Clive Smith, co-founder of the animation studio that brought us the famous "Holiday Special" cartoon segment, talks Fett, Chewie's fur, and Threepio's eyes

Check out this rare video "leica reel" animatic from the cartoon segment of "The Star Wars Holiday Special"!

A look behind the way Clone Wars is shot, as revealed at Comic-Con.

An unseen animatic from Episode III

This video presents the concept of how the Force can be used in a next-gen video game.

You've got a couple of guys on staff who came to you right from high school. How did they do that? Is there hope for others to follow?

We've heard a lot about "animatics," but it's still a bit confusing. Could you give us a simple explanation?

The latest issue of Cinefex Magazine, the leader in visual effects journalism, features a detailed synopsis of the making of Episode I.

Join Lucasfilm animatics artists Kevin Baillie and Ryan Tudhope for a chat about the making of Episode I.

Read the transcript from Wednesday's chat about the animated storyboards of Episode I with Pre-Visualization/Effects Supervisor David Dozoretz and Animatics Artist Jeff Wozniak.

David Dozoretz is now completing what we believe will be the very last animatic pre-visualization for Episode I.

One by one, ILM is completing the Episode I final effects shots, and some of those shots had their genesis in the work of a teenager.

To demonstrate how the animatics team creates a typical animatic shot, we've put together a demo shot made just for the web.

Evan Pontoriero started in visual effects work when he was very young. "That is," he laughs, "I scratched laser blasts onto my friend's Super-8 movies."

On-site at Skywalker Ranch is a small group of artists using computer-generated movies called animatics to pre-visualize the imaginative sequences of Star Wars: Episode I.

After the 65-day shoot of principal photography at Leavesden Studios last year, Episode I production has for the most part shifted into the next phases of film-making: editing and the creation of visual effects.

Kevin Baillie works in the Art Department, behind locked doors in a special aerie workshop of creativity. He's an animatics artist, constructing moving blueprints for the three Star Wars prequels.

A handful of stormtroopers don't seem quite menacing enough, so it's back to the desert for new filming. But first must come storyboarding and three-dimensional modeling before the cameras roll.

An in-depth exploration of what it took to breathe life into dewbacks after 20 years.