Star Wars Typography Art

Check out these fun typographic posters featuring Star Wars characters illustrated with quotes from the movies. They're available for sale here: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Drive-in-Prints/6508447

Merry Christmas!

Or Happy Life Day. Or whatever. (Art courtesy of Scott Park)

Star Flakes

It's getting close to winter, so these become extra appropriate: Star Wars-themed snowflakes!!!!

They're created by Anthony Herrera (who has his own design website: http://anthonyherreradesigns.com/) and frankly, they're awesome.

Below are some of my favorites (see bottom of post for link to download designs):

See (and download!) all of them here: http://anthonyherreradesigns.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=60:star-wars-snowflakes-2012&catid=34:anthonydesign-blog

Seuss Wars

Star Wars is awesome. Dr. Seuss is awesome. What does that make a combination of the two? Aawweessoommee. Or something like that.

(All the following was found on Geek Tyrant, one of my favorite movie/TV/geekdom blogs)

First, this mash-up fun from DeviantArt's DrFaustusAU:

For more: http://drfaustusau.deviantart.com/gallery/34733511


Then there's this fun from former Disney artist Jason Peltz:

Peltz sells his artwork (tailored to many themes) here: https://www.stealthisart.com/



And finally, these from Artist Adam Watson:

Go here to Geek Tyrant to see more: http://geektyrant.com/news/2010/12/3/star-wars-reimagined-in-the-style-of-dr-seuss.html

I Have to Get This Off My Chess

I love chess sets.

I collect them, though that hobby is tempered at the moment by the fact that I have nowhere to store the sets I already have. That would change quickly if I could get my hands on these Star Wars-inspired Lego chess sets (Bravo to Brandon Griffeth for creating these masterpieces - here's his Flickr page, whence the following photos come):

Here's the full "A New Hope" set gallery on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandongriffith/sets/72157622043546373/

Here's the full "The Empire Strikes Back" set gallery on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandongriffith/sets/72157624770160743/with/4964647893/

Here's the full "Return of the Jedi" set gallery on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandongriffith/sets/72157630740455010/

Star Wars + Internet = Dumb Humor

Okay, anything + internet easily ends in dumb humor. But still, these will make you chuckle.

A New Hope (See What I Did There?)

This morning my kid sister said she fell asleep during the best part of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Star Wars fans would, I wager, know she could only be talking about one of two scenes: the pod race or the Darth Maul vs. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan battle at the end. Okay, it could really only be the second one, else I really need to reevaluate Kirsti's ability to recognize quality.

I told Kirsti she could have saved time by only watching the two aforementioned scenes, sparing herself 90 minutes of terrible dialogue and acting (albeit missing some impressive visuals). Kirsti answered back, saying she and her husband wanted to watch the series as a whole, regardless of the bad acting and such.

Enter my other younger sister, Sarah, with a recommendation: don't watch it in the logical orders in which the films are presented: Release Order, where you go 4-5-6-1-2-3, or the Chronological Order of 1-2-3-4-5-6. Sarah then pointed us to the the following blog about how one can get the maximum enjoyment from watching Star Wars while avoiding the biggest pitfall, Episode I:

http://static.nomachetejuggling.com/machete_order.html

Now, I came up with my own way to change the prequels to make them better, outlined here: http://slammysworld.blogspot.com/2010/08/recasting-of-star-wars.html

I think it's good, but the Machete Order is a lot better. It's brilliant, because it's as simple as taking the movies as they are, just switching the order a tad. Seriously, read through the proposal and see if he isn't completely right. He offers a new hope for Star Wars fans still smarting from George Lucas' failure to make the prequels as awesome as the original trilogy.

What do you think of the Machete Order? Gonna give it a try? If you do/did, what do/did you think?

No, No, No - This One Goes There, That One Goes There, Right?

The Millennium Falcon is stuck on Hoth, and Han and Chewie are figuring out how to fix it to get it off the ground.

That's hard to do when you keep getting distracted by stormtroopers.

