Month: August 2020

Galactic Style Guide – Flightsuits and Jumpsuits

Welcome to your monthly installment of the Galactic Style Guide, where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! This time around, we’re taking a look at the kinds of flightsuits, jumpsuits, and utilitarian coveralls typically worn by mechanics, pilots, spacers, and other common types of citizens.
Considering the ‘spacey’ and often militaristic setting, it should come as no surprise that the inhabitants of the Galaxy Far, Far Away frequently wear these kinds of garments. And why shouldn’t they?: space is cold, and maintaining spacecraft is dirty work! However, in the original Star Wars, we don’t actually see any examples until we reach the Cantina, which is fitting as it’s a style associated with pilots. Let’s start out with some actual spacesuits:

flightsuits-variations
Ohwun De Maal, a generic Duros (New Essential Guide to Alien Species), BoShek, Bossk; Trandoshan mercenaries.

Continue reading “Galactic Style Guide – Flightsuits and Jumpsuits”

Finding Your Place in the Galaxy

I was recently sent this video of the ‘Mando march’ parade held at Star Wars Celebration ’17. Since social gatherings are now few and far between in these days of COVID, I wanted to share it with you here, not only as a visual aid for my points in this essay, but also just for a vicarious dose (albeit virtual) of the con experience for which many are currently in withdrawal.
After watching, I had two (okay, three) reactions:

1) Man, the Mando costuming community is bloody Inclusive. There are folks of ALL ages, abilities, body types, and (I’m guessing, since they’re all helmeted) races, genders, and sexual orientations on display in that parade, all with their love of all things Klingon Mandalorian proudly on display. Good on them! With that said, though… Continue reading “Finding Your Place in the Galaxy”

More galactic whittling – Republic cruiser

I was always intrigued by the Radiant VII, the first starship we see on-screen in the Prequels.

radiant7
The obvious Corellian Engineering Corporation design elements to connect it with the Tantive IV, the red paintjob, and that sweet, sweet Ben Burtt engine sound – what’s not to like?

I was reminded recently that MicroMachines included this craft—technically a Consular-class cruiser—as part of the Action Fleet line back in ’99, but they’re way out of my budget on eBay, so I opted to while away a few hours of quarantine in a galactic-folksy way and make my own!20200814_130147 Continue reading “More galactic whittling – Republic cruiser”

Project: Jedi ‘SCUBA tank’

This project has spent far too much time in the WIP drawer, but I’m happy to say that after a recent bit of prime scavenging, it’s finally finished up!
A99-finished20200805-1.jpgAfter assembling my first functional kit (Silo, washout Jedi from the Agricultural Corps) for Star Wars living history purposes in 2016, I first got the idea to add some Jedi accoutrements about two years ago. I was using the impression to teach mini survival workshops, and since Silo didn’t have a lightsaber, I figured he should at least have some recognizable Jedi gear in his belt pouches to help sell the impression. I reckoned the Aquata A99 breather would be a good fit, since I could use it as a prop to underline the first element of the Rule of Threes—you can’t last three minutes without breathable air.
I couldn’t wait to get started on a new project, so I pulled out my reference books and…immediately ran into a roadblock. Continue reading “Project: Jedi ‘SCUBA tank’”

Building the Inner Persona: Galactic Idioms

As we’ve touched on before, one of the last stages (in Townsends’ model) of putting together a living history impression is the ongoing process of building the ‘inner persona’. This means going beyond the superficial ‘outer persona’ (one’s clothes and gear), and working to inhabit the mental headspace of your chosen individual – for our purposes, a citizen of the Galaxy Far, Far Away. While this level of detail is probably not necessary if you just want to be a GFFA reenactor, if you’re interested in using your impression as an historic interpreter—especially a first-person one—it can be very helpful to have at least a few in-universe sayings stashed away in your mental ‘word-hoard’. We may take such phrases for granted in our everyday life, but they can really help sell the illusion when speaking in-character!
We’ll begin with variations on familiar phrases from Earth.

for “bull in a china shop”: “A nerf in an antiquities bazaar” (I, Jedi, Chapter 6) Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? 😉

for “making a mountain out of a molehill: “making meters out of microns” (X-Wing: Rogue Squadron, Ch4)

Continue reading “Building the Inner Persona: Galactic Idioms”