May the Fourth be With You!

Dartanbeck

Happy Star Wars Day!!!

I know it's kind of late in the day to say this, but I just got home from work, which began shortly after I woke up this morning.
Star Wars is a big part of my life. Probably The Clone Wars more than the movies, though I enjoy those too. I've always loved the visuals. But since I've started venturing forth into the idea of making my own CG movies, I've been using all of the Star Wars video offerings for inspiration and technique ideas - especially The Clone Wars, but the movies too. The Special Features that go behind the making of any of these have been incredibly fun to get into and study. This wonderful documentary series: ILM - Creating the Impossible is a delicious look at the creation of, and the importance of expanding and continuing the supreme film special effects powerhouse: Industrial Light and Magic, which also inspires me to no end!
It took a while for Star Wars - Rebels to actually appeal to me. After watching it a bit more and getting more used to the newer style of character art, I'm enjoying it and constantly wanting for more.
I'm also really jazzed about J.J. Abrams upcoming offering: The Force Awakens! The teaser for season 2 of the Rebels looks really sweet too! I'm seeing a lot of original Ralph McQuarrie designs being used, like the more stylized face of Darth Vader's helmet, etc., It's really nice (for me) to see them take more of that direction as well - although I still like the figure designs of The Clone Wars so much more.

During the recent Star Wars Celebration: 2015 - Anaheim, I actually streamed the whole thing live as it happened, and really had a lot of fun!
The team behind the upcoming new Star Wars - Battlefront is incredibly serious about taking game realism and functionality fun to all new heights! It was a blast hearing them explain all that they've been up to to create such realism and just plain SW bliss in a game... very cool!
The second series of the super-cool radio show: Smuggler's Gambit (video clip is just a taste of the whole, extraordinary drama) was performed live, and was amazing! High entertainment!
Interviews with folks that build R2D2 replicas, whom have actually been hired to build some of the droids for the upcoming Episode VII: The Force Awakens, with stars from the original and prequel movies, game and toy makers, fans who use Star Wars as fund raisers and charity, all manner of fun and worldly (universally?) creative endeavors to help make others smile....
Fan films, costume contests, stage presentations... I really enjoyed the fact that James Arnold Taylor was the host for the big, main stage. J.A.T. is the voice of both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Jedi Master Plo-Kun in the Clone Wars, as well as being heard in everyday life by most everyone in touch with daily broadcasting - his voice is literally everywhere! He made an incredible Master of Ceremonies.

Of on a different take of the Star Wars galaxy and its happenings, it's been revealed that we can expect a whole new line of movies, being the "Anthology Series". "Rogue One", directed by Gareth Edwards, due to be released December 2016, is the first of such films to be created and is set to be somewhere between Episodes III and IV centering around the stealing of the Death Star plans. See the News Feed Here

All-in-all I had a really good time without having the privilege of actually being there. It makes me really want to go one year and bump heads with some of the ILM magic-makers and other mentors face to face! I do plan to contact them and put in my vote towards continuing with the 3D animated shows, especially getting back to the dark, more mature Clone Wars style... that was some of the BEST Star Wars EVER!!!

Anyways... Happy Star Wars Day! May the Fourth be With You!!! :ahhh:

Dartanbeck

Oh... and in celebration of Star Wars Day 2015, I've purchased the Saber Bundle of digital games from GOG.com, along with Galactic Battlegrounds and X-Wing: Special Edition. I've never played any of these except for Knights of the Old Republic I & II, which I really like, and cannot wait to play them through again. I've joined GOG (Good Ol' Games) when I bought this laptop (netbook?), which is too tiny to house a disc drive, so DRM-driven games (copy-protected) won't run on it in a conventional way. GOG sells these beauties as DRM-Free, so I can just download them and play without having to mess with discs or copy-protection. Of course, this was for my need to run D&D games, so I now own the complete, Ultimate D&D collection, which totally rocks!
What fun to have such a fun collection to mess around with whenever time may permit ;)

WendyLuvsCatz

Does it have shadowplay or some other form of animated screen capture?
If so you can add it to a Carrara backdrop with a shadowcatch plane and put Rosie and yourself in your own fan made Machinema!!!
Some new games even have video capture built in as the creators realized Youtube videos are free adverts!!!

Dartanbeck

wendy♥catz said:

Does it have shadowplay or some other form of animated screen capture?
If so you can add it to a Carrara backdrop with a shadowcatch plane and put Rosie and yourself in your own fan made Machinema!!!
Some new games even have video capture built in as the creators realized Youtube videos are free adverts!!!

I think that some of them have something like that, but the older kind that doesn't (that I know of) have any way of accessin them without special mod tools - these are from the 90's and early 2000's.
GOG = "Good OLD Games" ;)

Funny though, Neverwinter Nights was built to allow for easy community modification and is still really fun to tinker with. It was that game that got me into the realms of 3d modeling in the first place - and the making of my first Rosie character!