Special Effects Test

When you grow up with Star Wars like most of us here did, lightsabers never really lose this magic for you. So when Adobe's After Effects compositing software first added a laser light feature sometime around 1999, it was essentially a race for us to see who could put it to use first.

We shot this fight scene for a weekend project a year earlier, but with Darth Maul's double-bladed lightsaber on fanboy's minds everywhere, it seemed like a perfect fit.

The nine seconds of finished animation took about nine hours of hand-placing keyframes and laser effects back then - today it would take less than an hour. Sound effects and music courtesy of The Phantom Menace.

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