The Panelists

The weight of history was on author and Lucasfilm executive editor J.W. Rinzler’s shoulders throughout the making of Blueprints. As he culled from hundreds of blueprints those that would most accurately and thrillingly speak to fans and devotees worldwide, there were difficult decisions to make. To make the final cut for the publication of Star Wars: The Blueprints, each of the 200 seminal images included here was selected by Rinzler in collaboration with an expert panel of Academy Award®-winning visual effects artists.

Dennis Muren

Industrial Light & Magic’s Dennis Muren is an eight-time Oscar-winning special effects artist who helped pioneer and propel visual effects technology through his work on the first five Star Wars films, in addition to other classic films with jaw-dropping special effects including Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jurassic Park and E.T. The visual effects supervisor for the original trilogy, Muren is a revolutionary, and the only special effects artist with his own Hollywood “star” on the Walk of Fame.

John Knoll

Award-winner John Knoll is a visual effects supervisor and author of Creating the Worlds of Star Wars: 365 Days. Knoll served as Visual Effects Supervisor on the Star Wars prequels and on the 1997 special editions of the original trilogy.

Lorne Peterson

Model-maker Lorne Peterson is an Industrial Light & Magic visual effects artist who worked on all six Star Wars films. In addition, he is the author of the 2006 book, Sculpting a Galaxy: Inside the Star Wars Model Shop, in which he details his experience making classic ships and locations like the Star Destroyer, the T-65 X-wing starfighter, and the Jedi Temple come to life.