Clone Updates

Did a little work on the clone last night. I need to finish up the paint job for the thighs, which I’ll do tonight once I pick up more paint.

And, I fixed my gun, which had broken. For those of you who didn’t see, I snapped the butt completely off of the main body. I’d planned to pick up a pipe or something to put inside, then glue everything together, but while looking around my apartment last night, I found a stiff poster from the Military History conference that I went to last year. Rolled up tightly, it filled in the hole entirely, and didn’t give at all. I covered that in Gorilla Glue, which expands, and put everything together. There was still a significant gap where the plastic broke, but I found that GOOP spread out over the entire area sealed it nicely. I just need to cover it up with a couple coats of paint and it’ll be troopable again.

Empire in San Fancisco, Again

This clip totally rocks:

Hm, that doesn’t seem to have worked, but see it here. http://gizmodo.com/5245451/star-trek-vs-star-wars-the-empire-wins-again

Free Comic Book Day, Earth Prime Comics

This past weekend was the annual Free Comic Book Day, and for the second year running, I trooped up in Burlington for Earth Prime Comics on Burlington’s Church Street Marketplace. This time around, I was joined by Mike, proving once again that two troopers are better than one. Oddly, we had three wranglers for the two of us, Stuart, Stephen and Josh. Stuart was in charge of pictures, and the other two were there for backup.

Mike and I arrived at Earth Prime right as they were opening, and we suited up, talked to the people in charge, who had stuff for us to hand out. We hung around in the store for a little while, then took off up and down the market place, after taping a couple of Free Comic Book Day logos to our backs so that people would know what we were doing. Armed with a couple handfuls of free comic packs for kids, we walked up Church Street, and almost right away, we were asked to pose for pictures, and this continued as we walked up. By the time we reached the top of the street, we’d handed out all the comics, and Josh went back for some more.

We made several passes up and down the street. There were a couple lingering college students who were excited to see us, but as usual, it was the little kids that really made the day. There were a ton who were absolutely thrilled to see us, including one little guy who was literally bouncing up and down when he saw us, and was extremely excited to take a picture with us.

We got out of armor around 12:45 while a short parade went up Church Street – something to do with UVM’s hockey team – and got lunch, and suited up shortly thereafter to walk around in front of the store. Apparently, we attracted so many people that the store ran out of the free stuff. I was interviewed by a news crew that was on the street about FCBD, which was interesting, although I haven’t seen the footage or heard if it even made it on the air.

Overall, it was a very fun troop! Pictures can be seen here.

Bly

So, I’ve been working on the Clone Trooper for a while when time permits (school and work have been plenty busy lately, and I haven’t been able to keep up with this blog as much as I’d like)

I debuted the Clone earlier this year at the Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which went over really well, with a couple additional things to do to it – seamless legs, a little helmet work, etc. While I’ve been doing this, I’ve been thinking more and more that it would be cool to convert the Clone over to a Commander Bly character, based off of the Cartoon series that’s currently on. He made an appearance in episodes 13 and 14, and there are some subtle differences between Episode 2 accurate and Episode 3 accurate.

This is what I need to do:

Arms need a Stripe – Bells, upper arms, forearms and handplates, yellow, down the middle, but not the elbow.
Chest plate needs a center stripe, as does the Helmet, knee pads and shoes.
I’ll also need a pauldron, kama, holsters, pistols and mountable binoculars. Might also need to get a pair of lights for the helmet as well.

I’m really excited for this.