The Force Is Strong With These Custom Star Wars Helmets

Check out these awesome Clone Trooper & Boba Fett helmet mash-ups made by various artists as part of the As You Wish Project.

The As You Wish Project is a charity fundraising event set to auction over 40 redesigned Boba Fett and Clone Trooper helmets in aid of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The helmets will be exhibited at Star Wars: Celebration VI in Orange County, California for one week and will be sold after the event on Ebay, with all proceeds being donated to the charity.
For those with pockets as deep as the Sarlacc pit, the bidding begins this Thursday.

You can find a link to the auction page below:

As You Wish Helmet Auction Site

This year's As You Wish Project is sponsored by The Dented Helmet, eFX Collectibles, and the 501st & includes over 40 artists, some of which were involved in designing and building the original Star Wars costumes, including Joe Johnston and Sandy Dhuyvetter, who helped design Boba Fett's now iconic armor. The artists have taken inspiration from a variety of places, including movies & history, and the art styles of H.R. Giger & Damien Hirst.

The detail in these customs is incredible, especially with the one pictured below, which has to be one of my personal favourites.

Awesome isn't it? Seriously contemplating selling a Kidney to raise the cash to buy it...

All of the artists have done an incredible job & I'm sure each one will fetch a Jabba's Ransom for the charity.

Hit the jump to check out some more of my favourites and visit the As You Wish Project's web site for more information on each artist and their designs.

Cinema Loses One Of Its Greats - Tony Scott Dies Aged 68

Some truly shitty news comes out of California this morning.

Director Tony Scott has died by apparent suicide at the age of 68. According to sources, Scott left a suicide note in his car before jumping from the Vincent Thomas Bridge near Long Beach (apparently without hesitation) at around lunchtime on Sunday.

Tony Scott (left) And The Vincent Thomas Bridge (Right)

Born in Newcastle in 1944, the younger brother of director (and some time business partner) Ridley Scott, he graduated from the Royal College Of Art with dreams of being a painter, but was tempted into film and TV by his brother.

After spending the early part of his career making adverts, his first full feature came in 1982 with The Hunger. The movie flopped and Scott returned to making adverts for a few more years until he caught the attention of producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer who approached him to make Top Gun after being impressed with an advert he had recently made for Saab showing one of their cars racing a fighter jet. The movie landed in cinemas in 1986, making a star of Tom Cruise and a household name out of Scott.

Scott directs a young Tom Cruise on the set of Top Gun

Scott would go on to direct the likes of True Romance, The Last Boy Scout, Beverly Hills Cop II, Crimson Tide, Enemy Of The State, The Taking Of Pelham 123 and, most recently, runaway train drama Unstoppable, starring Denzel Washington.

As well as directing, the Brothers Scott also tried their hands as producers, helping young filmmakers get their own projects off the ground.

Talking to Empire magazine in 2005 Scott said, “I’m getting younger as I get older. It's also a fear of losing the touch, which is why I keep fucking going. Whether you like the movie or don't like it, as long as people continue to pay me to continue to experiment, I'll keep doing that. I do a lot of research and I get paid to touch these other worlds and I want to keep trying to touch these new worlds and bring them to the screen, whether it's the 18th Street Gang or the Vietnamese Gang, or bounty hunting or whatever it is. I love what I do.”

At the time of his death, he had several projects in varying stages of production including a planned Top Gun sequel and a movie version of the comic book "Nemesis".

Scott is survived by his wife, Donna, and two children.

Thoughts go out to his family and friends at this difficult time.

Boarderland Sexism? Hardly.

Gearbox Software caused a bit of a stir today with the reveal of the "Best Friends Forever" skill tree for Borderlands 2. How can something with a name lifted straight off a Valentines card cause such a fuss?

Well, dubbed the "Girlfriend" tree by one designer; this particular set of skills specific to the Mechromancer character class, is designed for people that suck at games.

Borderlands 2 lead designer John Hemingway told Eurogamer:

"The design team was looking at the concept art and thought, you know what, this is actually the cutest character we've ever had. I told them I want to make, for the lack of a better term, the girlfriend skill tree. This is, "I love Borderlands and I want to share it with someone, but they suck at first-person shooters. Can we make a skill tree that actually allows them to understand the game and to play the game? That's what our attempt with the Best Friends Forever skill tree is.""

Can't shoot straight? Borderlands 2 has you covered. Sort of.

