Star Wars Rebels: To be 3-D Animation Like The Clone Wars?

Hello  "Rebels" Stormtrooper?

Star Wars: The Clone Wars Supervising Director and Star Wars Rebels Executive Producer Dave Filoni recently wrote a blog entry for StarWars.com expressing his gratitude to design artist and sculptor Darren Marshall who is leaving Lucasfilm.

If you have watched any of the behind the scenes videos on StarWars.com or the bonus content on The Clone Wars Blu-ray releases then you have seen some of Marshall's work.  The sculpted heads on sticks.

"He would do full standing figures at times, other times just the head, including Ahsoka, Savage Opress, Baron Papanoida, Bossk, Saesee Tiin, Plo Koon, Adi Gallia, Oppo Rancisis (spoiler) — 72 maquettes in total, many seen and many yet unseen by you, the fans."

Oppo Rancisis and Tarkin

Some including myself have speculated that the new series Rebels would switch to a more traditional 2-D animation style for production and cost reasons with the change of corporate ownership.  This speculation was fueled when Joel Aron appeared in a StarWars.com video discussing a different look of the show in terms of color schemes and going back to Ralph McQuarrie's concept art work on the films as a basis for Rebels' look.

What is interesting is a bit of a throw away line which gives us a clue that Rebels is likely going to be a 3-D animated series instead of the more traditional 2-D animation.  This would make sense if the team wanted to re-use some resources and character models created from The Clone Wars for the new series.

 "I bring this up today because sadly this is Darren’s last week as part of my crew. And while Darren will be moving on, I am happy to say that you will all be enjoying his work for many years to come; not just because of The Clone Wars, but because Darren also created sculpts of the primary characters for our upcoming series, Star Wars Rebels."

Interesting isn't it.

SOURCE: StarWars.com