Rebels Report from WonderCon!!

Well, I was about to go to bed...but then this happened, and there was no way I could sleep without talking about the new Rebels info!!  We've got more behind the scenes concept art, the reveal of the composer for the series (complete with a new interview), and best of all...our first real completely animated clip from the show!  So let's get to it!

A lot of great things were revealed and discussed at the panel, but first things first, a finished clip from the show!  Here we see Hera, the pilot and owner of the Ghost (the ship our heroes will be traveling in) taking down some TIE fighters:



WOW.  Any doubts I had about the look of this series have been completely blown away.  The character animation is especially amazing!  Just look at how wonderful the facial expressions are!  This series is definitely going to look absolutely AMAZING.  Once again, Lucasfilm Animation is pushing the boundaries of computer animated television.  This looks miles better than the animation that was displayed in the short teasers released at the beginning of March.

It's a much more colorful looking show than Clone Wars was, which is fitting considering Rebels is heavily inspired by the late great Ralph McQuarrie's concept art for the original trilogy, which featured a lot of bright colors.  One of my favorite things about Clone Wars was that it looked like moving concept art, so it's also nice to see that Rebels is carrying on the tradition of making painted textures for their 3D models.  While the textures in the Clone Wars were more impressionistic in style, the textures on this show are also inspired by the brush strokes seen in Ralph's paintings.  The Rebels crew created new textures for the models that mimicked Ralph's brush strokes.

This is some gorgeous art, and I really hope we'll get an Art of Star Wars Rebels book when the show debuts in the fall.  These are a few of my favorite pieces of art from the show; you can see the rest here at the official Star Wars Blog's report from WonderCon 2014.

 
Several news sources were also tweeting live from the panel, which is great for those of us who can't be there.  These are my favorite tweets that I've seen from this panel.  You can find the more from this article at The Star Wars Underworld.

.@dave_filoni says Rebels has “A more unified look, top to bottom than Clone Wars ever had,” noting Clone Wars took years of evolution.
— Eric Goldman (@EricIGN) April 19, 2014

The palette of Ralph McQuarrie's early work heavily informs everything about Rebels. #WonderCon #StarWars
— TheForce.Net (@theforcenet) April 19, 2014 

According to Dave Disney has been very supportive of what Lucasfilm has been doing on #starwarsrebels
— Rebels Report (@RebelsReport) April 19, 2014

Dave confessing his love of Tangled, had Keith Kellogg to look at animation and facial riffing of characters
— Rebels Report (@RebelsReport) April 19, 2014

Rebels has a, "flowy, traditional" feel as opposed to the near realism of Clone Wars. -Killian Plunkett #WonderCon #StarWars
— TheForce.Net (@theforcenet) April 19, 2014

Rebels is more classically “animated”, less trying to capture realism than Clone Wars. @dave_filoni says it took him back to Airbender days.
— Eric Goldman (@EricIGN) April 19, 2014

This is some really exciting stuff!  It's really cool knowing that the animation on Tangled (a movie I love dearly) inspired the animation for Rebels.  It's actually a neat bit of trivia that Dave Filoni is a big fan of Tangled as well!  And it's really good to know that Disney is very supportive of the studio, especially after what happened with Clone Wars.

Who will score Rebels? Kevin Kiner will score #StarWarsRebels
— Rebels Report (@RebelsReport) April 19, 2014

YES! I've been wanting to know for months who the composer for Rebels was going to be, and I'm very pleased that they've brought Kevin Kiner back on board.  Kiner scored the music for Clone Wars, and I thought by the end of the show he had really nailed down the Star Wars style of music.  It's a great choice to bring him back, and as you'll hear in this interview also released today, it seems he's got some great new themes for Star Wars Rebels.

 

There was also a great interview on Hero Complex with Kiner, and he offers some really interesting details on not only the music of Rebels, but he talks a little bit about what it was like working on Clone Wars as well.  Speaking of Clone Wars music, last month Kiner posted a lot of music from the series onto his website for your listening pleasure..  It's a really nice gesture considering the series has yet to have a soundtrack released to the public.  There was a soundtrack released for the film way back in 2008, but the music has come so far since then.  The music he wrote for the Ahsoka arc, the final story to air on television, is especially beautiful.  I really recommend a listen!

The future of this show looks very bright!!  I can't wait to see more!  Now as you all know, May the Fourth is coming up soon, and there have been rumors of more information/video on Rebels to be released.  Now, there's still no confirmation as to the official show debut; there's been reports of a summer made for television movie to kick off the show, and then the rest of Season 1 will debut in the fall, but nothing concrete.  Until then, enjoy the character profiles if you haven't seen them yet, as well as interviews with legendary producers Dave Filoni, Greg Weismann, and Simon Kinberg!

And of course, May The Force Be With You!