April 2022 – Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy

Galactic Style Guide – Color I

Welcome to the first entry in our ‘Galactic Style Guide counterpoint’ subseries! Where the GSG could be summed up as ‘how to look Star Warsy’, these alternate posts are meant to highlight and remedy common mistakes that can make an outfit look Not Star Warsy!
From the very beginning, the world of Star Wars has always had a very specific visual style. Unlike the matinee serials it was inspired by (in which heroes wore shiny, silver bodysuits and enemies wore bright gold and scarlet robes), the Galaxy Far Far Away was much more grounded in its visuals. While characters might fly starships across the galaxy and duel with swords made of pure energy, they didn’t dress futuristic. Chief costume designer John Mollo’s mix-and-matching of real world historical styles (Russian/Japanese peasantry, American cowboys, medieval gowns, World Wars military uniforms, etc) for inspiration provided the solid and believable foundation from which the series’ visuals would evolve. As part of this grounded approach, most characters tend to wear costumes in a very specific range of colors:

“The color scheme basically was the baddies would be black or gray, with the exception of the stormtroopers, and the goodies should be in earth colors—fawns and whites… Mollo tried to keep the colors muted wherever possible. Color is very, very difficult to use. Bright colors don’t work well on film, particularly reds and blues. George always goes for the authentic….and if it’s all garish color, it doesn’t work.” (Brandon Alinger. Star Wars Costumes – the Original Trilogy, 2014. p 15.)

This rule does not mean, however, that your outer persona need be limited to earth tones and shades of gray – as we saw a few weeks ago, there are tons of examples of characters wearing every color of the rainbow (especially in the pre-Imperial period)! However, if you noticed, almost all of them had something in common. As we read above, the main rule for creating authentic in-universe clothing is simple: Avoid. Garish. Color.: thus, if a garment is a fully-saturated hue, it is much less likely to ‘read’ as being authentic to the Star Wars setting. Let’s take a look at what I mean.

unSWarzy colors fixed using digital wizardry, within!

What’s the deal with Tatooine currency?

In Episode I, Anakin Skywalker wins the Boonta Eve Classic podrace, which we’ve discussed before. Following the race, he and Qui-Gon sell his podracer, go home to mom, and Ani exclaims, “look at all the money we have!” Here’s the thing – the money Anakin hands her appears to be a stack of Republic credits.

On his way out of town (in a deleted scene), he also gives his old friend Jira her own stack of Republic credits:

We all remember Republic credits, right?

Star Wars Color Theory

As I was preparing an upcoming post, I started wondering which characters in the Saga wore colors beyond earthtones, black, white, or shades of gray. I started leafing through my Visual Dictionaries and several hours later I had created the following rainbow of characters. These are presented in chronological order within each color band, and as we cans see, Trisha Biggar’s costumes for the Prequels are FAR more colorful than those of the Galactic Civil War period. If I do a third collection for all the blacks, whites, grays, and earthtone characters, I’m sure there will be many more OT characters represented.

Show me The cooler end of the spectrum!

Coming soon: a new way to exercise your ‘Star Wars eye’

Whenever I go to the thrift store, I usually cruise the racks on the lookout for certain materials—chiefly linen, wool, and silk—to be cannibalized into items for my various reenacting kits. After years and years of doing this, I can often identify a piece’s fiber content just by walking or thumbing past it, with no need to check the tag. When I go thrift-shopping with my wife, she will often remark and wonder on how I’m able to do this, and the answer is simple: trial and error, reinforced by years of practice. It’s a kind of exercise, and I’ve simply trained my ‘fabric eye’ to recognize one cloth from another.

(This is the same type of practiced skillset that allows me to go into the woods with the Middle-earth Reenactment Society and confidently pick a stalk of nettle or milkweed out of a thicket of other dead, gray plant stalks when we’re in need of some wild cordage on a trek).

What does this have to do with star wars, you ask?

