VANCOUVER -- May the workforce be with you.

Star Wars’ Jedi, glowing lightsabers and intergalactic alien adventurers will soon be duking it out in Vancouver’s Gastown.

Industrial Light & Magic, the legendary visual effects firm George Lucas created for Star Wars, is bringing as much as one-third of the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII’s visual effects work to Vancouver.

“Everybody here is going to be very, very involved in a lot of Star Wars content over the next seven years,” ILM president and general manager Lynwen Brennan said. On the weight of the Star Wars franchise, ILM has taken over Pixar’s 30,000 square foot Gastown studios and intends to staff it with 200 visual effects employees.

“The wonderful place we’re in right now, we have 10 years of work ahead,” Brennan said. There are not only three Star Wars plans in the works, but also spin-off movies. “That enables us to not only invest in jobs but in technoglogy development and R&D.”

“We will be here at least eight to 10 years,” ILM chief creative officer John Knoll said.

Vancouver’s digital community is still reeling from Pixar’s exit last fall, but Brennan said there’s no danger ILM will leave. Pixar was looking to consolidate production in one place, whereas ILM needs more capacity, she said.

“We’re absolutely committed to being here. We’re planting very real, permanent roots here,” Brennan said and she feels “very confident” that Vancouver staff will enjoy “very long, stable” employment.

The drop in the Canadian dollar hasn’t affected decision-making, Brennan said, “because our leading tenet is talent and it is not about economics.”

Nor will any interprovincial competition on tax credits drive ILM away.

“The tax credit is certainly important in that it’s enabled this critical mass of the community to build here,” Brennan said. “If the tax credit went away tomorrow — we have no tax credit in San Franciso and we are bigger in San Francisco than we have ever been. For ILM, it’s really about talent and we found it here and we want to hang on to these people. If it was just about the tax credit, there’s other places to go.”

ILM tested Vancouver with a small office in 2011 that has already grown to 130 employees.

“They didn’t just do what we told them to do,” Brennan said. “We would sit in the dailies in San Francisco and literally be blown away. They just took it that extra mile....This is something very, very unique about the passion that folks have here.”

The high quality of Vancouver’s digital compositors and animators are particularly notable, Randal Shore, Vancouver office supervising producer said.

ILM sets up each of its studios with full capabilities rather than focusing them on separate specialties. In Vancouver, the company is particularly keen to hire creature technical directors and layout artists. Creature technical directors “rig” or set up their fantastical characters with bones, muscles, skin and animation controls which animators then work with. Layout artists match the output of computer “cameras” with film cameras so computer generated material and filmed material work in concert.