Star Wars Stormtroopers: Beyond the Armor by Ryder Windham & Adambr Bray

Author:Ryder Windham & Adambr Bray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2017-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

THE CLONE ADVENTURES

A final frame from Star Wars: Clone Wars (2005) depicting Phase II clones. The series’ influence on the aesthetics, character designs, and storytelling in The Clone Wars (2008–2014) was significant.

Despite the anticipation generated by the film’s name, Attack of the Clones did not show the clones in battle until the very end of the movie. The next film, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (2005), only featured the tail end of the Clone War. This left a gaping three-year hole in Star Wars history, comprising nearly the entire Clone War. How to fill that void became the question.

“Hasbro was instrumental in providing impetus to make the micro series happen,” says Derryl DePriest, Hasbro’s global brand marketing director. “We asked Lucasfilm whether there could be created some form of entertainment to engage audiences in between movies. Through Transformer, we had a good relationship with Sam Register at Cartoon Network. Sam worked with Genndy [Tartakovsky] on Samurai Jack, and it was felt that his style could work well for a new Star Wars series. We brought Sam and Genndy together with Lucasfilm to present concepts.”

George Lucas hired animator Genndy Tartakovsky to create Star Wars: Clone Wars, a hand-drawn 2D animated series (with the exception of ship animations, which were 3D CGI creations), which aired on Cartoon Network over the course of three years. The first season of ten, three-minute “chapters” (mini-episodes) aired November 7–20, 2003. Season two ran in the same format from March 26 through April 8, 2004. Season three was comprised of five, twelve-minute episodes, airing March 21–25, 2005. The series’ storyline began at the close of Attack of the Clones and ended right where Revenge of the Sith picked up.

The series centered on a military-led war, with large-scale battles on land, sea, air, and space between clone troopers (all voiced by André José Sogliuzzo) and Separatist battle droids.

“We did a lot of research with all the hand signals to make sure that they were accurate. So you’ll see a lot of the guys using hand signals and not so much dialogue,” Tartakovsky says in his DVD commentary. “We initially thought they would all be clone troopers. But Lucas wanted to show a little bit more ranking, so they had some normal troopers along with a few special ARC troopers.”

The series featured a group of ARC troopers (Advanced Recon Commandos) under the command of General Kenobi, and led by ARC-77 (also known as Alpha, Alpha-77, or Captain Fordo) on the Banking Clan’s world of Muunilinst. Though ARC troopers were introduced earlier in Dark Horse Comics’ Star Wars: Republic #50: “The Defense of Kamino” (February 26, 2003), fans first saw them in motion in the second episode of season one of Star Wars: Clone Wars. With Hasbro’s early involvement, their team was influential in creating a look for these troopers. “Our team designed a lot of the things seen in the series,” says DePriest, “characters, vehicles . . . and the ARC troopers.”

Clone Wars also introduced clone scuba troopers for the first time, wearing twin jetpacks and scuba fins.

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