In case you all missed it, a plethora of new Star Wars information made the round this week. Perhaps the most exciting of which is some new information and art for the upcoming Star Wars: Rebels show from the creative minds that brought up Clone Wars. The show will be heavily influenced by one of the original Star Wars concept artists, Ralph McQuarrie. The full press release is here.

In Episode VII news, Kathleen Kennedy has spoken a great deal recently about how progress on the movie is coming along and their focus in creating the movie. She not only emphasizes their focus on characters, but also a return to the use of practical effects (merged with digital ones).  As she puts it…

“The story and characters are all we’re talking about right now. We have an amazing team at ILM, who can create fantastic effects, but if we don’t have a great story and characters, the effects mean nothing. I do think making huge popular culture – and I’ve had the good fortune to be a part of a lot it – is really hard to do and get right. And if you don’t spend the time you need on developing characters, and finding stories, complicated stories, the audience gets tired because they think they’re seeing the same thing again and again.

Looking at all the Star Wars movies and getting a feel for what even some of the early films did, combining real locations and special effects – that’s something we’re looking very seriously at. So we’re going to find some very cool locations that we’re going to use in support of Episode VII. And I think we’re probably going to end up using every single tool in the toolbox to create the look of these movies. [That toolbox includes] using model makers; it’s using real droids; it’s taking advantage of artwork that you actually can touch and feel. And we want to do that in combination with CG effects. We figure that’s what will make it real.”

In other fantastic news, John Williams is back for the next three movies! He’s excited to be a part of Star Wars yet again and think Kathleen and J.J. are two of the best people to be in charge of the series.

The fifth season of Clone Wars was also given a Blu-ray release date of October 15th alongside a “Complete” edition containing all 5 seasons. Still no word on what’s going to happen with those “lost” episodes… but oh well. The full press release is here.

That’s your weekly Star Wars round-up for this week folks! Hope you’re all as excited as I am!