TB-7076

I see no direct similarities to the Kashhyyk Trooper Helmet. It looks to me as if they based it on certain beehive helmet elements. We see those small vent bulges turning "inside" just like the beehive just not as close to each other as with the beehive helmet. there is a lot more space between those vent openings. Face mask and helmet are quite straight compared to other clone designs. The snout seems like a hybrid between Kashhyyk shape and AT-RT shape. A whole new design feature is the additional plating to the arc of the nose which correlates to the lens frame plating. The visor is more related to the commander visors as seen on cody than those of the scout or kashhyyk trooper. Except for visor and the "wasp tail" dome the shape reminds me to a WH40K space marine.

Hey Chris - in case you need some eagle eyes to help with the theoretical side of the barc armor just contact me. I hope you don't exclude innocent people. Well I wish Mike would have finished this as he was the first to start the Barc and I still hope he will at least finish his own personal Barc. I dropped the whole barc project once I was taken from the run when it got known that a helmet was bought from a recaster in germany. I knew that was the end of all hopes for a quality barc so I dumped my plans. ....should there be hope for a second attempt on a high level and with the option to get one I might consider reviving the project. ...and if it was just to show europe how a barc really looks like.

It's not that easy for us non-native speakers to always react as sensitive as the reader would like to. I think most of us try their best to communicate correctly with native speakers but you will realize that we quickly face our boundaries in communication skill especially in cases such as this one. The next thing is that as an elected spokesman of a club you cannot always do what you would do as a provate person. I also only know from SGB's impression and summary what he extracted form the conversation. Emails and PMs are private so I just accept as is. What I know is that we have a discussion about this in the garrison and I think when he responded to my statement it sounded reasonable. From what I've read in the clone empire there is a lot of dissapointment about the practice of the 501st agenda regarding costume sources but I doubt the road taken is going to lead to a betterment of the whole situation. This is an ethic question and not a constitutional one as we are all operating at the edge of legality and the claim for fair play by this collective of artists is something that can only work if people have the freedom of choice. If you take away the base to make a choice you force all of them to do the wrong thing. You just create a big market for recast sellers making it even more profitable for them. From experience you know that even if people refused to sell to certain persons that hasn't prevented recasts to show up at a certain point. Even your "honest" customers may sell their stuff at one day - and to be honest such sellouts I see happening quite often in the US as people frequently get into financial problems. A lot of props pass a lot of owners. On a personal note - I'm one of the people who are working towards more quality within the legion. The problem is that while Quality and Availability of the replicas are increasing the average quality of the legion doesn't increase accordingly. I have a bad stance promoting quality when quite a considerable segment of the replicators break away for a whole garrison or even continent. So again 1:0 for the recasters as one way or the other as long as props are traded they will fall into recaster's hands sooner or later. Everyone loses something. Establish forums where recasts are made known and also their drawbacks compared to the original. People should know with what kind of crap they're showing off but please don't cut the direct supply line for people who like to support the original artist. * Ouh sorry Jay - I wrote while you were posting - delete if necessary!

Do I automatically support someone just because he happens to live in my country/state/city? Do I automatically support someone just because my hands are bound to move someone out of a club? As long as a member doesn't violate the charter (so far no one in the legion council has put the term "theft" from article VI in relation to recasts) he stays a member. It might be that some garrisons follow their own policies and overrule legion policy but not in mine. So should I go to his place and kill him? (sorry for this exaggeration) The only thing I can do is - I repeat - educate about and ignore recasts.

Still he has a valid point that people who wanted to get a certain costume but being blocked from any original source are forced to buy a recast then. A lot of people approach me and ask for advice for costumes and I always send them to original creators (I guess some may testify this) and help them to understand why a certain original product is superior to the crap often much easier to access. Now if your organisation or even just a few decide to stop supplying these - maybe fewer but honest and idealistic - costumers those who cannot do such props have no othr choice but to buy from those sources. Is this really helping the cause? I know that this option seems the only one to satisfy your need for justice but I doubt it is really the remedy you're hoping for. So far most recasts have been inferior to the original products. Some people within the legion are working towards more quality needed to get in but with an entire area being unable to obtain quality stuff this attempt to passively control what's getting in and which is not may also be deemed to fail as accessability is a factor. I know that is none of your business as most artists aren't even in the legion but still it affects what is happening to your products.

