Mr. Roboto?

The dance styles for the male are similar to the female, but the moves themselves appear very different. Cosmo Hom is the performer for the male dance moves, as well as some combat actions, like ranged weapons, the Force powers.

Cosmo has done motion capture work on over 40 titles, including Tribes and Syphon Filter 1 and 2 as the main character, Gabe Logan. Cosmo has an incredibly varied performance background.

"I've been performing since I was twelve," says Cosmo. "I used to be a clown at Ringling Brothers. One of my side jobs is teaching circus skills in the summertime, tightwire, walking globe, Spanish web, unicycling, and balance routines. I've studied Jazz, tap, and ballet. I've done a lot of specialty dancing shows. I've been dancing for a long time, since I was 16."

Cosmo is a unique and fascinating individual. That's how people he has worked with with characterize him. Not only has Cosmo worked as both a circus performer and professional dancer, but he is also an accomplished photographer, a mime, a martial artist, an actor, a stuntman, a rigger and lighting designer for theater productions, a puppeteer, and knows quite a bit about the technical side of computer graphics and animation. Cosmo has a confident and relaxed presence, but isn't too serious. He's a cutup, and with all of those performance skills at his fingertips, you never know what he's going to do next. Every so often, he breaks into a mime routine, like "Man Walking Against the Wind," and despite the joke about everyone disliking mimes, it's absolutely impossible to dislike Cosmo.

The dance styles the SWG team and Cosmo draw upon include jazz, ballet, lyrical, and even some more contemporary pop-n-lock style. Dare I hope to see a hint in the final game of my favorite 80's dance, the Robot? I dare!

Speaking of robots, or more accurately, droids, Cosmo just missed his chance to play one in The Phantom Menace.

"I was very disappointed because I knew someone who was working on Episode One, and they were actually looking for me to do the droid animations, and I found out about that a year after it came out. He said, we were looking for you.

"I could have been a droid!"

Jedi For a Day

Each of Cosmo's moves today is performed masterfully. His lyrical and ballet styles, executed with elegance and precision, are remarkable to watch, but aren't simply stock moves performed as directed. Cosmo is always offering suggestions on how each can be altered to achieve the exact results Jake Rodgers is looking for. This process of hybridization produces distinctive styles that will give SWG it's own flavor.

Besides dance moves, Cosmo also performs some combat and martial arts moves for the game, including actions with ranged weapons like rocket launchers and blasters.

And, of course, Cosmo gets to be a Jedi for the day, too.

Force powers have a whole set of special motion capture actions associated with them. Jake spends extra time working with Cosmo on these. As has been said, one of Star Wars Galaxies' goals is to allow the player to feel as if he or she were a part of the movies. Capturing the right amount of drama for each Force move is crucial.

Many Force moves are recorded, including one of the best-known Ben Kenobi moments, the Force Suggestion. In fact, Cosmo even says the line each time he attempts the action: "These are not the droids you're looking for."

Jake and Cosmo work a while on another Force action, which calls for Cosmo to carve out a wide protective circle, stretching his arms to their limits behind him to close a wide circle around him. For one of the aggressive Force actions, Cosmo arcs his taut arms through the air as if he were gathering an unseen energy, focusing it before him. His arms tremble with the invisible Force as they reached a center point in front of him. Then, with a great thrust, his arms seem to fire the energy at his enemy.

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