16 Facts About The Freemaker Adventures 1 Week Before the UK Premiere!
In exactly 2 weeks Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures will be premiering in the UK on Monday 17th October at 4pm on Disney XD. To prepare you for the long anticipated event, Disney revealed an exciting new feature which includes exclusive behind-the-scenes interviews using numbers with co-creators Bob Roth and Bill Motz on the intergalactic adventure! Check it out…
Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures is set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. This action comedy series follows the Freemakers, a family of sibling scavengers who operate a salvage and repair shop in space. The series will also feature familiar characters and locations from the filmed Star Wars saga.
Are you interested to find out more about the new intergalactic adventure? Well, wait no more! Number crunch with the cast and crew as we head behind the scenes of the exciting new space adventure.
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Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures follows the story of three siblings: Rowan, Kordi and Zander Freemaker. “This is their story,” reveals the show’s co-creator, Bob Roth.
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Rowan Freemaker is a Force-sensitive 12-year- old with a thirst for adventure and a clear sense of right and wrong. When he discovers the existence of an ancient artifact called the Kyber Saber, he begins a quest that will lead the Freemakers into an epic struggle against the Empire!
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Kordi Freemaker is the brains of Freemaker Salvage and Repair; the salvage business that the Freemakers own. Kordi is a smart, quick-witted 16-year- old who can easily talk her way out of any trouble!
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At 18 years old, Zander Freemaker is the oldest sibling in the family. Zander is an ace pilot and a charming rogue with an encyclopedic knowledge of spaceships. He’s a self-taught starship builder who rarely follows instruction, but comes up with some ingenious creations!
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Show creators Bill Motz and Bob Roth admit that it takes up to 365 days to create each episode of Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures. “It takes us around a year to go from the very inception of the germ of a story idea to a fully-completed episode,” explains Bob Roth.
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“The sun never sets on the Freemaker Adventures,” chuckles Bill Motz. “People are working on the show 24/7! We work on the show in California with the Lucasfilm Story Group, but the LEGO Group’s US headquarters is in Connecticut, on the East Coast. Plus, we get input from the LEGO HQ in Denmark and our other production studios. Some of the animation is put together in China and some of the animation work happens in India. It’s a global show for sure!”
In the show’s story, the Freemakers are searching for eight pieces of the Kyber Saber. “There’s a little Kyber crystal in the hilt, and I believe there are seven additional pieces,” reveals Bob Roth. “It’s up to Rowan to find them all using the Force!”
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R0-GR [aka Roger] is a B1 battle droid who lives with the Freemaker family. “R0-GR is a super friendly but slightly misunderstood battle droid left over from The Clone Wars,” admits Matthew Wood, who voices the character. “He’s been programmed to be the best buddy to Rowan, but he’s not the brightest bulb in the batch.”
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Star Wars fans can expect to see tons of kooky new creatures in all shapes and sizes. “Talk to no-one with eight or more eyes,” Kordi warns Rowan in one episode of the animated series!
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The show’s creative team spent months working on the names of the characters. “Coming up with characters in the Star Wars universe is the hardest part of the job,” admits Bob Roth. “We came up with dozens of names before we hit on Freemaker!”
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There are seven writers who work on Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures. “We all work together to come up with the stories in the show,” reveals Bill Motz.
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The American voice cast of the series is obsessed with LEGO! “How much LEGO do I have at home?” ponders Vanessa Lengies, who voices Kordi in the show. “Tons! Basically, my entire 700-square- foot apartment is covered in LEGO sets.”
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There are 13 episodes in the first season of Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures. The premiere episode is called A Hero Discovered and the finale’s title is Return Of The Kyber Saber. Ooh!
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Every four weeks, the voice cast usually head into the recording booth to record their lines for the series. “It’s a lot of fun in there,” admits Nicolas Cantu, who voices Rowan Freemaker.
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Each recording session with the cast lasts up to four hours, or 240 minutes. “It takes us between three to four hours each time,” reveals Nicolas. “And it never gets boring!”
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Keep your ears open for the epic music of Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures. “We used an 83-piece orchestra,” explains Bill Motz. “They are playing live, which was incredible to hear. Michael Kramer is the name of our composer; he wrote an amazing score for the show. We couldn’t be happier!”
Note: The Freemaker Adventures series is not Canon!
Founder of SWNN, MNN and The Cantina forums.
Born on April 24, 1980.
By the way, if someone’s interested in my opinion, this show is very fun and totally underrated. Or maybe not even underrated, people who have actually seen it loved it, mostly, but too many people just hate it because it’s LEGO.
There’s no way it takes an entire year to create an episode for this thing. Maybe like for the whole series, but you’d think the fact that they’re Legos, making a new character or vehicle would be as easy as snapping pieces and texturing an old minifigure. That would blow my mind if a whole year was the case.
I’m sure you know better than they.
They are talking about their entire process. Idea gen/creative, writing, animation, voice recording, sound design… all of it. And they would be working on basically all of them at the same time. As in, this time last year they started the 1st ep, four weeks later they started the 2nd, then four weeks later the 3rd etc. Or something like that. With any large project you need some way of systemizing the workflow. That kind of workflow keeps things streamlined and orderly and means you can work on similar parts of different eps at the same time (parts with the same backdrops etc.).
Also, this show is definitely digitally animated. No stop motion.
Here is a great interview with Bob Roth and Bill Motz discussing the Freemaker Adventures series https://youtu.be/MLWgwwZL8nw
They should make lego star wars series canonish. You might just ignore them completely canon-wise, so that you never see references in other canon materials if you don’t like it, or just consider it, if you like. either ways the official canonisation would not make any problems IMO
Then why does it matter if they are canon? Just enjoy them.
If they make them canon then they have to remove the more outlandish and cartoonish comedy elements common to the LEGO series. It’s probably best they don’t as no doubt it would cause legions of thirty and fortysomethings to start crying about DIsney dumbing down Star Wars.
Personally I am a bit tired of the Lego stuff now. I used to enjoy the video games but the novelty has worn off. It’s been over a decade since the Star Wars LEGO franchise graduated beyond just the toy sets and while the first few animated shorts were amusing, the joke is now old. Still, if it appeals to little kids, who likely don’t care a shit about canon and weren’t around a decade ago, then I guess that’s all that matters.
that’s… true…
I wish they’d announce season 2. That is, I’m hoping there’s plans for it.
Man….slow news week already (and it’s only Tuesday). Trust me, anyone in the UK who wants to see 1st series of Freemaker has done so already; mind-numbingly antiquated model that doesn’t allow global simulcast of content such as this. To misquote my inner Ian Malcolm: Life finds a way to watch stuff…
… all this and yet there’s still no in-canon novel/movie/show about the Old Republic.
Thank God