Re: Luke v2 lightsaber paint stencils: All new files
List Updated. Thanks guys. Please check the list on the first post for accuracy and let me know if I missed anything.
Option B, my one complaint about your first stencils is that they looked much too smooth and vector. They didn’t have a natural weathered look.
Yes, that's the only 'negative' feedback I received on the original stencils. As you can tell from the teaser photos, the detail is MUCH MUCH higher than in the originals, so that "smooth vectory" appearance should be much better on these simply from the fact that tracing a higher resolution image can capture a lot of that extra detail. Adding noise to the tracings would definitely create extra roughness to help with that issue but it would be making up stuff that isn't really there and potentially decreasing the accuracy of the paint job.
So hopefully we're in the perfect spot in that A, they'll be better than the originals anyway, and B if you want to rough yours up further, there are lots of techniques to do that in order to remove some of the smoothness. I really do care and it matters a lot to me to offer something everyone will be happy with and proud of, so I take all of this into deep consideration.
Sounds good to me. Thanks for asking for all the feedback. The choices make this even more exciting
You're welcome! I love involving others and collaborating. It gets us to a better finished product that more people are happy with.
This may not be the best spot for this question, but is there a thread with a bunch of reference pics of the V2 saber? I’ve looked around but I can’t seem to find one. In my defense, I may not have looked everywhere on the rpf. I’ve read Wanna Wanga’s The Original Trilogy Lightsaber Guidebook. Anything else I should be looking for?
If you don’t mind me asking, where are you getting the images for your stencils? I can freeze frame ROTJ, but that seems like a lot of work and I’ve got to think someone else has already taken the time to collect those images. Just curious. I’d like to get as close to screen accurate as I can. Thanks much.
The original Luke V2 Lightsaber thread in the prop section from a couple of years ago when the actual prop was first revealed in the highest to date detail during Celebration is probably the best thread for you to read through It'll have most of the image collected. Additionally, the prop was featured in a YouTube video with Mark Hamill and lots of good close ups of it are now available. So while I did take a couple of references from ROTJ, the vast majority were collected over a couple of years through various threads and videos.
And just to clear something up, because people have asked. I do NOT have some magical set of images that are letting me simply scan the prop and unroll the paint texture.
This is a very painstakingly slow process of taking an image, trying to correct the perspective of it in photoshop, warping it so that it's as flat as can be, taking into account the curvature of the prop, the curvature of the camera lens, the angle and distance from the camera, the lighting, etc. to get as many reference points as possible. I then study each one and try to match up one scratch from one angle to the same scratch in another angle in an attempt to get a full picture of the entire thing. The problem is that a scratch that may look like a bunny rabbit in one image, may look like a guy holding a gun in another image so it becomes necessary to adjust, skew, stretch, shrink, warp, resize, rotate, etc. and then patch with more direct angles as possible. It's a lot of work but I think the result is turning out SO MUCH better than the originals. Not to down play those, I was very proud of how close I got with what info we had available at the time. But these are going to be spot on from every angle.
Just as an example here is a comparison of Gen 1 to Gen 2 for the emitter plate. For Gen 1 I was limited to a single shot of ROTJ where the prop is sitting on the emperor' throne, and one more from the Celebration panel. Gen 2 is from the Mark Hamill video. I think it's safe to say these will be much improved.
