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.

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.

The concept behind Star Wars Uncut is one of those seemingly preposterous ideas that can only flourish online. Vimeo developer named Casey Pugh challenged Star Wars fans around the world to collaboratively make a crowdsourced, shot-for-shot remake of Star Wars in short fifteen seconds chunks using any style of filmmaking they wanted. Fans sent in their individual scenes to Corey and his team, who then edited them together in to one big fan-made remake.

The project has been a big success. Although a final full length cut can’t be released yet due to legal issues, Star Wars Uncut has been featured in the news, documentaries, and at conferences around the world.  It’s even won an interactive Emmy award! Plans are afoot to make more Uncut movies; watch www.starwarsuncut.com for details.

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.

I’ve written about the phenomenon of “Action Figure Videos” before (previously posted examples include I’m A Marvel / I’m A DC, The Eyes of Darth Tater and The Eye of the Tiger), which I find really interesting because they’re a form of found object puppetry, even if the people making these videos don’t realize it.

Thanks to Robot Chicken making Action Figure videos isn’t exactly ground-breaking stuff, but someone who was doing it long before Seth Green’s crew was Probost Productions. They’re probably best known for Star Wars in 3 Minutes , but they’ve also parodied Raiders of the Lost Ark, celebrities and Rankin/Bass. You can see all of their videos on YouTube.

Here is Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, talking about the difficulties of working with small green animatronic puppets that have exceptionally high midi-chlorian counts. It’s a five minute clip from an upcoming documentary called Legends of Film and Fantasy.

Hat tip to Monster Island News via Lost in Schlock.

This morning’s inspiration was going to be an amazing 60,000-Piece Lego Star Wars Hoth Diorama (complete with LED lights!), but never mind that. Who wants a Star Wars diorama when you can build a full-scale Star Destroyer interior for yourself instead? This incredible set was built for a long-in-development German Star Wars fan film called Tydirium.

Links via Gizmodo and Fan Cinema Today.

Depending on your feelings towards/knowledge of Star Wars, you may or may not enjoy Ask Palpatine. If you fall in to the first category, check out its latest wonderfully surreal episode.

From the such-a-good-idea-you-wish-you’d-thought-of-it-first file comes Ask Palpatine from Hoggworks (let’s hope no one tells the Ninja…he seems like a testy sort of fellow).

This has got to be one of the most surreal (and cute) puppet commercials I’ve ever seen…two puppets help Darth Vader get a toaster. It’s one of a series of commercials in the UK for Woolworth’s featuring their mascots Wooly and Worth. The puppets in the ad were built and performed by the talented crew at Darryl Worbey Studios.

For more Wooly and Worth ads try searching YouTube.