Before CGI, Star Wars scenes were painted completely by hand

industrial light & magic team was literally magic!

As a kid I thought they were real people

Certainly did their job

Life was better then. Computers suck. They will get worse.

Any it is still amazing

This is some of the best movies made, prove me wrong

Such beautiful craftmanship back then! Blade Runner also had amazing painted scenes

Mat painting is absolutely fantastic. If you do it right, you can perfectly full the eye well the camera I love it old style movie, making at its best. And then you combine it with live elements

Was so good don’t even noticed it was painted

All the amazing artists positions were hired to work on this project are all gone now. So sad.

Matte paintings on glass were a very old technique by the time Star Wars rolled around. It's honestly sad that it's a job that's been made completely obsolete. This is one of my favorite clips showing it's use from a Charlie Chaplin movie:

the younger generation today look at this and cannot fathom the amount of work and expertise and brain power it took to do this. It's akin to us still in wonder how the Pyramids of Egypt were built.

And forced perspective which was used in the silent film era was still being used to great effect in the 1980s. From "The Gate" 1987.

What they achieved with the original trilogy is nothing short of epic. Visuals were spectacular and still look good today.

You also had to make very detailed models that could be used as well. It took a lot of effort to get each ship to look exactly as it should look on screen. Quite amazing how they pulled it all off without the use of computer generated graphics and other things we take for granted today. And if you really want to see old school, look up how they did animation movies and cartoons back in the old days.

@mada1971 We were a great country once.

I hope these masterpieces were preserved somewhere. Stunning.

Amazing art. I'd love to have some of the originals.

And looks far better than CGI

I should really watch these star wars movies, they seem ok

only true wanghafs could have made this movie

This is honestly so impressive. The attention to detail 😵

The matte paintings of the ice planet Hoth (the backdrops for the iconic AT-AT battle sequence) are stunningly beautiful. by a 21-year old Michael Pangrazio I believe

STAAAARRRR WAAAARRRRSSS!!!

& George pissed all over it.

When AI has rolled through us with its perfection & brilliance, People will always want to go back to these real human creations that will always amaze us more than anything made by a machine, its shows us all what we are capable of doing that we never knew was possible

and it was far superior

I think that's why it is still watchable for me-I am responding to the art. Where as the CGI iterations seem visually cheep.

Before the time they took art out of the cinema.

The cool thing is that the paintings actually looked more realistic than the CGI of today!

That's beautiful and great however this was unfortunately done in a bygone era and CGI can do this better (sometimes, not all the time) Though due to the lack of talent in modern day? Good fucking luck finding anyone willing to do this for a new Star Wars film

Beautiful

Matt paintings were legit, but something to think about. Kinda funny. Nobody got mad at these artists because they replaced a bunch of jobs. Extras, set and costume designers, construction teams etc. Well continue to always look back at each previous tool fondly.

'Is it true some science fiction fans in 1970s-1980s would see a movie specifically because it featured the matte paintings or special make-up effects or special effects model work of a particular movie artist or SFX team?' 'YES!'