Let's analyze/break down that sentence, which is a metaphor for Cantina de los Star Wars:

• "Millennium Falcon" = this blog
• "Hoth" = quagmire of creativity, meaning I've ignored this blog for years and am still unsure where it's going
• "Han and Chewie" = me, roguishly good looking and covered in the Wookie hair of ideas good and bad
• "fix it to get it off the ground" =  what I need to do to keep this blog and its possibilities alive

Now let's backtrack.

I started this blog back in 2007 as a sort of nerd central, posting videos, trailers, links, and other stuff related to not just Star Wars, but other fanboy fodder as well. Later that year, I decided it was going to become a place to create a Star Wars-based story using original characters and original storylines. I even got so far as to spin some plotline, as well as some behind-the-scenes kind of stuff.

Then it got caught in a sinewy swamp of stagnation.  Part of it was that I became more interested in writing Warcraft-related fiction - Tevan Kearu gave way to Nikolas Tien, and a galaxy far, far away surrendered to the fantasy world of Azeroth.

Someone has too much time on their hands,
and for once it's not me.

Another problem is one I suffer when approaching the writing of fiction in general - I feel like I need to know exactly where a story is heading before I start to write. I map out this whole, great idea and get a good start, but then a new idea/plot twist/story element comes up and screws the whole thing up. I then fall into a catatonia while trying to regroup and re-figure out where the story will go. It's happened numerous times with my Warcraft story, it happened in a crippling way to my Star Wars story.

So what now, then? Why am I only now addressing the comatose state of Cantina de los Star Wars?

Because no one wins with an empty cantina.

First, over the past couple of years, I've experienced what I call a "Star Wars renaissance," meaning a renewed fan-style interest in all things Star Wars. I blame:

• The Old Republic - though I have no illusions of ever playing the latest Star Wars MMORPG, the setting is one I grew to adore thanks to playing both installments of Knights of the Republic on Xboxes borrowed from friends. The story takes place thousands of years before the movies, and you play the role of a Jedi re-learning his/her powers, choosing your path and abilities and all that fun stuff. I loved those games, and loved the part of Star Wars lore they occupied, so when The Old Republic was announced, I was keen to learn all about it I could. Bombastically awesome cinematics only grew my interest:
• Return Cinematic Trailer
• Hope Cinematic Trailer
• Deceived Cinematic Trailer
• LEGOs - If you have a chance to play any of the LEGO games for Wii, do it - they're a lot of fun, plenty challenging and kid-friendly to boot. They explore the worlds of Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Batman, Pirates of the Caribbean and soon, Lord of the Rings. But my first one was the Star Wars game, and it not only entertained me for hours (and still does), but re-interested me in the movies.
• Movies - speaking of which, I've watched them again over the past year with renewed interest in how they tell their stories, finding new things to love and new things to criticize. I've even come up with a way to revamp the prequels (Episodes I-III) so they wouldn't suck as much.

Call me childish if you will, but these games are SUPER fun.

Now, where does this all lead? Well, I want to revive this blog. What it could be is too much fun to cast away. It may not be updated as much as my other blogs, and it likely won't be all fiction, all the time. You may notice I added a sidebar element that has Star Wars-related links for you to enjoy. I'll try to keep the YouTube videos there so as not to clog the main feed, but I won't promise one won't sneak in from time to time.

And then there's the fiction - I'd like to try my hand at it again. Maybe that will involve a total scrapping of what I was going to do. I've started liking the idea of an Old Republic setting - that, at the very least, would give me the option of having a lot of Jedi (Light and Dark side) for my characters to interact with. Maybe I'll try more short-story-style writing as opposed to a long narrative. I don't know how the evolution of Cantina de los Star Wars will progress.

But I promise to try and make it a fun ride.

