flight seems so realistic that I don’t think people realize a ton of it is computer graphics. It demonstrates the artistry at ILM, and the love and care we put into the details to make Ares as believable as possible. Every pixel, every camera, and every full-CG shot had to live in that world. Everyone gave it their best, and it looks fantastic. There were so many full-CG shots, and they are as good as the live-action photography. It’s a testament to the team.”

In a year where visual effects-heavy releases have been plentiful, Capogreco considers Tron: Ares to be a standout, concluding, “Tron: Ares is so different and out there. It’s not something you can say you’ve seen much of before, and I think that’s a feat for ILM to be proud of as a studio. I’ve been catching up on movies, and they all seem to have similar themes. That’s what’s quite cool about this one – it’s bananas. Celebrate it!”

Read more about the ILM Art Department’s work on Tron: Ares here on ILM.com.

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Jay Stobie (he/him) is a writer, author, and consultant who has contributed articles to ILM.com, Skysound.com, Star Wars Insider, StarWars.com, Star Trek Explorer, Star Trek Magazine, and StarTrek.com. Jay loves sci-fi, fantasy, and film, and you can learn more about him by visiting JayStobie.com or finding him on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms at @StobiesGalaxy.

The post ILM’s Jeff Capogreco and Jhon Alvarado Take Us Into the Grid of ‘Tron: Ares’ appeared first on Industrial Light & Magic.

Senior Visual Effects Art Director Alex Jaeger

For this piece the goal was to portray the Encom data hub fortress, but also give it a brighter almost daytime look. The challenge was to figure out what the sky looked like and the overall details and forms in both the surroinding fortress and the distant background and “waterfalls,” etc.

I looked at some of the landscapes created for Tron: Legacy [2010], combined with some looks developed for Tron: Uprising [2012-13] and combined them with more complex details for the foreground structures and more simplified forms for the distant structures. One main goal was to develop a brighter look to the Encom Grid, so there was a bit of a nicer and brighter difference between this and the Dillinger Grid. 

One specific detail that had not been worked out yet was how to portray the sky and clouds in this brighter world. I came up with several looks, including this one, where there is a grid in the sky that the clouds intersect and mingle around, giving it some sense of depth, and providing a cool lighting effect where the grid lines light up the clouds where they touched, and they also aided in showing some movement into the sky.

Supervising Art Director Jason Horley

The idea for this piece was to show a virtual vehicle being physically printed in the real world. When I was creating different versions of this image there were several that came before this final concept, all balancing how dense the 3D printing support structures were, and how not to reveal too much of the tank that was being printed. Because the tank is a large heavy vehicle, I also had to make sure the support structures looked strong enough to hold such a heavy vehicle. Earlier concepts were much lighter and you could see the tank through the supports, but it didn’t look like they would physically work. 

Once I received the brief, I researched current 3D printing technology to see what the physical process is like, and then scaled it up and added the printing lasers to include an interesting light source that would help add an extra layer of visual interest. 

I found it interesting that when looking at 3D printing, normally the 3D print is the actual point of interest, but in this case, the interest was actually the 3D-printed supports that normally get thrown away. That informed the design decisions. So there is a beauty in those formations that usually get overlooked.

Art Director Igor Staritsin

This was a design exploration for a ship in the style of classic Tron world from the 1980s. My task was to keep it fairly simple and in the language of the rest of the environment. I did multiple versions of the ship design, exploring ideas and shapes that would best fit the brief. Besides the development of the overall shape, I needed to design it in a positive and negative look in its color, as it would change shape while responding.

I am a firm believer that, more often than not, “less is more.” There is a term in traditional art that I like to use “complex simplicity”, meaning you don’t really want to make it so simple that it looks boring, but you also don’t want to make it too complex so that it looks chaotic. It is a balancing act to find the sweet spot. In this case, it was relatively easy to follow it.

