Arm Upgrades

So, this past weekend, I think I solve a couple of the last remaining problems with the Clone – the Shoulder and Upper arms. The consistant problem has been that the shoulder bells fall backwards, and the upper arms are just a little too loose, and move around a lot.

With the shoulder, I ripped out all of the padding that was in there, and replaced it with a foam knee pad, held in with some industrial velcro. That both holds the bell up off my shoulder a bit more than it did before, and straps it right to my arm.

The shoulder bells was another quick fix – on the sides of each one, I glued two strips of foam, which hold my arm right in place. Now, the two are both snug, and fit nicely together.

New Picture

Hayes, TK-4289, from up here in Vermont just did a fantastic photoshop of my clone:



The Today Show

On Friday, I participated on the biggest troop thus far: NBC’s Today Show. This was an official LFL troop, one that was announced several weeks ago, along with signups. I submitted my pictures of my Clone Trooper, and was selected for the group. It wasn’t until a week ago that we were told what we would be trooping, and weren’t allowed to tell anyone. So, I worked on getting my Clone up to snuff, made a new blaster and on Thursday night after work, set off for NYC.

I arrived down there at 10:30, and met up with several troopers from my garrison and the Connecticut Garrison in the hotel that we were all staying at. We stayed up pretty late talking, and turned in for the remaining couple hours of sleep before we had to get up. At 3:30, our alarms went off, and we got up, dressed and carried our gear to NBC studios, where we checked in, met more troopers who were arriving at the same time. At 5, we did a walk through of what we were going to be doing for the morning, getting lined up and recieved our instructions. We then went back to the studio and suited up.

By 7 or so, we were finished suiting up, so we lined up, put our helmets on and went down to the street, where we crossed and waited for cameras. There was a little rehersal and changing of plans, and I ended up being on the first shift, rather than staying the whole morning. At 8 am, the show started, and cameras rolled. I was standing behind Al Roker, for his introduction, with a group of clones, and was on TV for just a couple seconds. You can see video here.

After that introduction, my time was done, although 10-15 clones and stormtroopers were retained for upcoming shots. I, along with three other clones went back to the changing space, got out of armor and went back down to watch for a little while, then headed up to Boston for the next troop of the night.

 

Converting a Rubies Blaster

The build was pretty easy – thanks Sean, for posting up the pictures, and Brian, for helping me last night with a couple questions. This is what I did:

Materials needed: Rubies Clonetrooper blaster, 2 ft long piece of PVC, PVC connector for said pipe, 5′ piece of 3/4 flat rod, thick cardboard tube, metal clothes hanger, glue, spray paint.
Tools needed: Hacksaw, clippers, sandpaper, clamps, screwdriver (small)

I took the gun and cut the bottom rail off with a saw, about halfway down – completely seperate this from the main body of the gun. At the same time, I also cut off the wires on the barrel, although Brian noted that they can be snapped out somehow. I just tossed the pieces. I also removed the greebles on the side with a small screw driver.
Taking the metal rod, I cut it into four pieces – 2 15″ pieces that make up the side rails, a smaller, 13″ piece for the bottom, and the last piece, about 6″, went on the handgrip. From there, I used Goop to attach the two rails to the seperated piece, lengthening that bottom part. I used clamps to hold the pieces on, then glued on the bottom piece and clamped it down. Once that glue was well on it’s way to being set, I put on the handgrip piece.

While that glue was setting, I cut the PVC pipe down from 24 inches to 14 or so. I took a cardboard tube (the kind used to mail posters and things) and cut it in half, then stuffed the two halves down the barrel, to give the entire setup some stability. (It might be prudent to put some glue on them.) Put on the connector (essentially a PVC ring – It was a snug fit, I didn’t glue it), then glue the greebles on the pipe in the same postition as on the original barrel.
After that is set, I took a coat hanger, and cut off the corners. They’re about the same position and shape as the original wires. Taking a sharpie, I marked out where they should be postitioned on the end of the barrel (use the original for reference) and with a small dremel bit, I drilled two guide holes. Cover the ends in glue, and stick them in, and they should hold – make sure the holes are a little angled and that there’s no undo tension that will pop out the wires before the glue sets. Mine are a little delicate, so next time, I’m going to drill a little deeper.

Once the bottom rails have finished setting, I slathered the original barrel with Gorilla Glue and put the new barrel over it. There’s a stub on the guide/handgrip, and I used some goop on the top of that – that connects to the barrel, and will hold that assembly together by connecting the handgrip to the barrel. Make sure it’s on straight and let set. Gorilla Glue expands a bit, and I’ve found that this helps when in an enclosed space – I don’t think that’ll be going anywhere. Allow this to dry.
Next step, paint. I only had time to give it one or two coats, but flat black should do the trick. There’s a lot of little edges that you should keep an eye on – I missed a couple my first go around and had to repaint a couple parts.

Done!

This was a pretty easy thing to do, and around $40 all told. I really enjoyed putting this together. Knowing that there’s a bunch of clones out there in the test tube, so to speak, I’d be willing to make more of these, provided they’re okay to be approved with.

