Author: A.H.

Building the Rebel Persona: 5.1 – Helmet

As I said in the previous Hard Kit overview, I opted to give ‘Citizen Olis’ a little armor in the form of a Rebel ‘swoop’ helmet.
“Rebel soldiers wear very little protective armor, typically a helmet at most, though some soldiers wear chest and abdomen plates. Alliance tacticians believe that complete freedom of movement is more useful than the dubious protection provided by armor—which rarely stops a blaster bolt anyway.” West End Games: Rebel Alliance Sourcebook p.99)

As my first serious foray into the world of Pepakura (cardstock + resin), while it’s not perfect, I am extremely pleased with how it turned out! (While researching construction techniques, I came across one fan’s attempt at making the helmet using the same files as I did…I was determined to have the final product come out better than his—a rather low bar—but I am still quite surprised how nice mine looks in the end).
olishelm DSC05064
The road from computer file to three-dimensional helmet, however, was long and winding. Continue reading “Building the Rebel Persona: 5.1 – Helmet”

Building the Rebel Persona – 5: Hard Kit

#1 Helmet:
This is my take on a standard Rebel ‘swoop’ helmet as featured in Episode IV, but which has been commonly depicted in various planetside conflicts in plenty of secondary materials. It is made using the Pepakura technique (cardstock hardened with fiberglass resin and Bondo putty).
(Full, detailed account of construction found here).
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Naturally, we have zero hard references to specific gear that local Rebel cells received from Alliance Ordnance and Supply, so I don’t know how appropriate the swoop helmet is for my context—versus something like the ‘Endor donut’ helmet. My main issue with the swoop helmet is that the light color clearly stands out in outdoor settings (although it’s still frequently shown worn in such settings), but I’m hesitant about painting it a light brown or something, which might deviate a bit too much from the accepted visual norm of what we’re used to seeing. Continue reading “Building the Rebel Persona – 5: Hard Kit”

Building the Sulon Rebel – 4: Soft kit

What follows is a breakdown of the practical kit I eventually assembled for a Rebel ‘partizan’ persona, based on Sulon around 4-5 years ABY.

I. Soft Kit:

When starting to plan out what clothes a Rebel partisan on Sulon would wear, I didn’t have a lot of reference material to build from; the three Dark Forces novellas are each illustrated by three different artists with wildly different styles, and as typical Star Wars media, tend not to focus on the mundane minutiae of everyday citizens.
This gave me a certain amount of freedom, but I still wanted to keep things fairly conservative while starting out (a wise approach to take while reenacting in general!) Continue reading “Building the Sulon Rebel – 4: Soft kit”

Developing the Rebel Persona – 3: Naming

When creating a new living history persona, I find that using a name similar to my own given name is a great way to strengthen my connection to the persona. In my main Middle-earth impression, I use the Gothic translation of my name, which isn’t too far off. While there are plenty of ‘Earth names’ present in the GFFA, I felt that mine probably wouldn’t be a good fit; in which case, I was stuck until I could come up with an appropriate in-universe name.

While there are a ton of ‘Star Wars Name Generators’ out there, most of them are pretty arbitrary, and usually come up with a list of names that uncreatively follow the ‘Obi-Wan’ pattern. They also never take cultural naming conventions into account—Rodian names are distinct from Twi’leks, who are distinct from Hutts, who are distinct from Corellian Humans, who are different from Naboo humans, who are…you get the point. Continue reading “Developing the Rebel Persona – 3: Naming”

Developing the Rebel Persona – 2: Homeworld

When building a persona from scratch, a few basic questions must be answered before getting too far ahead of oneself:
WHO would this be?: Some sort of generic partisan Rebel from a local Sector Force.
WHEN were they be?: Galactic Civil War period—which, properly speaking, limits us to the 2BBY-5ABY period.
WHERE did they live or come from?:   ?????

This last one had me stumped—I may have had a whole galaxy to pick from, but I naturally wanted a degree of verisimilitude in my choice. I’m from (and most likely to operate in) a temperate, deciduous biome, so I knew I wouldn’t be picking a desert or ice planet, but unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of planets in the GFFA that resemble eastern North America! Continue reading “Developing the Rebel Persona – 2: Homeworld”

Developing the Rebel Persona – 1: Groundwork

After getting my AgriCorps Jedi impression mostly ironed out last year, I started kicking around the idea of picking up a second persona, something Rebel Alliance-related during the Galactic Civil War period (because that’s Where It’s At, of course!). Eventually, after some quality research time and a bit of creative synthesis, I came up with something that I think works just fine. Continue reading “Developing the Rebel Persona – 1: Groundwork”

Building the Jedi Persona – 4: Hard Kit

agribeltkit1The assembling of appropriate items of ‘hard kit’ is the point at which we move from only having a outfit to truly having a cohesive Kit. Using pieces of gear that are what they are (in the list below, only the comlink is a prop) makes a kit functional and brings it into the realm of living history. Let’s see what I mean: Continue reading “Building the Jedi Persona – 4: Hard Kit”

Building the Jedi Persona – 3: Soft Kit

What follows is an itemized breakdown of the kit I eventually put together for my AgriCorps ‘washout’ Jedi impression, based during the Dark Times.
Agri1The main thing I wanted to do with this persona was to help subtly differentiate it from the Jedi we’ve seen already and with whom we are most familiar. Continue reading “Building the Jedi Persona – 3: Soft Kit”

Developing the Jedi Persona – 2 : Dates and Ages

As I discussed last post, while I knew that I couldn’t portray an AgriCorps persona in the New Republic period, I still needed to pin down a time period that would work (because personas work best when they are tied to a specific place and time). While conceivably I could go with any point in the previous 1,000 years, I had some decisions to make.
Even though I’m pretty sure most folks would agree that the Galactic Civil War is the best period, the further back in time one goes from the Prequel Trilogy era, the hazier and less-fleshed-out things get. Also, since (at least for now) I’d likely be presenting this to children, I figured I should probably keep it situated around the Prequels and the Clone Wars, with which I expect a younger audience would be fairly familiar (especially compared to the ~950 years between the Battle of Ruusan and the Stark Hyperspace War, which are pretty much blank).

Therefore, next I thought about what would be my ‘anchor point’—the place where my life history matches up with the GFFA timeline. At first, I considered basing it around the Naboo Crisis, since I was 11.5 when Episode I was released. That meant I would’ve been born 43 years Before the Battle of Yavin, and since I’m almost 30, would put the ‘present’ at 13 BBY.
That seemed decent, but I like having choices, so I tried coming up with another. Continue reading “Developing the Jedi Persona – 2 : Dates and Ages”

Developing the Jedi Persona – 1: Groundwork

Back in the summer of 2011, I spent my evenings sewing linen Jedi tunics (two sets, actually!), not with any particular purpose in mind, but mostly because I figured opportunities would reveal themselves once I had them completed. (During this time I also got myself ordained with the Universal Life Church, since all my friends were getting married and I thought it could be fun to officiate a wedding as a real-life Jedi—since ‘Church of Universal Life’ sure sounds like an Earth version of the Jedi Order to me!). It was about this time that I came across a reference to the Jedi Service Corps, and the Agricultural Corps in particular. Continue reading “Developing the Jedi Persona – 1: Groundwork”