It was certainly interesting to try to play, and mix different low polygon shapes, and sometimes come up with unexpected results. Nowadays, sometimes there is a tendency to give too much control to “play aspect,” with all the modern tech available. I believe whether you come up with a good idea by accident or intentionally, a good artistic judgement is necessary either way.

Art Director Cody Gramstad

This image was designed to illustrate the process of transformation from the past’s aesthetic to the modern world’s. This was achieved using a gradient across the scene, transitioning from screen left to right, which defines layers of change between the original Tron aesthetic and its contemporary counterpart.  

The process involved taking a modern office space available on location and simplifying all its assets to align with the technical limitations of the 1980s. Subsequently, those key assets were replaced and blended using Tron lines until they evolved into the high-fidelity assets of the real world. High-frequency cubes and digital detail were used to help smooth the transition in complexity between the two states.

The image’s development involved a two-stage iteration process. The initial stage focused on integrating 1980s Tron world design details. The challenge was to clearly introduce these features without compromising the overall compositional goals. For the Tron design, we concentrated on achieving a level of detail that felt appropriately simple yet visually distinct for the space. The second stage addressed the compositional design, which was initially too complex. The combined visual information from both visible worlds and the particle laser effects created an overly complicated scene. We resolved this by employing several techniques: gradating all secondary information out of the Grid space, reducing reflection clarity, and ensuring the lines retained sufficient value contrast for clear reading. Finally, we used this same gradation effect to soften the right side of the frame, allowing Ares to be seen as clearly as possible.

The most rewarding part of designing this image was managing the sheer chaos. With such a busy scene, the challenge lay in simplifying and ordering the elements, essentially solving a complex visual puzzle to bring structure to the multitude of details.

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See the complete gallery of concept art from Tron: Ares here on ILM.com.

Learn more about the ILM Art Department.

The post Inside the ILM Art Department: ‘Tron: Ares’ appeared first on Industrial Light & Magic.

By Jason Eaton

50 years ago, in an industrial park far, far away, an unassuming team of young artists and craftspeople created something that would capture the hearts and imaginations of an entire generation, becoming an icon for decades to come: the X-wing fighter. 

Seemingly against all odds, these men and women would work in what was initially a bare-bones environment. It was a warehouse with no air conditioning in a lackluster part of town. It would bake in the summer with little shade. There were hardly any trees, just taco stands and aviation supply shops. Cinderblock buildings with no labs, institutes, or studios nearby. And yet, with no fanfare, and against all odds, magic was made. 

A roughly two-foot miniature made of acrylic, styrene, metal, and resin, the X-wing was the on-screen vessel that carried heroes to triumph. It moved impossibly before our eyes against surreal pinwheeling star fields, giving a sense of desperate energy. For myself, a child at the time, it would become a totem for my imagination, never really leaving my brain, to one day push my curiosity as an adult: What exactly were the models made from, and how did they come to be?

I collected various die-cast and plastic toys and built the model kit of the X-wing. I was captured by a design that was both rugged and sleek. Building that first model of the X-wing was not only an enjoyable pastime, but it also began the building of skill sets, and it was a way to imagine myself as an ILM modelmaker. I found incredible joy in building impossibly realistic-looking ships that inadvertently created our modern Star Wars mythology and redefined a multigenerational, visual science fiction “style guide.”

The onset of the internet facilitated a fan community with a shared curiosity about ILM and its creations. I found my tribe through gatherings, parties, and, eventually, ILM artisans’ living rooms. My curiosity transformed into a personal mission to preserve and record the nuanced details behind these Star Wars miniatures – specifically the processes, dimensions, and stories that inspired me as an artist. The X-wing was not just a focus, but an artistic and intellectual obsession.

Origins: Colin Cantwell

Memory alone is understandably an unreliable narrator, and over the last 50 years, the storied history of the X-wing has been both apocryphal and often contradictory. Focusing on period photographs, paired with the recollections from people who were there for production, we can establish a more comprehensive understanding of the X-wing’s history. I always value the time and generosity of those helping me on my journey. Sadly, many of the artists and incredible people who were part of the production’s journey are no longer with us, and my sense of urgency about this “mission” has only grown stronger. The photographic record is a window into this incredible time, when no one realized how they were changing the world of entertainment. Each photo contains little glimpses of magic being made in an extraordinarily unassuming environment.

