Star Wars is coming to Blu-ray on September 12th and as we’ve come to expect, it’s arriving with a few new tweaks from director George Lucas. The revisions have been met with the predictable outrage from many Star Wars fans and one of the most extensive is the replacement of the animatronic Yoda puppet in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace with a new CGI version similar to what was seen in the rest of prequel trilogy.

Here you can compare the original puppet:

…with the new CGI version:

Personally, like Navneet Alang over at the Toronto Standard, I’m from the Billy Corgan school of art; if you’re going to make something for film/video, why not make it as good as possible? No disrespect to Nick Dudman (who led the redesign of Yoda for Episode I) or the rest of his team, but the Yoda puppet in The Phantom Menace looks, well, odd. By going back and replacing it, Lucas seems to be trying to correct a mistake and make the film more consistent with the rest of the prequel trilogy (something he’s done before).

So puppet or CGI Yoda? Which do you prefer?

Via /Film.

How To Train Your Dragon Live is a new $20 million arena show that opens next March in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. It looks pretty incredible; all of the dragons in the show were created by the Creature Technology Company, which was previously responsible for the internationally touring arena show Walking With Dinosaurs (see previous post).

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how the animatronic dragons in the show are being created:

Videos via Kari and Cartoon Brew (lots more can be seen in CTC’s Vimeo profile).

This is clever ad for U.S. hamburger chain Carl’s Jr. about a robot who comes home to discover that he can’t eat their new chicken sandwich. Although you might assume an ad like this is done with CGI, it’s actually mostly puppetry. To achieve the effect Legacy Effects (see previous posts) built two versions of the robot; an animatronic puppet for close-ups and a full body suit version worn by a performer that was digitally augmented in post-production.

Here’s a look behind-the-scenes at the making of the commercial:

Special thanks to Dockery James for sending this in!

Like a lot of kids my age, I was obsessed with Star Wars when I was growing up. I especially loved learning about how all of the monsters and special effects were created by Industrial Light and Magic. This clip from the documentary (well, thinly veiled commercial) Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi provides a glimpse of how one of the original trilogy’s famous aliens, Admiral Ackbar, was brought to life.

Ackbar has developed a huge cult following over the years, largely due to the fact that he has one of the most parodied lines in the original trilogy (“It’s a trap!”). He was performed by puppeteer Tim Rose, who also performed the puppet of singer Sy Snootles (which was eventually replaced in the “special edition” with a computer animated character) and Jabba The Hutt’s annoying sidekick Salacious Crumb. Tim discusses his work on Return of the Jedi in this great interview.

The Mon Camamari (the fictional alien race Ackbar belongs to) also appeared in the Star Wars prequels. They were realized using very impressive radio controlled animatronic masks.

This is a hilarious little short directed by UK director and animatronics specialist John Nolan, who’s incredible animatronics demo reel was posted here last week.

Just some absolutely incredible animatronics by John Nolan.

Hat tip to Dangerous Minds via Sons of Punch.

I have to apologize again for the lack of updates, I’m waiting to have a new Internet connection set-up at home and in the meantime my Internet access is limited to work, which is very busy at the moment. Updates might remain few and far between for at least another week or so.

In the meantime, have a look at the video above of the new “talking” animatronic Mickey Mouse that Disney has been testing at Disneyland in California. It’s likely a by product of Disney’s previously-blogged Living Character Initiative. It looks pretty good, although there are still a few bugs to work out (ah, the joys of animatronics!).

Via Cartoon Brew.

This is set of videos from Steve Johnson’s Rubber Rules series (see previous post) that takes a look back at the making of The Abyss. Steve led a crew of artists, technicians and puppeteers who brought to life the film’s NTI (“non-terrestrial intelligence”) aliens. The making of the Abyss has become something of a legend in film-making circles; it’s infamously known as the “most difficult shoot in movie history” owing largely to the fact that most of it was actually shot underwater in a specially built set at the bottom of a flooded nuclear reactor.

I won’t spoil the story for you, but suffice to say director James Cameron has a reputation for being very demanding and, like much on the set of The Abyss, this job didn’t go smoothly for Steve and his crew.

I was doing some animatronics research the other day and I came across the YouTube channel of veteran FX artist Greg McKee, who has lots of great videos posted on YouTube. This video of a Mon Camamari from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith is probably my favourite, but who doesn’t love Nute Gunray? Or for that matter, who doesn’t want to see a Terminator Robot Kangaroo?

Be sure to explore all of the videos in Greg’s YouTube Channel.

This is a teaser for an upcoming DVD called An Even More Incredible Hulk from Eon Entertainment and Steve Johnson (see previous post). The DVD promises a ” stunning look at…a 100% animatronic Hulk” that was developed, but never used for Ang Lee’s 2003 film Hulk. As you can see, this was some really incredible work and considering the shoddy CG animation that ended up in the movie, it’s really a shame they scrapped this.

No word on a release date for this DVD yet, but I’m looking forward to seeing it when it comes out.