A New URL for The Official Star Wars Blog

Effective today, the Official Star Wars blog is heading to the starwars.com domain, existing at a new address. Please update your bookmarks and set your navicomputers to:

http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/

The blog and the links at the wordpress domain will remain for those who may have blogged about or deep-linked to content here, so don’t worry about links in your blogs suddenly going dead. New updates, however, will no longer appear here. For that, you’ll need to go to the new address at starwarsblog.starwars.com.

All the content that appeared here from May 2007 to January 21, 2008 has been moved to the new URL, including your comments.

Rebelscum Japan Launched

Our friends over at rebelscum.com have just launched an all-new site dedicated to Japanese Star Wars collecting, posting an informative tutorial on the history of the hobby in the Land of the Rising Sun. Here’s a bit of the intro:

In 1978, turmoil from a galaxy far, far away finally reached the big screens in Japan. Tickets were selling by the thousands, and in every big city everyone was talking about the new Star Wars movie. The stage had been set for a new promotional era in Japan. The first company to realize this potential was Coca Cola. They had devised an ingenious marketing plan that not only boosted sales, but also began a race for toy products throughout Japan. They began advertising new bottle caps which would contain a small vinyl picture of characters and scenes from the movie. There would be 50 designs total. There were even 3 color variations which included a gold background, a silver background, and a pink strip design. It seemed the collecting and trading, among the anxious consumers was endless.

Read the entire article here. As big fans of Japanese Star Wars collectibles, this is one we’ll be watching!

Catching up on Star Wars Insider

Red and Jonny checking out their profile in Star Wars Insider.

Check out their photos on Flickr:
RedandJonny

Skywalker Sound Nominated for BAFTA

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has nominated Matthew Wood, Chris Scarabosio, Michael Semanick and Thomas Johnson from Skywalker Sound for their amazing work on the Paul Thomas Anderson film There Will Be Blood starring Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Dano.

Previously, Wood worked as the Supervising Sound Editor, while Scarabosio, Semanick and Johnson worked as re-recording mixers on the Star Wars prequels.

Congrats fellas!

Click here for the full BAFTA Nominees List.

Star Wars Guide to the Candidates

For those of you who think it might be fun to vote based on random connections between presidential candidates and Star Wars characters — here’s the Mighty Rex Star Wars Guide to The Candidates.

Closer to “Human” Clones?

Researchers at Stemagen claim that they used male skin cells to create human embryos, even thought they did not delevop past 100 cells.

It is not clear whether the embryos would have been viable if implanted into a womb. Stemagen did not test whether the embryos had the correct number of chromosomes. But Dr. Wood, who also is a fertility doctor, said, “We’ve seen reproductive blastocysts that look like this or worse and they implant.”

Read more articles here:
Cloning Said to Yield Human Embryos (New York Times)
Mature Human Embryos Created From Adult Skin Cells (Washington Post)

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SOURCES:
BoingBoing.net, ClubJade.net

The Many Looks of the Imperial Stormtrooper

Though it may seem that the only characters who get frequent costume changes in the Star Wars galaxy have to be royalty, that doesn’t mean the Imperial troopers don’t get to mix it up.

The hardcore fans over at IGN.com decided to give some props to the Imperial army with a rundown of the many looks of Clone troopers, stormtroopers, BARC troopers, Galactic Marines, pilots, sandtroopers, Imperial Navy troopers, Imperial gunners, TIE fighter pilots, AT-AT drivers, scout troopers and more.

Read all about it here:
The Many Looks of the Imperial Stormtrooper

Sneak Peek at New Exclusive

Check out starwars.com tomorrow for more details.

Utinni Ick!

Russell Walks to Illustrate Indy Promos

According to billingsgazette.net, fans will soon see a lot of Indiana Jones promotional artwork coming from Russell Walks, an artist who Star Wars fans may recognize from the Star Wars Celebration Art Shows and the Topps Galaxy trading card series. For Indy, it looks like Walks will be illustrating for Dr. Pepper, Kellogg’s, and others.

His work for the film includes a life-size cardboard standee of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones – yes, the one featuring an expression with “slight undertones of happiness.” Using promotional shots provided by LucasFilm and poses from members of his fan base, Walks created the piece after a little bit of struggle, mostly with those slight undertones.

He did 10 or 15 sketches until he was finally satisfied with the expression. From there he did a value drawing, with a full range of tonal values in black and white. Walks usually prefers to hand paint his artwork, but because of the tight deadlines on the “Indiana Jones” project, he did most of the color in Adobe Photoshop, then added brush strokes and “the twinkle in (Ford’s) eye.”

Check out the full story here, and learn more about the artist in starwars.com’s official artist profile.