June 27th, 2023 
W.R. Miller 
When one thinks of Star Wars’s impact in the real world, at least three terms come to mind: innovative, imaginative, and inspiring. Innovative, as in developing technologies that improve the production pipeline. Imaginative, as in its exciting audio and visual storytelling. Inspiring, as in motivating people to develop their talents and pursue their dreams. It’s possible they could even play in the interstellar sandbox created by George Lucas.
Such is the case with Star Wars: Visions, an anthology series that, so far, has racked up two nine-episode seasons, or “volumes.” Lucasfilm selected studios throughout the world to animate a Star Wars short told from their local perspective and in-house style.
The initiator of Visions, Executive Producer James Waugh, talked with me about the project on June 15.
“It’s really a matter of the breadth of styles, tones and different cultural perspectives when it comes to how they approach storytelling,” he says. “With Visions, Volume One, we celebrated anime but with Volume Two we took a bold step and wanted to showcase all the different styles and techniques around the world. It’s rare to see that spectrum of storytelling put together into one place. There’s definitely other anthologies, but the difference is seeing how Star Wars reflects within each one of those cultures. You’ll see Star Wars like you’ve never seen it before. If you just love animation it truly is a spectacle of the potential of the medium.”
James Waugh
“Watching Star Wars and then going home and playing with my Star Wars toys, and making it my own stories, helped me make sense of the world,” he says.
“I grew up outside of a small town outside of Miami, Florida, and wanted to see what else was out in the world. My path has been circuitous from film development to screenwriting to video game animation and multi-platform franchise development for a long time.”
The companies he worked for included Suntaur/Elsboy Entertainment, for nearly four years, and Blizzard Entertainment, for nearly nine years. Waugh joined Lucasfilm in November 2016.
“I ultimately came to Lucasfilm through people who were aware of my work,” he says. “I ended up coming in for an interview, and the rest is history. But I think why I was uniquely suited for this role is that I grew up in a soup of media, of loving video games, loving books, loving publishing, animation, all of this mattered to me just as much. Being able to work at a job that touches all those things is really important to me. I love working with creators and helping them make the best stories they can.”
Waugh’s official title is Senior Vice President, Franchise Content and Strategy at Lucasfilm. He describes his role as, “overseeing the franchise story, animation, narrative for video games, publishing, parks, expressions. And then I partner very closely with the live-action group in a creative brain trust advisory role.”
Does he determine the directions of the franchise?
“No, I don’t think it’s as singular as that, ever,” he says. “Ultimately, I am on a group. I advise. I would say I have a strong perspective and help steer within the franchise content elements. When it comes to live action, that’s Kathy (Kathleen Kennedy, President of Lucasfilm), Carrie Beck (Executive Vice President, Live Action Development & Production), Dave Filoni (Executive Producer / Executive Creative Director). But we work very closely together, and really share consistently and try to build this franchise holistically. It’s far too big for any one person to navigate. It’s a partnership. Ultimately the authority is Kathy’s direction. She’s steering the franchise. And Dave is there as well. But when it comes to all these fun things like animation, video games, publishing, parks, I definitely take a leadership role in all story development.”
Waugh pitched the concept of an animated Star Wars anthology series to Kathleen Kennedy, who gave her approval.
“I pitched it,” he says, “but I have really great producing partners as well with Josh Rimes (VP, Animation Development and Production) and Jacqui Lopez (VP, Franchise Production). And I have to give Kathy a lot of credit. She really backs passion.
“Star Wars: Visions was a passion project from the start. What inspired me was, I love animation. We all love animation. We love the art of filmmaking and animation and storytelling. Kathy, very early on, threw the gauntlet down and said, ‘Look, I would love you all to start exploring different forms of animation, seeing what we could do with Star Wars.’ We were all very big fans of anime. It’s very much a reference point consistently with our animation group, but even with games and live action directors, it’s a lingua franca in a way. And so she had us start exploring, exploring possibilities of how we could think of animation in a new way. We didn’t want to be another Western studio that took something to these studios and said, ‘Please make this; we just want your aesthetic style.’
“We really wanted a framework that allowed these creatives to work within their process,” Waugh says. “When we partner with a studio, it comes from personal passion. It comes from being ravenous consumers of content ourselves, and being fans of a lot of these studios already. But we’re there from the start, from a story development perspective, hearing a story from each one of these creators, making sure that they have something they want to say within Star Wars. Our role is to function as really strong dramaturgs, story editors, and helping them shape that idea in the optimal way for Star Wars. So we’re there throughout the development process from script to screen.”
In choosing the studios, Waugh says, “it was different with both volumes. The same sort of top level methodology applies in the sense of who do we think is really doing inspiring work out there? We literally watch tons of this stuff because we love animation. So you’re always looking for inspiration points. And there’s a chain of creatives influencing creatives.”
Visions, Volume One, devoted itself to anime, involving studios such as Production I.G., Kamikaze Douga, Studio Colorido, Geno Studio, Trigger (two shorts), Kinema Citrus, and Science SARU (two shorts). Volume One was released September 22, 2021.
Waugh says, “We had a partner, Qubic Pictures with Justin Leach, who is very, very, very savvy in the world of anime. And has great relationships and helped introduce us to some of the lesser known studios and sent us examples of their work.”
Volume Two expanded to a global outreach, involving Aardman (United Kingdom), Cartoon Saloon (Ireland), Studio Mir (South Korea), El Guiri (Spain), 88 Pictures (India), Punkrobot (Chile), Studio La Cachette (France), Triggerfish (South Africa/Ireland), D’art Shtajio (Japan) with Lucasfilm (United States). Star Wars: Visions, Volume Two released May 4, 2023.
Waugh relates, “For Volume Two, a big part of it was who do we want to work with? And who do we see globally that are doing great things? We wanted to have a whole spectrum of different talent, tones, feelings and animation styles.”
A complication sometimes arises from whether a studio is available. They may be working on their own projects, or projects for others. Do they postpone that project in favor of Visions, or does Lucasfilm allow the studio to finish their project first?
“That’s a great producer-y question because that is true,” Waugh says. “Animation is in demand more than it’s ever been. There’s a global appetite now. We’ve been pleasantly surprised with the studios that we’ve reached out to, that we know are incredibly busy, who said, ‘Yeah, we’ve always wanted to make a Star Wars.’
Cartoon Saloon’s “Screecher’s Reach”
“Cartoon Saloon [made] Song of the Sea, a movie that really, really means a lot to me and my son. And so [we] really wanted to reach out to them. But we assumed they would have to say “no” because it was a short. They’re very busy. But it’s always amazing what Star Wars means to people. We found very quickly that a lot of these studios wanted to figure out how to make it happen, even though they’re very busy, even though they have lines of production. There’s definitely been times where some studios didn’t have the bandwidth, but I would say the majority of them seem to find a way. Obviously we have dates and timelines, so it’s not like we can put everything on hold and wait for everybody that we want to work with. But, it’s been fascinating and really gratifying to see the people who’ve figured it out and said, ‘Yeah, we want to do this. This is a great opportunity.’ It’s also hard to do a short. You’re not amortizing your cost in the same way as you would have for a series.”
Waugh anticipates the question, “How do we choose the story? It really comes down to hearing the story that the studio would want to tell. Not every studio is someone that we move forward with. It really matters what the director has to say.
“I know this sounds trite—but the truth is, we look for heart. That’s what makes a good Star Wars story, when you can strip all the Star Wars out of it. It’s a human story at its core. Those are the stories we usually gravitate to. They have that mythic human element. And then it’s how they present it. So it’s a mix of the right story, the right voice, something to say in what the studio does.”
Such is the flexible nature of Visions, studios could even present stories that deviate from a position held by George Lucas. For example, when Marvel Comics editor and scribe Roy Thomas wrote issues of Star Wars, he invented a talking, gun-toting green rabbit named Jaxxon. Lucas objected to the character, which influenced Thomas’s decision to leave the comic.
“Lop and Ocho”
Decades later, Star Wars: Visions presented a short, “Lop and Ochō,” from Japan’s Geno Studio, that features an anthropomorphic bunny, Lop. Director Yuki Igarashi wanted a rabbit for his protagonist. His mecha designer, Izumojuki, found one did indeed exist in the expanded Star Wars universe, the Lepus carnivorous species, using the precedent set by Jaxxon. And thus, Lop was allowed.
(After a 40-year absence, Jaxxon returned to Marvel Comics with Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories – Jaxxon Annual, published this year.)
In American Graffiti and in the original Star Wars, Lucas advocated leaving one’s home to achieve a better life elsewhere. He told the crowd at Star Wars Celebration III, “The point of the movie is to get on with your lives, to take that challenge to leave your uncle’s moisture farm, to go out into the world and change it, and save the universe.”
Director Paul Young of Cartoon Saloon inverted that idea for his short, “Screecher’s Reach.” Daal, the protagonist, learns that leaving home may involve too heavy a price.
