The animation for Clone Wars was created in Maya and topped off with a brushstroke look from Photoshop. The result is a CG milestone for TV.

But that's Lucas for you: always raising the bar. "The big thing we're still working on is that George is a live-action director and I'm a traditional 2D animator," Filoni admits. "I draw everything and board it. George has mastered a way of prevising everything by getting a rough version of his films as early as possible [using the company's proprietary Zviz interactive program], so he is treating our animated series like a live-action show... that has been the biggest learning curve for me."

The action-packed feature even offers a strategic twist: a vertical battle to rescue Jabba's son. "George one day decided in a story session to put it on a jungle planet, which is a lot harder," Filoni adds. "[Someone said], 'There go your tanks.' And I said, 'Who says so? We'll just make them walk up a cliff.' It was a happy accident of filmmaking that turned out to be one of the better [action] scenes. That was another learning curve: How to take something you've seen, like Walkers on snow, and make it different."

For Lucas, who studied animation at USC, the combination of anime-influenced character design with more realistic-looking environments, sets and vehicles (the animation is done in Maya and topped off with a brush-stroke look from Photoshop) is a CG milestone for TV. He said it's been a refreshing change of pace from live action. "Animation is an art: You either like photorealistic art, which looks exactly like a photograph, or you like something that actually tries to find the truth behind the realism. And, to me, animation is all about design, it's all about style."

Bill Desowitz is the editor of VFXWorld.