[Links were broken – updated]

Here’s another video from the international press event I did for the Clone Wars back in October last year at the ranch.

This spot was for Network Ten down in Australia. It was shot at the end of a very long day and I’m slightly embarrassed how it came out, I think Artoo was too animated and they were supposed to replace some of the sounds/music in post-production.

[Video on youtube]

Original can be found here with a lots of other cool video from that day, but I think it’s only accessible to folks in Australia – unless you mask your location by going thru a proxy.

Related:

• My Artoo in a Clone Wars Promo
• More Clone Wars Press Event Photos
• Clone Wars Press Event at the Ranch

A friend just sent me this video from Sky TV in the UK, it’s from the international press day that I was involved in at the ranch for the new Clone Wars TV series

Watch for my droid at the beginning and at the 2:49min mark, blink and you’ll definitely miss him.

Related:

• Clone Wars Press Event at the Ranch
• More Clone Wars Press Event Photos

Here’s a few more photos from the Clone Wars Press Event courtesy of Lucasfilms.

I spy Dave Filoni

Original gallery here, with new additions on the last page.

Related:

• Clone Wars Press Event at the Ranch

Earlier this week I was fortunate to be asked to bring Artoo to the ranch for an all day  press conference for the new Clone Wars TV series.

It was a late minute request so unfortunately neither Gerard or Steve were available to come with me.

I arrived just before 10am and I was joined by Mark and Anthony from the 501st’s Golden Gate Garrison.

It ended up being a very long but fun day, and we got to meet a lot of the people working on the new show, from the stars to the engineers and artists.

Dave Filoni (Clone Wars Director)

Matthew Wood (General Grievous and sound editor)

Matt Lanter (Anakin Skywalker voice actor)

Ashley Eckstein (Ahsoka Tano voice actor)

One of the coolest thing was between shoots I got to hang out with the artists and engineers. One of them had brought down his collection of concept art figures and even some vintage R2-D2 toys. One of the demos he was showing the press was how he constructed the new Artoo (and R2-KT) for the show and some of the design decisions that went into them.

This is one of the animators on the show, note his t-shirt which has over 50 famous and not so famous robots on it (this was a big topic of discussion on the R2 Builders list a few weeks ago.)

During the course of the day I even got to the bottom of the new nickname “Artooy”, but I’ll keep that story for a astromech.net Friday night chat sometime.

They had the new and unreleased Wii lightsaber video game setup in one area, and pretty much everyone had a go playing it by the end of the day, including Dave Filoni and the clonetroopers.

Throughout the day there was a long line of press that had us doing all sorts of strange stuff from an interview with Artoo to the the clones playing soccer for the British press.

One of the more interesting and surprising things was how the LFL employees responded to having Artoo there. Everyone had a big grin on their faces when they walked by or heard him, and  people kept on popping down from their offices to get a quick photo. I had many complements that my Artoo was “better” than the real one they sometimes bring down from the archive, and the funniest line was “Hey this one makes sounds.” 🙂

As always there’s many more photos in the gallery.

I’ve had a busy couple of weeks getting Artoo ready for Clone Wars and attending 3 screening events. Started off with the pre-screening in San Francisco on Monday which was great, followed by the midnight opening on Thursday at the local Theater in San Bruno, then an all day event with the Rebel Legion and 501st down in San Jose for Saturday.

Thursday night was fun, but very quiet with not many people turning out for the midnight showing. Maybe 40 or 50 people tops. I guess the days of blockbusters are long gone 🙂

I did get to see the movie again, and enjoyed it just as much the second time around. The lip syncing still bugged the hell of of me though.

Saturday was a little busier, but not by much. The Rebel Legion were there in force and throughout the day one or two 501st members popped in and out.

The Rebel Legion did a great job organizing a raffle for each performance giving away t-shirts, figures and other prices to those in attendance.

More photos in the gallery

My 5 second review of the movie:

• Lots of action.
• Replacement voice actors did a great job.
• To me, it’s clearly 3 TV episodes bolted together.
• Considering it’s TV roots and budget the animation wasn’t bad – but not in the same league as Wall-E or even the much older Toy Story.
• Somewhat weak plot – why they had to pick a Hutt story for the movie is beyond me.
• The lip sync issue drove me nut.
• Inconsistent style for the characters, e.g. Obi-Wan is blocky and jerky where as Asajj Ventress is almost life-like with smooth flowing animation.
• What’s with the Ziro the Hutt speaking English?
• Hated the new nicknames banded around, from “Stinky” to “Artoo-ee”. I guess little kids will love it.

Having said all that, I enjoyed it, really looking forward to the weekly TV show. Overall rating a B-.

Couple of technical highlights from the weekend:

• When I switched to the Futaba, I replaced the original 600 mHa NiCad battery pack with a 2,100 mHa NiMH. Runtime went from just a few hours to over 11 hours. More than enough for a days outing.
• Periscope worked great with a few minor problems.
• With so many servos in the dome (8 at the last count), the little 7805 5VDC regulator IC on the power distribution board wasn’t up for the job (it can only deliver 1A at most). It would quickly overheat and shutdown stopping all servos in their tracks, so I had to quickly make a new beefed up power supply on Friday night.
• The new CTEC keycoder worked out great. I can’t see how I used Artoo without it.

Here’s a couple of photos from the Clone Wars pre-release screening in San Francisco on Monday.

It was a pretty low key event compared to some SW charity premiers we’ve been to in the passed, but we all had a lot of fun hanging out.

I didn’t get many photos as security was tight and we had to hand in our phones and camera.

More photos in the gallery.

Just got back from the TRU Midnight Madness – and was it madness. Over 100 people were in line when I arrived at 11pm. People had been camping out since noon today.

Unfortunately, I didn’t plan ahead so I was on my own. – Alas all my buddy’s in the RL/501st are down in Comic Con this weekend, but I had a blast anyway and everyone loved Artoo.

My embarrassing moment from tonite was when someone in the line heckled “2-3-2, do 2-3-2, I bet it doesn’t do 2-3-2”. I came back with “Well, where’s your droid?”, and he answered “It’s at home, I’m the guy who bought Jerry Green’s R9!”. Too funny.

At 11:50 they were still assembling the display and people in line were getting mad, especially as there were only going to be 60 of the special General Grievous.

This is Bobby who bought Jerry’s R9.

More photos here

I was able to snag the new artoo as well as some new figures with the “1st Day of Issue” sticker that may help pay for the gas tonite via ebay 🙂