Colin Cantwell was the first to put glue to model kit, creating a series of prototype designs very early in 1975 from George Lucas’s thumbnails and descriptions. It was fascinating to talk with Colin about the X-wing, as his mind saw objects and concepts in uniquely creative ways. His model was built from the body of a Jeb Allen’s “Praying Mantis” top fuel dragster model kit, with wings hinged at the center rear of the fuselage that would spring open in an “X” shape. He said he imagined it as a fast craft and as a Wild West gunslinger. The “X” was analogous to the quick draw of a pistol at high noon.

The Cantwell concept models were unsuitable for filming, however, as internal armatures were not included for support or mounting to production equipment, and the details were too fine for the blue screen compositing system being developed by ILM at the time.

Refining the X-wing Design

What was the launch point for the iconic ILM X-wing fighter design that we know today? Enter art director Joe Johnston, who worked with the modelmakers and technicians to bring what was internally dubbed “Project 504” to life, with the first unfinished “hero” example being completed in December 1975. “Hero” meaning a filming miniature that would have the best fit, finish, and all of the adornments needed for specific shots, as opposed to a “pyro,” which was a simpler construction built for pyrotechnic detonation. But before we talk about blowing up models, let’s back up a little to the early fall in that industrial park in Van Nuys.

From a series of photographs and an internal document tracking the progress of each project with names assigned to tasks, David Beasley carved the X-wing fuselage as a “buck” from wood. This first prototype fuselage appears to be made from a top and bottom shell, both in vacuum-formed styrene. There was an internal armature made from machined aluminum by Grant McCune, with David Grell assisting, with the wings being made from a combination of machined acrylic and sheet styrene. Motors and some, if not all, of the electrical wiring are in place.

Notable landmarks of this prototype include the half-circle engine intakes we see in Ralph McQuarrie’s paintings from the time, as well as a much sleeker underside rear fuselage. The nose was a different shape, as this build followed the idea that the midline of the body would contour slightly upwards to meet the nose, as depicted in the McQuarrie painting. Most importantly for the design process, this initial series of parts shows that the back half of the lower fuselage is cut away, as the internal armature and motors would need more room to inhabit the shells. David Jones recalled this being a running design change. A careful examination of any hero X-wing will show that quite a bit of material needed to be cut from the sides of the fuselage as well, with long slots to allow the wing brackets to travel. This is very apparent when the wings are closed, but nearly invisible when these models have their wings open. It is a quirk of the hero design that is rarely noted or seen. 

The next series of photographs shows a “proper” hero build in progress, now with a resin top shell, fully enlarged vacuum-formed lower shell, full-circle-shaped engine intakes, and the various details and engines being glued in place.

The Original Model: Blue 1

In December 1975, Lorne Peterson, Jon Erland, and Steve Gawley were working on wings and detailing three days before Christmas. Joe Johnston painted the model with Gawley. The model is Blue 1, the first X-wing ILM would build. It features a blue paint scheme instead of red, no cockpit or pilot figure, no droid, and no working electronics. But it is photographed in this state and shipped to production designer John Barry at Elstree Studios in England on December 26, to be used as reference for blueprinting and constructing the full-sized X-wing fighter set piece on a sound stage.

The images above appear to show Blue 1 and the Red Y-wing (also sent, in an incomplete state to England), along with a clay mock-up of a pilot and canopy/cockpit. This sequence of shots seems to show possible angles and focal lengths to inform the eventual build of the 1:1 cockpit sets that actors would be filmed in.

This model will be returned to ILM in the new year, and Grant McCune will finish the electrical plumbing. The model will be completed by breaking the canopy framing to allow a cockpit and a pilot to be inserted. The frame is somewhat restored with a styrene strip, and the model is redressed as the Red 2 Hero. This will go on to be the miniature that is photographed by Richard Edlund and composited with a TIE fighter behind it, featured on thousands of lunchboxes and promotional materials.