Spy Game Part II (See Previous Post)

Once he had made his way out of the sentries' view, Tevan crept to the north wall of the compound's swoop garage. In a shadow outside, he took his pack off and laid it down. He then made his way, through the darkness, to the main building. There, he pulled out one of the slickest pieces of technology he'd seen: a jamming device that was virtually undetectable. Only a detailed diagnostic would find something out of place, and even then it wasn't always easy to determine what. The jammer was one of Imperial Intelligence's latest sources of pride, and Tevan had heard that developing an effective counter-method to it was a while in coming.

Tevan selected a segment of an exterior power cable that was relatively concealed and stuck the jammer on. The power flow of the conduit would further hinder any attempts to locate the jammer- not that the smugglers would be looking anyway. They were mostly asleep in the small...barracks? Could one even call it that? It was mostly just a large storage unit with some cots and bunks set up.

Tevan's observations showed that no more than six people were active at this time of night, and that was on a busy night. There were always three or four sentries patrolling the perimeter, and sometimes one or two people inside the main building.

Tevan moved to a side entrance and tested the door. It was unlocked, and Tevan slipped inside. The corridor was not dark, but the lights were relatively dim, either from low-power settings or poor maintenance. Tevan crept along quietly, listening for any sound. At each door, he pressed his ear to the metal, trying to see if he could determine whether the room was occupied. He heard nothing, though that certainly wasn't conclusive. He passed the short corridor to the stairwell, went to the first room on the left, and went inside. There, he laid a small device in the far corner of the room, then returned to the corridor. He reached the stairwell and moved up to the second floor.

As he moved along the corridor, hand on blaster in case of discovery, Tevan heard only two things: the low hum of the lights and his very quiet breathing. He knew the control romm to which he was making his way would have at least one occupant. Tevan was banking on the hope that the occupant would be alone.

He turned left into the corridor where the control room was located. Just beyond the door to the room, Tevan saw another small room, with another staircase leading back down to the first floor. Tevan crouched behind the corner in the shadows, then pulled out a slim, flat remote. Watching the door closely and listening, he pressed a button on the remote, and counted to ten. Sure enough, after ten seconds, a short, somewhat stocky man walked out, turned right, and headed down the stairs.

Tevan quickly and quietly moved into the control room. It was mostly filled with a bank of computers, moniters and consoles that ran along the walls. Tevan saw a blinking red light, indicating that something was messing up the environmental controls. That, Tevan thought with a small grin, meant his little device was working perfectly. It was meant to simulate an energy spike indicative of a faulty power coupling, and it was doing its job. But Tevan knew he only had about a minute. So he found a scomp link and pulled out a small tube. It was a modified droid scomp link access arm, meant to quickly access computer data. This one was rigged to find the central database and copy it all. Coupled with a state of the art security-slicing program, it took about thirty seconds to download all the information Tevan needed.

(Stay Tuned for the Exciting Conclusion, Coming Soon!)

Episode from Tevan Keanu's Past #1

Nothing in the darkness moved. Not even tree branches or blades of grass. There was no wind to speak of. Just the warm night air.

That's how it seemed, at least, to the two sentries standing guard on the perimeter of the Bloody Fist base. They didn't see the shadow move across the pathway behind them, not even in their peripheral vision. There was no way they could. The sentries had fallen victim to the same mistake that many others before them had, in many different places: light pollution. By standing so close to the light posts which illuminated the base's gates, they ruined any benefit of natural night vision. And so Tevan Kearu was able to move into the base unnoticed.

The Bloody Fist smugglers had made several mistakes, far beyond the sentries' blunder, which allowed Tevan easy access. First, they had set up shop on a world so full and teeming with animal life, and large animals to boot, that sensor alert systems were troublesome. The smugglers had installed them, of course. The problem lie in the fact that a large portion of Baroonda's animal population was nocturnal, and would frequently trigger the sensors at night, when the sensors were most necessary. This led the smugglers to leave them turned off most of the time. They would periodically activate the sensors to see what was around, but nothing ever was, besides large predators and their smaller prey.

