Yay for Rax

Rax, the former Seneschal, has returned, and in just the right time.

I've been looking at the pile of robes and sabers i've done, and thinking... 'well, i'm gonna need someone to actually make these things work for the members"...and then, i get a PM.

so now, journeymen and Equites all have shiney new robes to use, and equite 3 and up have dual sabers ready to roll.

all in all a productive weekend.

now, I'm onto the Elder robes, and a few custom sabers.

Dual Sabers for Equites

At Equite 3, members get the ability to select some standard double-bladed sabers from the saber construction tool. The gfx for the Dual sabers at the same rank have been completed and uploaded...now we're just waiting on the code-support.

Working on robes tomorrow...hopefully something to release this weekend.

Ze Robez

I spent all of last night working on the robes. Yay robes!

Anyway, I decided that I was in one of those moods where everything I had done before was not as cool as what I had done so far... so I redid a bunch of them, made them look a helluva lot cooler (in my eyes, anyway), added shading and textures, and now i just gotta find the time to drop them on the correct background and upload them. (It's a lot more of a pain in the butt than it sounds, as the colors tend to distort if I do it any way except for one very complicated way)

One of the things I was concerned with was our ladies' robes. Before I started this project, there was no such thing. The robes we had for many years were quite unisex. As I was working on these, I found that they were a lot cooler if they 'fit' a body shape, making them far better looking...which, I thought, would alienate our ladies in the Brotherhood. So I made a ladies' version of the knight robes, and it looked cool...so I went and made a few more. After last night, I have robes based off of Jocasta Nu, Aayla Secura, Luminara Unduli, etc.

I also went and revamped quite a few of the male robes that were looking 'cartoonish' in my opinion. And I ended up reloading the GM and Elder robes on the site. Go take a look, if you like. The GM robes are based off of a Palaptine senatorial look, and the elders have a kit now that I bassed off of a jedi who surived order 66... I love that kit, and it's one of the drawings i have taken to tailors when I was looking to get robes made for DragonCon.

I can dork harder than any of you can possibly imagine.

Anyway, I realize that there's less women in this club by far, but I'm trying to make it a reasonable showing for both sexes at first. Right now, I have 17 kits, of which 2 are unisex, and 5 are female, with the remainder being male kits. I'll likely add more kits as time goes by to help bring this to a more equal standing...heck, I may even add more before I manage to release this, you never know when inspiration will hit.

While I'm discussing the girly robes, I'll say something about the lack of female characters in Star Wars... something I had noticed before, but it's been refreshed in my mind since I've been looking for 'canon' models to base the robes off of. Luminara Unduli, Shaak Ti, Asajj Ventress, and Barriss Offee all wear pretty much the same outfit: a tight fitting top, a full long-skirt and a cloak. The rest (Excluding Jocasta Nu and Aayla Secura) wear a version of the Knight robes (usually without an undertunic). It's pretty sad that there's so few ariants...although I suppose that the same could be said for the males in the movie. They all pretty much wear the same thing, with the different colours being the only differences. Thank heavens for the Comics... even though they tend to show the Jedi in either the common robes or in something totally 'not-robes', it still shows a bit of what sort of clothing Jedi would favor.

Anyway, so that's the robes report. I'll have stuff to look at in the next official report on the site.

Sabers: the 'unofficial' rules

I've been working on the 'Lightsaber Request Guide' for a while now, when I have had the time but I'm still a ways off right now (what with all the other stuff). So I figure I'll plop down some hard and fast 'rules' for the interrim.

1. Lightsabers are Lightsabers - This means that you can't have a 'light-spear', a 'light-whip', or 'light-nunchaku' yet. Yes, I realize that there are instances from comics, games and books that have these weapons, and I may even implement them in the future, but that will be a very limited basis when and if that happens. Yes, I think that they are cool ideas, so you don't have to 'sell' me on the idea. I'm just not anywhere near ready to discuss or implement them yet (and honestly, if too many people get them, it'll make them way less cool). This rule also applies to 'proto-sabers', 'sith swords', and weapons that have a steel blade along one side of them.