Project: Naboo pilot’s helmet part 3

Welcome back! This is the third and final part of my buildlog for attempting to scratchbuild an N1 starfighter pilot’s helmet. When we left off, I had the scaling figured out and patterns drafted, and the side pieces and earmuff details created. Now it’s time to craft the helmet’s shell itself.
To get an idea of how the helmet would look, I transferred the patterns to lightweight cardboard and taped everything together to make a rough mockup of the whole assembly to check the general shape:

This was bonded along the seams (inside and outside) with brown paper bag and PVA glue (left) before brushing both exterior and interior with Bondo resin (center):

Continue reading to see the Step-by-step to completion!

Project: Naboo pilot’s helmet part 2

Hello there! Welcome back to my buildlog for recreating an N1 starfighter helmet – let’s not waste any time and get straight into the process!
In my last post I determined how big the components of the helmet would be, and decided on a method for construction (Pepakura). While I originally wanted to make all parts of the helmet using Pep, I decided that the Y-shaped-part-that-holds-the-earmuff was complicated enough that I should make them out of something more substantial.

I first considered making a mold and casting them in resin, and when I want to feel like a real prototyper, that means carving a positive from amber ‘victory wax’. Well, after a few days I had built up the shape pretty close – I figured I would cast the pieces fairly roughly, and then do the fine shaping on the casts, since resin doesn’t heat up and deform in-hand. However…

Upgrading the Rebel persona – Naboo pilot’s helmet part 1

_{Before we get started, a quick scheduling note: the project that follows was a long and involved process, involving many different skillsets (including—but not limited to—pattern drafting, sculpting, casting, and woodcarving). Instead of trying to cram all that into one mega post, I’ve decided to split it up into three parts, and rather than dole them out separately across most of this month, I’ll be posting all three today (we’ll return to regular programming next week). With all that out of the way, let’s get started!}

With little else to occupy my time while backpacking thousands of miles last year, I spent a large part of my AT thruhike thinking about ways I could improve my various Star Wars reenacting/living history kits when I got back home. Along the lines of adding a Q2 holdout blaster to my Rebel-on-Naboo impression, I wondered if there was anything else I could do to help anchor my kit to that specific planet. While the popular conception of Naboo is of a peaceful, pacifist culture, that’s not exactly the case. While they may not have a proper standing army, the Royal Naboo Security Forces are plenty prominent in the pre-Imperial period and have plenty of hardware to incorporate into a kit. Just as Earth military gear of past generations can trickle down to the civilian market as surplus and family heirlooms lay forgotten in attics, I figured something similar could happen on Naboo as well, especially following their effective demilitarization under the New Order.
While I was never really onboard with the ‘pearl hats’ of the Royal Guards or the Security Guards and Officers’ visored caps, the headgear of one RSF branch felt like it had more Star Wars-y pedigree than the others: the Naboo Starfighter Corps. Their flight helmet is so iconic yet has such a grounded design I thought it might be fun to add one to my kit…and after supper one night in our tent I made a quick doodle of what a Naboo partizan might look like wearing one:

And once I make a character sketch, it’s all over – I *have* to make it a reality!

Once we returned home, I was able to do some research and see what kinds of options I had. Somewhat unsurprisingly (?) it doesn’t seem as if many fan-makers have tackled the N1 helmet…as far as I could tell, only one other (rather exquisite) fanmade example existed, produced by one ‘Godzilla’ (of super-accurate Tusken Raider mask fame). Perhaps one reason for this dearth was because an official N1 helmet replica does exist…they pop up on eBay from time to time but are typical quality for Don Post – they’re basically just a cast plastic shell with a mediocre paintjob – and more than I want to pay for such a thing. After being away from my workshop for so long, I really needed a project to get back in the Maker groove, and thought a scratchbuilt Naboo pilot helmet would do the trick nicely! The obvious question was: HOW?

Attention! Your input is needed!

Hello there, folks! We don’t have a regular post for you this week, but believe me that next week will more than make up for it (a triple-header, in fact)!

As I was reflecting recently, I’ve been a maker of Star Wars clothing, costumes, props, and gear for over 20 years! After building and growing my skills for so long, I’ve been thinking it might be time to try and turn my hobby into a small business. So…

To help identify my market and see what potential products people might be interested in, I’ve created a short, anonymous survey, which you can find HERE. Your participation will be greatly appreciated – thank you!