The debut trailer for Star Wars: Visions season two is here and it’s looking like it’s going to be a visually dazzling trip through a galaxy far, far away. Whereas the first season of Visions focused on Japanese animation studios, the second covers the entire world, with entries from India, South Africa, South Korea, Chile, and the United Kingdom.
As before, these shorts will cover a wide range of styles, from goofy comedy to atmospheric Jedi vs. Sith duels. So, here are the nine studios Lucasfilm has wrangled for season two and where you might have seen their work before.
El Guiri Studios
El Guiri is based out of Madrid, Spain, and will tackle the first episode “Sith”. The creative force behind the studio is Pixar veteran Rodrigo Blaas, who worked on monster hits like Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, and Ratatouille. Though Blaas has maintained links with Pixar, he’s founded his own studio, which turned heads with the 2009 short Alma. More recently, El Guiri has teamed up with Guillermo del Toro to work on Trollhunters for Netflix.
Cartoon Saloon
Cartoon Saloon is tackling “Screecher’s Reach”, which will be directed by one of its original founders, Paul Young. This Irish studio has produced the feature films The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, The Breadwinner, Wolfwalkers, and My Father’s Dragon with all four films receiving Academy Award nominations for Best Animated Feature. On TV, they’ve turned out shows Skunk Fu!, Puffin Rock, Dorg van Dango and Vikingskool.
PunkRobot
PunkRobot is making “In the Stars”. The studio is based in Santiago, Chile, and has a reputation as one of the best animation studios in the country. Formed in 2008 it has produced Flipos, Las adventures de MuelÃn y Perlita, and Historia de un oso (Bear Story). The latter is notable for winning the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 2015, making it the first Chilean movie to win an Oscar and the only Latin American animated feature to win (or be nominated for) an Academy Award.
Aardman
British studio Aardman is perhaps the best-known studio in the line-up, and is making the comedic-looking stop-motion short “I Am Your Mother” for Visions. Aardman is beloved for its Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep movies and has a very distinctive style that’s making the leap to Star Wars intact. Its most famous movie is 2000’s Chicken Run, which was an international box office smash and still holds the record as the highest-grossing stop-motion animation film in history.
A sequel, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, is coming to Netflix on Nov. 10, 2023.
Studio Mir
Studio Mir is a South Korean animation powerhouse with credits you will almost certainly have heard of. It animated the majority of The Legend of Korra, the fourth season of The Boondocks, the third season of HBO’s Harley Quinn, Netflix’s The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf and the animated feature Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge. Its Visions short is titled “Journey to the Dark Head” and will be directed by Hyeong Geun Park, who previously worked on Dota: Dragon’s Blood.
Studio La Cachette
Studio La Cachette is from Paris, France and is best known for its work on the Love, Death + Robots season one short “Sucker of Souls”, about a vampire battling mercenaries armed with cats. Other notable works include Genndy Tartakovsky’s excellent Primal and its own works, Day Trip to the Aquarium of Doom, Mune: Guardian of the Moon, Kairos, Muyi, Mehdi: Avis de Passage, and Le College Noir. It has also contributed work to Adventure Time. Its Visions episode is entitled “The Spy Dancer” and is directed by Julien Chheng.
88 Pictures
88 Pictures is an Indian animation studio boasting staff that has worked on Dreamworks hits like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar and How to Train Your Dragon. It has also worked on Netflix’s Trollhunters, Fast & Furious Spy Racers, Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles, and Wizards. For Visions, director Ishan Shukla, known for the 2016 short Schirkoa, is working on “The Bandits of Golak”.
D’ART Shtajio
Japanese anime studio D’ART Shtajio will deliver “The Pit” in collaboration with Lucasfilm’s own animators. Its most well-known work is on the animated music video for The Weeknd’s “Snowchild”, though it has also contributed work to Netflix’s Castlevania, Attack on Titan, One Piece, and Fire Force. The studio has also worked on adverts for ASOS and the SNIPES clothing brand.
Triggerfish Animation Studios
South African studio Triggerfish is based in Cape Town, South Africa and Galway, Ireland and is producing “Aau’s Song” for Visions. Its work includes feature films Adventures in Zambezia, Khumba, and Seal Team, along with Disney Plus shows Kizazi Mobi, Kiya and the Kimoja Heroes, and Netflix’s Mama’s K Team. It’s known for raising the profile of African animation, picking up a Mifa Animation Industry Award for “the pioneering role that the company has played in animation in South Africa, and Africa”.
It’s a stellar line-up of studios, with the trailer indicating that these studios have been given a huge deal of creative freedom on how to approach one of the biggest franchises on the planet. We adored the first season of Visions in 2021, which showed stories that’d be impossible to show in traditional canon Star Wars media. Here’s hoping this high-profile project launches each of these studios to new heights and scores them more work in the future.
Star Wars: Visions season two will premiere on ‘Star Wars Day’, May 4, 2023.
