Maul: Shadow Lord has frequently reminded us that it’s some of the best-looking animation put out by Lucasfilm over the past few weeks, filling its storytelling with great visual flourishes and some sneaky extra layers of detail for people paying attention. But this week’s set of episodes went even beyond that—using a key moment in Maul’s journey to blend practical effects with its animation.
Episode eight of Shadow Lord, “The Creeping Fear” sees Maul trying to pick himself up after a grueling fight with both Marrok and the Eleventh Brother, escaping into the dark as quickly as his damaged robotic legs can carry him. It makes for one of the best introspective moments we’ve spent with Maul across the whole series as we find him rueing the ignominies he’s faced across his life (as he so often does, which is part of the character’s charm at this point). How this plays out is almost in a dreamlike haze, as we witness Maul glimpse shades of his past and relive all the times he’s lost and suffered at the hands of his former master, Darth Sidious.
It’s a cool mix of new footage—of a young Maul being taken away from his brother Savage to begin his harsh training—and reused clips from The Clone Wars as we revisit all these low points in Maul’s life that he’s still struggling to overcome. But while they’re great narratively, the real fun is in the visual presentation, which was apparently achieved with a practical twist. According to a new behind-the-scenes trivia dump by the official Star Wars website, Lucasfilm Animation’s Director of Lighting, Cinematography, and Visual Effects Joel Aron prepared the scene by taking the animated clips of Maul’s memories, and then projecting them over a smoke machine. So when they flicker and fade against the backdrop of Maul’s vision, that’s them actually doing that, rather than simply being animated as such.
It’s just one fun flex among many that Shadow Lord has taken in its animation, from the painterly texture effects that define the look of its world and characters, to the ways its lightsaber blades flare up and flicker like wild flames instead of the controlled beams of energy we’re accustomed to seeing. But it’s just another reminder that we’re getting to see Lucasfilm Animation’s best work play out week by week as Shadow Lord continues, too.
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