2. Blade colours - If you tell me a colour, I can make it. Basic colours are : Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, and Silver. There are gold colours, but those are restricted to people with a golden lightsaber award. Can I do teal? Certainly. Blue-violet? Of course. Just tell me what colour, or even better send me a sample of the colour (or, if you're hardcore, a PMS code or hexidecimal number), and I'll do my best.
• If you've requested an Ultraviolet Lightsaber, that's what you get...I'm not going to tweak the tones or whatever, as it's special enough. And for the record, the core of a UV saber is not black...it's clear, with a faint violet glow.
• I will never do two blade colours in a single blade instance. If you must have two colours, go multiphase and watch them rotate. That's the only way it'll work as a saber (you can use some weird force power to change it in battle, but that won't show on the graphic).

3. Hilts - This is pretty open. There are a few things I take exception to, however.
• If you do a highly kinetic art (Soresu, Ataru, Djem So, Vapaad, Sokan, Juyo, Trakata), you can't have a hilt that encloses your hand (knuckle blades or whatever). The nature of these styles requires that you have great hand mobility to perform the style properly, and those ornaments would break your fingers. In contrast, Shien and Shii-Cho users will benefit from these sort of things, based on their art.
• Curved hilts can be used for any form... but realize that if you lose that weapon, it takes you some time to readjust to a straight-hilt lightsaber (say, if you pick up a saber that your enemy dropped mid-battle).
• All gold hilts, or even hilts with a lot of gold will be denied... I can't let any sabers come even close to looking like a Golden Lightsaber award.
• If you ask for a highlander ripoff hilt, that's what you're going to get. 'Carved dragon hilt' means that you don't want me to really draw something unique, just that you want what Duncan or Conner had. And that's what you'll get, for better or worse.

4. Form Restrictions - Yes, which form you practice has a MAJOR impact on what weapons you can use. Not every weapon is supported by every form... Boxers don't magically understand jiujitsu...they've never trained in it. The broad strokes are below.
• If you practice the single-form arts (Shii-Cho, Makashi, Soresu, Ataru, Djem So, Niman, Vapaad, Dun Moch, Basic Sokan, Basic Shien or Trakata), you can only use one lightsaber at a time. That is because these forms often call for maneuvers that require two hands on a single saber, making the use of two sabers at once a liability and a handicap. This is not to say that you can't have two displayed on your dossier... just that you better write it correctly in your ACCs and whatnot.
• Only people who practice Juyo or Shien (with the requisite mastery) can use a double-bladed lightsaber at all. Otherwise, it's ineffective, and a liability to your own safety.
• Anyone of the appropriate rank can have a Multi-phase Lightsaber. But there are forms which benefit more from it. Those forms are Dun Moch, Vapaad, and Trakata.
• If you use Jar'Kai Niman, or Shien (with the requisite mastery), or Sokan (with the requisite mastery), you can use two lightsabers effectively. If you don't...well, you can't.

5. Doing it yourself - If you have the ability, you can of course make your own saber. You do still have to follow the rules, though...and the graphic has to be 400 pixels tall and no more than 300 pixels wide. I'm assuming that you will draw it with proper proportions as regards blade and hilt length/width. If it's not, I'll talk to you about it.
• There are a few people who do good lightsaber gfx in the DB... If you talk to them, they can do the graphic for you as well. They're like 'independant contractors' for the Herald. The former Herald Kaine Mandaala might be possibly convinced to make you a saber, as Cyris Oscura may. Spears Tarentae has done great work on lightsabers as well in the past, and Raven of CNS is also known to do a saber or two.
• You can always send me a scanned sketch and I will make it with the computer. This works pretty well, actually. So if you draw well IRL, but hate computer drawing, this is a great option. Just attach the graphic link in your request, or talk to me in person on IRC or whatever.


And I think that this about covers it. I'll likely post this on the DB forums later. Questions and comments are always welcome.

Oh, and...

• Warbanner Request form has been fixed!

• 13 days until the Great Jedi War!

• Twenty-odd days until my birthday!

• Three months until DragonCon!

Grinding the gears of war...

Spent all evening yesterday doing warbanners and sabers...not because I was behind, but because I wanted to clear out the mess before I got back on the Robes and stuff. Anyway, I put a hurtin' on the Warbanner requests, and got about half of the remaining saber requests blasted out.

Next projects to complete:
• Replace remaining un-rendered robes on dossiers with new sexy ones.
• Add 'Standard' Dual Saber sets to Saber Construction Tool.
• Report!

If I have my way, these will be done by this time next week. Which is a good thing because next weekend, I'll be gone for almost all the weekend for a great friend's wedding.

I also have some other projects working, but these are more to do with the HRLD site and history stuff (which is to say: not as crucial as the bits that can go on your dossier).

And I guess that's all for right now.