With just 23 days until the premiere of Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord on April 6, Animation Magazine took the time to interview the creatives behind the show and discuss the new and old techniques being used as Lucasfilm Animation continues to push the envelope.
Supervising Director of Maul: Shadow Lord, and The Bad Batch, Brad Rau, said that new Lucasfilm CEO and animation legend Dave Filoni set the bar for Maul’s next chapter high.
“The thing that Dave put to us is, how do we tell this portion of this guy’s story? What is he doing when the Empire rises? What is he doing, trying to get revenge? He only has, like, two lines in Phantom Menace, so he’s just always been this mysterious, interesting character that we felt like the time was right to tell his story… We keep a measure of mystery around him. It’s an interesting narrative balance. How do we focus on facets of this character without ruining him by telling you too much?”
Animation Supervisor Keith Kellogg, another Lucasfilm veteran, points out that the new characters Maul has to interact with in Shadow Lord are the foils he needs at this point in his journey. That includes disillusioned Jedi Apprentice Devon Izara, and a local cop, Brander Lawson, who’s tired of being a lawman, and apparently struggling with a strained relationship with his son. “We’ve kind of never done a full-on, for lack of a better word, cops-and-robbers kind of Star Wars.” That story is currently being fleshed out in the Dark Horse series, Shadow of Maul.
Cover of Issue 1 of ‘Shadow of Maul’
From an animation standpoint, everyone who saw the trailer noticed that the animation style has changed somewhat since The Bad Batch. Cinematography and Effects lead Joel Aron made it clear that Filoni asked for updated character rigs, textures, and more enhancements to make the show more cinematic, while still leaning into what makes animation special:
“At no point do I ever want the show to look like we’re crossing the line into live action. That’s something that Dave has always made sure that we don’t do, and so I think because of that, we have a very, very tight relationship with the artists that are producing the show.”
For Shadow Lord, animators developed a new power rig, allowing them to create naturalistic animation distortion frame-by-frame, which Rau points out in the trailer:
“There’s a couple of shots of Maul spinning and whirling, and if you look frame by frame, you’ll see distorted fingers, and the overlap is a little bit more like 2D features.”
A scene still from Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: MAUL – SHADOW LORD, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Lucasfilm Ltd. © 2026 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
That updated rigging also translates to updated facial expressions, allowing for more subtle performances. It’s truly light-years beyond where The Clone Wars started so many years ago. Additionally, Kellogg states that the fight scenes are getting a bit of an anime-inspired stylistic boost to lean into the strengths of animation as a medium.
“For the action scenes and things, we really wanted to try and concentrate on silhouettes of the character. So we enabled the rig … to really shape that silhouette a bit more, so that we could really get a very artistic, slightly anime kind of style. We really wanted the show to reflect the aggressive style of [Maul]. The other thing we did was really try and focus on crisp posing … especially for fight and action scenes. We really wanted to make those really strong clashing moments with lightsabers and things really … read in a very strong, graphic kind of way.”
Those updated animation sequences were created with new software aimed at a cinematic level of quality. The creators are now shooting scenes more akin to live-action scenes with reference footage shot of actor Sam Witwer, which the Animation Magazine article goes into some detail about.
A scene still from Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: MAUL – SHADOW LORD, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Lucasfilm Ltd. © 2026 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
But the new technology has also been supported with some old-fashioned style. After making small appearances in Skeleton Crew and Andor Season 2, matte paintings are returning to animation. Rau explained how “matte paintings have helped us extend sets to get a bigger scope and scale, especially for our huge city, and you can see the painterly style in the background.”
This artistic touch is further complemented by the show’s use of glass-painted brushstrokes to create the hand-touched look and surreal atmosphere we see in the trailer, something StarWars.com revealed when the trailer dropped.
Poster for Maul: Shadow Lord showing off distinctive brushstrokes.
To read more about Lucasfilm Animation’s new animation workflows and enduring partnership with the Taiwanese studio, CGCG, read the entire Animation Magazine article for yourself, and start counting down the weeks until the first two episodes of Maul: Shadow Lord arrive on April 6th!
Colin is a lifelong Star Wars fan and researcher who enjoys diving deep into every corner of this weird and wonderful galaxy far, far away.