The trills, chirps and whistles emitted by everyone’s favourite Star Wars droid are very similar to the sorts of sounds made by budgerigars, furthermore, blue and white is one of the most popular colour combinations for budgies, and they also have somewhat dome-shaped heads that they can rotate a full 360 degrees.
Is there any documentary anywhere that suggests budgies were one of the influences that shaped Artoo, or is it just coincidence?
Seriously, though, the sounds are so uncannily budgie-like that my pet bird flew down and landed on the keyboard of my laptop when I was playing them, which is an unusually bold move for him (He’s tame, but usually very wary of all unfamiliar objects)
The only specific things I recall about the sound design for R2 is that it blends output from an analog synth with recordings of a baby cooing and chirping and some of Burtt’s own vocalizations.
It’s *not *just you, though. There are scads of YouTube videos of people’s parakeets (budgies) doing R2D2 impressions, and at least one African Grey (parrot) named R2. Many people have seen the similarity, just not, it seems, the creators.
You threw me when you said, “everyone’s favourite Star Wars droid”. I kept trying to figure out how you could even think that a budgie sounded like C3PO.
It’s the other way around. Parrakeet is the foreign for budgie.
(actually, all budgies are parrakeets, but not all parrakeets are budgies. Budgies are a species. Parrakeets are a collection of many species of small parrot, including budgies.)
For reference, here’s a video of some budgies making natural budgie sounds, that I think demonstrate some of the similarities I’m talking about (it’s important to note that this video still doesn’t portray the full range of possible budgie sounds.