The “Hero” X-wing

So what makes a Hero X-wing a “hero”? And what is a pyro? For the sake of clarity, let’s start by focusing on miniatures made for the first film. There were four Hero X-wings made, with a fifth unfinished example that appears to have stayed with the model shop through the production of the original trilogy. The four X-wings are painted to represent Red 1, Red 2 (formerly Blue 1), Red 3, and Red 5. Each fighter model is bespoke. Detail elements were patterned using styrene, acrylic, and various pieces from model kits, which were all then molded and cast, such as the rear butt plate, top “droid strip,” nose, droid, the two-piece cockpit, pilot, and elements of the laser cannons.

The armature was round metal stock, threaded at either end. This rod ran from nose to tail with the threaded holes providing the front and back mounts. Situated underneath the astromech droid is an octagonal-shaped block with threads on the top, sides, and bottom. Set screws are always present in one of these mounts, serving to anchor the octagonal block to the main armature rod. Behind this block sits the “scissor” mechanism for the wings, which consists of brackets that hold two motors in place along the underside, with the brackets ending with “L” shaped metal that serves as the main surface to affix the wings. 

The motors each have a toothed gear that sits against a larger brass central gear parallel to the octagonal mount, and it appears that the motors, when engaged, would “crawl” along the surface of the central gear (which did not move) and this would open or close the scissor mechanism. At some point, someone added screws to the wing mounts with a rubber band stretched between them, which aided in the wings’ opening. It appears that the motors may have been underpowered to pull the wings open reliably or smoothly. Dennis Muren recalls that the motors worked smoothly when he filmed the models on stage, and agreed that the rubber band would have provided tension in the mechanism.

Plumbing made from surgical tubing was used to distribute cool air to the hot lights used at the time, and an electrical wiring loom was also created. Four sets of six wires were positioned at mount points – front, back, port, and starboard. These wires were capped with brass female pin plugs, and are very visible along the sides of the miniatures just aft of the canopy, and on the underside of the Sherman tank detail on the butt plate. These wires would provide power to the motors and the lighting to the four bulbs inside the engines at the exhaust. 

GE aircraft indicator bulbs were utilized for the engine lighting and were most likely sourced from Kasper Sales across the street on Valjean Avenue, according to Paul Huston. The bulbs are seated behind Aavid heatsinks (remember, the lights used at the time would be incandescent and would become hot), and in the center of the heatsink, a circle of hand-cut red lighting gel is glued to give the color to the engines that you see on screen. Curiously, the same bulbs are found inside the laser cannons, torpedo tubes, and, from an examination of Red 5, the cockpit. Muren doesn’t think that these lights were ultimately utilized, and the supposition for some is that they would be keys for the rotoscope artists to follow when animating things like the laser fire.

The wings on the Hero builds were constructed from machined acrylic and styrene. The outer face of the wing starts with an acrylic “box” that mounts to the armature’s “scissor” mechanism with two bolts. This box sits atop the main wing itself, which is made from 1/16th acrylic on the top and sides, and .040 styrene for the inner facing wing. This creates a hollow along the length of the wing. The wing box is dressed with a large Holgate and Reynolds HO Scale brick sheet panel, which is long out of production and prized by contemporary Star Wars model makers as it also appears in small rectangle chips elsewhere on X-wings and other filming miniatures. 

The acrylic box at the base of the wing also serves as the main mount for the engines, which are made from half of a 1/144 Saturn V rocket’s third stage and half of an engine bell (large and small sizes), 1/32nd Phantom turkey feathers and engine halves (cut up, reassembled, dressed with kit parts and in some cases molded and cast), Aurora Sealab pieces, styrene, and acrylic. The back half of this assembly has a machined metal tube with those aforementioned Aavid heatsinks inside. This metal tube is encased by the Phantom engine halves, which were patterned and cast (and curiously, in the case of Blue 1/Red 2, are uniquely patterned). This top wing ends with a mount for the laser cannons, which is a cast resin plate. 

