How ILM Recreated The T-6 Jedi Shuttle from The Clone Wars for Ahsoka

The creative team at Industrial Light & Magic has shared the process of recreating Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ iconic Jedi starship for Ahsoka.

The series, which takes place after the defeat of the Galactic Empire in Return of the Jedi, draws inspiration from both the prequel films and Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series to reintroduce several elements and designs from an earlier era in the Lucasfilm galaxy.

Along with the protagonist’s companion, the former Jedi droid Huyang, Ahsoka’s personal vessel is a T-6 Jedi shuttle that originated in Dave Filoni’s animated series.

In an interview with the official Star Wars website, ILM model maker John Goodson discusses how the effects studio used practical effects to create the Jedi craft.

The final model, which weighed 15 pounds and measured 30 inches across, had the most challenging feature in the ship’s distinctive rotating wing. Goodson admits that it would be “simple to make it as a digital model or animated element”, but he thinks that Star Wars fans value the choice to use a practical model and emulate the filmmaking method of the original films. You can watch what Goodson shared in the video and read his quotes below:

It was a slightly different version, but it was the same design. It was the same big semi-circular wing with a cockpit and three engines in the back. It’s the most mechanically complex thing I’ve seen in a long time. This ship is different from anything else that we’ve worked with. [Machinist Dan Patrascu and I spent four months working full-time in my Marin County garage to sculpt, cast and fabricate Ahsoka’s T-6 shuttle.] It was really complicated. [We vacuum formed and fabricated individual parts instead of 3D printing the model from a digital file, as that is far more delicate.] When you’ve got these models on stage, and you remount them, they wind up getting manhandled a lot. They’ve got to be robust. They really get a lot of abuse on stage. They have to be tough enough to withstand it. I didn’t have a machine big enough [to use heated plastic sheets to create the base of many of the model’s bigger pieces], but the original 2-foot-by-2-foot vacuum former that they bought in 1975 for the first Star Wars is still at 3210 Studios.

Each of Star Wars’ spacecrafts are more than just a way of traveling across the galaxy, they are the product of elaborate and careful design processes. Many of them have become almost like characters themselves, and the choice to give Ahsoka her own Republic-era vessel is not only a significant reference to Filoni’s original animated series, but also a part of an ongoing trend of seeing prequel-era technology reappearing in a later period in the Star Wars timeline.

The T-6 Jedi shuttle first appeared as concept art in the 2009 book The Art of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and later made its onscreen debut in Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 2. It had a cockpit that was deliberately similar to the Millennium Falcon and a red-and-white color scheme that matched the Grand Army of the Republic.

The T-6 became a favorite design of Filoni, who preferred to use it more often than Anakin Skywalker’s captured spice freighter called The Twilight.

The T-6 Jedi shuttle’s live action debut is not only a thrilling addition for fans of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but also a symbolic connection to the legacy of a lost era. Like Ahsoka herself, the T-6 Jedi shuttle is a survivor of a time long gone, a relic of a period when the Jedi were at their peak before the Empire’s rise.

With its presence in the Ahsoka series, Filoni continues to draw from the rich concepts and design themes that have made the Star Wars franchise such a popular property.

About Star Wars: Ahsoka

Ahsoka is a Star Wars show on Disney+. Created by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, the show sees Rosario Dawson returning as Ahsoka Tano.

The series follows Anakin’s former Padawan Ahsoka Tano as she hunts the Chiss dictator Grand Admiral Thrawn, who plans to take over the galaxy.

The cast includes Rosario Dawson, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Eman Esfandi,  Ray Stevenson, and Ivanna Sakhno.