Star Wars the Last Jedi

As always, thanks to my local library, I was able to read both the Art of Star Wars the last Jedi, and the Visual Dictionary for the Last Jedi (and the novelization too)

Both of these were in my opinion a bit paltry, without giving full coverage to some of the areas that I would have liked to see more of.  Part of the problem I suppose is that the editors are constrained both by the need to make the book under a certain maximum page count, and also hold back some material for future books... no reason to give away all 100 of a certain space ship design, or all the aliens.  This was further compounded by the "twist" in the Force Awakens that Rey is the force sensitive one, and not Finn.  So all of the art from that section was relegated to this art book, which is more than a bit unfair.

Anyway here are some highlight images from the Visual Dictionary:

Cool Resistance soldier outfit

Layered helmet

"Heavier" version of the standard rebel pilot uniform

Bridge crew you never saw before they were obliterated 

Ships you never saw before they were obliterated

Cool alien

And here are some images from the Art of Star Wars: The Last Jedi:

These Resistance soldiers are pretty awesome, particularly the guy in the lower middle.  I could certainly see these influencing some future 15mm scifi soldiers

This version was rejected as being "too heroic", which makes it suitable for use elsewhere! 

Horizontal version of the bomber

Jedi Texts

Higher tech version of the caretakers, would be interesting aliens

Rey of Sunshine

It has been rather hot here (40°+ every day), so not much hobby has been accomplished.

However, it was my beloved wife's birthday, and I did manage to convert and paint a Star Wars Rey figure for her.  I used a Hasslefree miniature as the base, which with the correct head selection and some work to the staff and robes makes for a passable Rey figure.

Pose is a bit hard to photograph

I nearly had a heart attack when my daughter started shaking the wrapped box to try and figure out what was inside. 

Bit of a hasty superglue frosting on the base here

Now contained in a golf ball box

Unfortunately I ran out of matte spray after completing the figure, so I did not get the Inquisitional team finished, but they are nearly there.

 I did also help to "run" a murder mystery dinner party for her birthday, and wrote an additional character for it, so I guess that counts for hobby as well, but there really is not anything to show for that.

Star Wars: The Visual Encylopedia

As long time readers of this blog probably already know, I tend to get every Star Wars book that the local library gets.

The latest I have read is Star Wars: the Visual Encyclopedia (2017) This is a newer version of what is now a series of books (mostly labeled visual Dictionary).  It appears to be complete as of its publication date, and as such has material from the third season of Rebels and from Rogue One.  Content (other than the pictures) is rather slight, and many of the pictures are very small as there are so many per page.  For instance, I have wanted to see the frieze from Chancellor Palpatine's office in detail for a while, but in this book it was only about 1 inch by 4 inches high!  Even with high resolution printing, that did not help much.

An interesting part of the book for me is how much material comes from the two cartoons, and further how very good it looks in the book.  It makes me suspect that the Clone Wars tv show in particular is actually much higher visual quality than it appears on TV, making me wonder about DVD or other ways of watching it where the sharpness of the images come through.

A few useful pictures (which are probably worth viewing full size)

Various alphabets from the SW universe

Blasters (pistols)

Blasters (long gun)

Rogue One

As I mentioned in my holiday report, like most of you I saw Rogue One over the holidays (which now seem long gone).  When I was back at a computer the following week, I perused the local library's collection of Rogue One books, and ordered up the lot of them.  The novels have not turned up yet, but I have read both the Star Wars: Rogue One: Ultimate Visual Guide [Subtitle: the search for more colons] and the Art of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.  Both are lovely as you would expect in the Lucasarts/Disney tradition, and are very well made books (as they ought to be for the cover price!)  However, I was a little disappointed that neither book had much in the way of set design/photographs which is what I really wanted to see, nor much detailed costuming. I suppose that there may be a future book that will cover the costuming and locations, but it seems like content that could have been included here, and neither book had much of anything anything about Cassian at the Rings of Kaferne, which I suppose is because that scene was added very late in production.

Here are some inspiring sample pictures from them. (click to enlarge)

Imperial Tank officer

Jedha Street Patrol

Jedha Bounty Hunter

Jedha pilgrims

Chirrut costume variation

LA apparently made over 500 pieces of space ship art to settle on the U-Wing

Jedha characters

Stormtrooper confrontation

Vinyl Sampling - Part Four Abdul Goldberg

As mentioned in Part One, following Suber's lead, I selected a few Star Wars Miniatures for conversion to use in 40k.

This final figure is special, because I chose him to become the most infamous of Rogue Trader Characters, Abdul Goldberg.  Abdul has been all over the internet lately because the facebook group The Emporium of Rogue Dreams had a contest to create the figure, and Rick Priestly even picked a winner. 

Anyway, my Abdul Goldberg is made from this figure:

I cut off the original head, added a belt and a dagger, and changed his mon calimari wrist into a controller of some kind.  I have liked the look of a keffiyeh scarf for a while, and it seemed in keeping with the background, so he got one. Abdul seemed like the sort of fellow that would have a big belt buckle, so he got one of those too (it is a little hard to see, but it has Alpha Gamma written on it in Attic Greek letters).  The white uniform was inspired by watching the trailer for Rogue One for the 100th time.

