Summary
Ahsokabrought a slew of characters from creator Dave Filoni’s animated seriesStar Wars Rebelsto live-action and featured the return of some ofStar Wars’ most iconic characters. Ahsoka Tano, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and even Anakin Skywalker were brought to life through a combination of VFX wizardry and practical costuming and makeup.Ahsoka’s five Emmy Award nods reflect that, with VFX, prosthetic makeup, and costuming all nominated
When it comes to costumes, the honor goes to the late Shawna Trpcic and her team, which included assistant costume designer Elissa Alcala and costume supervisor Devon Patterson.Ahsokawasn’t the first project on which Trpcic and her team collaborated with Filoni—they also worked onThe Mandalorianseasons 2 and 3 andThe Book of Boba Fett. ForAhsoka, Trpcic and company built off of the work they did for those series while also breaking new ground in the form of kintsugi-inspiredNight Troopersand live-action Nightsisters.
Ahsoka Nominated For Five Emmy Awards, Including Outstanding Special Visual Effects
The 2023 live-action Star Wars series Ahsoka has been recognized by the Emmy Awards for its many achievements, including costumes and visuals.
Screen Rantspoke with Alcala and Patterson about their work onAhsoka. The pair reflected on what it was like working with Trpcic, revealed the inspiration behind the enigmatic character Enoch, and detailed the massive undertaking of handcrafting Thrawn’s portion of theImperial Remnant. The pair also discussed the emotional aspect of working onStar Wars, and what it was like to see actors get in costume for the first time.
Elissa Alcala & Devon Patterson On Being Emmy-Nominated For Ahsoka
Screen Rant:Congratulations on the Emmy nomination. I imagine that’s bittersweet, but how are you feeling about all your work being recognized in this way?
Elissa Alcala: I think it’s absolutely amazing, something that Shawna would be so proud of, and something that I know our team is also really proud of. We worked so hard on this project and we put so much thought and passion into it. To be recognized for something that we were also passionate about and would’ve worked our butts off for no matter what is a huge honor. That not just fans but also our own peers see the hard work and dedication that went into it is a real big honor.
Alcala & Patterson Detail Working With Dave Filoni To Bring Animated Characters To Live-Action
I watched all ofStar Wars Rebels,so I was very excited to see all of this come to life. How did you all go about adapting that artistic style into the wardrobe for this show, especially with the characters that got brought over from animation?
Devon Patterson: There was a lot of research involved. Shawna had some ideas in terms of which fabrics might work for certain characters, but it literally was a research process. It was also going out to shop for various fabrics to see what would work. A lot of things that you see on camera, we dyed. We bought white or off-white versions of fabric and dyed it to get the vibrancy of the animation because we couldn’t find the exact thing that we were looking for. But Shawna was really like, “Let’s figure out how to make this work. We owe it to the fans, because they’re excited to see it.” She was excited for the fans' response.
Elissa Alcala: Also, we had to consider that something that is animated isn’t necessarily going to translate into being wearable on an actual human being. It was really important for us, as fans also, to keep as much of the animated costume represented in the live action, but then make sense of why it’s on a living human being. That was really important for Dave as well. He didn’t want us to just regurgitate the animated. He wanted us to be inspired by it, but then take it and build something that an actual human being could wear. It was [about] figuring out how we were going to mesh the two and do it in a way that was both respectful and also made sense for an actor.
And you went even farther back thanRebels—you hadThe Clone Warspeople popping up with Nightsisters. Was that a similar process? Because that animation is even a little more abstract.
Elissa Alcala: For Anakin’s costume—and Ahsoka’s costume, even—there was a lot of meeting with Dave talking about aspects he definitely wanted us to keep from that and figuring out how to translate it. We looked at everything. We had to look into the archives and we got 360 [degree models] of the animated characters so we could see them from every single angle and consider the pieces that went into it.
We also looked at how other people then took it and did it. We looked at the toys that have been made from it—Sideshow has done some really good ones—and we looked at how people tackled it themselves. From there, we were able to figure out how we wanted to tackle it and bring it to life. Again, it was a collaboration between our custom-made people, our tailors, Shawna, and Dave, and also Doug [Chiang] was involved. Everyone was involved in this process, but it was a lot of fun. [We had to consider] the actors as well: “This armor piece that is on Anakin—how will Hayden be able to move in it?” Everyone had to be involved in the process.
How did your department—you two, Shawna, and everyone else—work? How were things handed off, and what did each of you dive into the most?
