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Galactic News
Friday August 24, 2001
Homing Beacon #42!
The latest Homing Beacon has arrived with a great article about R2-D2.
"Artoo-Detoo is a beeping, rolling, life-saving mobile toolbox, and his little frame is crammed with all sorts of useful appendages perfect for saving the lives of heroes in a jam. Artoo wouldn't be nearly as resourceful without the helping hand of Don Bies, an ILM modelmaker who, among other things, works as a droid wrangler for the production crew.
"We do get to see Artoo do a few new things in this movie," said Bies, describing the astromech's role in Attack of the Clones. Artoo will also be seen reprising some old favorites from his performance repertoire, including projecting holograms and interfacing with computer ports. "I don't think he did that in Episode I," says Bies of the latter. "The props people made up a new computer armlet with a socket that he plugs into on Amidala's ship. That was fun to do, because we had never done it before. I mean, I had never personally been involved with something like that."
Someone on set did have experience with the potentially difficult task. "Tony Daniels (C-3PO) was on the set the day we were shooting that, and he mentioned that when they did it way back in 1976 they had such a problem with the arm coming down and constantly missing the socket. Since we knew of that history, we could not let it repeat itself. The machinist from the Prop Department made a system where the arm came right down and registered exactly spot-on. I just puppeteered it from behind, dropping it down, pushing it in and doing the turning. That was fun."
Though Artoo did do some drink dispensing in Jabba's sail barge in Return of the Jedi, we haven't seen him dish out food until now. "We took one of his pincers from The Empire Strikes Back, and modified it so that he can grab some bread in this one. We also needed a holder for the soup bowls that he delivers to Anakin and Padmé. That was a brand new device that we never had before."
The ever-resourceful droid is also slated to receive a number of computer-generated appendages that allow him to perform complicated tasks that would be too difficult and time-consuming to try to simulate practically."
Now you noticed that they said "The props people made up a new computer armlet with a socket that he plugs into on Amidala's ship." Take a look at Episode II Select #29 at the plug-in port on Amidala's ship! Also, look at Episode II Select #35. This is from where they said "We took one of his pincers from The Empire Strikes Back, and modified it so that he can grab some bread in this one." What do you think?