There is a patent by Disney's Imagineering R&D group that sheds some light on the head mechanism. There's also a vertical bearing that helps to keep the wheels in contact with the walls.īut what about the floating head? Because that's actually the jaw-dropping part. The base plate (batteries included) serves as a counterweight to keep the wheels acting against the lower half of the sphere. The RC robotic ball uses a gyroscope to determine which way is down and two wheels to move the sphere from inside. When he learnt about the filmmakers trying to build a rolling droid, he knew the right people for the job.īB-8 and the Sphero are likely to share a very similar internal mechanism. Disney CEO Bob Iger himself was Sphero's mentor inside the company. The closest thing out there is the Sphero ball, and turns out that Sphero was one of ten start-ups funded by Disney's first accelerator program in 2014.
So, how does BB-8 work? What kind of black magic powers it? Well, what we know for sure is that it's not driven by a hamster as some theories suggest. The Pinewood Studios' Creature Shop took on the challenge and eventually succeeded at building and puppeteering BB-8 in the film. How do you bring alive a droid like that? CGI would have been the logical choice, but J.J.
The idea of a rolling robot was cool but complex. According to Episode VII producer Kathleen Kennedy, the film crew looked a lot at early concept art by McQuarrie during pre-production and some unused concepts have made it to The Force Awakens. In an interview with Star Wars Insider, the artist responsible for the original trilogy concept art, said that he originally envisioned R2-D2 as a rolling droid. It certainly wasn't a Ralph McQuarrie illustration, but the concept might be his. The first known sketch of BB-8 was revealed during Star Wars Celebration 2015. To achieve that, they used as many practical effects as possible, and BB-8 was no exception. Abrams wanted Episode VII to feel organic and tactile, closer in spirit to the original movies. The original trilogy, which mainly used real sets and props, had a special vibe that was missing in the prequel trilogy. Abrams went old school during production of The Force Awakens.
0 kommentar(er)
