Huh, sounds like you know a few of them? So this became a giant show reel, I guess.
A few years ago, during my active time in the german movie community I had a colleague who was quite close to the core team, and it seemed like they were the usual mix of avid star wars fans and collectors, with a few of them professionals in the CGI area, working iirc for "das werk" and "scanline". Unfortunately I lost contact with him over the years. One of the head honchos sold a lot of sw collectibles to finance this project, IIRC.