Jay Chladek files this report from Siggraph 2002:

Hi guys, I noticed you had a report on SIGGRAPH and what was there as far as AOTC footage. I just felt I would chime in with the stuff I saw there since I was there the entire week.

The Special session about Yoda was very informative. ILM is apparently kept in the dark on story points almost as much as we are it seems since apparently they didn't the script until about 2 days before production work started. So, in order to create digital Yoda, they went back to footage of the puppet from ESB. To help tweak the character, they did some render tests of digital Yoda doing segments of his speech to Luke about the force. One interesting thing is that apparently Frank Oz didn't want to see the puppet giggles in digital Yoda's ears since he said that was something which the puppet did and he didn't originate that. But, the ILM team left the giggles in since it is still a part of the features we remember from the Yoda character.

Rob Coleman also offered some thoughts about the lightsaber duel with digital Yoda at the end of the film. If I recall correctly, he said that George didn't have a full blueprint mapped out as to how Yoda should fight and he only apparently said that Yoda should have a fighting style with elements of "The Tasmanian Devil" and a nasty frog. This apparently was a difficult concept for Rob to wrap his mind around and he said that it apparently took him the better part of a year to finally come up with a fighting sequence that incorperated these elements. Rob also showed a scene from the Jet Li Chinese martial arts film "Swordmaster II" to show some of the other inspirations he had for the fight scene. And although it wasn't seen in the Yoda fight, Swordmaster II did show some flingings of twirling swords, like one of the attacks that can be used in Jedi Outcast (also similar to Vader's saber twirl attack used in Jedi, but these swords came back).

Other presentations at the special Yoda session included a talk about the digital clothing software that ILM came up with (for which they were awarded a special scientific achievement award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences last year). The presenter prefaced that section by mentioning that their team was responsible for helping to dress a wise person with big ears......Jar Jar Binks. Like, TPM, live action footage of Ahmad Best in Jar Jar outfit was used for certain scenes to get the timing of Jar Jar's movements down and basic positioning for the costume.

Some problems were encountered and these were shown in the digital outtakes reel. At one point, we saw Jar Jar's costume falling into the Jar Jar mesh, exposing Jar Jar's shoulder. In another scene, Jar Jar's mesh was replaced with a weird low resolution image that looked like several blobs walking in formation. Digital Yoda's cloak was also seen billowing up in a low resolution test animation and it looked something like Yoda's version of the classic Marilyn Monroe's classic pose of her dress getting air blasted. BTW, all of this outtake footage was shown to the tune of the Austin Powers theme.

Other demonstrations included the behaviour of rigid structures in the factory fight scene, the clone/droid battle and the destruction of the Naboo cruiser at the beginning. Rigid structures are digital meshes that behave like solid objects. So they can fall with gravity influence or bounce off other objects. These objects sometimes caused problems as there was a bug in the mesh of Poggle the Lesser. His bracelets were rigid structures and they apparently had a habit of falling through and off his arm in test renders (sometimes in dramatic and explosive fashion. The bug was dealt with, but Poggle almost appeared with no bracelets because it kept causing a few problems.

One other highlight worth mentioning is that one of the ILM guys pointed out where the TIE Fighter easter egg is on Corescant. When Zam Wessel's speeder is seen diving straight down, look in the lit trench at the bottom left of the screen. If you look close, you'll see three TIE Fighters going up the trench (presumeably chasing an X-Wing).

BTW, some addtional effects information can be found in the latest issue of Cinefex magazine that just went on sale. It features in depth articles on the effects of Star Wars and Spiderman.

Well, this is probably way too much information for TFN, but I just wanted to provide it as it was very educational to learn about the effects of AOTC. And this is only a small sampling of what was talked about at SIGGRAPH. May the force be with you.

Great stuff Jay, thanks for writing in.