Lucasfilm hires YouTuber deepfake who fixed the Mandalorian

the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian saw the titular lone bounty hunter complete his mission by delivering Grogu (formerly known as Baby Yoda) with the open arms of a Jedi. But not just any Jedi. A young Luke Skywalker showed up to the excitement, then the disappointment of fans who raised eyebrows at his visual effects rich look.

Enter the YouTuber known as Shamook, whose The Mandalorian deepfake, released in December, gained nearly 2 million views for improving the VFX used to age Mark Hamill. It was so good that Shamook then got a new job with Lucasfilm and its Industrial Light and Magic visual effects division.

“As some of you may already know, I joined ILM / Lucasfilms a few months ago and didn’t have time to work on any new YouTube content,” Shamook wrote in the section comments from a recent video. “Now that I’ve settled into my job, downloads should start to rise again. They’ll still be slow, but hopefully months apart.”

Shamook said in the comments that the job title was “Senior Facial Capture Artist”.

Lucasfilm has confirmed the new hire (via IndieWire).

“[Industrial Light and Magic is] always on the lookout for talented artists and have in fact hired the artist called “Shamook” online, ”a Lucasfilm representative said in a statement.

“Over the past few years ILM has invested in both machine learning and AI as a way to produce compelling visual effects and it’s great to see momentum develop in this space as the technology advances. . “

This is Shamook’s awesome deepfake (he also corrected The Irishman).

Deepfake videos use artificial intelligence to make it look like a person is doing or saying something they’ve never done, like with these Tom Cruise deepfakes. In less disturbing territory, visual effects enhancing deepfakes in movies seem like a great addition to your movie director resume.