SupaTrooper
Active Member
joshvanrad
Sr Member
There is flat out no way they were trying to make new Star Wars characters look like Disney characters. The end. To assume otherwise sounds completely ridiculous.
No, Lucasfilm brought out the concept, which dates back to one of McQuarrie's early designs for what would become R2-D2, as they've done with a lot of their stuff lately. And while they were trying to sort out how to possibly make it work, Bob put them in touch with the company that makes Sphero. I've watched the BB-8 rollout quite a few times now. Kathleen says Bob Iger found the company that made BB-8 possible. Not bought or owned or acquired or any of that.
And I do not see anything ducky in the new Stormtroopers. Nothing moreso than the originals.
--Jonah
It's not that hard to find the business articles on the actual relationship between Iger and Sphero. As noted above, Iger did not acquire Sphero, but found them and worked with them to bring BB-8 to life.
eifion
Sr Member
Having seen the armor in full I really like it, but I still dislike the helmet. If they had used something similar to the new snowtrooper/flamer helmet (the bulbous protruding part with the "mic tips") for the lower half of the stormtrooper helmet it would've look much better and more faithful to the originals - basically like the new tie pilot helmet.
As it is the lower front does look like a duckbill, though I really dont think it was a conscious decision to evoke donald duck :lol
As it is the lower front does look like a duckbill, though I really dont think it was a conscious decision to evoke donald duck :lol
Here's a link to the article in Fortune : http://fortune.com/2015/04/17/iger-star-wars-bb8-sphero/
According to the article Disney invested upwards of $120,000 in the company. Not exactly "acquire" but their investment is sure going to pay off once the movie is released at the end of the year.
Maybe not but it is still a hard thing to un-see once seen. Every time I see the helmet I feel like I should build a duckpond.
I just find the design of the helmet a very lazy design. This design is something I'd expect a first semester community college design student would come up with in 15 minutes. This helmet is what I would expect to see in all those low budget Roger Corman-like science fiction movies from the late seventies and early eighties that tried to capitalize on the success of Star Wars.
The sad thing is with a couple of added features this design could've been a great design.
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Riceball
Master Member
I agree with you on the duckbill but disagree with you on the overall design, I like it, a lot. I find the design to be very clean with a very modern aesthetic while still reminiscent of the original and PT designs. I also like that they dispensed with the molded details and decals and actually put in real mesh where there should be mesh and cut out the slits on the side where there were just decals suggesting slit on the original buckets.
JJ Griffin
Sr Member
Those are latches for the chest piece.
I'll bite. What couple of added features would've made this a great design?
levallois
New Member
I think like you. =)
And did you remember the Stormtrooper with shield and lightsaber ?
thoses one.
I think there is one of those on the right side.
And I like the snowtrooper on the back.
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Jodo
Master Member
Either of these designs make the helmet look much better!!! I've been trying to figure out exactly what I don't like about the new helmets, and it is definitely the black area which you have covered here. If I get a PT helmet, I will absolutely paint that section!
If you look at the Ralph McQuarrie concept art posted by Levallois you'll see all the classic design elements they omitted like : the mic tip and vocoder section on the front to make it not look like a duck (they even added that front design to the snowtrooper and flametroopers even though the original snowtrooper didn't have that and decided to keep it on the tie pilot helmet), an ear section that breaks up the front and back of the helmet, detail on the back of the helmet to make it look less like a hundred other motorcycle helmets out there. It's funny how they're trying to go back to the original designs like with the new x-wing and the only thing they decided to keep from the original design is the little design on the ear. Spacebob also posted a pic that would've been an improvement on the current design. They've even decided to keep the design for the old tie fighters from ANH (all be it with a new paint job) even though we've already seen a new design in ROTJ (tie interceptor).
This is what I don't get with this design. At what point did the designers and J.J. step back and look at all the different designs for the new stormtrooper (I assume there were many different designs) and decide to go with the one that looks like a duck. I would imagine a good designer wouldn't design something to look like something else unless that was the intention.
Here's another example of a bad design that looks like something else that wasn't the intention :
http://www.everythingtech.net/2009/10/worst-mcdonalds-happy-meal-toy-ever/
This is why this is a bad design for the stormtroopers. If they came out and said they intentionally tried to make it look like a duck I could probably live with it. How did they not see it?
I have a feeling that the person who gave us this design is the same person who gave us a clonetrooper helmet that couldn't actually fit on a human head and a naboo starfighter with an astromech droid that didn't actually have space for an astromech to fit into.
Anyway. This is only my opinion, which in the greater scheme of things really doesn't mean much.
Like Mark Hamill said : "This is only a movie."
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'Tested' has a nice video about the celebration with good quality shots of the new troopers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKrFZBncjmU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKrFZBncjmU
levallois
New Member
Is it look-like old style helmet ?
recover from 1080p trailer 2 (.mov)
Edit :
More I look it, more I think I am wrong.
recover from 1080p trailer 2 (.mov)
Edit :
More I look it, more I think I am wrong.