“I haven’t spoken to George about this, but I can tell you that your analysis of that is dead on,” Waugh says. “In the early development conversations, that was one of the things we [discussed]. We loved taking that risk with Cartoon Saloon and Paul and the team. That this is an inverse of A New Hope, and American Graffiti, is absolutely right, too. The idea of someone who sees a bigger world and is willing to leave, but at what cost? And who do you have to leave behind, and what’s that path?
“Going off to college, to art school, is Paul’s take. The point is, what do the artists have to say within Star Wars? And these should be personal stories—stories that have universal myths, but mean something to the voices creating them.
“I’d like to think all of these stories do that.”
Aardman’s ‘I Am Your Mother’
Are the stories considered to be canon?
“That’s not how they’re designed,” Waugh says. “We never wanted this to be a canonical exercise. This isn’t about telling stories that, you know, weave into the broader tapestry and continue the mythos. That said, we’re not opposed to stories that fit within a timeline window, but we don’t want to limit that because ultimately we’d never get a story like ‘The Duel’ that is completely an Akira Kurosawa tale. A lot of these stories don’t necessarily fit within the way we normally look at them.
“My favorite thing about Star Wars in particular is, how do you leave a lot to the audience? Does this story mean a lot to you? Does this story feel like it fits in there? But I think it’s really important to say that that’s never the intent of the Star Wars: Visions. It’s a celebratory expression of the franchise.”
Production time for each project varies from 18 months to two years, depending on the style of animation.
To achieve the Star Wars aesthetic, Lucasfilm provides the studios with designs for reference and the Skywalker sound library.
“Star Wars has that sort of unique cultural currency of 40 years of meaning so much to so many people that those sounds evoke a certain emotional texture. And so it’s critical to us to make sure that these are our truthful expressions of Star Wars,” Waugh says.
“The other element is, of course, we have our story group. We have our art department here, and we are there to help supply designs. We’re there to help answer lore questions and to talk through story points and provide specific aliens, make recommendations. All through the lens of making sure it’s the best form of a Star Wars story.”
Part of the Star Wars aesthetic is the compositions of John Williams and the performances of the London Symphony Orchestra—which is not to be found in Visions, Volume One and Two. Though it’s a possibility if the series continues.
“It’s something that we’ve talked about a lot,” Waugh says. “I don’t think any of us are opposed to using cues from John. John’s music is, you know, probably the most inspiring film score in the history of cinema. And it definitely feels Star Wars. With Visions, some of the talent wanted to lean into John. We definitely have this conversation for cues. We always gave them the opportunity to tell us how they want this to sound. Different studios have different sounds. ‘Aau’s Song’ feels very much influenced by certain sounds in Africa. You’ll see the same with Punkrobot. Cartoon Saloon is haunting and unique, but it fits that Banshee theme. And they all wanted that.
“There’s certain themes within Star Wars, like the Force theme, that are so powerful. And there’s been moments where we’ve talked about the value of that, but none of that is off the table. The joy of Visions is finding new ways to express Star Wars. We’ve been doing that in live-action series as well, like The Mandalorian and Andor, but I think that’s the charm.”
As for Star Wars: Visions merchandise, Waugh says, “Volume One had toys and some really interesting publishing. There’s a Visions novel and definitely comics by [Takashi] Okazaki-san who [wrote] ‘The Duel.’ There’s tons of soft lines as well: shirt, socks, those type of things.
With Visions, Volume Two, there wasn’t as much as an initial toy presence, but there’s definitely soft lines. I think we’re sort of balancing the amount of volume of shows and product per year. But we found people were interested because they’re such unique expressions of Star Wars. So they’re out there. What’s fun about them is you get to see Star Wars in a whole new light.”
Ronin from Volume One’s “The Duel.”
Is Season Three in the works?
“Well, we are discussing the possibility of doing more,” the executive producer says.
Some of the endings are inconclusive, suggesting that the story could continue. That leads to the question, are these backdoor pilots?
“In all honesty, that’s not the intention of them. That said, could they be? Look, there are so many of these characters I love. You’re asking the wrong guy here because my take is yes, let’s go make stuff of all of these stories. There’s such wealth of potential in all of them. Could you see future characters and stories from elements of Visions? Sure. I love that idea,” James Waugh says.
As Yoda would say, “Always in motion is the future.”
See here for a list of shorts and credits from Star Wars: Visions, Volume Two.
He has just completed Batman: The Animated Interviews, a five-volume work featuring the executives, producers, directors, writers, actors, designers, storyboard artists and composers involved with the making of Batman: The Animated Series and its spinoffs. BearManor Media is the publisher.
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