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| - When I arrived at Celebration on Saturday, there was a lot going on, and it was incredibly warm outside. Despite the heat, a large crowd was gathered in front of the Celebration Stage to greet Dave Filoni, who gave a first look on his new animated television series, Star Wars Rebels. Together with presenter Warwick Davis, who played Wicket in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, some of the first ideas of the animation team were explained and presented.
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| - When I arrived at Celebration on Saturday, there was a lot going on, and it was incredibly warm outside. Despite the heat, a large crowd was gathered in front of the Celebration Stage to greet Dave Filoni, who gave a first look on his new animated television series, Star Wars Rebels. Together with presenter Warwick Davis, who played Wicket in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, some of the first ideas of the animation team were explained and presented. Special mention was given to all the new possibilities available to the team. Not only can they look back on the experiences many of them gained on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but also on the enormous wealth of experiences and resources that are now available to them as a result of the Disney buyout. After all, Disney is legendary for its animation, so it's not just a small Lucasfilm animation studio anymore. Filoni stressed that Star Wars as a whole is in good hands at Disney, even though he knows some fans will be critical of the new partnership. Two other producers on the show, Greg Weisman (Gargoyles, Young Justice, Ultimate Spider-Man) and Simon Kinberg (X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Star Wars spinoff films), were not at the show but sent a pre-recorded video message. Both were absolutely ecstatic about their tasks and keenly aware of the responsibilities that working on Star Wars brings with it. Kinberg said that his sons are huge Star Wars fans and he could not afford to disappoint them. Filoni talked about the time period that Rebels is set in, namely between Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope as the Rebel Alliance is formed to fight the Galactic Empire. This is a time period the entire creative team decided on pretty quickly. It's especially important to Filoni that they offer Star Wars fans a new experience while still giving them a familiar feeling, which is ensured by their approach to basing this show on the original trilogy. Graphically, a new direction was chosen for Rebels. Rather than continuing the style of The Clone Wars, the team is basing their show's look off the concept art created by Ralph McQuarrie for A New Hope. Though not all of McQuarrie's ideas made it into the final film as he designed them, the designs that were eventually used are pretty close—so the team has decided that the original designs will be the pre-A New Hope look and go with those. The designers have developed a special digital brush modeled on the technology McQuarrie used. Here is some of the McQuarrie art that was shown during the presentation: There was no completed footage to show yet, but there was a glimpse of the new ship, Ghost, which is based on the Millennium Falcon in that it's meant to be a home for the characters. Here is an image of Ghost, as well as other images revealed to the audience: At the end of the panel, Davis asked Floni some fan questions that were sent via Twitter, using the hashtag #AskFiloni. Filoni wasn't going to share much, and was coy about most of his answers, but he hinted that characters from The Clone Wars might make an appearance in Rebels. Another character someone asked about was Porkins, the large X-wing pilot from A New Hope. Filoni admitted that the idea of telling the story of a younger and thinner Porkins was actually mentioned in a brainstorming session, which he used to show that the fans and the creative team are not that far apart in their thinking. Another question posed was whether Rebels, like The Clone Wars, would have episodes shown out of order. Filoni explained that the reason there were out of order Clone Wars episodes was because of the way George Lucas approached some story ideas. After a group of episodes would be finished, Lucas would sometimes want to see what happened before that, necessitating showing episodes out of their chronological order. Filoni joked that telling stories out of order was par for the course for the man who made Episodes IV-VI before I-III. This time, though, the team wants to tell the story in chronological order. With that, the panel was a wrap. Attendees were encouraged to check out the Celebration Store, where they could buy Star Wars Rebels t-shirts. After today, I for one can't wait to find out more about Rebels!
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