Devon Patterson: Once you had an idea of where you were going, depending on what you were doing, you would go source fabrics. Shawna did a lot of testing with dyeing. Some of the fabrics didn’t always start off the color that you see them on screen, so they would go to the ager/dyer. Shawna would say, “I want it to be like this color,” and then they would do several test dyes until they got the color that Shawna wanted. Once she got the perfect dye, Shawna would move that over to the tailors and say, “This is what I need you to make,” and usually that was given to them as a sketch. But then, even sometimes as they were creating it, she would say, “I’m not sure I’m happy with the way that’s going. Can you adjust this?”
Then, if there was any armor that needed to be put on top of that, it would go to our specialty custom-made armorers, and we would put it on a dress form. The next step would be putting it on the actor, and at that point it’s like, “Well, we need to adjust the armor this way,” or, “We need to take in or let out,” or, “We need to move this up here because it accentuates their body better.” That is the process that we go through, in general, for just about anything that we do.
Elissa Alcala: We’ve both been using the word “collaboration”, but Shawna was an actual collaborator. She didn’t just go up to people and go, “This is what I want, this is how you need to do it, and this is how it needs to be done.” Shawna understood that the people she had hired knew what they were doing and they were the experts. She wanted to collaborate with them. She wanted to bounce ideas off them. She wanted our tailors and our specialty custom-made and our ager/dyer to have ideas and present them to her, and she actually loved that process. She loved being able to talk to all of us and bounce off ideas, and she wanted it to feel like it was a real artists' community.
Alcala & Patterson Detail The Creation Of Enoch & A Night Trooper Army
One of my favorite parts of this whole series is Thrawn and his people. Enoch the stormtrooper is unlike anything you’ve ever seen in Star Wars. Can you talk about how that character specifically came together and why he looks the way that he does?
Elissa Alcala: We had that sketch pretty much from day one of starting production. He was pretty thought out between Dave and Doug, but Dave also always liked it to come to us. He understood that it was a sketch, and you have to consider the person that’s going to have to wear it and how it’s going to be worn. Dave and Doug both were always really good about being like, “Here’s our sketch. Where are you guys going to go from here?” Shawna, especially with anything that she did with Star Wars, liked us to take everything and look at how it would’ve been made when Star Wars was originally made. For Enoch specifically, she knew she wanted him sculpted from day one. She wanted to have our sculptor making it from scratch with clay.
There was no 3D printing involved. There were no computers involved in making that costume. We didn’t do animation on the computer. We had Marcus Napuri come in and start sculpting him, and Dave was constantly coming to our warehouse and making adjustments to the sculpt before we even started molding it. From there, we molded it, and then we had to play around with the colors and the gold leafing and how to get it just right. Through that process, we had a lot of people involved. It was Shawna and Dave, our sculptors, and our tailors. They had to figure out how his armor pieces were going to work. He is inspired by a stormtrooper, but he’s also different because he’s the leader. We had to figure out how we wanted to build his soft goods and make them unique to him, but at the same time, [we wanted] people to recognize that he came from the stormtroopers.
Devon Patterson: There was a little bit of Greek mythology in his character too. In terms of his facial structure and his body type, that was one of the inspirations for his character.
Elissa Alcala: Dave was always really good with coming in and giving backstory to not just Shawna, but our whole team. He would take the time to sit there with the team and explain the backstory of a costume or where the inspiration came from so that our team understood what this costume needed to look like.
What was the hardest part of putting costumes together for this series?
Elissa Alcala: The sheer volume of costumes we had to make. For our Night Troopers, I feel like we were working pretty much until the hour on the hour to have those guys done. Yes, they have the basis of being stormtroopers, but we literally went in with all [of them]—I think we had 56, 46, somewhere in there—and our team had to go in and do all of the break lines and kintsugi them back together. They had to do all the gold leafing, they had to do the breaks, we had to wrap them in the red cloth, and [before all of that], we had to come in with scraps that Shawna had us cut and age, and then we had to add more on top of that. It was a constant [battle] until it was on screen, and then our set costumers had to maintain what we established.
Our warehouse and the place that we shot all of this were two separate places, so in between dressing the actors in these costumes, we had to pack all of this stuff. We had boxes for all of these stormtroopers that had to be loaded onto transpo, taken over, and unloaded and unpacked. [There’s a lot of] stuff that you don’t think about goes into these costumes. I’m pretty sure I remember packing all of the stuff and being like, “Okay, I’ve got to be back here in 10 hours, and then we’ve got to do all of it again.” So it was crazy, but a lot of fun. Seeing it on stage, I probably cried. Shawna probably cried. We all probably cried at some point with relief, but also it just looked really, really cool.
