It's "Star Wars Day" at Comic-Con! Stay tuned for up-to-the-mintue coverage from the first panel. Read on for the official description...

10:00-10:50 Star Wars: Designing the Clone Wars Universe— Meet the original in-house team that designed the unique look of The Clone Wars series. They will discuss how they worked with supervising director Dave Filoni to come up with the graphic, painterly style of imagery that gives The Clone Wars its distinct look. Drawing on the last three years of production, they will share how The characters and environments have evolved using much of the rich classic Star Wars imagery as reference for designing the show's overall look. Moderated by Lucasfilm's Steve Sansweet. Room 7AB


We're just getting started and Steve Sansweet has just introduced the guest speakers listed above. Now we're getting an advance look at the characters in the show.

Kilian Plunkett
The concept artist discusses how he comes up with ideas for the characters. How he makes the transition from a 2D artist to a 3D designer. He had to make things a little simpler than what was shown in the movies. He wanted to focus on texture and lighting for each character in the movie, rather than the exact details for them and to make them totally realistic. Simple clean shapes were adapted for ease of movement, and yet they could still keep the shapes clean for the show.

For characters like Obi-Wan and Palpatine, they were able to keep the look from the film. They showed Palpatine with different looks...(thankfully, not a shirtless version!)

Darren Marshal
Darren was the sculptor of the maquettes for the animated series. Anakin was the hardest character to nail down. The models underwent several sculpts and with different lighting. Ahsoka was originally called Ashla...she was originally thought to be a twi'lek character before she was changed to a togruta. Next up was Jabba the Hutt, who was a fleshy character with lots of different angles make up the voluminous body for him, showing off his size.

Thong Lee
The backgrounds for the show were adapted from the live action versions. with some simple colors, and texturing materials, the same designs could be used. They showed Jabba's Palace, the Tantive IV, the AT-TE, the Turbo Tank, with different colors schemes and rich textures.

Russell Chong
The vehicles are close to the movie versions...they also brought in some classic trilogy vehicles (like the Y-wing) into the series. With some elements from the prequels added to it, the new vehicle designs are a mix of the two trilogies. The final version was also shown...it has a sleek turret and the twin pods on the side of the ship.

Tim Brock
Texturing artist for the series adds life to the models for the ships and sets. Used a lot of Ralph McQuarrie designs for Jabba's palace and they showed a quick animatic of it. Also showed the texturing for the clones and droids. They removed the highlights from the models so they could show off the details on the figures. C-3PO and Asajj Ventress were shown....as well as the Republic Cruiser. The end reults shows the models as they were originally created.

Quick Hits from the panel
- Kilian discusses his favorite comic story....a short story in an issue of Star Wars Tales that featured Darth Vader and C-3PO on Cloud City.
- Darren talks about the need for maquettes in animation....the lighting of a 3D sculpture helps George and the creative team visualize the characters.
- When designing the vehicles, a lot of attention was paid to the original designs of Ralph McQuarrie and Doug Chiang from the films, and keep them true to those designs by using the basic shapes for them.
- George has a whole folder of stuff that didn't make it into the movies, and a lot of it has been used for the new series.
- Each one was a fan of the old movies and they all played with the figures as kids. And now they can play with toys of a different kind!
- They love to go into the Lucasfilm archives and play with the original props....just kidding, they aren't actually allowed to touch them!

There was more discussion about the look for the series, but it was pretty much the same as what I wrote above. The series uses OT designs with PT elements added to it. This was the standard answer for every point, which wasn't so interesting after awhile. Still, it was interesting to hear.

Panel ends....stay tuned for photos!
UPDATE! Photo Gallery is now posted!