persona – Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy

Updating the Naboo partizan – Inner Persona

While the new-home renovations continue, I am still at least a month from having a functional crafting studio or workshop again, and so in the interest of avoiding a lull and having to overcome the inertia to resume publishing (and to get some pieces out of my drafts!), I thought this would be a good time to check in with the state of some of my galactic impressions. Links to each of these breakdowns will all be collected at the Personas and Impressions page ^above^!

Seeing as how I’ve continued to rework this impression in the years since its ‘first draft’, I want to show how things have progressed, and also serve as a benchmark for any changes I make in the future. Since Naboo pretty much drops off the galactic stage after about 18 BBY, this impression required a large amount of ‘frog DNA’ to extrapolate and create a complete kit from a specific time and place. However, as I hope will become clear, this method of taking the truth of my own life and ‘translating’ it to an in-universe context works very well for creating a fleshed-out but believable persona that stays within the bounds of the setting. (Numbers in [brackets] refer to reference sources in end notes.)

Naming:

‘Steen Olis’, in Naboo’s informal Futhork script

Turn your own life details into a believable galactic backstory!

Galactic Style Guide – Mechanics and Technicians II

Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, the series where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! In this entry, we’re continuing our examination of blue-collar mechanic or technician-type characters by seeing how examples from print sources compare to those from live-action. While most SW titles center around exciting or elite character classes (Jedi, Sith, politicians, mercenaries, troopers, etc), if there’s one subset of GFFA publication that fully embraces the more mundane characters like these, it’s role-playing games – especially the current license holder Fantasy Flight Games. FFG’s Age of Rebellion and Edge of the Empire games include sourcebooks for Technicians and Engineers to give us a number of examples to help fill out our sample. If they follow the trends we noted in our live-action examples last time, we should expect these RPG designs to dress in text-free, one-piece coveralls of a muted single color. Let’s see how they measure up!

The vignette that opens Special Modifications (the Technician sourcebook) sees Twi’lek mechanic Chalan Talosi hanging with her pit droid, WAC-77. We can see she wears a gray or slate blue coverall with the sleeves and legs rolled up – normally if a tech is wearing tall boots, they’re visible because the pants are tucked/bloused, not rolled up, so this is certainly a choice…but hey, maybe it gives better ventilation or something? It could simply be a gathered waistband, but it does look like she’s wearing a belt. Also note the goggles (not currently in use), which are a prime accessory for any welding-related occupation!

keep reading for more examples, and analysis!

Diamonds in the Rough – Colin “OddViking” Adams (part 1)

Welcome back to our monthly spotlight series, where we discuss Star Wars costumers who have ‘gone the distance’ and put in the effort to create solid, in-universe outfits or personas. This is actually the first half of a two-parter, because our subject has gone so totally above and beyond and built an incredible kit with tons of details that spreading it out over two months is the only way to really do it justice!

If you’ve spent any time exploring Star Wars content on Instagram in the last several years, chances are you’ve seen Colin Adams’ incredible work before. As a professional graphic designer/illustrator, Colin has a very large bag of tools to draw from, and puts them all to good use with a number of impressive cosplays and kits, each fully-detailed and seamlessly dropped into immersive settings with the magic of Photoshop. At the beginning of this year, when I saw Colin was starting a custom Mandalorian build, I knew the final result would be amazing. As we’ve discussed previously in our First Steps series, one of the keys to successfully creating an effective GFFA character is to dedicate time at the beginning of the process to doing your research and really nailing down what the ‘outer persona’ should look like.

creating this incredible mando kit, step by step

AgriCorps Jedi impression (2023) – hard kit

This month, I’m switching things up and making an effort to lay out my current complete kits for GFFA reenacting/living history. The clothes (soft kit) worn by a Jedi in the AgriCorps are only one part of that impression – what about field gear???

