Writing over at ILM.com, Clayton Sandell brings us the second part of hs look back at the work done by ILMVFX on Skeleton Crews first season and the craft that was employed to bring this exciting, charming tale to the small screen. Containing over 3000 VFX across its eight episodes, the show hopped planets, used a variety of contemporary and classic efects techniques and mixed it with good old fashioned storytelling to deliver a modern Star Wars classic.
Next stop is a mountain on the planet Lanupa, the site of an old pirate lair that SM-33 believes contains At Attin’s coordinates. It’s also the site of a lavish hotel and spa occupied by high-end patrons, including a Hutt who swallows a Troglof mud bath attendant and a massive, tentacled creature called Cthallops, both achieved digitally with the help of Important Looking Pirates.
Jod is captured by the pirate horde and sentenced to death. He’s allowed a few remaining minutes for a final appeal, measured by an hourglass filled with churning blue plasma. “It wasn’t a fully fleshed-out idea on set. We knew we needed an hourglass, and we would be doing it, but it was just kind of a fun adventure to figure out,” Pasquarello says. “We were trying to do some fun ideas with how the plasma would show the passage of time.”
Successfully navigating a series of booby traps, the children, Jod, and SM-33 enter the subterranean treasure lair of pirate captain Tak Rennod, another set that relied heavily on the StageCraft volume.
“They built the big skull throne that the pirate king sat on,” says Balog. “They had all the treasure in the room, four big columns, and the stairs and the rock when they walked in. Everything else in the cave was created with the volume.”
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Be sure to listen to recent episodes of Making Tracks for our chats with Ravi Cabot Conyers and Kyriana Kratter (who you can hear LIVE on stage from Star Wars Celebration Japan very soon on Fantha Tracks Radio and TV) and dig back into late 2024 for our conversations with the young cast of the show, Jude Law, showrunners Jon Watt and Chris Ford and star Nick Frost.
