Artwork from Lucasfilm’s The Mandalorian and Grogu and Lucasfilm Animation’s Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord have been selected for the competition.
Hosted by the Concept Art Association, the 2026 Concept Art Awards will be held on October 24 at Pasadena Civic Auditorium near Los Angeles during the LightBox Expo. Artists from the ILM Art Department, as well as their colleagues from the Lucasfilm Art Department and Lucasfilm Animation, have been selected as finalists for their work on Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu and Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord.
The honorees include ILM senior concept artist Brett Northcutt (art seen above), who is a finalist for “Live Action Feature Film – Keyframe.” His piece captures Grogu’s solo journey as he searches for help and cares for a wounded Mando. The artwork establishes Nal Hutta’s swamp landscape, exploring its atmosphere, visual characteristics, and scale surrounding Grogu. Northcutt painted with warmth and vibrancy to set a specific mood, which is in stark contrast to the Hutt’s Palace.
“[Production designer] Doug Chiang asked me to do a few concepts depicting Grogu coming of age in the heavily forested swamps of Nal Hutta,” Northcutt comments. “While the Hutt palace area was meant to look dreary and polluted, Doug wanted the swamp area to look magical and beautiful. Considering Grogu’s small stature, I realized pretty quickly that raising him up off the ground onto a branch or root would really help to showcase him in the vibrant environment.”
ILM senior art director Aaron McBride is a finalist for “Live Action Feature Film – Character.” His concept explores a live-action interpretation of Embo the bounty hunter, who first appeared in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and now brought into live-action for The Mandalorian and Grogu. McBride drew from the original animated design, keeping Embo’s defining characteristics while adapting his alien silhouette, costume details, and Bowcaster weapon for the film.
“The challenge was trying to stay faithful to the design and spirit of Embo’s design from The Clone Wars,” says McBride. “Much of it was a graphic design challenge. Trying to draw focus to his face. In the case of live action lighting, we couldn’t rely on glowing eyes. A lot of it was the relationship of his Kaza hat to his shoulder pads, and that gap between them, and the lean horizontal negative space that creates on either side of his head. In silhouette those gaps create arrows to his eyes. Also finding a comfortable balance between the elongated thicks and thins of his proportions as they translate from his animated version.”
Lucasfilm concept design supervisor Richard Lim is a finalist in two categories, “Vehicle” and “Live Action Feature Film – Environment.” His vehicle artwork depicts Grogu’s pram from The Mandalorian and Grogu, a new version which the character obtains during the Shakari chase sequence. Lim created several iterations of the pram, exploring different shapes, functions and mechanisms. The final design incorporates rotating handles that fold down as the pram accelerates. “There were a bunch of designs I made,” notes Lim, “but this one was interesting because of the rotating handles. I initially thought it rotated mainly for storage reasons (since it was quite long), but turns out when the long handles are flipped down – visually it sells speed too!”
Lim’s environment art visualizes Grogu’s journey within the Nal Hutta swamp forest. He painted this piece exploring the flora and fauna of the swamp in morning light, which plays with scale, dramatic lighting, and atmospheric depth to capture this defining story moment. “I was trying to get a more positive mood here, so that Nal Hutta’s swamps might not be creepy all the time,” says Lim. “It’s early morning, with warmer sunlights and some magical god rays shining through the swamp trees.”
Artist Jama Jurabeav is another finalist for “Live Action Feature Film – Environment.” His concept piece for The Mandalorian and Grogu depicts the Razor Crest’s approach over the sweeping terrain of the Hutt Twin’s palace. Jurabaev explores the environment at a macro scale, capturing the expansive landscape and visual character of Nal Hutta and its surroundings. “Nal Hutta is probably the largest environment I’ve ever shaped,” the artist says. “From distant horizons to close, grounded action, every layer demanded a different way of seeing the same world. At a certain point, the scale demanded a different approach. The environment grew beyond my usual process, and I had to adapt, eventually moving into a real-time toolset just to keep up with it. It was all about scale. One of the challenges I often run into is what I call ‘blurry eyes’—you spend so long on an image that you stop seeing it clearly. That’s why it was invaluable to have Doug Chiang’s fresh perspective. More than once, I thought the scale was enough, and he would push it further. It took time, but I’m proud of where it landed.”
