The Sandcrawler building at Funsionopolis district of Singapore was officially opened this morning by Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr. Lee Hsien Loong, filmmaking legend, Mr. George Lucas and President of Lucasfilms, Ms. Kathleen Kennedy. Sandcrawler will be headquarters for Lucasfilm Singapore, The Walt Disney Company (Southeast Asia) and ESPN Asia Pacific.
Designed by Aedas Architecture, the Sandcrawler already received six architectural awards before the opening, including the prestigious Chicago Athenaeum International Architecture Award for Best New Global Design. The seven storey office building and a 100 seat theater are elevated above a lush public garden where The Yoda bronze statue, sculpted by Lawrence Noble, will be sitting on a boulder-like waterfall. The building is also built to conserve energy by introducing a special two-part high performance glass exterior which allows natural daylight into the offices without the accompanying heat.
Since the launch of Lucasfilm Singapore in October 2005, it had contributed to the productions of Hollywood blockbusters like Transformers trilogy, Iron Man, The Avengers, Harry Potter, Star Trek and many more. Lucasfilm Singapore will continue to produce groundbreaking animation and visual effects work right here in the Singapore office while nurturing and develop new animation talents through The Jedi Masters Program (JuMP), School collaboration and Employee training program by Lucasfilm Singapore.
Here are the 11 major disciplines from JuMP:
- Hard-Surface Modeling – We create new realities; building our dreams, polygon by polygon
- Organic Modeling –Sculpture is our inspiration; a digital stylus and pad are our tools
- Texturing – Beautiful surfaces require a deep commitment
- Creature Simulation – We make 80-foot robots fight as gracefully as Jackie Chan
- Matchmoving & Layout – From 2-dimensional footage, we build 3-dimensional virtual worlds
- Character Animation –The subtle performances we create allow audiences to connect with characters and stories
- Lighting – Mastering the nuance of spectrum and shadow, we know there is no life without color and no images without light
- FX – We are practical physicists; “force = mass x acceleration” is just another line of code
- Digital Matte/3D Generalists – With skills ranging from Modeling to Compositing, we are the pipeline’s polymaths
- Compositing – Within 24 frames per second anything can happen; we are putting it together, layer by layer
- Rotoscoping – Perfecting the image, pixel by pixel
