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..