For Spain’s El Guiri Studios, Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon, and Chile’s Punkrobot, contributing original shorts to the second season of Lucasfilm’s animated anthology allowed them to pay homage to their home countries through both design and narrative inspiration; the series is now streaming exclusively on Disney+.
For over four decades, each new slate of films within Lucasfilm’s Star Wars universe has expanded its audience reach, adding more diversity in character identity and story while constantly growing the range of planetary environments throughout galaxies far, far away. The Star Wars world we’ve come to know in 2023 is immense compared to its 1977 beginnings. And, in 2021, Lucasfilm proved the franchise’s global influence by inviting animation studios in Japan to create their own unique shorts, set in the Star Wars world, compiled into the anthology series Star Wars: Visions for Disney+.
The second season of Visions, now streaming on Disney+, has further proved that sentiment. Invitations to contribute to the series were sent to studios around the world. Among the nine studios that participated were El Guiri in Spain, Cartoon Saloon in Ireland, and Punkrobot in Chile. All three studios’ Season 2 shorts are up for Emmy nomination consideration during this week’s voting, which will last through Sunday, June 25.
“One of the reasons I love short film is because that format is where you find the most experimental animation being done,” says Rodrigo Blaas, co-founder with Cecile Hokes of El Guiri Studios in Madrid and creator of Visions Season 2 2D / 3D hybrid short, Sith. “It’s a format that’s not bound by so much of the business,” he says. “That's what is great about these anthologies and it’s a great opportunity to be a part of that.”
Gabriel Osorio, founder of the Oscar winning Punkrobot and creative mind behind this season’s 3DCG short, In the Stars, added, “This was the chance to tell a story within this universe that I love about a group of people I love. Of course, we jumped at the opportunity.”
Naturally, each of the nine studios - whose expertise ranged from 2D and illustrative stylings to 3DCG and stop-motion - used their shorts to not only represent the cultures they hail from, but also to pay homage to their countries’ histories.
“The characters in our story live in the Outer Rim and they don't have a connection with the main civilization, which represents how the Patagonian people lived as well until 100 years ago,” explains Osorio, whose story is inspired by Chilean and Argentine colonization, a recent theme in the Star Wars Andor series.
He continues, “That’s why we don’t have lightsabers or droids anywhere in the story. It felt odd at first, since it’s Star Wars. But, to me, the theme that connected directly to Star Wars was more from the sight of the Empire putting their feet over these native people.”
In the Stars follows two sisters, the last of their kind, who live in hiding on their ravaged land after their mother dies in a battle with the Empire. The sisters squabble about how to survive with the Empire encroaching but, on a typical water run, the sisters are discovered and find they must fight back to ensure their survival.
“When the mother turns into a star, that's actually what the Selk'nam people of Chile believe, that when you die, you turn into a star,” shares Osorio. “That's why their flag contains all those stars. There's actually a frame in the film that it's completely inspired by that flag.”
The setting of In the Stars is based on the natural scenery found in Patagonia, a geographical region that encompasses the southern end of South America, governed by Argentina and Chile.
“The people from the southernmost part of Chile, the original inhabitants, have a very distinct and unique way of painting their bodies,” notes Osorio. “We didn’t want it to be too literal because this is a story that happens in a galaxy far, far away. We also didn’t want to appropriate the culture, but there is a lot of inspiration in the design.”
He adds, “The Selk'nam people were very connected to the water and to the sea. So, our creative director had this idea that the characters’ hair could be modeled after some kind of algae. That’s why it has a very distinct shape. Most of the character costumes were made from things in nature, like feathers on the capes. The shell the small child wears was inspired by a king crab common to Patagonia.”
The entire aesthetic of In the Stars looks and feels organic, and the plants and rocks featured in the short feel like characters who are as important as sisters Koten and Tichina. And though Cartoon Saloon’s short, Screecher’s Reach, taking place in a setting that feels more possessed than organic, the toxic environment it showcases is just as tangible.
“I love Ralph Stedman and Ronald Searle and I really wanted to do a pen and ink kind of thing with this story,” explains Paul Young, co-founder of Cartoon Saloon and first-time director for the 2D short. “When it came to when the main character enters the cave, for example, we wanted to get the feeling that the energy in the cave was so dark, like a dark forest, and it's almost like there was ink in the air and it would become hard to breathe.”
The story begins with a young girl named Daal who wishes to escape her life at a droid-managed workhouse. She makes a declaration to her friends that she’s headed to the famously-feared mountain Screecher’s Reach and, though her friends are skeptical, they join Daal in her quest. As Daal and the gang enter the cave, a dark and sinister force unleashes its wrath on the group. Daal saves her friends by staying behind and slaying the ghoulish creature, only to later abandon them when a Sith master requests that Daal be her new apprentice.
“When the ghost lady screams, we wanted the visuals to be expressionistic ink splatters, like a manifestation of this dark energy,” notes Young. “She was based on the banshee characters of Irish mythology. They were thought to be these sort of Irish fairies who, if a family member was going to die, you’d hear this scream in the night. We wanted to let the composition in this short tell the story as much as possible and take audiences on a ride emotionally, even if they aren’t totally aware of it.”