As it turns out, no two Hero X-wings were built exactly the same, so plating details and even the Saturn V pieces will vary from wing to wing and miniature to miniature. Even the small engine bell halves inside the engine’s “intakes” will have different pieces on the same model.

Laser cannons are made from a cylindrical assembly (cast resin in at least two heros) that features unique chip/panel detailing, back caps that are recessed to varying degrees on each build, and a cannon made from telescoping brass tubing (and in one instance, machined acrylic). The tips have a small resin-and-styrene “emitter” assembly, with the smallest-diameter brass tube creating the tip. On Red 1, there is solid red acrylic inside the laser cannons. On Red 3, a length of fiber optic material pokes out slightly. Both, we assume, would be lit by the bulbs inside the laser cannons, which sit inside the two stacked Aavid heatsinks on each cannon. These cannons are mounted on the wings with 3/16th brass tubing, with the wiring from their bulbs traveling down the tube mount, and through the wing plate hollow described below.

The inner wing plate features two cutouts. Plastruct “C” channel, styrene, and model kit parts were added to suggest the idea of mechanical detail. While the wing is oriented in this position, it would be easier to see the rest of this mechanical detail sitting in the wing boxes’ hollow. There are two detail plates from the Sealab inside this box, and they seem to sit opposite each other in each wing, top to bottom. The majority of the box’s space is filled with another Phantom engine half, either a patterned casting or a section of the styrene base part that was not used elsewhere. 

Surgical tubing is visible here. It starts at the end of the metal tube inside the engine assembly up top, travels through the Saturn V’s third stage half, and emerges below into the wing box hollow, punching out of the Phantom half to become visible, and then directly into the body. Hero birds have one or two “cages” from the Sealab, adding to the idea that this is a functional engine area. Half of a Sealab’s air tank piece caps it all off and hides much of the surgical tubing and bolt heads.

Interesting, lesser-known wing features include a chamfered edge on the top of each wing’s leading edge. This has been somewhat obscured on Hero Red 1 by the reflective tape applied to these models on the leading and trailing edges of the wings. This tape shows hand-drawn pencil lines suggesting panel lines, a technique seen in some areas on these models, including the rear portions of the engines and the rear of the angled box that the engine assemblies rest on. 

In speaking with Dennis Muren and Richard Edlund about the challenges in the revolutionary blue screen and compositing process they were refining at the time, both explained that when a model moves in certain ways and creates motion blur, thinner areas are prone to disappearing as the lighting drops off. So for the X-wing, this reflective tape was an attempt to ensure enough light would define the wings to keep them from disappearing during the compositing process. Muren also recalls experiments in which they would intensify the front lighting on a model, as a more dynamic movement would be programmed into it. He said they tried many things, and then analyzed the next day during dailies. If it didn’t work, they would abandon the idea.

The top shell, as stated before, is a cast resin. An examination of a surviving unused casting features faint panel-line engravings, an indentation for the “Droid Strip” to be placed behind the cockpit, and a solid back wall. The reverse shows two thicker rectangular stand-offs on the inside-facing surface that aided in affixing the top shell to the armature, with two screws puttied over. Over time, these puttied circles have, in some cases, fallen away, revealing screw heads along the top of the fuselage. 

The wall thickness of this casting would be seen when the back wall was cut away to create a lip around the inset butt plate resin casting, as well as the wall thickness of the canopy bracing, which was made by cutting and filing material to the etched lines that described them – essentially what would be canopy glass, but in this instance, negative space. This explains why the back window on each of these models was uniquely shaped, as there was no surface etch to follow. 

The cockpit was two cast resin pieces, with a pilot made from a figure from a 1/24th Harrier model kit, modified to feature a futuristic helmet. Then arms from other 1/24th kits were used, which again makes identifying the source kits a bit of a scavenger hunt for a researcher. The pilot castings were used in both hero builds (painted in multiple colors) and Pyro builds (painted a solid dark primer grey), with the cockpits being solid dark primer grey in both versions. Neither reflected the designs of the 1:1 sets and props seen in the live-action footage.