“What do the Jedi carry in their pockets? String, or nothing! In The Phantom Menace we see that the Jedi wear utility belts, and just as Batman always has the right tool for the job the Jedi would therefore carry anything the writer needed them to have in a particular story, up to and including space-shark repellent. … The Jedi would never be caught without a breather, a comlink, food capsules, etc.” (Dan Wallace, endnotes for The Jedi Path, #3 of 4)

The basic needs can be covered by a belt kit which holds the necessary tools, a canteen for hydration, and a satchel (M9A1) for a couple larger items.

What’s inside? I’m glad you asked!

keep reading for Jedi field gear EDC breakdown

AgriCorps Jedi impression (2023) – soft kit

Somehow, it’s been almost seven years since I first entertained the idea of doing first-person interpretive workshops in the Star Wars setting, and since then my various portrayals have evolved quite a lot! Although a reenacting kit is never ‘finished’—but I’m a perfectionist who likes to wait until something is complete before sharing (hence why I rarely share full-kit updates! – see the problem here?)—I want to try and lay out each of my ‘complete kits’ in their most up-to-date form, summarizing the background research and justifications for choices that I’ve made to create each impression. All of this is intended to serve as an example of what solid, research-based fictional living history looks like. Because they will inevitably get pushed down the blog’s front page, these posts will be collected at the new PERSONAS AND IMPRESSIONS page ^above^!

I want to start with the impression that first got me thinking about ‘doing Star Wars‘ in a reenacting/living history sense – a ‘washout Jedi’ member of the Agricultural Service Corps.

Diamonds in the Rough – Scott Bowen

Welcome back to our monthly spotlight series! In this feature, I interview Star Wars costumers who have ‘gone the distance’ and put in the effort to create solid, in-universe outfits or personas. This month we’re looking at Scott Bowen’s excellent original Rodian character, ‘Bossome Scow’:

As you might imagine, Scott’s initial inspiration for this character design was the ur-Rodian example, GREEDO! His goal had a challenge embedded, however: not only to create an original Rodian character, but also to try and stick to Greedo’s iconic orange/teal/yellow colorscheme. As we will see, he definitely succeeds!

read the complete interview!

Galactic Style Guide – Identification

Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, the monthly series where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! In this entry, we’re taking a look at examples of a rarely-seen category of ‘pocket trash’ which can really help to ground an impression in the Galaxy Far Far Away – we’re talking ID cards!
To show the evolution over time, I’ve chosen to present these in real-world chronological order, starting with examples from the West End Games era.

MerenData IPI-1000 (Galladinium’s Fantastic Technology sourcebook, 1995)

New Republic historian Voren Na’al wears his ID clipped to his tunic and on his belt (SWRPG 2nd Edition Revised & Expanded, 1996)

many more examples within!

Diamonds in the Rough: Sean S

Welcome back to our monthly spotlight series! In this feature, I interview Star Wars costumers who have ‘gone the distance’ and put in the effort to create solid, in-universe outfits or personas. This month we’re talking with Sean S., who portrays the Rodian pirate, ‘Xetrax’:

read the full interview!

Diamonds in the Rough: Buck

Welcome back to our monthly spotlight series! In this feature, we talk with Star Wars costumers who help illustrate what high-quality, in-universe costuming looks like, and provide some insights into their character creations!
This time around, we’re looking at ‘Buck’ and his excellent custom Mandalorian kit!

Buck told me that his original inspiration for this outfit were the blue tones of Jango Fett and the Death Watch, with the hooded poncho coming from Bo Katan and the Nite Owls’ appearance in Season 7 of The Clone Wars.

When designing this kit, Buck referred to the excellent work of Brian Matyas (concept artist for The Mandalorian) to get the general aesthetic. As Matyas has a rock-solid grasp on what authentic Star Wars looks like, you’ll see no garish colors or high-contrast custom Mandos here!

Diamonds in the Rough: Max

Special shout-outs this month to Doremy and Renee for their generous donations to help out the site – you all rock! 🙂 If you like this series and would like to support my work as well, consider contributing below!

While I personally avoid the divergent creative and aesthetic decisions of the post-Disney era, these outfits are still quite representative of the general galactic style and worth showing off!

read the full interview!