The second mistake was that the smugglers were too predictable in the way they managed their sensors. Tevan had been on-world for a little more than a week, studying their patterns and habits. They always activated the sensors at dusk, and at 2 hour intervals until sunrise. That told Tevan how long his window of opportunity would be. Further, the sensors used at the base were cheap, low-grade models, favored by small operations like the one Tevan was observing. Even further, whoever manned the sensors didn't pay a lot of attention to them, which was much more important when your sensors were little better than trash compactor fodder.

Tevan had run exercises, small test runs, to see just how attentive the smugglers were. Even when he was running full speed through the jungle, right towards the base, the smugglers had given no obvious reaction. So either they were very patient and devious, or very stupid. Tevan felt confident that he was up against the latter.

The mission was a simple, at least in its objective: infiltrate the base of the Bloody Fist smuggler's organization, download their complete files, and upload a program into their main computer that would allow Imperial Intelligence to track message traffic and shipments. Of course smuggling was against the law, but beyond that, Tevan didn't really know what the big deal about the Bloody Fist was. They were a very small operation, relatively speaking, with personnel numbers only in the hundreds, and their cargo rarely got more exciting than foodstuffs or basic maintenance materials. But his role was not to question, only to perform. Whatever Bloody Fist had done wrong, besides the obvious smuggling, they had caught the attention of Imperial Intelligence, and that was a serious matter.

The Main Character

If you check this blog, you probably know I'm in the common "writer's block." I started, I had a great beginning, then I realized that a) I didn't really have an idea of where I wanted this story to go, and b) I didn't really know who my characters are.
As I've thought about it over the past couple of weeks, I've come up with some thoughts about the protagonist, Tevan Kearu. You can give me feedback about what you like, what you don't like, where you might like to see him go, etc.

First, I changed his last name from Antilles. I had originally named him Antilles, inspired by one of my favorite characters from Star Wars, Wedge Antilles. I thought it might be amusing for Tevan to constantly have to let people know that he didn't know Wedge Antilles, much less share a blood line with him. But in coming up with names for the other characters, I settled on Kearu as Tevan's new last name. I want to make him as original as I can. That he's from Corellia, like Wedge, means there could be room for some connections there.

So who is Tevan? He is the son of a well-respected career Imperial officer. Or, I had the thought yesterday, his dad might be an officer/lawyer. But regardless, the Kearu family enjoys some level of prestige in the Imperial social and political circles. His mother is a relative of Garm Bel Iblis, who is the mainstay of Corellia's rebel elements. I think I want that to play some role.

Tevan, then, is a young man raised in and by the Empire, but who isn't necessarily fiercely loyal to it. He's been trained in the military academy, and I think I want him to specialize in special operations (basically equivalent to the Army Rangers or Navy SEALs- covert paramilitary operations, that kind of stuff). He's loyal to the Empire, at least at first, but he's not an idealist.

I think I want his journey to start because somehow his family gets tangled up in the conflict between the Rebellion and the Empire. I don't think I want him to see the Rebellion as the moral high ground (though they are, of course), at least not at first. Maybe he starts with the mindset that the Rebels are a means to some end, then is converted to their ideals along the way. Or maybe he will have some sudden revelation that gives him insight into why the Rebellion is more right than the Empire. I'm not sure if I want him, at first, to see the Rebels as evil, or simply misguided.

I don't think I want it to be an easy change, though. I think I want him to have to struggle, at least a little bit.

Though I think I want to include a Jedi in the story, I am fairly confident Tevan will not end up as a Jedi. It's a bit too cliche for me. He may find out about some level of Force sensitivity.

Those are some thoughts to begin with. Like I said, if you want to offer any feedback, feel free, but don't feel obligated. I mainly wanted to just get some of these ideas and thoughts out on paper (so to speak).

Possible Ship Designs

Okay, here are the images for possible ship designs for Tevan Antilles' vessel. I'll place a poll on the side and you can vote for which one you like best.

Note 1: If you can't tell, I'm a fan of the YT series.

Note 2: The Barloz and YT-2000 are two different designs, even though they look similar.

YT-1210 Freighter

Barloz-class Freighter

YT-1930

YT-2000