It’s not every day that my severed head ends up in a piece of art work. Luckily for me, Star Wars artist Randy Martinez also put my noggin in the company of well-known heads that belong to Lucasfilm Events Manager and Bantha Tracks Editor Mary Franklin, Lucasfilm Director of Fan Relations Steve Sansweet, and You Can Draw: Star Wars artist Matt Busch.

I chatted with Randy about the Headless Horseman tribute which is featured in his upcoming book Creature Features: Draw Amazing Monsters & Aliens, published by Impact and due to hit stores in March 2009.

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It’s not easy being Jedi Master Yoda, but imagine if your last name actually was Yoda? Would you get instant respect from Star Wars fans or would you grow tired of everyone you meet trying to have a conversation with you in Yoda backwards speak?

Hiroko Yoda writes about what it’s like to share a last name with a green movie icon.

Excerpt:

People think I changed my name because I’m a crazy Star Wars fan, or that I’m just kidding around. Even people who know I’m not making it up are always giving me Yoda trinkets and keychains and figures, so I had this little shrine to him going on for a while.

And then there was this latest incident with Facebook. I tried signing up like ten times, and it always rejected my name. Finally we figured out that a filter was blocking “Yoda” because it thought I was trying to register a fictional name! They finally let me sign up, but it took several days and a lot of emails. So we do occasionally have a hard time, but on the other hand, it’s nice to have a short and memorable name because people easily remember us.

Read the full essay here:
Life as Yoda (AltJapan)

Star Wars isn’t just about the lads. Check out this list from Bettie Magazine of the female characters they think not only make the grade, but can hold their own in a fight. I love that they included the newest Jedi apprentice Ahsoka, as well as a few Expanded Universe gals — but why no Ackmena? Sheesh.

The 9 Most Badass Women of Star Wars (Bettiemag.com)

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SOURCE: Club Jade

Feel free to submit photo captions below.

Ever notice that by switching around the letters Ackbar you get Barack? No word yet on which Star Wars character a McCain jumble translates to.

Feel free to submit your own caption below in comments.

G4’s “Attack of the Show” host Blair Butler interviews The Vader Project co-curator Sarah Jo Marks and artist Wade Lageose about the popularity of the artsy helmets, as well the new additions to the collection as it’s shown at Celebration Japan.

VIDEO: Sweet Darth Vader Helmets

Ever wonder whose job it is at Lucasfilm to make sure Star Wars planets and characters’ names are spelled correctly on everything from video game menus to Happy Meal toys? Wired magazine’s Chris Baker ventured over to Lucasfilm to meet with continuity master Leland Chee also known as the Keeper of the Holocron — “a searchable repository of more than 30,000 entries covering almost every character, planet, and weapon mentioned, however fleetingly, in the vast array of Star Wars titles and products.”

Excerpt:

Chee spends three-quarters of his typical workday consulting or updating the Holocron. He also approves packaging designs, scans novels for errors, and creates Talmudic charts and documents addressing such issues as which Jedi were still alive during the Clone Wars and how long it takes a spaceship to get from Dagobah, where Yoda trained Luke Skywalker, to Luke’s homeworld of Tatooine. The Keeper of the Holocron takes this very seriously: “Someone has to be able to say, ‘Luke Skywalker would not have that color of lightsaber.’”

“The thing about Star Wars is that there’s one universe,” Chee says. “Everyone wants to know stuff, like, where did Mace Windu get that purple lightsaber? We want to establish that there’s one and only one answer.”

There have been some egregious missteps, like the Jar Jar lollipop. It looks like a plastic bust of the hated character, but push a button and it opens its mouth and sticks out a hideous candy tongue for children to suck on. “The tongue had bumps on it,” Chee says, wrinkling his nose.

Read the full article here:
Meet Leland Chee, the Star Wars Franchise Continuity Cop (Wired.com)

Be sure to read Leland Chee’s Blog here:
Keeper of the Holocron’s Blog (Blogs.starwars.com)

I’ve been a long time fan of Bookcrossing.com ever since it began. The concept is simple — leave a book you no longer want on a park bench, a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Anywhere it might find a new reader. Log on to the web site, and track the book’s journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person.

So last week when a well-worn copy of The Empire Strikes Back novel was left at the Lucasfilm lobby, in our San Francisco Presidio campus, I couldn’t help but smile. There smack dab on the front cover was a Bookcrossing.com sticker. I’ll be leaving it in the lobby again today to see who picks it up next. You can track its journey here.

May the Force be with this beloved paperback, wherever it ends up.

words: Bonnie Burton

As a proud resident of San Francisco, I can tell you I’ve often daydreamed of how cool it would be if a Star Destroyer hovered over the Golden Gate Bridge as I was stuck in traffic. Or if AT-AT’s shared Ocean Beach with joggers and dog walkers.

It looks like a fan had the same brainwaves I did, and made it happen — at least in video form. Check out this awesome short film by Michael Horn of Star Wars vehicles and ships as they sneak into various video footage around San Francisco all thanks to some creativity and impressive tracking software. Maybe one day tourist snapshots of Coit Tower and cable cars will have the Death Star in the background! A fan girl can dream, can’t she?

VIDEO: Death Star over San Francisco (Current TV)

Here’s a few of our favorite screenshots from the film including our interview with Michael about how he made the film and why:

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