LEGO Star Wars - Rebuild the Galaxy
Design Process from Concept to Matte Painting
1: Moodboard
I wanted to find the interesting silhouettes of the buildings of the city and translate them to simple Lego shapes. We had lots of reference to pull from paying special attention to layouts from iconic movie moments, and details like spare parts and scrapped vehicles that make this world instantly recognizable. Then we get to flip it on it's head and make it a surf town and prep it for an epic battle and the reveal of Darth Jar Jar!
2: Concept
In an earlier version of the script, Tatooine was covered in snow like Hoth. The first pass is photoshop sketching over rough 3D proxy GEO. I started with WIP Buildings, vendor tents, SW tech / props scattered about. It was fun scouring Lego bits and other repurposed scene assets parts to populate this set and make it feel authentic and give it character.
3: Building Line Up + Set Dressing
Here is the ortho lineup of buildings I’ve designed and built with Lego and Blender and Photoshop for the finishing touches. 3 basic building sizes with variation on door, roof and other detail elements I can kitbash to make them unique and interesting. I reverse engineered the visual style from the Cantina set ( provided from Lego) detailing and color palette already established to tie it all together.
4: Proxy / Rough Pass
Deep dive into the script, calling out key story moments and experimenting with a few different layout ideas. I have my Mos Eisley buildings and proxy GEO in Blender, setting up multiple camera renders with Photoshop paintovers to making sure it works for the most important story moments across all four episodes in our series.
5: Dialing it in / Renders
Angles have been isolated and selected by directors, and we are ready to move forward with the chosen 2 for a clean up/ detail pass. Here are my raw renders laid out with a quick sky mockup. We really like the layout of the falcon pointing at the cantina - but ultimately picked the shot that showed more of the Mos Eisley set and boardwalk and did a separate break out design for the cantina.
6: Design Pass
Full color / texture paintover from options isolated in previous round. Maisha had this awesome idea that we put "TATOOINE" in Aurebesh up in the hills with a subtle nod to Hollywood that we all thought was super fun! I really feel like we got this California beach boardwalk vibe. <3
7: Final Approved Image
Addressing the notes from the previous round, I provided a wooden boardwalk variant and pushed the “TOYBOX” craft tempura watercolor sky texture and crumpled paper mountains in the distance.
It was super fun to design the iconic Mos Eisley building shapes add the surf/ tiki elements to shake it up the place we all know so well. Also wild to try it as a snow covered area in an earlier iteration of the draft!
Special thanks to my directors Chris Buckley and Maisha Moore and to Atomic Cartoons for the opportunity to work on one of my dream projects !
8: Composited Matte Painting
3D projection/ animated and composited in Nuke, Blender and Photoshop!
For the DMP, I’ve added a dramatic sky matte, and more cinematic lighting and color correcting.
Nuke Working Project File