In "Sphere of Influence," Chairman Papanoida, modeled after George Lucas, searches for his family. Images © 2010 Lucasfilm Ltd.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars has recently begun its third season on Cartoon Network on Fridays at 9:00 pm. In fact, the fourth episode, "Sphere of Influence," airs this week, featuring Papanoida (from Revenge of the Sith) who is modeled after creator George Lucas. This season "secrets are revealed, truths are questioned and alliances are betrayed," so director Dave Filoni fills us in on how the series has evolved. 

Bill Desowitz: What's new in season three?

Dave Filoni: I think this season, more than any other, we have a much grander scope; we stopped avoiding things like water, which, as you know, can be very hard to sim and we attacked a lot of these things head on. Visually, I think it's far more stunning and really getting to the caliber that Star Wars fans are used to in the feature films. We've hit a stride and I'm pretty happy with the way things are looking. Storytelling wise, we learned so much after doing two seasons of this show. What we all liked; what we didn't like. And George has keenly been involved in that with the writers and me.

BD: How have you managed to raise the animation bar?

DF: I think it's the culmination of my artists becoming more experienced working together. I've been at Lucasfilm Animation for five years now and I have some really strong relationships with the artists here. My CG Supervisor, Joel Aron, is a 17-year veteran at Industrial Light & Magic, and he's brought a lot of trickery to The Clone Wars. He worked on A Perfect Storm, where they did an immense amount of water, so challenging him to bring that in a fashion to television was really fun for him, but the water planet, Kamino, which is where all the clones are born, we never could've done in the first two seasons because of the complexity of the environment. And now you're going to see the birth world of the clones in all its glory inside the barracks where they train; the massive battle where the Separatists attack the facilities; we under the water; we're over the water; we have crashing waves. It's all done in a way that the water will be the least thing that you recognize. It becomes a part of the story and a part of the planet, which is the best kind of effect.