For a bigger head... E1 Maul, maybe?

Fritz -

Do you mean the wide shots of the gunship moving through Coruscant, or the close-ups of Koe and Qoz aboard the gunship?

In the case of the former, I just put the gunship on the end of my desk, took a few angles, and then cut them out in photo shop. I copied and pasted the cutout gunship onto various coruscant backgrounds, and then scaled the gunship layer until it looked like the scale was proper.

Next I attempted to balance the levels and color balance for either the gunship or the background (whichever looked less natural). When I got those looking relatively consistent, I blurred the background to account for motion or distance. I added the fog effect (see above) when necessary, and erased as needed.

Hope that answers your question, and thanks!

Wonderful stuff, CHEWIE! Wow, adversity seems to bring out an even higher level of work with you.

First off, I was really sorry to hear about Kirby, too. He was the man. Sometimes the brightest stars just burn out faster. 

Anyway, on your 501st, I can't really say much on these other than that I think this is what Hasbro should have given us. I don't know if I'll ever forgive them for saddling us with the AT-TE sculpt for that figure. There's always hope, I suppose, for SA 501st, but I'm not holding my breath.

Clone Armor Mace is AWESOME. Great choice of head sculpt, as we can be pretty sure that when Mace has to don armor, it's going DOWN.

Hagen Daas is too cool for his name, man. Great use of head there. You know, that could VERY, VERY easily be a young Dooku...



Can't say a whole lot about Jolan Karr other than the head repaint looks really good, and that's a nice use of the Mace body.

The Clones in Jedi disguise are amazing. The facial detail (I'm not sure if you did that or if it's just the pic) makes them LOOK like they're waiting to ambush someone. Brilliant.

Aayla also looks awesome. I think your point on the bulk of the armor is right on. It might be the shoes? The use of the skirt is a nice was to minimize the scale difference. I really like her this way.

The final Mace, well, he's damn near perfect. Why Hasbro hasn't stepped up with an ultimate Mace escapes me, but if they do one, I'd suggest they steal your recipe. Nice job.

Great shots, how did you achieve your fog?

In photoshop, add a new layer. Completely fill that layer with a mid- to light gray tone (should be completely opaque when you do this, but the back layer will be intact). With your color palete set with the light gray foreground and white background, go to filter and render clouds (you can also do difference clouds).

Turn the opacity on the new layer down to between 10 and 50% (depending on how thick you want your fog). If you want holes in the fog or want something in the foreground to appear to emerge from the fog, set your eraser to airbrush and wipe away the areas of the new layer where you want the background to show through.

Works like a charm.

I am always awed by what people can do in 1:6 scale. These are no exception. Very fine work. Thanks for sharing these here.

Saesee Tiin will be making a cameo in armor in the next episode of K.O.E.

Consider that a soft spoiler.







He's sort of a quick n' dirty custom, but I think he came out OK. I washed the head a little to bring out some detail, but the pics are a bit overexposed...

Comments are welcome.

Wow. I'm really, really happy to hear this is being well received. I thought I'd responded to everyone in my last post, but it appears I only responded to CHEWIE. That ain't cool.

Jediknight760071:
I'm glad you liked the sepia work. For Koe and Koe's Killers to work, I needed to establish a. who they are and b. where they're coming from. The only really good way I knew to do that was to use flashback. I typically HATE flashback, but when I can use a visual signal for it that doesn't make me say in the story "This is a flashback", I think it works OK.  There will be more flashing back in later stories, but not nearly this much (I am toying with the idea of telling how Qoz came to be a Killer and possibly with telling about a couple more of the Killers... think "LOST", but less involved. )

I hope you will keep up on this PN and ALL the PN's here at JD. These things require an INSANE amount of work, especially when you consider that the author/creator gets exactly two things out of it: The fun of creating something and the fun of talking with others about it in these forums.

PenDragon:
Thanks, man.
I am pleased with the basic hook of what makes these Clones unique. As for offing wounded Clones, I sort of think of it like this: Clones are equipment for the Republic. If it costs more to fix a Clone than it does to replace it, just replace it. That leaves a lot of terribly injured soldiers to dispose of, and if the Republic doesn't neutralize them, the CIS could rehab them and then extract information. Same goes with other pieces of equipment. Destroy anything the CIS leaves behind, and return or obliterate anything of the Republic's.

And yes, the Killers are first-class bada$$es. It will be tough for me to prove that to you in the near future, but I think you'll appreciate their skills soon enough. (I hate to put off too much of the action, but this is really about Sedo getting some questions answered, and that will require some chit chat)

CHEWIE:
You already got special treatment.  But thanks again for your comments.

BrentS:
I'll look forward to your more detailed comments. The more detailed the better. I'm glad your comments have been positive so far.

As for the connection between Ch. 1 and Ch. 2, I wanted people to know that this isn't just ANY Jedi being assigned a unit, and this most certainly isn't just ANY unit he's been assigned to. There are forces at work here between Republic Command and the Jedi Council that are bringing this to bear, and they have their reasons. 

S_A_Longhorn:
It means a lot for you to compliment my photos. Quite frankly I think what you do with photos is mush more work intensive and requires more skill. If I mess up, I can undo or use a digital airbrush or whatever. If you mess up, you have to reshoot, and THAT is hard.

This will be a long-ish PN, but it will tell one story. I'm afraid we're a little late in the war for a saga with these guys like CHEWIE has with R.E., although you never know where things might lead...

mister_palpatine:
Thanks, dude.
I really appreciate the comp. with R.E. and S_A_'s. I'm not sure it's deserved, but it does mean a lot to me. I've read every frame of CHEWIE's and S_A_'s work that I'm aware of, and that - along with Quazar's interactive PN - is what got my wheels turning that I might be able to make something, too (and I think that's what a customs forum is all about, BTW).

I didn't actually do anything to that Clone pilot helmet. I just put it on wrong intentionally to give it a different look. I knew that in sepia the color and whatnot wouldn't matter, so that's an off-the-shelf Evo Clone with a pilot helmet on

Clone Commander:
Thanks! I'm eager to tell the rest of this story, so it's nice to hear you're eager to hear it. If I could snap my fingers and tell the entire story tonight, I would. But, as it's a PN, we have to wait on the P's.

Quazar:
Wow. Neat compliment. I'm not sure these guys are as developed as Rykrof or, well, the players for your interactive PN. Very high praise, though, and I appreciate it. Hopefully the coming chapters will give me the opportunity to introduce some other compelling characters.

Darth_Ennis:
Thanks! I hope you will come back for the following chapters. It took me a LOOOONG time between Chapter 1 and 2. I'm hoping the next break isn't as long, but work is ramping up again for me, so...

Phew! I really should have been responding more frequently. Again, I am very pleased with all of your responses. Thanks so much!

So I'm checking in to see what's what this evening, and I see where the main page has plugged my humble little PN right alongside R.E.!

Thanks, Jesse. That's an awesome gesture on the part of JD. I consider it a very high compliment to say the least.