May 27, 2007
Story by Rodel I. Cruz-Herrera (odiewan)

DAY 4: ANIMATED CLONE WARS SERIES
The Star Wars Animated TV Behind the Scenes with Catherine Winder and Dave Filoni show, hosted by David Collins, was informative and quite entertaining. A new company called Lucas Films Animation was new created and its first task is the new animated series called Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Catherine, the producer, and Dave, the supervising director, were there to talk about the new Star Wars TV show. They mentioned LFA has 300 employees working on CW, 100 of which are working at Skywalker Ranch. Other sites are in Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan. The team has been working on this 2004.

Dave went over some slides of the new Clone Troopers design. They took the body of an ROTS Clone and the head of the AOTC Clone. They took another reference from the original CW clones to come up with the new version. There were problems with the 3D modeling since, articulation needed to be used on this format. Plenty of cheating can be made using 2D animation, according to Dave. Also, there are many stylized features on the characters. There are some real human features, but the stylize areas give pop to the characters. The evil ones are very distinct. Like Count Dooku’s profile which looks like a knife. Palpatine’s character is very similar to the original CW cartoon. General Grievous was not show, except for a shadowy teaser shot.

Dave should us a video at Skywalker Ranch of LFA employees saying "hi" to all CIV attendees. This contained a little nugget of information. Someone mentioned they were working on a Jedi Cruiser. I don’t think I have heard of this ship before. So we might have something new here. Currently they have the first few episodes completed.

Some of the Q&A additions gave us the following information. CW will be in HD, 720p or 1080i was not defined. More of the background characters from the prequels will come to the front of the storyline. The release date will be in the fall of 2008, the network broadcasting the series is not known.

Of course the audience at this point thought a trailer would not be shown. People were leaving. Guess what they saved the best for last. Not only did we get the first opportunity in the world to see the trailers, they gave us an encore. My adrenaline was rushing. I was sitting next to gran3131 and he was the same way. The rest of the audience was on the edge of their seats. It was the talk of the day at CIV.

The trailer was awesome. It opens with a squad of gunships flying across the screen. The paint job is reminiscent of WWII B2 bombers. Think of the Memphis Belle movie. I am sure this will hit the web soon if not today. One thing to note, since Anakin’s Jedi Star Fighter blew up in the CW series; he is flying a B-Wing like ship. Is this the Jedi Cruiser mentioned before? Only time will time. Only one poster was given to each attended in the audience.