The lower shell is a vacuum-formed piece of styrene that was hand-scribed, with the side torpedo tube openings hand-cut and located by cutting brass tubes at angles and grafting them into place. Curiously, at the ends of these tubes, you will find those small incandescent bulbs. The handmade nature of these landmarks means that every one of the hero X-wings has unique panel lines, as well as unique “chip detailing,” which are small rectangular pieces of .010 styrene placed along wing and fuselage surfaces to help catch the light on set. 

The vacuum-forming process creates a thinner-walled piece the deeper the draw is, meaning that for these lower shells, the wall thickness tapers to a very thin edge at the bottom rear of the fuselage. This is a signature look unique to the Hero X-wings. A nose cone finishes off the fuselage, which was cast in one piece and grafted into place in the front, with the gaps puttied and contoured over. Each nose was sliced in two at a slightly different spot, creating a permanently attached mount area on the body, with the separated front cone acting as the front armature mount cover. The nose cone has a proud cylinder and two brass locating pins that fit into corresponding holes on the front of the fuselage. When removed, the six power port female pin plugs can be seen encircling the hole to access the armature threads, three on each side.

Adding Detail

These models were all painted using automotive paints, Floquil enamel railroad paints, and primers from companies such as Nu Finish. Much has been said about the process over the past fifty years, and a fair amount of it can be contradictory. It wasn’t until a conversation I had with Dave Jones in the late 2010s that the proverbial light bulb clicked on, when he made an off-hand comment about how (paraphrasing) “everyone was experimenting and doing their own thing with the painting.” 

That one observation neatly explained why some were painted with black primer and some with grey primer. Some were base-coated with Hot Rod White, which is a creamy warm white, and some were base-coated with Reefer White, a brighter white comparatively. This also neatly explains why Red 1 is so bright overall, and why Red 3 was warmer, even “muddier” in places. 

Floquil made two very similar red colors, and it appears that both were used to make the stripe details. Lorne Peterson and others have described using Scotch-Brite and/or sandpaper for processes such as sanding back finishes to reveal the dark primer underneath, masking fluid applications for “chipping” detail, and varying the color on wing and body panels. Other processes included masking areas with tape and painting diluted washes; adding decals from Micromark (and other kits the shop used for miniature construction); applying dry transfers of small rectangles in black and dark grey with hand-cut frisket masks; and airbrushing misted coats and streaks.

Everything was used to varying degrees to create these unique models akin to the WWI Flying Circus. Each X-wing had recognizable painted landmarks, which deepened the “used universe” look and feel that made Star Wars as a whole feel so “real” to the viewer.

There was even an attempt to include “canopy glass” in some shots of the models on stage. Peterson remembers using slide glass, and it appears there are remnants of a tinted gel material on the surviving Hero Red 1. Some stage photos show this canopy glass, and if you look closely at any surviving X-wing, you will see remnants of adhesive or missing paint from where these panels were removed. It is usually mistaken for weathering, as it indeed looks the part.

The “Pyro” Models

With the complexities of the X-wing Hero fighters, how did ILM then simplify the process for the Pyro models? In an interview after the film’s release, McCune stated there were nine Pyros made. These would have to be easier and quicker to make, given financial and time considerations. In speaking at length over the course of multiple years with Dave Jones, he explained about the master pattern he helped make for these Pyro versions of the X-wing. 

Returning to the photographic sequence of events, the Pyros were an all-hands affair, with Lorne Peterson, Paul Huston, and Dave Jones constructing and assembling the Pyro builds and a “first wave” of Pyro X-wings painted by Joe Johnston, featuring a level of care and sophistication that was given to the hero builds. These well-painted Pyros were photographed by Richard Edlund and serve as a wonderful preservation of some of the work that was quite literally destroyed to get the pyrotechnic shots. 

