By: Mandy J Watson Posted: 4 May 2015 Category: Features

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Every May the 4th for the past 14 years the geek community has celebrated Star Wars culture with puns, memes, and jokes. This year was no exception - even Twitter got in on the action with emojis, which resulted in an explosion in the day's stream. Plus, the world's biggest LEGO Millennium Falcon was built in Australia and Vanity Fair went behind the scenes of the new movie with the help of photographer Annie Leibovitz's lens.


Unsurprisingly the Internet exploded this morning with memes, trivia, teasers, and cartoons due to the annual May the 4th Star Wars celebration. We've rounded up some of the more interesting bits and pieces in case you missed anything (or were deliberately avoiding everything in order to get some work done!).


Twitter Introduces Star Wars Emojis
We're not particularly fans of emojis but they're becoming inescapable on social media. Last month Twitter announced that it had made three available for fans to use, with more to come later this year in celebration of the new movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which will be out in movie theatres in December.


In future the first three - C-3PO, a stormtrooper, and BB-8 - will automatically be added to a tweet when their corresponding hashtags are used but today that was widened to the May The Fourth celebrations: if you use the hashtag #MayThe4thBeWithYou you get a stormtrooper, #MayTheFourthBeWithYou results in C-3PO, and #HappyStarWarsDay gives you BB-8. If you use other hashtags, such as #StarWarsDay or #StarWars, you're likely to get a stormtrooper or C-3PO.



Make Your Own BB-8 Droid With A Sphero, Some Magnets, And A Few Other Supplies
This recent DIY project by industrial designer Christian Poulsen is doing the rounds again today. He figured out how to modify a standard v1.0 Sphero robotic rolling toy into a BB-8 droid. You can see a little video of it below:


The project is documented on his personal web site and on the Make web site but if you don't feel you have the DIY ability to make your own you can wait a few months for the official one from Sphero.



The World's Biggest LEGO Millennium Falcon
LEGO Master Builders Chris and Dan Steininger spent two days building the world's largest LEGO Millennium Falcon with the help of shoppers at Westfield Southland Mall in Melbourne, Australia, to celebrate Star Wars Day down under. The ship was built using around 250 000 LEGO bricks and is almost five metres in width. Here is a time lapse of the work:


The builders also constructed two two-metre-high Imperial TIE fighters and used around 80 000 LEGO bricks for each one. You can find out more about the project at CNet.



Humour, Trivia, Flashbacks, And (Potential) Memes
Here's a selection of fun posts that have been making the rounds today. Everyone from @Loki_Lego to the ISS research team jumped in to celebrate.




Art(s) And Crafts And Comics
There have been some great comics and comics teasers posted today, as well as a cool flashback to an animation experiment from earlier this month.


The image above is Tatooine Speeder by Michael Lanning, which he posted on Dribble earlier this year. It's an animated image so click through to Dribble to see the full effect.


The image above is Boba In Borderlands by Stain-Art on DeviantArt. It's a couple of years old but still a great artwork.





Behind The Scenes Of Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Annie Leibovitz Photographs The Cast for Vanity Fair
Peter Mayhew, who plays Chewbacca in the Star Wars movies, kicked off this morning with a few Twitter posts that were a selection of Chewbacca jokes and general Star Wars Day celebrations but then he posted two behind-the-scenes teasers that started generating buzz about the new movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens


The context became much clearer later today when the US came online - the photos were related to a shoot that photographer Annie Leibovitz did for the latest issue of Vanity Fair, which will be out digitally on 7 May and physically on 12 May. The photos were taken at Pinewood Studios (see below) and you can see some teasers here and here.

The cover features John Boyega, BB-8, Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca, Daisy Ridley, and Harrison Ford and some of the interior photos feature characters that haven't been seen before - Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), CGI-created pirate Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong'o), and Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) as well as a selection of minor alien characters.


The news didn't stop there, however. This afternoon reports started surfacing that Episode VIII will be filmed at Pinewood Studios outside London, where parts of a number of Bond films, as well as Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3, Full Metal Jacket, Batman (the 1989 Tim Burton version), The Fifth Element, Event Horizon, The Dark Knight, Children Of Men, the three The Hobbit movies, X-Men: First Class, and numerous Marvel Cinematic Universe movies - to name a few - were filmed, as was part of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Filming for the eighth episode is expected to start in 2016 and the movie will be written and directed by Rian Johnson, who write and directed Brick and Looper.

Happy Star Wars Day!


Tags: #arts_and_culture, #comics, #lego, #screen, #star_wars

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