Have you guys ever been tempted to take some of the action figures and stuff home just to play around with? -- BobaChris93
Green: Sure, the same way that people are tempted to steal office supplies for their own personal use.
Senreich: As silly as it sounds, we find ourselves bringing in our own Star Wars figures sometimes to use for the Special. And as much as we'd like to take the ones we build, Adult Swim would murder us dead if we did.
Root: I took the George Lucas puppet home. When I go about my everyday life, I pretend he is directing me. "Make that sandwich faster and more intense!" he yells.
Goldstein: I once took an R2-D2 figure home and loved it so much that I took a bath with it. Our aquatic adventure got a little dramatic and I've no idea where R2 ended up. I have a strange pain in my side though. And my belly-button makes strange whistles and clicks.
How do you guys decide which of you plays which characters? Everyone must want to play Vaderkins, or Palpy or Fett, but who decides who gets the short straw and plays the slightly less cool characters like Headbanging Stormtrooper, Yaddle and sixth pit droid? -- janlomona
Green: Honestly, we choose whomever does it best.
Senreich: It really depends on the character. A lot of it is gut feeling. A lot of it is who we think would make these characters funny and resemble their original voice enough to evoke the feeling of those characters with a little added touch. Seth MacFarlane has become the Emperor for me and added a whole new layer of sympathy to this once evil character. And Breckin Meyer is the perfect Boba Fett. He pitched the voice in the writers' room and it was just dead-on! It may be hard to believe but even the smaller characters, we slave over who plays them. A good example is Dr. Evazan who Donald Faison just did the best impersonation.
Root: We have a casting director. But yeah, whatever happened to Yaddle? They executed Order 66 and I fully expected to see Yaddle taking a laser to the back of the head. Someone please write a Further Adventures of Yaddle novel. Aaron Allston, start typing.
Goldstein: Don't tell anyone, but the actor who played the headbanging stormtrooper now works here. His name is Hector Rodriguez and he likes to eat plantains. Plantains are a different kind of banana that doesn't taste as good.
Oh, and thanks for making me laugh so hard watching the episode one of the legs on my computer chair snapped off and I was launched into the desk and onto the floor. Very dignified (and totally true). -- janlomona
Green: Hope you didn't build it or your future as a carpenter is severely in question.
I'd like to ask. Are planning to do any more Star Wars sketches, or indeed, any more Star Wars specials? (I do hope I see more skits based on the prequel trilogy)
Green: We love Star Wars; it's ripe for parody.
Root: I want to do a special based entirely on the life of Theodore Roosevelt. Nobody ever does good Spanish-American War comedy anymore.
Senreich: I was a history major. I'll seriously contemplate doing one.
Green: Not all franchises natually lend themselves to 22 minutes of parody and we really look for properties that have universal characters and a mythology that we can draw comedy from. That said, there are plenty of 'em that we'd love to dedicate a half-hour to.
Senreich: It's tough with other Specials. It wouldn't make sense for us to do an Indiana Jones Special as he is one man and there isn't a world of characters to play with. If we did a special with another property, we'd probably eye brands like G.I. Joe or He-Man. Brands that have a whole universe of characters to play with.
Goldstein: We argue about which specials we should try to do on a regular basis. I'd personally like to do specials based on The Black Hole, The Last Unicorn and Solaris -- not the George Clooney remake but the original Russian version. Everyone basically agrees with me.
Okay, why haven't you made more Star Wars skits? -- igottime
Green: Why haven't you?
Senreich: We did a whole half-hour special, silly.
Goldstein: We haven't made more Star Wars skits -- See how I incorporated your question into my answer? That's how I roll. -- because Seth stubbed his toe the other month.
Where do the ideas come from for your skits and how do you choose the characters to be in them? Like Admiral Ackbar cereal? -- igottime
Goldstein: It's basically a no-holds-barred brainstorming session. We're basically just trying to make each other laugh, so if we think referring to Dengar's outfit as a toilet-paper tuxedo is funny, we'll think of a story for it.
Green: That Admiral Ackbar thing came from Breckin doing the voice in the writers' room and it was killing us! A ton of sketch ideas came up from that and suddenly we realized, oh, Admiral Ackbar is funny.