Clone Modifications

 

The night before the Woburn Parade, I worked on improving my Clone Trooper. As I’ve noted before, troops take a toll on a set of armor, and there is generally a bit of maintainence that’s required before using it again. In this case, my Clone required a bit more work, as I’ve lapsed on the fixing up parts. Over the last couple of troops, I’ve had to replace the straps at the knees and elbows, knee pads, belt boxes and shoes.

The knees were the big thing that I needed to get fixed – previously, they’ve slipped down over my shins, which looks weird. To fix this, I took some industrial velcro and simply velcroed them to the knee pads. Now, the straps in back simply hold the knee pads straight, rather than in place. It did push my shins down on my ankles a bit, which wasn’t fun, but it’s a work in progress.

The belt was the bigger improvement. Previously, I’ve had issues keeping the boxes on – they frequently fell off, so I decided to affix them on to the belt permenantly, using an expanding foam. I need to do a little cleanup and paint it at some point, but other than that, it worked wonderfully at the parade – nothing fell off!

Shoes required a little glue here and there, but other than that, they’re good to go.

Woburn Parade 2009

This event marks the beginning of my third active year with the 501st Legion. The Woburn Parade has quickly become one of the major events that I would be loath to miss, and for good reason: this is one of the larger events that we come out in great numbers, and churn out some of our best work for.

In years past, the New England Garrison has done a number of large props: a life-sized Jabba the Hutt and Dewback for the past two years, we shifted gears and went with something just as cool, but not quite as big: Battle Droids for the 501st, and an Ewok Village for Alderaan Base. Both builds came off wonderfully, with our two battle droids, Fred and Ginger Rogers looking fantastic. The Ewok Village likewise looked fantastic, with several of our garrison member’s children posing as Ewoks.

The highlight here, however, was the first Clones from the NEG’s massive build recently, which churned out 20 new clone kits. Most of those are still in the works, but there were six of our members who had finished them in time to get them put together, although one was still building his in the parking lot. I was the only AOTC clone there, movie-accurate, rather than Cartoon accurate, which was pretty amusing.

The parade itself was a painful experience. While I’ve marched in my Clone Armor before, I made some small changes and/or put it together wrong this time around, and as a result, I’ve been aching for the past couple of days while waiting for the bruises and cuts to heal. 2.2 miles is a long way to walk in armor, and I was happy that the parade was over, but I was equally happy that I’d done the parade.

Pictures can be seen here.

Photo Primer

I’m thinking that this will be an ongoing thread for tips. Photography is a big thing with our group, and the images help translate our image to the rest of the internet. Thus, it’s probably a good idea to try and capture the garrison in the best way possible. I am by no way an expert in photography – I’m still learning quite a lot about it, but here’s some things that I’ve learned that I’d like to pass on. This is in no way any sort of ultimatum: “do this, or your pictures suck”, just some things that I’ve found. For all of you photography people out there, I’d love to get your imput as well.

Lighting
Lighting is the most important thing when it comes to photos – over or underexposing a shot can ruin it, and given that we do a lot of our events in a number of environments, it helps to know a bit about it. Cameras depend on light to operate. The basic principal is that light hitting the film in an older camera will cause chemical changes that can then be translated into a photograph. The same principal is applied to digital cameras nowadays.

Low Light
The longer the light hits the film, the longer the exposure. This is good for low-light images, where there isn’t as much light making its way through the Aperture, but the downside there is that your subject (the thing that you’re shooting) may move, or you, the photographer, might move. This causes the photograph to be blurred.

Lots of Light
Too much light can overexpose an image, depending on your settings. Shooting towards a light, or the Sun, with your subject in between you and the light source, will cause the subject to be shadowed, and you might not get a good view.

Here, Aaron has been shot with too much light – note how it’s cropping in around the edges.

How to compensate for lighting:

Low Light: Use a flash, and learn how to use your camera’s settings. Oftentimes, I’ve found tha the flash can over-expose the picture, causing it to be very washed out and look very odd, especially shots that are indoors or at night. I’ve found that bumping up the ISO (Film speed )(you can do this with manual settings) to higher numbers will help with lower light. Lower ISOs, consequensly, are better for better lighting. Try to minimize the amount of movement that you do. Lean against something, rest the camera on a steady surface or invest in a tripod. This will allow for a steady platform, and should help cut down on the blurriness.
Lots of Light: Don’t shoot into the sun (direct sunlight can damage a camera), instead shoot away from it, with the sun or lights to your back – this cuts down on the shadow. Use the flash as well, if you do shoot into the light.

Here, the flash has been used inside, where it’s slightly darker. Notice how it washes me out a little, but keeps the background somewhat dimmer.

This is an example where there’s too much light in the background, but not enough in the foreground, leaving everything with a lot of shadows. I should have used a flash here.

The manual settings on a camera are generally spelled out on your camera’s guide – don’t throw it out!, it’s an incredibly helpeful resource. My camera actually tells me what things do, which is handy, and the best thing to do is to practice – you learn best by seeing what works, and what doesn’t. The auto feature will usually select the best internal settings on its own, if set to that, which can be good or bad – I tend to shoot my pictures without using the flash – I prefer natural lighting when it’s avaliable.