Devon Patterson: For people to understand, we really make these costumes. It’s not like we go to a store and buy them. With a couple of pieces that we may have purchased, we basically ripped them apart and reconstructed them. Everything is custom for Star Wars. And you don’t see how anything closes in Star Wars, so you also have to consider that. You don’t see buttons, you don’t see zippers, you don’t see any of that because that’s not how Star Wars works. So, when you also consider everything that’s done, it’s also like, “How do we let them get in and out of this without you seeing how they get in and out of it?” I would say that’s also a thing that you have to consider when you look at the whole universe.
When you’re on a time crunch as you’re describing with the Night Troopers, is the guy in the very back of the legion ever in sweatpants? Are you ever able to cheat any of it?
Elissa Alcala: No. Shawna would never. We always plan for the worst-case scenarios. That is something that myself, Devin, and our team would always consider. Worst case scenario, someone’s costume is going to break, so you may have only seen 40 to 56 troopers on screen at a time, but the reality is that we had 10 more made that we could pull pieces from just in case something broke. By the time they made it to the stage and were being filmed, we had already thought of worst case scenarios and had backup plans.
“They Would Start Crying”: Alcala & Patterson On People’s Reactions To Dressing For Star Wars
I imagine for any actor that’s stepping into this world, it must be crazy to put on the wardrobe of a Jedi, stormtrooper, or whoever. You’re seeing the actors put all this stuff on. Do you have any memorable moments of seeing Hayden, Rosario, or anyone have an emotional reaction to your work?
Elissa Alcala: I remember one of our first fittings with Mary Elizabeth. Most people do fittings with mockups. We still did that, but Shawna wanted our mockups to pretty much look like the actual costume when we got to fit the actor. She knew that the actor needed to have this aha moment of being like, “I’m this character.” With Mary Elizabeth, we had a good mockup of what her costume was actually going to look like. We had pulled stuff, we had things made, and we had put it on her, and she looked in the mirror and was like, “I’m Hera”. She’s like, “This is it. I don’t even need to see the makeup. This is me. This is what I’m going to be. This is really cool.” She got really excited.
[It was the] same thing with Natasha. For her first fitting, we obviously didn’t have a full Mandalorian set, but [she] wound up putting on one of our extra Bo Katans so she could feel the weight of what the costume would be. She was like, “Okay.” So, I think we did have these “aha” moments, but some of my favorite moments in fittings were actually with background.
The background actors came in for these fittings not knowing what they were coming in for. They would come into our warehouse space and our key costumers and our background fitters would be putting stuff on, and I would come into the room and I’d just stand there. All of a sudden, this person would have this realization of being like, “Am I on Star Wars?” Some of them would be really big fans, and they would start crying because they had no idea, because secrecy. It was always really fun.
Devon Patterson: I would say the aha moment for me was when I was on set when we did the Clone Wars segment. The response of the crew when everybody was there on set was amazing. That was an aha moment for them.
Alcala & Patterson Reflect On Working With Shawna Trpcic
Do you each have a favorite memory of working with Shawna on this series?
Devon Patterson: I would say my favorite memory of working with Shawna was doing the spacesuit for Ahsoka. Shawna liked collaboration, she had something so specific in mind, and the back and forth between the two of us in relation to that costume is what I will always remember most.
Elissa Alcala: Ahsoka was my third project working with Shawna, and my third Star Wars series with Shawna. What I appreciated most about Shawna was her ability to look at something, get so excited, and be ready to go at it a thousand percent. Shawna would always say yes to everything. Any request was always a yes. Devon and I would be standing there, like, “No, we can’t keep taking stuff on,” but she was so passionate and believed so much in our team that she knew we could do it. There was no doubt in her mind that we could do it. For me, that was something where, at the time, I would want to shake her and be like, “What are you doing to us?” But now, looking back on it, I really appreciate it. It just shows the belief that she had in our team and in our ability to be able to pull everything off.
About Ahsoka
Ahsoka follows Ahsoka Tano, former padawan of Anakin Skywalker as she investigates a growing threat to the New Republic, Grand Admiral Thrawn. With help from her allies from the days of the Rebellion, Ghost crew members Sabine Wren and Hera Syndulla, they will hunt for this familiar threat while also searching for their friend, the lost Jedi Ezra Bridger.
Ahsoka
Cast
Ahsoka follows the journey of former Jedi Knight Ahsoka Tano as she investigates an emerging threat to a vulnerable galaxy. Released in 2023, this series takes place within the Star Wars universe and features Ahsoka navigating through a complex political and cosmic landscape.