Root: We have a big dry-erase board in the writers' room and we put up a list of characters we think should be in the show. For the Star Wars special we tried to hit all the big characters from that universe, and I think we did a pretty good job, except when it came to Yoda. We totally failed at thinking up any Yoda jokes for some reason.
I may be a bit late but y didn't u make the last three episodes shows(episode 1 2 3)? -- darthz456
Senreich: Too easy. [Laughs.]
Root: We did! We got plenty of prequel characters into the special -- one of my favorites was Jar Jar Binks getting reunited with his old friend Anakin. But you're right, our special was pretty heavily weighted toward the original trilogy. I think that's because Episode IV has been in my brain for 31 years, and Episode III has only been in my brain for three years.
Goldstein: Episodes 1, 2 and 3 are the first three episodes, not the last. The numbers 4, 5 and 6 come after the numbers 1, 2 and 3. Your question disappoints me.
What is the scale you usually work with and how many frames per second do you usually film at? For the puppet armatures, do you use the standard 12-inch figures and cannibalized Mego figures, or are the armatures custom-made? If it is the latter, where could the aspiring animator acquire similar armatures? -- Trak Nar
Senriech: Most of our puppets are custom-made armatures that we build in-house. Sadly, you can't buy them anywhere. We shoot a mixture of 8-inch, 12-inch and sometimes even 3 3/4-inch depending on the sketch and what existing toys are available for us to modify and use.
To keep figures standing during filming, how do you usually anchor or support them? -- Trak Nar
Senreich: The animators will glue down their feet or use a wire to hold them down. But with something like "Empire on Ice," our animator used magnets in the bottom of their feet to move them around.
Root: We always use custom armatures, no matter what scale action figure we're cannibalizing parts from. Sometimes we keep the action figure bodies intact and just add wires to the joints, and sometimes we chop the heads off the figures and give them brand new bodies, but every toy used on our show has been modified in some way, otherwise they won't hold their poses when the animators are working with them. Not sure where you can acquire similar armatures, since we build our own! We usually work in Mego 8-inch scale except in rare instances. We shoot 30 frames per second, but most animators work "on twos," meaning they hold a pose for two frames in a row, and only have to change the pose 15 times per second instead of 30. It cuts the workload in half, obviously. To keep the figures standing, we usually screw up into their feet from under the stage!
I'm curious as to what ideas for sketches were rejected. What kinds of ideas were floated, but didn't appear in the final episode? I'd guess there was a fair bit of brainstorming, and probably plenty of suggestions thrown about, so I'll specify that I'm most interested in the ideas that made it furthest along before being scrapped and/or the most outlandish suggestions. -- Master Ki-Aaron-Mundi
Senreich: They are all on the DVD and when you see them, you will understand why they weren't in the episode. [Laughs.]
Root: We rejected about 10,000 sketch ideas, so I'll give you the first one that pops into my head: Nien Nunb introduces everyone to his older brother, whose name is Eight Nunb. Come to think of it, I'm lucky I wasn't fired after I wrote that sketch.
Goldstein: There were just so many rejected ideas, most of which were just terrible. Consider the titles of the rejects: Obi-Wayne's World, The Star Wars Hanukkah Special, Ewok Jackass... You wouldn't believe how unfunny we could be when we try.
What was your favorite scene to make for the Star Wars Special? On a scale of 1 to 10, what would the likelihood of another Star Wars Special happening be? -- darthstitch2
Senreich: Two of them. Ponda Baba has a special place in my heart. I just found it so clever to see this scene from another point of view. And then I will always love anything the Emperor is in. That character has become a favorite of mine now.
Root: Favorite scene from the Star Wars special: George Lucas steps off an elevator at a Star Wars convention, and a horde of fans spot him. That moment has some hilarious costumes and an element of real danger. Run, George, run! Likelihood of another Star Wars special: 42.
Goldstein: The clip of the Hoth battle at the very beginning of the episode was my favorite even though it lasted only a few seconds! I think the model-makers, animators, editors and effects guys did an amazing job there. When I see that I think we're working on a real show, and not just a few clips of fart jokes. As far as another Star Wars special goes, it depends on how many DVDs you buy of the first one. Keeping in mind that I personally get $.0001 cents per sale, and I'd like to buy a house, I'd suggest you get going.
Robot Chicken: Star Wars arrives on DVD on July 22 from Adult Swim and Warner Home Video. For more details about the DVD, click here.