Many have described that the initial Pyros did not result in the explosions they wanted for the shots. Later Pyros would have to be made and would be more hastily constructed. Infamously, at least one, had “sticks” as stand-ins for the laser cannons, which made it into a final shot. It can still be seen in the current version of the film (look for Red 10’s demise for the shot).

The Pyro master pattern was created by taking a Hero top and bottom shell, mating them with the torpedo tubes, and grafting in a nose cone. The wing root area was fitted with a fixed wing mount, constructed in the open “X” mode, and then panel lines and chips were applied. This assembly was then cut vertically, so that the body was now a left and right shell. Dave Jones then poured liquid resin into the inside of this pattern to strengthen everything from behind. The thinking being that the weight of the wings would help to quite literally pull the body apart when they exploded. 

Wings were constructed similarly to the Hero wings, but any undercuts were filled in on the underside, and the wings overall were slightly shorter (in the area where they ultimately attach to the hull). Laser cannons and engine assemblies were in brass, but also constructed and cast as simpler, more complete assemblies, and then everything was molded and cast.

This meant that every Pyro X-wing would lock in the locations of the nose, the torpedo tubes, the angle of the “X” wing deployment (they are noticeably a wider splay on the Pyros), the panel lines, and the chip detail. The body is overall shorter than a Hero and surprisingly skinnier as well, as there was width lost to the kerf of the physical saw blade used to cut the body in two, and then again but to a lesser degree when assembled, as the cast halves would have had their mating surfaces sanded slightly once cast, to remove any irregularities/flashing, or to ensure a flat plane. Some seem to have been constructed without a butt plate casting, and seemingly backfilled with foam so they could slide onto a C-Stand. On stage, they found that there would be better results if the bodies were pre-scored to break apart into smaller pieces, and surviving fragments will sometimes show these odd zigzag shapes carved into the castings.

Over the years, photographs have helped identify these pyros. Red 1, Red 3, Red 4, Red 6, Red 10, and Red 12 have been identified. Red 1 closely followed the Hero’s paint job, but at some point was partially detonated, and then was repaired and partially repainted. Curiously, two more stripes were added to it and the Hero, to make it appear as Red 3. Red 3 bears little resemblance to the Hero Red 3, and Red 6 seems to have been detonated and then donated some of its parts, becoming Red 10. The stripes top out at 6 on the wings, and for 10 and 12, ILM simply took a thin length of additional tape when masking for paint, and cut the 6 bars in two, so that when painted, they became shorter stacked markings. 

Many pieces of Pyro X-Wings have surfaced over the years. Some have been positively identified as one of those mentioned above. But many pieces have no photographic reference, which perhaps speaks to the speed at which the later Pyro builds were created. 

These Pyro molds (and castings pulled after the film, which were themselves used to mold and cast again) are where all “lineage” post-production castings originate, including the first licensed replica created by Icons in the 1990s. When compared to a production pyro casting from 1976, dimensional shrinkage will be noticeable, making the Heros look massive in comparison! 

These kinds of details and observations are what drive people like me to learn as much as possible about the filming miniatures of Star Wars. Every new piece of information about the construction of these filming miniatures would encourage me and others to refine recreations of the X-wing miniatures, and there is no greater satisfaction as a modelmaker than to see how close the builder community has gotten as we have continuously improved the builds over the last twenty-five years. Part archaeology, part artistry, and part friendship, the journey to get to the center of these models has been illuminating and gratifying. 

The amount of heartfelt thanks to individuals is massive, but I would be remiss in not specifically mentioning Lorne Peterson, Dave Jones, Bill George, Dennis Muren, Paul Huston, Jon Erland, Gene Kozicki, Richard Edlund, John Goodson, Sean House, Hiroshi Sumi, Ed Minto, Craig Underwood, Bryan Babich, Mike Salzo, Dave Mandel, and my supernaturally-cool-with-this-stuff wife, Lisa Eaton. You can find a few X-wing replicas I have made here: www.jasoneatonstudio.com.

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