Composition

This is a little more tricky, because it’s often in the eye of the beholder – keep in mind that there is no right or wrong way to shoot something. My friend Seth, who’s trained with this stuff, told me that there is a general rule of thirds. According to Wikipedia:

“The rule of thirds is a compositional rule of thumb in visual arts such as painting, photography and design. The rule states that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections.”
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds

I find this works really well for me. It gives the photograph some balance and helps show off your subject and the surroundings a bit. When I’ve been shooting, I try and focus on some of the smaller details, putting those in focus over the rest of the frame.

In both of the above pictures, there’s specific things that I wanted to highlight – Brian’s Red Bull, and Mike’s Blaster. In these instances, they held out the items, and the camera did some of the work, autofocusing on those items – that’s the subject of those pictures.

In the same way, Brian and Cy are both the subjects of these two images, as they’re in the foreground. If i was taking a picture of the Mandolorian in the background, or the red car, I’d want to reposition the shot and focus in on it better, again, using the rule of thirds.

In this instance, I haven’t really gone by the rule of thirds, and as a result, the image here is straightforward, the subject as the people in the center, but the viewer isn’t sure which person is the subject. I’ve found that I tend to flick past a lot of these images, simply because they don’t tend to leave an impression. It’s just a couple of troopers and kids, very common:

Whereas, I’ve found a shot like this, that shows the scale of something, to be much more interesting, where there might not necessarily be a subject:

Part of the idea here is to highlight parts of us as a whole. When it comes to trooping, what I’ve found that makes really good pictures is the poses, things that come right out of the movies, or some of the shots with weapons. Some of these rely on the photographer being in the right place, and postitioning (if possible) the subjects as needed. For example, a barrel shot of a Stormtrooper with a gun is cool, but you’ll see the TK pointing something with a hole. Angle the gun away a little bit, and you see the entire weapon, which makes the photograph more interesting, especially when it makes that specific detail ‘pop’. I also try and capture things from strange angles, from down on the floor, to the side, really close up, etc, to get something slightly different.

This isn’t to say to just take pictures that are artsy, at weird angles all the time. There are tons of pictures that would be brilliant, but are never taken. I take a ton of picture purposely, setting my camera to take multiple shots, one after the other, with the intent on editing them down and weeding out the best ones for online. I don’t put all of my photos up – I tend to take 400 + at events when I’m taking pictures, and will usually end up with around 50 or so – a couple friends of mine do the same, for the same reasons.

After Affects
Something that I’ve started doing with my pictures after events is running them through a photo program to adjust the color and shadows a little to make the picture better. I personally have been using Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/) to do this, but other people have highly recommended Adobe Photoshop, and there are some other good ones out there as well. I tend to darken the outdoor photos a little and add in a bit more color to compensate for the outside light, while indoors, I tend to do the opposite.

Here’s an example:

Before:

After:

It’s a fantastic way to show what the garrison does as a group, but a step beyond that is to take some fantastic pictures. I know that when I started, a lot of this was from playing around with my camera – with a lot of new people, who may or may not have had a lot of practice with this sort of thing, I’m hoping that it’ll help a little.

Another crucial point to all of this is that you don’t need a horribly expensive camera to do this sort of thing. A couple of those shots were done with my iPhone, a couple with a point and shoot Canon that I had and others with my lower-end SLR Nikon. It’s not necessarily the camera type or quality, it’s how you lineup your shots and knowing what you’re doing with the settings.

Meet Trilo!

Not 501st related, but close, my Clone Trooper has been accepted into the Rebel Legion. Clones are accepted, like they are in the 501st, and I submitted mine along with the 501st a little while ago. Instead of numbers, the RL seems to assign people names.

I chose Trilo, which fits with my TKID, TK-3220 (The three in there) and my common username online, JediTrilobite. I also think that I’m the first Rebel Legion member in the state of Vermont. Interesting.

Nom Nom Nom Trooper

Mike Anton, TK-2084, demonstrates why Stormtroopers won’t make good zombies:

Bristol, RI Walk Now for Autism

This past weekend was a good one for trooping. It’s been a couple of months, so I was thrilled to get back into it, and add a new state to the growing list of places that I’ve trooped: Rhode Island.

Because it’s a bit of a drive, I spend the night in Boston and met up with a couple other 501st members while down there. On Sunday, I drove about an hour down to Bristol, where I met up with Adam, Mike, Justin, Sean and Ann-Marie, where we suited up (Tie Pilot, an officer, TK and crewman) at the Walk for Autism site. I brought my Clone along, for its first troop as an approved costume.
I suspect that there were some organizational issues between the Autism people and us, but that really didn’t matter. We were surrounded by a number of people throughout the morning, kids and adults alike wanting pictures. Right as we started off, I was approached and hugged by a boy who looked thrilled that we were there. After walking around the park for about an hour and a half, we went to the front of the line, where we waved and cheered people on as they passed. We didn’t walk this time around, because everybody who was part of this had planned on going up to Waltham, where a droid build was underway.

See pictures here.