A YouTuber whose viral deepfake fix to a digitally de-aged Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian was given, as Darth Vader might say, a “substantial reward” for his efforts. He now works for Industrial Light and Magic, George Lucas‘ effects company, which has brought Star Wars‘ effects to life since the original 1977 film.
The content creator who calls himself Shamook had more than 2.4 million views of his handiwork, which compared his work to ILM’s. Iinstead of more common digital de-aging tricks, he used so-called deepfake technology to more realistically replicate how the now-69-year-old actor appeared in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, which is set about five years before The Mandalorian.
In a message to his more than 80 thousand followers in his most recent video two weeks ago, Shamook revealed, “As some of you may already know, I joined ILM/Lucasfilms [sic] a few months ago and haven’t had the time to work on any new YouTube content.”
A representative for ILM confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that they’d hired Shamook, adding the company is “always on the lookout for talented artists.”
Deepfake technology uses machine learning to shuffle through tens of thousands of images to create a new one — sometimes replacing one person’s image for another.
Among many others, Shamook has previously swapped faces of Alden Ehrenreich, who played a young Han Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story, with that of original star Harrison Ford, and swapped previous Spider-Man Tobey Maguire for Tom Holland‘s face in various Marvel movies.
Shamook also famously fixed Warner Bros. much-maligned mustache-removal CG on Henry Cavill‘s face as Superman in Joss Whedon‘s reshoots for Justice League.
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