So how does one create a never-before-seen environment in the Star Wars universe? Where would you find reference for an appropriately vast swamp? Start with photos of Florida.

Environment art lives and dies on the quality of its reference. For most environments, artists will find as many reference images as possible from the movies, art books or production images and cherry-pick the best elements to emulate in the game. Next, the concept artists are let out of their cages long enough to produce some amazing concept images of mood, lighting and important points of interest specific to the areas that we will work on.

When we began work on Hutta, we knew it was supposed to be a polluted, filthy sewer of a planet, just like the Hutts would like it. Without any movie reference, we gathered a wide variety of real life photos of swamps and wetlands, taking note of common themes and basic shapes that come up again and again, like hanging moss, thin trees and ankle-deep water. We complimented this with a collection of images from industrial sites, construction zones and junk yards. Now that we know what this dump is supposed to look like we’re ready to start!