Sometimes the hardest note a concept artist gets comes from their own boss, and it comes in two parts.

First, as Lucasfilm concept artist Jama Jurabaev told a packed ballroom at LightBox Expo in Pasadena on Saturday, Doug Chiang, Lucasfilm's Senior Vice President and Executive Design Director, who leads the department and is boss to everyone on the panel, asks you to "go epic." Then, Jurabaev said, "he comes back" with the follow-up: "it's too epic."

It got a knowing laugh from a room full of working and aspiring artists, but Jurabaev's explanation of what "too epic" actually means turned out to be one of the most useful lessons of the afternoon. When a world is drawn so vast that the camera loses its footing, he said, "it's so big that when you zoom on to the characters, like, the background is really flat." The fix: build big, then drop the camera to ground level and make sure every shot still holds up where the characters actually stand.

That tension, between the grand scale Star Wars demands and the grounded, lived-in details that make it feel real, ran through the whole panel, "The Art of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu," held Saturday, Oct. 24, in Ballroom F. Moderated by John Romulo, a digital asset coordinator in the Lucasfilm Art Department, the session brought together four of the film's concept artists: Benjamin Last, Brian Matyas, Christian Alzmann and Jama Jurabaev.

This was a hot ticket. A lot of people got tickets to the panel, and looking around the room, many of them were part of the LightBox community itself: visual artists who have spent years inspired by the artists at Lucasfilm. For them, it felt like a real treat to come face to face with their own version of Jedi.

From left: Lucasfilm concept artists Benjamin Last, Brian Matyas, Christian Alzmann and Jama Jurabaev, with moderator John Romulo at the podium, at LightBox Expo in Pasadena on Oct. 24, 2026. Photo: Jordie Poblete / DisneyExaminer.

Romulo, who sees the team's work every day, opened by saying it amazes him to watch the art move through its iterations and early process all the way to the big screen. Then the artists took turns walking the crowd through their pieces.

Much of the conversation centered on Shikari, a sprawling city in the film with a 1930s Chicago gangster flavor. Jurabaev described the location as "like inventing a new giant city," a scale big enough that he switched tools to Unreal Engine partway through the project. He even had to solve problems the software couldn't, including building his own frosted-glass look for the city's countless windows. "It gets a little technical, but that's kind of the life today, you know?" he said. "Because of the ambitions we have."

For Christian Alzmann, Shikari meant creatures, including the little pet carried by the city's crime boss. Alzmann traced his approach back to the expressive creature work of the early '80s, the era of The Dark Crystal and the Muppets, where a character's personality reads the instant you see it. "I love that when you see an alien," he said, it "has a personality already."

How does he know a design is working? "I kind of know when I get it, when I'm starting to smile," Alzmann said, adding that this one carries a bit of "a Salacious Crumb" energy, a nod Return of the Jedi fans will appreciate. A version of that same idea, that a creature is working when it makes him smile, appears in the upcoming art book.

Alzmann also designed the arena where creatures based on the dejarik holochess pieces from the Millennium Falcon battle it out. To blend Star Wars with Shikari's Prohibition-era mood, he said he spent time "looking at a lot of old, big boxing matches from that era," where "everybody" was "smoking something, some pipe or cigarette back then."

Brian Matyas, who designed many of Shikari's background citizens, put the panel's unofficial thesis into words. Star Wars, he said, is "80% real-life stuff that we understand," and the remaining 20% is where the artists "push it just a little bit" to make it magical. His Shikari aliens lean on familiar pieces like trench coats, then twist the upper half of the silhouette just enough to feel otherworldly. He pointed to the original trilogy's blasters as the template: real World War II and early Vietnam-era weapons with a few extra parts bolted on.

The same thinking shaped Matyas' Imperial Remnant snowtroopers. Set years after the Empire's fall, they're no longer answering to an officer demanding spotless armor. "They look like they've been in the field for a bit," he said. A self-described cosplay fan, Matyas said he loves doing armor and approaches it with a fabrication mindset: in a case like this, the changes come down largely to a paint job and tweaks to costuming and accessories.

Jurabaev also worked on Nal Hutta alongside Shikari, and said it ended up "bigger than Shikari." That's where Chiang's "too epic" lesson came in. He also described building the environments in Unreal so he could drive a camera around inside them looking for shots, and so the art department could get the whole set with accurate proportions.

The Nal Hutta work clearly resonated beyond the film. Midway through the panel, Romulo paused to congratulate Jurabaev on a nomination at that night's awards, and the room gave him a round of applause. Jurabaev's "Nal Hutta Environment" from The Mandalorian and Grogu was a finalist at the 2026 Concept Art Awards, presented by LightBox Expo that evening at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

Alzmann returned to discuss the Amani, the species of Return of the Jedi's Amanaman. The brief, as Alzmann recalled it, was to make them "really scary dudes." He gave them eyes that catch light in the dark and, once they were set as amphibious, looked at sharks for their teeth. But he didn't want them to be mere monsters: he gave them weapons and ornamentation "so that they're not just animals," making them scary but a "unified community."

Matyas closed the design talk with the film's mercenary droids: prequel-era battle droids that have developed a culture of their own and personalize themselves. He described the patina of mix-and-match parts, with the droids "just sourcing whatever they can find" from the junkyard, plus capes and "some minimal clothing," echoing the clothed HK assassin droids he worked on for The Mandalorian's second season. Because the final design was worn by a performer, he explained, the joints, abdomen and neck became opportunities for negative space that could be cleaned up with blue screen, so the droid wouldn't read as a person in armor.

Romulo wrapped by going down the line and asking each artist for advice for the LightBox community. The panelists urged students to follow what excites them, to remember why they fell in love with art even when it starts to feel like a job, and to stay open-minded and keep learning.

But it was Christian Alzmann who left the room with the line that stuck. "I'll add that if you're not inspired by doing it," he said, the audience won't be inspired seeing it either. His answer is to protect his sense of wonder, surrounding himself with things that bring out the kid in him. "You know, keep that kid alive and put it forward into your work," Alzmann said.

If the panel left you wanting more, there's a lot more coming. "The Art of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu," written by Lucasfilm's Phil Szostak with a foreword by Doug Chiang, arrives Nov. 3, 2026, from Abrams Books. The 256-page hardcover, priced at $50, is filled with concept art, sketches and interviews with key cast, crew and creatives, covering the film's characters, locations and vehicles. According to StarWars.com's announcement, it also looks back at artwork from Season 3 of The Mandalorian and moments from The Book of Boba Fett. Originally slated for April 28, 2026, the book was later moved to its November date.

The Mandalorian and Grogu, directed by Jon Favreau and co-written by Favreau and Dave Filoni, stars Pedro Pascal, Sigourney Weaver and Jeremy Allen White, and was released in theaters May 22, 2026.

For a room full of artists who have spent years inspired by Lucasfilm's art department, the afternoon offered more than a peek at a new art book. It was a chance to hear, straight from the source, how 80 percent real and 20 percent magic becomes Star Wars, and to meet their own Jedi.

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