“Real-time tools allowed me to efficiently make design changes when needed, while working closely with the virtual production team who ultimately had to build this world as a virtual set,” Jurabaev continues. “The set evolved through different moods, shifting from a darker, more somber tone to something lighter and more cheerful. Even as an imagined world, it still had to make sense, to feel like it could function. Real-world references became essential, like the opening of the giant metal door, inspired by medieval castle gates. At its core, the Nal Hutta palace is a giant spore, like a mushroom scaled up a thousand times, shaped into something closer to a nest, with pipes feeding into it, hinting at life inside.”
Artist Anton Grandert is also a finalist for “Live Action Feature Film – Environment,” for his work on an establishing view of Shakari’s fighting arena in The Mandalorian and Grogu. Set at night with persistent rain, this location sets the stage for various action sequences in the film. Grandert created a moody atmosphere using ambient lighting, depth, and reflections, while defining key details of the city’s architecture. “My main focus for a big portion of work in Shakari was determining what the buildings look like,” says the artist. “What does the street look like? What about the neon signs, what’s the feel? They gave me reference of the warehouse [where the set was built]. I tried to figure out how I could use some of the actual warehouse to work with my design.
“The arena was supposed to be a circle building, not flat like the warehouse was, so I needed to make those work together,” Grandert continues. “I also needed to put in some of the overhead L train tracks. The challenge was to come up with a cool design for the arena. I referenced Wrigley Field in Chicago to get a glimpse on how the layout could be. I created all these different, smaller entrances, I pictured that there could be a lot of people coming in at the same time. Richard Lim had made these posters for the arena fight. I thought we should have those here, like holographic commercials. When we designed this, we wanted it to feel Noir, Chicago, and, of course, Star Wars.”
Artist Aaron Cobb is an “Animated Series – Character” finalist for a piece from Lucasfilm Animation’s Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord. This design for the captain of the Pykes was featured throughout the first season. The main task was to establish how the species would be adapted and changed for the new show style.
“The challenge was to preserve enough of the original design language for longtime fans to instantly recognize the species, while still pushing the look in a new direction that would set the new show’s design apart,” Cobb explains. “I worked on the concept from early sketches all the way to final design and tried to make the captain stand out among the other Pykes. Perhaps his biggest distinction is that he is without his mask, which allowed for me to work in more bespoke features such as skin patterning on the head, sharpened teeth, and a growth on his neck.”
Concept designer Ben Bryant is a finalized for “Animated Series – Environment.” His art depicts the main spaceport used on Janix during the events of Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord. The brief was to nestle the spaceport against the edge of the gigantic crater that Janix is built into, use the shapes from a major airport terminal building somewhere in the spaceport, and to make a long lens spirit-of to be used as a starting point by the matte department later.
“I did a standard thumbnail to 3D block-out approach, but did most of my detail work in paint because of the loose brushy style we wanted to hit in the show,” notes Bryant. “The details I wanted to emphasize and suggest with strokes would be different in the day versus the night plate. This image is what I painted before the matte department took over for final show looks. I tried to keep the lighting relatively flexible and on layers so the matte department could push and pull the plate as needed for each shot.”
See the full list of finalists for the 2026 Concept Art Awards. Congratulations to all of our honorees from ILM, Lucasfilm, and Lucasfilm Animation!
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Read more about The Mandalorian and Grogu here on ILM.com:
Inside the ILM Art Department: ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’
Holograms No More: Bringing the Dejarik Creatures to Life in ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’
Read more about Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord on StarWars.com and Skysound.com.
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