Heatshock - a CO has no means to ban members or to make people stop recasting. A CO is bound to the 501s charter and unless the 501st isn't altering the stance regarding sourcing of costumes he cannot do anything about it. So from a 501st angle there is no legal backup for action against members doing recasts. The only thing we can do is educating about recasts. This is done in the detachments and within garrisons and on legion level some members do as well. But still you cannot convince/reach all with this information and as the legion also has a hard time increasing the requirements to a level most recasts would fall through there is only passive action by the membership itself possible.

Article VI has never been applied to replica issues. That would violate the neutral stance of the legion regarding costuming issues and put the legion in a troublesome position once siding in favour for any replica artist due to the problematic of non authorized replication of copyrighted content. If you don't reaslize that dilema of the legion then that's your problem. Recasting has always been controversal within the legion and a problem for those who wanted to protect original replica artists. If you were a member you would know that - at least Steelblitz should know it.

SGB I understand ypur point I'd be tha last one to tell people who they have to sell stuff or not. But you probably also see that a lockdown achieves nothing and probably would just result in the opposite of what was intended. On legion and garrison level - as you already stated yourself - there are no means to control or punish activities outside the legion's jurisdiction. Members may decide to ignore recasts and educate about it but that's that - and people do. If you remove access to original replicas it is more likely more people have to go for recasts. In my eyes the wrong signal but of course your choice! I think those who look for quality will always buy original stuff - that's probably poor consolation but the only thing I can come up with.

I respect everyones opinion on recasting but talking of collective bans or a blockade punishing also people who always bought and promoted original prop replicas is an emotional and illogical measure. I think it would make things even worse. Besides the 501st has no ruling concerning sourcing of costumes and there is no law in germany or anywhere else protecting unauthorized replicas of materials falling under copyrights or trademarks and intellectual property. This is a discussion of ethics and colleagueship but not laws.

Though sanctioned by LFL we experience a lot of inaccuracies within the merchandise world of Star Wars and Kenner/Hasbro ...even Lucas Arts are known for mistakes or individual interpretations of certain characters and equipment. Btw. since Clone Wars is now reveiled we have an answer to what we can call Scout Trooper within the ranks of the clone troopers

Well at least for the Scout you have the proper designation as it remains a scout weather you call it biker scout or scout trooper . also the scouts we see in the movies act like that too. In this clone case we have nothing real handy coming in to clarify what this troop type is supposed to be except that we are sure this trooper is using an armor back-engeenered or related to the scout armor. It's worth to discuss this tpoic as we now face a shared designation due to people doing the costume we here at BSN call Barc and those who portray the clones on the speeders which don't seem to have designation yet.

Was about time - I wondered why he hesitated so long to get his butt into the gallery Congratulations Rudi - you earned it! Looking forward to the shots after the weekend

"All too easy" - quite flexible the new lancer aspirant.

The metal clips are just the wrong alice clips provided with the MC set. The MOM exhibit part shows alice clips but actually the thinner type most pouches of the alice equippment are using. Use of Alice clips is probably an arguable point as visual reference is only verified for the exhibit peace. Maybe he could use them but shift them behind the canister so it won't be that visible anymore? About the vest - I think there is nothing he can do as a quick fix as it seems the vest closes up to the neck while the original didn't go up that far. The collar is a tricky issue as I think on screen we have several shots indicating the same practice with the collar Rudi is showing.

I went through all my pics - unfortunately I don't have the DVD - and also only see that speeder that cannot be identified in the kashyyk scene. In an earlier discussion on the same topic right on the start of the project here someon mentioned it and due to not possessing the DVD (I'm waitng for a bundle) I didn't asked any further. I also wouldn't consider secondary references form the expanded universe as authentic reference when it comes to on screen chars but the clones are even not a real prop so there are a lot of issues regarding desing details such as textures functionality, antomy and the like. As I said before the whole funky army of the clone era is less a product based on military understanding (even less than in the OT already) but a colourfull circus. To get it to work the only thing we could do is suspecting there are special gears and different unit colours and in the case of Kashyyk the only example where the colour actually serves a practical use as far as environmetal circumstances are concerned. So we're operating on a very hypothetical level. Imo the troops on Kashyyk are no scouts - they seem to be a light mobile infantry unit. At least the way they're portrayed during the battle leads me to that conclusion. At a later point of the empire's rise to power these troops might have been the core or simply their equippment the base to form the recon units we know from ROTJ. It's obvious the designers used the scout and especially the known concept sketches for the scout to base their new desing on. I think they chose it because the scouts are known from the forest moon Endor setting and so they thought - well fine we use troops looking similar for kashyyk. But the way the troops are deployed in battle are completely different and that's why I think it's wrong to talk of a clone scout.