Screeching banshees aren’t the only representatives of Irish culture in the story. Far from it, actually. The scenery illustrated outside of the workhouse is heavily based on the mountains and wetlands of Kerry and there’s plenty of Irish Catholic symbolism throughout the short, but not in the way one might expect.
“I’m an atheist, or a ‘recovering Catholic’ as I like to joke, and I wanted to make the Sith master look a bit like the Virgin Mary, or this angelic creature, who comes down and appears very welcoming, so you understand why Daal, who doesn’t have a mother, might be drawn to this kind of person,” shares Young. “Sticking with the Catholic theme, we also came up with the idea of the Sith talking to Daal through this religious medal or talisman. So, it looks like Daal is saying prayers but, in reality, it was a Force-sensitive communicator the whole time.”
Like it flips religion on its head, Screecher’s Reach also flips on when Luke Skywalker trains with Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back and goes into a dark cave to face off with a ghost of his dark-side self. Screecher’s Reach, on the other hand, shows what may happen if someone is put to the test by a Sith against a real person, not just an illusion.
Blaas takes it a step further and questions what would happen if a Sith apprentice decided to try and escape her fate with the dark side.
“It was a look from my daughter that started the idea,” he says. “We were leaving the house and I was nagging her to put on another pair of shoes instead of her flip flops, and she looked at me with so much dare, like, ‘No. I’m going to do this my way.’ It was such a change for me as a father. I’ve watched her grow up and suddenly she’s a different person in this little gesture. That connected me to this idea I’ve always wanted to explore, which is, ‘Could a Sith in this world of Star Wars actually find a way out of that dark training?’”
In Sith, main character Lola is a former Sith apprentice, leading a peaceful, but isolated life where she is learning to use The Force to create rather than destroy. This is illustrated in a series of abstract sequences where Lola, whose chosen environment looks like a half-finished painting, transforms her Force energy from dark ink splatters to waves of color in order to paint the life she wishes to lead. But, as visuals of her old life encroach on the new life she’s created, Lola is confronted by the past when her old master tracks her down.
“These abstract paintings reflect a lot of her psyche and what is going on in her head, but we wanted to connect it to the rich history of painters in Spain and how they contributed to the birth and evolution of painting in the 20th century,” shares Blaas. “Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, these big names broke away from tradition and from the figurative type of styles to create something different. I'm sure it wasn't easy at the time, and there was controversy and a lot of critics. But it was the birth of a new movement. Now, animation is, in a way, going through a bit of that process, too.”
Carlos Salgado, the short’s art director adds, “One of the biggest challenges was everything related to the white canvas. Finding the balance required to be minimalist but at the same time expressive and fresh, providing the necessary details to understand the space and suggest the inner world of Lola is a beautifully controlled chaos, a quiet and Zen place but unstable, where there are some dark corners. Joan Miró's use of color and shapes was undoubtedly a great influence, especially with regard to Lola’s color forest. Then there’s Picasso, regarding the deconstruction of elements.”
In addition to architectural references in the design of the fortress where Lola is hiding, which is inspired by the Air Ministry building by architect Luis Gutierrez Soto in Madrid, even some details of the characters’ clothing such as the black Droid's cape, or the design of the Sith master's lightsaber, spotlight Spanish culture.
“The hilt on Star Wars lightsabers had such a specific design in the way that it was inspired by Japanese Katana swords, and I wanted to take that concept and use a Spanish design to create a new saber, where the hilt is a bit more decorative and functional for protection,” explains Blaas. “So, the Master in this story has a saber styled after swords from medieval Spanish literature.”
More specifically the saber was modeled after the Tizona, the sword of El Cid, a historical character in Spain. “Tizona also means ‘fire stick,’” notes Salgado. “It fits perfectly with a lightsaber.”
As specific as any of these three stories are to their own studios’ cultures, they are also created in a way that speaks to more than just one group. Screecher’s Reach, told from the perspective of, as Young calls himself, “a recovering Catholic” or atheist, can also speak to practicing Christians with the Sith master representing Satan, who is described as being deceivingly beautiful. In the Stars, while inspired by Chilean culture and colonization, also speaks to more modern-day gentrification of neighborhoods within the United States. And Sith speaks to a vast array of battles throughout history against toxic indoctrination, as well as the even more common internal battle every coming-of-age youth faces at a certain point in life.
“One of the biggest themes I’ve noticed in Star Wars is that all their stories tend to be about orphans, or people who have lost their families,” notes Osorio. “Grogu, The Mandalorian, Rey, Anakin, Luke and Leia, Jyn in Rogue One, they are all orphans.”
Osorio’s insight also extends to the shorts - Lola having separated herself from her mentor, Koten and Tichina having lost their mother, and Daal and every kid at the workhouse being without any parents.
“Having lost my dad not long after the first time I saw Empire,” continues Osorio, “that theme is something always at the core of Star Wars that I have been attracted to since I was a child.”
The point is, while Lucasfilm may have offered a blank canvas to participating studios for Season 2, not requiring them to stay within canon or really any parameters of Star Wars storytelling, each story inherently or subconsciously embodies the core of Star Wars; it’s ability to speak to audiences on a global scale, even through highly detailed storytelling.
“What animation can communicate is almost limitless,” says Blaas. “And I think we're in for a ride in terms of different styles of animation coming to the mainstream industry. It all speaks to this idea that you're able to paint your own destiny.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
