Jay Kushwara / Digital Renaissance

For the past 2 months or so I’ve been working with Paul Harrison and Chusk Paskovics over at Jedi Temple Archives on an exclusive interview. JTA is a Star Wars collector’s site that features just about anything and everything related to Star Wars collecting with an emphasis on action figures. The interview will go live July first.

Along with the help of Dave Vennemeyer and Hasbro, we’ve put together a great behind the scenes look into almost every 4″ scale Star Wars figure I’ve done. Included in the interview is an exclusive series of renders I put together for most of the figures – the first ever public look at the master digital patterns. I’ll be posting many of those same images here about a week after the interview goes live on JTA.

A big thanks to Paul and Chuck for their enthusiasm and allowing me the opportunity to reach out to the SW figure collecting world!

Link – http://www.jeditemplearchives.com/specialreports/Jay-Kushwara/

Clone Wars Aqua Droid

BG-J388

Yet another obscure Star Wars droid from the Hasbro Build a Droid series.

I created the primary digital model of the Lizard character for Hasbro’s The Amazing Spider Man action figure line. This sculpt was used for the 4″ figure and was also re purposed for other scaled figures in the line.

The Lizard

This figure has just started hitting the shelves as a Target Exclusive. One of the classic and more obscure droids in the original Star Wars films. Gonk has double ball jointed legs and a removeable upper shell that reveals the internal mechanical parts.

Gonk

Crimson Dynamo

After creating all the primary Mark 2 and Mark 3 figures for the first Iron Man movie line, I was asked by Hasbro to create the primary Iron Man figures for the CG animated series Iron Man Armored Adventures. It was great to be able to do a more stylized version of the classic suit, and I also got to sculpt a young Tony Stark face under the removeable faceplate.

Iron Man

This figure was created for the Iron Man 2 film line. The design was based on one of several unused concepts created for Iron Man 1 by Phil Saunders and can be found in the Art of Iron Man book. I really enjoyed working with the different style and almost War Machine like feel of this figure.

Power Assault Iron Man

In 2007 I had the honor of creating the primary Ark of the Covenant model used for Hasbro’s Raiders of the Lost Ark lines. The first version was designed for the 4″ figure series. Afterwards I added extra detailing, a sand textured inner floor and fully detailed support pole pieces for a 12″ scale exclusive mail in rebate version.

Ark of the Covenant

Here is the Build a Droid figure YVH-1. Part of the Star Wars Extended Universe, the YVH-1 was designed by Lando Calrissian and eventually used as a bodyguard by the Skywalkers as a personal guard to their son Ben. I couldn’t help but think “I’ll be back” when I first saw the design.

YVH1

Here are photos of the final production piece, used with kind permission of Paul Harrison and Chuck Paskovics from the Jedi Temple Archives website.

And a few more showing some great poses used with the kind permission of Jayson Krebsbach and featured on the Yakface website

First glimpsed in the original Genndy Tartakonsky Clone Wars series on Cartoon Network the Tri Droid was later seen in Revenge of the Sith. This extremely pose able figure quickly turned into a collector favorite with it’s 25 separate points of articulation.

Tri Droid

 Here is an exploded view showing the fully engineered digital pattern’s 35 separate pieces.

 In 2008 I had the chance to create the Surgical Droid version of 21B. First seen as a medical droid attending Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, 21B made a second appearance as a surgical droid with a nasty spin in the Revenge of the Sith.

Surgical Droid 2-1B

Here are photos of the final production piece, used with the kind permission of Jayson Krebsbach and featured on the Yakface website. Note that the tubing was added to the physical tooling pattern and was not part of the original digital model.

This is the Assassin droid figure from the Anakin Skywalker / Assassin Droid Comic Pack released in 2007.

Assassin Droid

Here are photos of the final production piece, used with the kind permission of Jayson Krebsbach and featured on the Yakface website. Note there were some slight changes made to the face after the digital model was completed.

 Shortly after the release of Tron Legacy in 2010 EFX contracted me to create a screen accurate replica of the helmet worn by Tron in the original film. We decided early in the process to create a piece that matched the detailing and style of the screen used helmet but also represented an idealized version of the design. My personal goal on this was to model a helmet that felt like it was designed by Jean Giraud Moebius himself, rather than a direct copy of the Cooper hockey helmet decorated with black masking tape used during the original filming

Tron Replica Helmet

Here is the first publicly displayed prototype

Here is the Spider Assassin Droid from the Clone Wars line created in 2010. With 8 legs, 16 points of articulation, and a removable head “lid” that housed 3 baby spider droids this figure was quite the challenge. It was well worth it in the end, the final piece remains one of my favorites for overall coolness. It was also rewarding when I finally saw the Clone Wars episode it was featured in – one of the best episodes in the entire Clone Wars series so far.

Clone Wars Spider Assassin Droid

Here are photos of the final production piece, used with kind permission of Paul Harrison and Chuck Paskovics from the Jedi Temple Archives website.

This is my favorite Build a Droid figure to date, based on a character seen briefly in the original 2D animated Clone Wars miniseries created by Genndy Tartakovsky. Having been an admirer of Genndy’s previous shows Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack, it was a pleasure to interpret the clean, elegant, almost retro style of L8-L9 in 3D.

L8-L9