ILM visual effects supervisors Mohen Leo and Scott Pritchard, along with members of their talented crew, talk to Jay Stobie about the process behind building the TIE Avenger in Andor season two, as it journeyed from concept to screen.
For many Star Wars enthusiasts, the word “avenger” conjures up images of Captain Needa’s Imperial Star Destroyer Avenger, the TIE Avenger starfighter featured in Lucasfilm Games’s Star Wars: TIE Fighter (1994) video game, or even Marvel’s prestigious superhero collective. The second season of Andor (2022-2025) has now pushed its own TIE Avenger to the forefront of that list, as the epic series chronicled Cassian Andor’s (Diego Luna) theft of the prototype craft from a Sienar Fleet Systems test facility. Outfitted with advanced armaments and a hyperdrive, the TIE Avenger transported Cassian to Yavin 4 before playing a key role in rescuing Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona) and Wilmon Paak (Muhannad Ben Amor) from Imperial forces on Mina-Rau.
Industrial Light & Magic’s Mohen Leo, whose resume boasts projects like Ant-Man (2015), The Martian (2015), and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), served as Andor’s production visual effects supervisor for both seasons of the series, while ILM visual effects supervisor Scott Pritchard (Star Wars: The Force Awakens [2015], Avengers: Infinity War [2018], Avengers: Endgame [2019]) oversaw the creative output of the work across ILM’s global studios in London, Vancouver, and Mumbai. Leo and Pritchard gathered alongside CG supervisor Laurent Hugueniot, modeler Owen Rachel, texture artist Emma Ellul, look development artist Renato Suetake, animation supervisor Mathieu Vig, and compositing supervisor Claudio Bassi to chart the TIE Avenger’s course from conceptualization to the completed sequences seen in season two.
Constructing the Concept
The TIE Avenger prototype is first unveiled at the beginning of season two, resting in its Sienar hangar bay before being commandeered by Cassian and embarking on a dramatic escape. “The idea for the opening sequence began with [showrunner] Tony Gilroy wanting to start season two off with a big, classic Star Wars action sequence,” Mohen Leo tells ILM.com. “That initially came out of an outline that Tony gave us in 2022. Early on, a big story point became that Cassian doesn’t know how to fly it, so the Avenger had to have completely unfamiliar controls, and the interior had to look different from any TIE fighter or ship that you’ve ever seen before.”
When it came to the Avenger’s look and layout, Leo worked closely with production designer Luke Hull. “Luke explored various prototype airplanes, and then we played around with the idea of what the ship needed to do in terms of the chase sequence. We wanted something that wasn’t just a dogfight. If he immediately jumps in and it’s just a chase, it’d be difficult to do something original with that,” adds Leo. “Luke had already decided to build a full-sized practical TIE Avenger. As far as its physical construction, the wings were inspired a bit by the TIE interceptor.” While Andor’s Avenger shares a name with the craft from the TIE Fighter game, it maintains its own design lineage. “I don’t think the previous ship was a strong influence,” Leo begins. “When we were designing our Avenger, how the ship functioned became something Luke and I reverse-engineered based on what we wanted the ship to do. That dictated the look.
“I put together a pitch deck for the Avenger before we got into previs when the directors weren’t even on yet,” Leo continues. “I wanted to make sure that the ship and the weaponry, in particular, were based on real weapons and felt both dangerous and aggressive. The team based the TIE’s fold-out Gatling-like cannons on the United States military’s M61 Vulcan rotary cannon. Hull wanted the Sienar base itself to feel like a Skunk Works test facility or NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“It was a back-and-forth between previs and Luke Hull and the art department in terms of the ship’s design,” Leo notes. “We’d say, ‘We need guns that fold out,’ and then Luke would go, ‘Let me see where we can fit those in.’ It was almost as much driven by the necessity of the functionality as it was by the aesthetics.” Once the additional armaments, including external launchers and a powerful cannon below the cockpit, were set, the team pitched the action sequence to Tony Gilroy. “We blocked the whole sequence with a temp model, and Tony generally really liked it.”
Assembling the Avenger
“As the studio-side visual effects supervisor, I was involved in pre-production through to the end,” Leo shares. “I also guided the previs development with The Third Floor’s Jennifer Kitching and collaborated with Luke Hull on how we would make the practical build service what we needed to do in the visual effects sequence.” The creative dialogue between the ILM visual effects team and the production designer was vital in ensuring that the computer graphics (CG) starfighter built by ILM would be identical to the full-sized practical ship that was constructed to be used on the Sienar hangar, Yavin 4, and Mina-Rau sets.
“Because we had a practical version of the Avenger during the shoot, we were able to scan that and provide lots of references,” Leo details. As such, the full-scale Avenger proved beneficial for Owen Rachel, the ILM modeler responsible for building the CG Avenger. “My job was to take [the practical model] and replicate it as a digital version. There wasn’t much design work that we had to do other than replace some structural bits, like the Gatling guns as they come down,” Rachel outlines. “We did have to create the laser cannon that comes out from underneath the cockpit. It’s an intricate design because it’s both delicate and powerful at the same time. It felt a bit like the inside of a watch,” recalls CG supervisor Laurent Hugueniot, who was in charge of the team’s 3D output.
Texture artist Emma Ellul tackled the job of texturing the TIE Avenger. “We had great reference images, which was super helpful. I tried to focus on real-life objects, too, such as stealth planes. They’re quite smooth and angular, and I’d see how specularity affects the metal. Not every sheet of metal is made the same, so it has a slightly different bend or warping to it. I incorporated that, especially on the paneling on the outside of the wings,” Ellul relays. “There were a lot of nooks and crannies to look at and a lot of small decals everywhere, which I had to match one-to-one with the practical model. It was an awesome asset to texture. Who doesn’t want to texture a TIE fighter? And then I had to destroy it and chuck laser blasts all over it [laughs].”
Look development on the Avenger was handled by Renato Suetake, who asserts, “As a look dev artist, I get the model and textures so I can put them together and make the shaders. I make sure the shaders and materials react precisely like the reference we have in any situation or lighting condition. Certain shots jumped between the prop filmed on set and the CG version, so the digital Avenger had to be identical. At the same time, because the prop wasn’t made of metal, we still had to make it believable as an actual spaceship that flies.” From the Avenger’s weapons to the hangar explosions to the collapsing ice arch, Leo also credits the effects artists who contributed to the sequence, revealing, “In general, all of those things are just massive, complex simulation work.”
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