I can think of a couple of less patronizing terms that don't play to stereotypes that are guaranteed to piss off a cross-section of your gamers... But still, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

In any case, the tree is designed for the noob in your life (whatever their gender/relationship to you), with perks that allow you to shoot without aiming(?) and the ability to summon a large robot whose sole purpose is to sponge enemy fire whilst you scream "which button is reload?!?" at your co-op partner in a blind panic. 

Gearbox president Randy Pitchford quickly took to Twitter to defend the comment, claiming the quote was a "personal anecdote" that was being sensationalized by forum users & the increasingly easy to offend PC Brigade, and that the term "Girlfriend Skill Tree" will not be featured in any part of the finished game.

That's good news for all the do-gooders of the internet as they can put their placards down and go back to harassing pages on Facebook safe in the knowledge that this minor non-injustice never nearly almost existed..

Some GiANT news from Marvel at this years SDCC

I've never been to Comic-Con in San Diego, although I am registered for pre-registration for tickets to next years event (I kid you not, you have to register your interest in registering for tickets before the tickets even exist!) they do NOT make it easy to get your hands on the geek worlds equivalent of one of Wonka's Golden Tickets, so this year, like many others I am left to trawl the internet for info about what went down in Hall H over the weekend.

First up is the news from Marvel Studios, who made some huge announcements on Saturday about what they have planned post Avengers, in what they are calling "Phase Two" of their self-produced movies.

Some of the announcements were expected, whilst others were a bit of a surprise. So, what did we learn?

Next Stop: LV426? - Paris Train Station Gets An Alien Make Over

The marketing campaign for Ridley Scotts long awaited return to the Alien universe has already bucked the trend of simply releasing trailer after trailer showing maybe 3-4 seconds of extra footage in favour of some incredible viral marketing videos, and now they've stepped up their game once again. This time by recreating a part of the movies setting - in a disused subway station in France!

This train is for Fiorina 161, The next station is Prometheus.

Closed in 1939, The Saint-Martin subway station in Paris has been transformed into the surface of the alien world which our intrepid explorers/xeno-bait from Weyland Industries will be running through terrified when we finally get to see the film when it releases next month. 

By the looks of it, passengers won’t be able to get off and have a nosey; instead merely being able to snatch glimpses of it as their train passes by. Probably for the best really as I imagine the large stone head pictured below would make it's way into a fans home before long (although I think they might need a power loader to move it...)

Where d'ya want it? Bay 12?

I'm a massive fan of viral marketing, especially when it's done well and this is one of the best I've seen so far. If your yet to see the other videos released promoting Prometheus you can find links for them below. If your a fan of the franchise and are excited about seeing the film you should definitely take a look as they truly are something else ("Happy Birthday, David" being my favourite so far).

New Assassins Creed 3 Gameplay Trailer Is Awesome!

Unfazed by lawsuits and angry authors, Ubisoft released the first gameplay trailer for Assassin’s Creed 3 today and damn does it look good!

You can clearly see from the trailer below that this is no half-arsed sequel like Brotherhood & Revelations and that claims by the developers that this is the biggest and most ambitious entry in the series yet now seem more than just empty promises.

Yeah, I said it. Brotherhood sucked!
 

Anyway, the clip is chock full of awesome and gives us a peak at new combat, weapons, moves, and free-running tricks that make the previous games look like Tenchu for the PS1.

 

The story takes place between 1753 and 1783, across the American frontier so there aren't going to be many building to climb. Plenty of trees though.

As much of the game takes place out in the sticks instead of the ever familiar busy market places, it looks like you will now have to blend into nature to remain hidden from those pesky Templar's (new stealth system perhaps?). Luckily, Assassin’s Creed 3’s fancy new frontier locations aren’t just cut & paste forests that all look the same, offering little interaction. It looks like Connor can free-run through them just like his ancestors would run across rooftops in the previous Assassin’s Creed games.

Check out the trailer below.

Bad News For Bioshock Fans.

A bit of bad news for Bioshock fans today.

Irrational and 2K Games announced earlier that Bioshock Infinites October 16th release date has slipped back to February next year. Balls. Looks like we'll have to wait a few more months to explore the shiny floating dystopia of Columbia.

In an open letter released today (you can read it in full after the jump), the game's Creative Director, Ken Levine explained that this would give the developers time to fine tune the game, making it, in his own words "Even more extraordinary".

Now, I don't know about you but I think this game already looks incredible, but if 2K Games think they can make it even better, I'll wait as long as they want.