The problem is that on Kashhyyk there is a scene where the troops also use a speeder like that.... That's probably the reason why Hasbro has called the troops BARC. As these can be seen as the ancestor outfit for the scout it came in handy for them. That's the problem when you get lost in fancy designs but loose track on continuity and practicability.....a major flaw with the whole branched out clone trooper conept. No one really seemed to have cared for logical patterns as long as it looked good.

I doubt he is doing a QUAKE III Character as costume so I guess that's the nick name of his vac-table. Though I don't know what the moon phobos might have to do with heat. But maybe it#s just the fact the moon is located in space (vacuum) and sounds cool. Frank enlighten us - please (with sugar on top)

I guess we see no seam lines as we have mostly low poly models with reduced skin detail. The Barcs have minimal screentime and no real close up shots in the movie therefore sophisticated cgi would have been a waste of time leaving the barcs almost as detailed as a common computer game model. Look at some screen caps they even forgot to wipe out some errors with the lens of the barc making it semi transparent so that you see the back vents through the lens. Embrace the fact that we get a lot of possibilities to use our own brains to make this costume a functional real life replica with lots of room for improvement over the references given.

Scans now hosted on my webspace (2 files zipped): right-click save

Guess we have a new scout recruit soon . Frank - awesome progress. A little whinming though You asked for the length of the vest sleeves - I think they're too long but this may also derive from the fact that the shoulder bells seem to be still too small compared to your size. So either you tweak the sleeves or you tweak bell and sleeves to meet half-way with both. As for the knee peaces - very nice shape - I like the crisp detail of the gaps between the "protective segments". But I would have added edges pointing more inward at the bottom to give it a more solid look as seen on your very nice detail at the top lips. The latter came out very nice. I still have a gripe on the X shape of the whole body but then again those details are probably a matter of point of views as we have seen the warping of the plastic due to the straps. All in all - very nice scout from scratch!

Hey Frank do I spot an X-shaped direction in your knee peace? I know there is this one photo where the upper knee peace looks like that but I think that is not intended rather than an effect due to tension of the lower part from the band leading to a collapse because of the gap there. To illustrate what I mean: I think this picture is the major reason for your approach (if I'm looking right) But shots like these are in my opinion the ones that should get more attention I know that a few screen shots also indicate a slight x-shape in the construction and my argumentation is quite subjectively but I think it makes sense to speculate that the force of the straps below the (probably) weakest spot of the construction is the reason for that optical effect. As a designer you know that form follows function - neither anatomy nor the functionality would profit from an x-shape. Plus - it doesn't look good (I think). Opinions?

It's one thing to develop theories or recap and evaluate the findings of other people but a whole different thing to put in practice. My hat to those who not only talk and debate but actually do it. I'm especially happy that you take your time and critically advance from phase to phase - even revisiting things. The patience and devotion will pay big time in the end.

Gallery picture finished and sent to the webmaster. Congrats Marcel!

Frank more and more reveils he is a true interdisciplinary genious. Why can't we be neighbors damnit?!

Nothing to complain about - looks spot on! I wonder if you already have a solution for the buttons that connect the armor wih the boot? I think any movement will cause wrinkling of some sort (splitting at worst) due to the deformation of a boot while walking and the three fixed points - toe, sides. The designers probably forgot about those logical issues as they do most of the time - I should know it . In reality the hard parts would be even more problematic than your's as those are planned to be made out of flexible PU. Perhaps an original might have a compensation system -> rails, sliding systems of some sort right under the armor serving as a flexible cradle for the button to move according movement. Still that would limit the general agility of a soldier as movement is limited to the predefined sphere of action by the suit. oops ... do I overshoot?