George Lucas in Singapore - No Ewoks Yet, But There's The SandCrawler... and Yoda!

It says a lot about the power of the Force when Red Dot Diva is able to bond with a colleague and many fellow fans about Star Wars' creator and Lucasfilm founder George Lucas' visit to Red Dot Island this week.

The first word on the ground was seen on Twitter yesterday (January 15th) when staff members working at Kinokuniya mentioned about George Lucas shopping at the popular bookstore. How lucky was that person manning cashier's counter A??

That's when mere plebeians like Red Dot Diva first got news of today's official launch of the Sandcrawler Building.

The "Sandcrawler" resembles the giant desert vessel featured in the Star Wars movie franchise, although not in drab brown camouflage colours but in very shiny scifi-like silver and glass. Located at Fusionpolis View, the 22,500 square metre building will be the new home for Lucasfilm and Disney folks regionally as well as ESPN Asia Pacific.

ILM Singapore's VFX Puts The Smash Into "The Avengers"

Making gazillions of fanboys and fangirls all over the world squee with utter delight, Joss Whedon's fun take on Marvel's "The Avengers" movie has now crossed the hallowed USD 1 billion mark in the worldwide box office.

This would not have been possible, if there were no uniquely creative and hardworking VFX artists involved in various segments of the superhero ensemble film. For "The Avengers", the digital magic was done by ILM, the fore-runner of all things VFX!

Last Saturday at The Cathay, ILM Singapore hosted a VFX talk about "The Making of The Avengers" and special screening of the movie in 3D, to a group of polytechnic/ university students and faculty teachers as part of their drive to get more talent into Jedi Masters Program, an apprentice-training initiative.

ILM Singapore's Visual Magic In "Transformers: Dark Side Of The Moon"

Industrial Light Magic (ILM), a division of Lucasfilm, has already been in Singapore for about 5 years. And lately, they have taken up more high-profile projects in the movie industry.

As a local, Red Dot Diva beamed with pride when she knew that the ILM Singapore team had a significant role in Paramount Studios' animated film, "Rango". (Read the interview with one of the "Rango" ILM team members here!)

Then mid last week, she received a nice surprise invitation to a ILM career talk specially for students on 9 July morning at the Cathay. The talk would be followed by the screening of "Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon" in 3D! Of course, she couldn't say no!

Lion City Pride in "Rango"!

RAWWwrRRRRrrr!

When it comes to noteworthy geekism, Red Dot Island somehow manages to take things to a level worthy of a whole lot of Singa-pride.

Thanks to ILM Singapore, who recently gave that geek-level a boost with "Rango" - an animated feature film by Paramount Pictures/ Nickelodeon and directed by Gore Verbinski (he who is famous for the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies). The computer-animated movie is a Western comedy about an over-imaginative, metrosexual pet chameleon (voiced by superstar Johnny Depp) turned small town sheriff-hero, via some dusty spiritual journey.

With ILM Singapore's key contribution in "Rango", the animated movie is about one-quarter made in Red Dot Island!! Wooohooo! (And if one is wondering, Red Dot Diva is 100% made in Singapore. But that's another story....)

Get Your Lightsabres and Suits READY!

This.Must.Be.A.Rebellion.Takedown.

Red Dot Diva reckons that the Singapore Toy Games and Comic Convention (STGCC) organizers are trying to maim the pop-culture fans with major geek-overload.

'Coz get those lightsabres ready! The list of already interesting STGCC panels now include two hosted by Lucasfilm! 

One of the panels - "The Clone Wars: Pushing the Envelope for TV" will discuss about the challenges Lucasfilm faced with delivering quality episodes of the animated series, "The Clone Wars" and meeting the expectations of hard-core Star Wars fans. Rob Ladermeier (lead animator) and Josh Robinson (lead asset artist) are panelists for this event.

Not only does one have to get ready to duel with lightsabres, one has better be able to strut it as good as suave tycoon, Tony Stark!

The second Lucasfilm panel is by the folks from Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). ILM is reknown for providing astounding special effects for countless films - including the recent "Iron Man 2". The digital craft from ILM would be seen in over 530 visual effects shots for the movie, including the brassy Stark Expo opener and the thrilling battle scenes. Red Dot Diva is proud to know that 190 of those shots were done in the Singapore studio.

So, don't miss the chance to catch ILM's Digital Artists, Phil Pham and Abishek Nair, who will both share about their experience working for the "Iron Man 2" movie. Phil and Abishek will show how the shots shown in the theatres were created and put together.

On a side note, Red Dot Diva wonders if any folks dare cosplay themselves as Tony Stark and the Ironettes during STGCC? Red Dot Diva saw a pretty impressive bevy at this year's SDCC, despite "Tony" being just a *little* hefty. Heh.

That's not all!! It seems that Lucasfilm will also be recruiting at STGCC from 1-5 pm on 10th December (Friday) and 10 am – 2 pm on 11th December (Saturday) at booth J24. For more details, do follow STGCC's Facebook acccount!

The Lucasfilm panels are held at Level 4, Halls 401 and 402:
10th December, Friday, 2.30pm - "The Clone Wars: Pushing the Envelope for TV"
11th December, Saturday, 11 am - "Iron Man 2: An Insider's Treat on the Movie's Visual Effects"

Dark side or not, Red Dot Diva thinks that these two Lucasfilms panels are far too epic to be missed!