That concludes this round of Vinyl Sampling, but I am sure that there will eventually be more... I do after all, have a large number of excess SW figures...

Vinyl Sampling - Part Three

As mentioned in Part One, following Suber's lead, I selected a few Star Wars Miniatures for conversion to use in 40k.

This time I used the following figures as a base:

The first guy is sort of a cheat, since all I did with him is repaint. The base figure is quite good, although a bit slender for 40k, being more "true scale".

The second guy got a new head and a scarf, which transformed him from an alien into a gangly pilot.  As I worked on his helmet, I was inspired by a fairly obvious source...

Bases are unfinished, but will eventually match all the other Inq28 figures.  I did go back and paint them black, which helps the figures look better in the short term (or given my project speed, long term) before they are rebased.

More to come in Part Four with a special character.

Vinyl Sampling - Part two

As mentioned in Part One, following Suber's lead, I selected a few Star Wars Miniatures for conversion to use in 40k.

The first figures I would like to show off are two "gangster" types I created from the following figures:

I cut the alien heads off of both of them, and in both cases replaced the left hand with a GW knife hand.

I also added a sort of a "purse" to the larger figure, as he needed to have something to carry his undoubtedly stolen goods in, and a shoulder pad.

The shorter guy got a new head, a sort of ribbed collar or closed hood, as well as a redone chest plate.

As you can see, neither has been based, and that will happen sometime in the future, and will follow my now standard basing scheme.

More to come in Part Three with the two pilot figures, and in Part Four a special character.

Vinyl sampling - Part one

At the beginning of March 2016, Suber had a great post on his blog Old School Workshop about using Star Wars miniatures as bodies for Inquisitor 28/Rogue Trader/Necromunda conversions.  For those of you not in the know, Star Wars miniatures was a collectible miniatures game from Wizards of the Coast, which used a similar system to the Star Wars D20 system roll playing game, and allowed for quick, point based skirmished on a gridded board.  The "common" figures from the collectible packs were available cheaply on Ebay, and I ended up with a few figures.  Well, maybe more than a few...

Collection status as of ~2008

On ebay, the Star Wars figures were often sold in "x4" lots, where more than one of the common or uncommon figures were grouped together in lots, meaning that I ended up with quite a few duplicates, often far in excess of what I needed or wanted. The figures themselves are often well sculpted, if a bit thin in comparison to the rather "heroic" GW figures. After reviewing Suber's success with chopping and repainting the figures, I got out my miniatures and the bitz box, and set to work.

The first five, prior to sculpting and painting

Over the next couple days, I will be showing the results off, which I think went quite nicely.

Star Wars Costumes: The Original Trilogy

 Over the last few weeks, I have been very slowly working my way through Star Wars Costumes: The Original Trilogy, provided as usual by my local library. Originally, I got this book with the intent of showing it to my kids, but it had rather fewer pictures of completed costumes than I expected, and the text was much more interesting, so I ended up reading it.  Far too large for bedtime reading, (being coffee table sized), it took me a while to get through.  The book is lavishly printed on high gloss paper, which makes it hard to photograph, but it has a ton of interesting information (as one might expect) about Star Wars costuming, but also about costume design generally, which I think allows it to carry over into design for Inq28 figures, or role playing games more generally.   Other than reminding one that John Mollo is a genius, and that George Lucas has very specific ideas on how things look, it also really made me think about costume choice and design in a way that I had not before.

Below are a few pictures of things which I thought might be interesting for future reference. The pictures were taken at night with my cellphone, so they are not the best (plus the glossy paper), but I think you get the idea (and can click on them to enlarge in any case).

Different rebel helmets

These are rebel helmets from A New Hope, which show the various variants for different pilots. The two red and white ones I find to be particularly interesting.

This Lando design needs to be made for space roleplay

Lando went through a few designs before they ended up with space pimp, but the picture above seems like he would fit into the 40k universe nicely as some sort of governor or rogue trader.

Pig faced Orcs in SPAAACE

Is that first picture of the Gamorian a pig faced orc or what? Not even a blaster on him.

Rebel Techs

There were several sections about rebel technicians from the Hoth base, and the RotJ scene where Admiral Akbar is addressing the fleet. Unfortunately there are not too many pictures of the concepts from this project, since the discussion is excellent, and regular rebels are fairly underrepresented generally.

Original Akbar design, showing his helmet and a more complicated yoke for his outfit

Another interesting part of the book was discussing the use of military styling vs. civilian styling to emphasize the warlike nature of a character and the end of conflict at the end of RotJ. Specifically cargo pockets were used for "warlike" clothing, and no pockets or smooth flat pockets for "peace" clothing. This made me think about how we adorn Inq28 characters, because most of the bitz we have for figure construction are from soldiers, and they end up making Inquisitors look like they are in the middle of the battle of Verdun, when at least some times, and for some characters, they should look like they are going to court instead.  Something to consider next time you are putting a figure together.