Earlier this week, YouTube’s algorithm pushed the first trailer for the upcoming Star Wars: Squadrons game onto my homepage. I have neither a console nor a good enough PC to ever be able to play this game, but as a player of the classic LucasArts flight sims, I took a look, and as an EU-loyal Star Wars ‘reenactor’, wanted to share my thoughts as they relate to our pursuit of the ‘costume arts’ and authentic living-history in the galactic setting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04mFcoCLmVA
First off, I really like that we are seeing a return to flight combat games. I mostly missed out on X-Wing Alliance back in the 90s, so I got it working last year, and really dug it – it’s a great primary source for living history research, so I highly recommend tracking it down on Steam or GOG. It’s cool to see that it looks like Squadrons might include the power management system for speed/shields/lasers, like in the old games. Since this is primarily a console title, I’m sure they won’t be able to go as in-depth like the old X-Wing games—which almost required a full keyboard to play—but anything is better than a simplified, Rogue Squadron-style arcade game.
With that said, I do have a few thoughts/grumbles:
Continue reading “First Thoughts on ‘Star Wars Squadrons’”
Category: Image Analysis
First thoughts on ‘The High Republic’
While I try to avoid association with the post-Disney canon, I feel like the recent announcement of the-project-formerly-known-as-Luminous could prove very intriguing, and I wanted to share my observations and initial thoughts as they relate to our pursuit of the ‘costume arts’ and authentic reenacting in the Star Wars setting. As has been mentioned by many, the idea of a multimedia publishing campaign is nothing new for Star Wars; it’s somewhat reminiscent of the ‘movie without a movie’ approach of the Shadows of the Empire project in the mid-Nineties (games, a comic miniseries, toys, novel, soundtrack). But while SotE filled in the gap between 3-4ABY, the High Republic has a much bigger sandbox to play in… Continue reading “First thoughts on ‘The High Republic’”
Image Analysis: Mon Calamari outfitter
It’s been awhile since our last Image Analysis, and we’re looking again at the work of Langdon Foss, who consistently infuses his images with plenty of details that sell the galactic setting, and therefore are ripe for teasing out insights!
Although this picture is chock-full of details, there’s one in particular that I will focus on later, as it has the most potential for real-world usage. Continue reading “Image Analysis: Mon Calamari outfitter”
NRAC: research and insights
Creation of a functional New Republic Archeological Corps impression will be an exercise in extrapolation, as I have a limited amount of data to draw from. In this post I’ll lay out and unpack the sources I uncovered, and next week I’ll reveal a ‘character design’ I have synthesized from these sources, and my explanation for these choices.
As the main body of Star Wars material for popular consumption generally (and stubbornly) revolves around a cast of high-level generals, politicians, pilots, soldiers, and warrior-monks, ‘occupational’ characters like archeologists are not to be easily found. As I have frequently found in my efforts documented here, when ‘common’ background details are scarce, one can usually turn to role-playing game materials to flesh things out, and this case is no exception.
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Thoughts on Disney Galaxy’s Edge Cast Costumes
Last week, images were released which revealed the costumes to be worn by ‘cast members’ at the forthcoming ‘Star Wars land’ attractions at Disney parks. I don’t actively follow post-Disney developments, but what I’ve gathered via geek-internet-osmosis is that these cast members will essentially be playing the role of NPCs (non-player characters) who visitors can interact with and who will provide in-universe ‘atmosphere’ for the public, plus manning restaurants (food+beverage) and vending?
While I’m not concerned with ‘NewCanon’, I have spent the last three+ years breaking down the conventions of Galaxy Far Far Away fashion and subtly integrating them into my civilian wardrobe…so when I heard that these Disney park costumes would be ‘everyday’ clothing, I had to see how they lined up with my observations.
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Image Analysis: Garqi Agricultural Academy
(image originally published in WotC’s Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds (2004), artwork by Langdon Foss.)
This image is a great ‘slice of life’ for children on an agricultural backwater—sort of a Star Wars Norman Rockwell scene: who hasn’t been a youngling ‘flying’ toy spaceships around while making PEW-PEW sounds? But what’s more important is how especially valuable this image is for the rare look it gives us at GFFA commoners’ fashion. Here are a few pertinent tidbits I’ve teased out:
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Image Analysis: Ruusan lookout
“The statue that had occupied the platform off to his left had fallen hundreds of years before. The remains of it were scattered down the forward slope and pointed toward a skillfully sculpted hand. The palm was blackened where signal fires hand burned, beckoning travelers from many kilometers away. It must have been something to see.” Star Wars: Jedi Knight (William C. Dietz) 1998.
I’ve always liked this piece from the Jedi Knight novella. Actually, Dave Dorman’s photo-realistic paintings have always been very influential in terms of how I imagine the GFFA. This vignette just happens to be one of the few EU depictions of an isolated cell of commoners on the run from Imperial forces – and so is very useful for my purposes.
Here we see a familiar mishmash of gear that is very inspirational for those of us who portray fringe-y Rebel personas:
Continue reading “Image Analysis: Ruusan lookout”
Image Analysis: Taxi Ride
This will be a short post, as there’s not a lot in this vignette (from page 109 of Wizards of the Coasts’ Galactic Campaign Guide) to talk about, just some buildings, a lot of ships, and a few non-humans (a Duros taxi driver, two Cereans, and an unknown). However, one of those speeders is very familiar:
Don’t recognize it? How about now?
That’s right, we finally have an appearance of Boba Fett’s toy airspeeder in situ – it’s no longer just a prop made up for a Visual Dictionary, it’s a legitimate vehicle!
Image Analysis: Clone Wars Playtime
One feature I’ve been wanting to implement here is a series in which I take a close look at individual images, something along the lines of Townsend’s Sifting the Past blog. And here, I think, is the perfect example to start with!
This picture comes from Wizards of the Coast’s Galactic Campaign Guide (2003), p. 113. The book is a great source for our purposes, as it includes (among many other juicy details) an excellent section on species-specific naming conventions, and many similar world-building vignette scenes.
Looking at this image with an anthropologist’s discerning eye, several details leap out at me.
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Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy 