One Of The Star Wars: Visions Season 2 Shorts Was Partly Inspired By Picasso
Unlike the Japan-centric first, the second season of "Star Wars: Visions" features animation studios from all over the world. One of these studios is El Guiri, co-founded in Madrid by creative director Rodrigo Blaas. Blaas has an impressive resume — his contributions to "Ice Age," the first feature film produced by Blue Sky Studios, were impressive enough that he was scooped up by Pixar.
In the following years, he toiled behind the scenes of "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles." But then Blaas stepped away from Pixar to make "Alma," a 2009 horror short that earned "special mention" at Fantastic Fest that year. "Alma" caught the eye of Guillermo del Toro, who asked that Blaas come and direct a movie with him. That film became the Netflix TV series "Trollhunters" and its extended "Tales of Arcadia" universe. Now Blaas has returned to the short format with "Sith," produced by El Guiri co-founder Cecile Hoakes and featuring art direction by "Pacific Rim" concept artist Carlos Salgado.
Blaas acknowledged his own history in a panel discussion at Star Wars Celebration 2023 centering on the second season of "Visions." He praised Disney for "giving us the reins to make and tell stories" about their personal experiences. "In taking that step," he said, "it allows these creators to bring part of their history, their learning, through the creative process."
In his own case, Blaas sought to combine "Star Wars" with the color and style of 20th-century painters, particularly the famous Pablo Picasso. By doing so, he hoped to create something in the "Star Wars" spirit that was distinctly new, just as the original "Visions" did.
Great artists steal
Previously at /Film, we have written about how "Sith" uses color to give weight and texture to its world. Just by watching the trailer, the simulated brushstrokes and splattery lightsaber effects are immediately noticeable. "Sith" follows the path of "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" and "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish" by pushing CG animation beyond realism into subjectivity.
But "Sith" is more than that, too. After all, Pablo Picasso wasn't just a famous painter. He was a famous Spanish painter. While he spent much of his professional life in Paris, he loved Barcelona and attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid as a teenager. Madrid is, of course, the home of El Guiri Studios.
When you say, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal," you are quoting Picasso. Today's artists say this metaphorically, but Picasso lived his truth. According to ArtNews, he spent much of his career lifting ideas from other people's work. As a student, he combed the famed Prado Museum for inspiration. There he fell in love with Caravaggio and especially El Greco.
Picasso's breakthrough "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" takes influence from "the compositional grouping of El Greco's 'Vision of Saint John'..." while "its paint handling owed an obvious debt to Cézanne." Picasso's genius, though, came in not just integrating these influences, but transforming them through the lens of his mature style. This has kept his name in the history books despite his arrogance and raging misogyny.
A bridge to something else
Just like Pablo Picasso, Rodrigo Blaas is the sum of his past influences. "Sith" transforms both "Star Wars" and CG animation through a painterly aesthetic. But Blaas has other influences, as well. He loved Pixar for its expressive character animation as well as its storytelling ambitions. "In Spain, at the time," he told Trojan Unicorn in an interview, "the few companies that did CG were using it mostly for commercials."
The country lacked the institutional knowledge or funding to produce films, leading Blaas to seek out Blue Sky Studios and Pixar to learn the trade. Blaas has retained that scrappy spirit even through his career as a television director, a medium that can be hostile to individual creativity. "I see it as a challenge," he said. "Not a door, but a wall. It's a bridge to something else." This philosophy also applies to short films, which he describes as "a passionate endeavor" to Remezcla.
Another of Blaas's favorites is Segundo de Chomón, a contemporary of Georges Méliès and fellow "trick filmmaker." Chomón produced much of his best work between 1907 and 1912, including many early works of stop motion. "The Electric Hotel," released in 1908, features a hotel room that shines shoes, dresses hair, and unpacks bags. The 1909 short "Bob's Electric Theater" depicts a mechanical children's theater complete with dueling dolls.
ArtForum describes Chomón's work as "an industrial-era machine ... that nonetheless creates lifelike phantoms from a projected beam of moving shadows." But Blaas also sees himself in Chomón's life story, as well. Just as Blaas traveled to the U.S. to learn animation, he told Remezcla, Chomón moved to France "to work on his stop-motion camera trick animations." Chomón died there too.
When magic happens
Rodrigo Blaas couldn't become a successful artist on his own. Neither could Pablo Picasso nor Segundo de Chomón. Picasso's father was an art professor, while Chomón relied on the patronage of the film studio Pathé Frères for work. Blaas has spent his career bouncing between the likes of Pixar and DreamWorks, his name obscured beneath those of Brad Bird and Guillermo del Toro.
Now, though, he and his friends at El Guiri Studios have a chance to distinguish themselves. For the past several years they have worked hard to build the Spanish animation industry that they wanted to see. Now they are uniting their many influences under one banner as Picasso once did.
It should be acknowledged, too, that George Lucas himself was an art thief. The first "Star Wars" borrowed its plot from "Hidden Fortress" and its air battles from "The Dam Busters." There's plenty of influence from classic science fiction, like Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" novels and Frank Herbert's "Dune," in there too. Later "Star Wars" films made by Disney cribbed from the likes of "The Bridge on the River Kwai," while TV series like "The Mandalorian" and "Andor" borrow from Westerns and historical uprisings respectively.
The first season of "Visions" featured a short by Hiroyuki Imaishi, a notoriously self-referential creator who remade "Star Wars" in his own bombastic image. As corporate as "Star Wars" has become since the monumental success of the original film in 1978, it has always been an opportunity for artists to proudly wear their influences on their sleeves. Now, it is time for El Guiri to show us what they love the most. "I think when you start mixing those different things that mean a lot to you personally," Blaas said, "that's when I think the magic happens."