Getting and sending physical Christmas cards have been a tradition for centuries (or…. maybe just one century!). It didn’t always have so much to do with emotions, family or religion. I think it was sometimes about networking- letting contacts, business acquaintances etc know your new address, reminding them that you’re still around…..
Physical Christmas cards have getting replaced by emails and myspace / facebook posts for almost a decade…..
No you can’t hang emails over your doorway……. but here I am folks! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is full of eye-popping effects, both practical and CG. And if you were paying attention, you may have noticed a bit of stop-motion animation thrown in there as well. After the jump, watch a video showing the Force Awakensstop-motion sequence came together under the guidance of VFX wizard Phil Tippett. (Minor spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens ahead.)
The Force Awakens stop-motion sequence comes as a little Easter egg for fans. When Finn is aboard the Millennium Falcon, he accidentally hits a button that turns on the Dejarik holochess board. He stares at it for a moment, attracting Chewbacca’s attention, before turning it off. The moment has no real impact on the plot; it’s really just there as a fun callback for fans of the original.
As teased way back in July, Adam Savage dropped by Tippett Studio to see Tippett and his team work on the stop-motion animation sequence. If you’re interested in Star Wars making-of lore, or just stop-motion animation in general, the video is worth a watch. Tippett and his team discuss the process of animating these little monsters, and also about Tippett’s work on the original film.
It’s interesting to see that J.J. Abrams’ preference for practical effects over CG ones for The Force Awakens extended even to the holochess set. It probably would’ve been simpler to recreate it in CG, but it wouldn’t have felt quite the same.
As Tippett explains in the video, bringing back the holochess set wasn’t as easy as dusting off the original models. “We got a call from [Lucasfilm president] Kathy Kennedy saying that they wanted to restore the original chess set from Star Wars, and the problem was that the characters that we had made, you know, close to 40 years ago, were in a horrible state of disintegration,” he said.
Though they knew exactly where the originals were — on a plaque presented to George Lucas — the figures were beyond repair. “They were made out of a rubber that disintegrates over time, and turns into like graham crackers,” said Tippett. So he and his team went into the archives and used photogrammetry to reconstruct the characters for 3D printing. The new figures are made of silicone, and should last longer than the old ones did.
Best of all, Tippett reveals that the holochess game as seen in The Force Awakens is actually a continuation of the holochess game from A New Hope. “We elected to pick up where we left off … and we just swapped out who wins this time,” said Tippett.
The Star Wars: The Force Awakens stop-motion sequence, along with the rest of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is in theaters now.
Ive seen a lot of fan film, ALL are well intentioned but many are painfully amateurish…. kids in costume in their local park banging toy sabers together…. fanboys in front of a green screen, using the camcorders mike…
There was the classic TROOPS, whos producers wisely played to their weaknesses, that since they were shooting on video why not just make it look like an episode of the TV show COPS…?
This “Empire Falls” looks like they were copying the look seen the “Force Awakens” trailer…… they really did a good job BUT arent the troopers now retconned to be clones of Jango Fett and if they DO mix in new recruits don’t they give the newbies haircuts? Still I give this an A for effort and a B-plus for execution!
And lets not forget the first ever Star Wars fan film:
I was hired to shoot the games at the Bitter LaCrosse ” LAX” tournament in Lockhart, Texas ( right outside of Austin, Texas). Shot on a variety of cameras and edited in Premiere and some After Effects.
” Los Angeles, California, has the largest concentration of Scientologists and Scientology-related organizations in the world, with the church’s most visible presence being in the Hollywood district of the city. The organization owns a former hospital on Fountain Avenue which houses Scientology’s West Coast headquarters, the Pacific Area Command Base — often referred to as “PAC Base” or “Big Blue”, after its blue paint job. Adjacent buildings include headquarters of several internal Scientology divisions, including the American Saint Hill Organization, the Advanced Organization of Los Angeles, and the Church of Scientology of Los Angeles. All these organizations are integrated within the corporation Church of Scientology Western United States.
The Church of Scientology successfully campaigned to have the city of Los Angeles rename one block of a street running through this complex “L. Ron Hubbard Way.” The street has been paved in brick. ”
I’ve never been a Scientologist, but I’ve been long fascinated by the stories, good and bad, about this group!
Is there a more definitive 80s band than “Frankie goes to Hollywood”?
This video combines traditional hand drawn animation with photo collage motion graphics that could easily be done today with photoshop / after effects but back then surely had to be done the old/ much harder way of really cutting and filming the pictures.
mattkprovideo 
