CHICAGO – The Force is strong with the newest video game in the Star Wars franchise.
LEGO Star Wars: The SkyWalker Saga has a ton of cool features, settings and modes and it’s reportedly so amazing that some critics and lots of players are calling it the best LEGO game ever!
Chris Woodworth is a cinematics animator for TT Games Ltd in England, which produced the video game.
He joined WGN News Now to talk about all the work that went into making it.
Woodworth said the video game was a passion project that took several years of planning.
As a cinematics animator he brings life to anything that is moving in a scene, not just the characters. Woodworth said animating the cinematics alone for The Skywalker Saga took just over two years. “It’s crazy thinking about what has happened in that time.” he said. “Just meeting my partner and for the longest time, this is all she knew that I worked on.”
When the pandemic hit, Woodworth and his co-workers had to work from home and finish the game on their PCs. He said the entire team put their hearts and souls into the project to try and give fans the game they wanted them to experience.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga features more than 300 playable characters and allows players to relive all nine films.”They are going to be flooded with so much nostalgia. They are going to want to watch those movies again,” said Woodworth.He added that families have bonded over LEGO Star Wars games.
“These games are for the whole family basically. They are created in a way where both adults and children will love them.” he said. “You’ve got like the cuteness and slapstick humor at times for the children, but then for the adults you have the nostalgia, the things that they do know and the little hidden jokes as well.”
Woodworth also discovered TikTok while in lockdown, and although most of the content he posts centers around voice acting which he also does, Woodworth does share some of his animation work on it too.
You can see more of his work here…and you can watch his interview with WGN News Now’s Christine Flores and Chip Brewster in the video above.