Here's where I'm at with the sabers. I'm not entirely sure if i'm satisfied or if they need further enhancement, what do you guys think, honestly?

Brief recap: those in the know will remember that I'm lifting the introduction of ventress from it's original point in the series and using it as a sort of cold opening before the main titles. We intercut a few times between Ventress and Dooku [and sidious] in the Ratattak [sp?] penthouse and the arena where she proves herself. the arena shots are in black and white and are meant to be flashbacks she has throughout the encounter. After Sidious reveals his intent to Dooku we have a fresh shot of Ventress going to hyperspace...

Now initially I had an opening shot pretty close to the title shot of the series but that proved pretty awkward to transition to Muunilinst - without looking rubbish. So I tried for a compromise between the overall blue look and the plain starfields of the movies. Yes the ship does zoom off into hyperspace.

Cue the main logo - none of these shots are completely final btw...

Now during the pan down I move the 'nebula' at a slightly different rate to the star field which I feel helps to 'sell' the camera move.

Which finally brings us to Muunilinst for the coming battle. I tried to be caeful here with adding extra stuff that i keep things far enough away so I wont have to add them to every space battle shot - That is why the area directly around the planet is fairly plain.

Yeah baby.....Johnny keep up the great work.

Look forward to more sneak peaks.

awesome stuff.

CANT WAIT!!

Well guys, do you find those Light sabers satisfactory? I really need others opinions on this. if peple think they look fine I'll do them ALL that way. I've tried many things and the saber shots above are the result of the simplest method.

If i have some time later on I will try to post some comparison shots.

Oh, the actual blades are as originally shown, I'm only enhancing the actual 'glows' at this point. If I had to totally repaint every single blade I would never be finished.

I'd like to see that Dayv, I'm cool with ya posting pics in here.

I think the sabers look good.  Can you post a vid of them when you get a chance?  Seeing them in motion might help illicit more responses.

They look good to Sluggo's keen powers of observation.

EDIT: Okay here's a short comparison clip on youtube, I'd prefer if comments were posted here rather than there.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=iXEXcJRHF9s

- On review the quailty is quite blocky / blurry. I might take another crack later on. I am a total noob at Youtube.

I think the sabers are right where they need to be.  The Youtube clips where tough to watch, but the color of Obi-wan's saber looks right on.

I'll try get some clips going on youtube when i can.

In the mean time i've decided to repaint the actual saber cores in some scenes rather than just redoing the coloured glows. Heres an example where you can see Count Dooku's blade come to a fairly precise point.

So here's a basic redone blade I drew - I've done the whole shot already so i know it looks fine in motion.

With the original blade masked out we have a nice clean looking blade now....

Now the reason for the black is so that when we add the nice red glow, it will look like a nice red glow ;)

without the black the red glow would be kind of faint / weak.

It took me a little while to figure that out but it's how i've done things in the last several previews...

Johnny Ringo said:

these sabers look lush, but the raised one behind her head, appears to be glowing in front.

apart from that all this stuff looks seriously awesome. i cant wait for its release!

Yeah, I was just showcasing my current method. I am mindful of things like that. Altho in momnets of fast paced action I'd let something like that slide.

And you should know that there is still a LOT of work to be done on this thing. Touching up the effects alone takes quite some time.

Take your time and do it right.  The end result of doing it right is a great reward for patience.

The sabers look great.  I never would have thought about how the black makes the red 'pop'.

Likewise. I spent a lot of time trying to come up with a very simple way of doing things, using basic layer styles like 'screen' and 'multiply'. For a while i had sabers looking good, but not good enough, Something that would look good live action was not emphasised enough in the cartoon with low detail backgrounds.

I was actual woring on compositing something else and thought, hang on this simple masking might be the answer i'm looking for, and it turned out to be. The upshot is that is also saves a lot of work when overlaying the existing sabers. My major concern is changing the look too much, But so far they seem to look good.

In regards to the end result, I just hope everyone keeps in mind that i'm not necessarily trying to make clone wars 'better' just 'different'. I'm not of the opinion that the show needs improving, aside from a handful of bloopers.

I also hope people find interest in what I'm sharing on the long road to completion.