Star Wars Episode IV - E-11 Blaster Rifle

[Jehudah Design]

Good evening.

Some while ago, I made an E-11 blaster rifle while taking photos of every step of the buildup, then put all the photos into my website, known as "The Dromund Kaas Sith Temple" This website was a free hosted website, and the tutorial had copy protected photos that were dark and fuzzy, and the grammar on the site was bad.

I have now bought a domain and now have a new website called "The Eternal Darkness" at Dark Side Sith Lord - Costumes, Prop Replicas, Robots, And More, and have also redone the whole tutorial.

The tutorial now has 50 photos in each page to make each page faster to upload, this was a request from a guy some while ago.

The photos are no longer copy protected as I thought people might like to save them on their computer, and if someone ever would steal my photos, posting them in their site, saying that they built the blaster, then I know along with everyone else who has seen the tutorial that I am the one that actually owns the blaster rifle in the photos, and can proove it as it is right here with me.

What is also very cool is that the photos can now be enlarged by clicking on them, turning them to a resolution of 1024 x 768.

Grammar has also been fixed, as far as I can tell with my norwegianity...

I hope you like my new revised tutorial then, and good luck building your own Blastech E-11 blaster rifle.

The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

EDIT - Website is now back up, and link to the tutorial has been fixed.

Dark Side Sith Lord.

 

[wannab]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

Nice.:thumbsup

I have a couple suggestions though...

Just make thumbnail photos that link to larger photos (it takes forever to load all the pics). Alternative would be, resample the pics to bring the file size down for faster loading. Example, your photos are averaging 700+KB (big), you could resample with no decernable loss to around 75KB (much faster).

Next little tweak, create a bit of space in your tables so the text doesn't run right up against the photos.

If you need any help, lmk.

Doug

 

[TazVader]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

AWESOME MATE!!! Well done

Regards
TAZ

 

[SaberFreak]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

Another thing you can do to protect your photos is to add a watermark on all of them. If you do it right you can have a huge watermark right across each photo without affecting the viewing of the photos much.

I really wish I have the tools you have, as I'm just starting to put together my own E-11, and need to make some of the parts which didn't come with the kit I bought...

Actually, you could make quite a bit of money if you make metal parts for those who want to upgrade their E-11...

 

[superjedi]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

That's one of the most amazing tutorials I've ever seen!! :thumbsup
Incredible work. That's a blaster you can be proud of.
How long did the entire build up take you to complete?

 

[vaderdarth]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

Excellent tutorial! I wouldn't change a thing. Honestly, I have always wanted to make an E-11 out of metal, but just don't have the time. Now that you have raised the bar, I won't even bother. LOL

Dave

 

[Jehudah Design]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

Nice.:thumbsup

I have a couple suggestions though...

Just make thumbnail photos that link to larger photos (it takes forever to load all the pics). Alternative would be, resample the pics to bring the file size down for faster loading. Example, your photos are averaging 700+KB (big), you could resample with no decernable loss to around 75KB (much faster).

Next little tweak, create a bit of space in your tables so the text doesn't run right up against the photos.

If you need any help, lmk.

Doug

The photos are already thumbnailed to 500 x something, and they cant be done any smaller as this is what they need to be in the tutorial in order for people to see whats in them without having to enlarge the photos.

The text was placed right next to each photo because of the "snap to grid" setting that makes it easier for me to place items around in every page, but I might figure out a way to make the text better.

 

[Jehudah Design]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

Another thing you can do to protect your photos is to add a watermark on all of them. If you do it right you can have a huge watermark right across each photo without affecting the viewing of the photos much.

I really wish I have the tools you have, as I'm just starting to put together my own E-11, and need to make some of the parts which didn't come with the kit I bought...

Actually, you could make quite a bit of money if you make metal parts for those who want to upgrade their E-11...

I dont know if I will ever bother to put watermarks in the photos, now that they have already been scaled down and saved once as JPG, the quality might suck if I saved the photos again with the watermarks on then, or I would have to scale down, sharpen, hue balance, and add contast and all sorts of stuff to all the photos all over again.

I hope building those parts will go well then, too bad they didnt come with the kit. Perhaps I could make metal parts for people who needs then, not a bad idea, thanks.

 

[Jehudah Design]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

That's one of the most amazing tutorials I've ever seen!! :thumbsup
Incredible work. That's a blaster you can be proud of.
How long did the entire build up take you to complete?

Thanks for the kind words
I am very proud of it, feels good in my hands:love
I tried to figure out the time spent for the build some while ago, and it wasnt easy since most photos were said to have been taken 10/05/2030 and such, so I just counted the different dates, and there you have it, about two and a half months.

But really I dont fully know.

 

[amish]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

Wow, wow, and wow!! I am only on page 2!

 

[defstartrooper]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

The photos are already thumbnailed to 500 x something, and they cant be done any smaller as this is what they need to be in the tutorial in order for people to see whats in them without having to enlarge the photos.

The text was placed right next to each photo because of the "snap to grid" setting that makes it easier for me to place items around in every page, but I might figure out a way to make the text better.

I think what Doug was saying was you could post thumbnails on the tutorial page which link to another page with the full size image on when clicked, that way the tutorial page will load pretty much instantly instead of having to wait for every image to load, and he's right about resampling them too which makes the file size a lot smaller but the loss of image quality is not noticeable it's pretty easy to do, photoshop and other similar photo editing softwares usually have an option labeled save for web or something similar and it will automatically resample the file to a much smaller size making the images faster to load.

 

[Jehudah Design]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

Hmm, Im not sure I understand.

You mean that I should have really small thumbnails, about 250 x something, that can be clicked to visit yet another page with the same stuff, only the photos are 500 x something? Ugh, I must be tired and/or confused.

Other that that....The images in the tutorial are the thumbnails, what you are waiting to load are the thumbnails, the actual photos are 1024 x 768, and the thumbnails are 500 x something...The thumbnails are meant to be 500 x something so that people can see whats in the photos, but can click on them to enlarge them to 1024 x 768 if wanted to, but the photos you see in the tutorial itself are the thumbnails, and some more thumbnails, then thumbnails. I find no point in scaling down the photos when they are automaticly scaled down to 500 x something to be thumbnails, clicking them to enlarge them is optional.

The pages upload pretty fast over here really, and on every other computer I've used. Hmm.

 

[wannab]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

You could have the full size pics on the page if they were resampled to a smaller file size and they would load much faster that the smaller pics you have already. Yes I was saying have small pics say 100 pixels wide as thumbnails that link to full size pics if not resampling. I have DSL and it takes a long time for the page to load even with the smaller pics you have now. You have a great tutorial there and it would be even better if it loaded faster that is all I'm suggesting.

If you don't know how or the software you have won't resample I could snag them off the site and resample them for you. I could send you an example of one of your pics resampled to show how there is almost no decernable difference. It would be better if you did it having the original files though end quality would be even better than me resampling your JPEG.

Doug

Doug

 

[Nexus6]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

You could have the full size pics on the page if they were resampled to a smaller file size and they would load much faster that the smaller pics you have already. Yes I was saying have small pics say 100 pixels wide as thumbnails that link to full size pics if not resampling. I have DSL and it takes a long time for the page to load even with the smaller pics you have now. You have a great tutorial there and it would be even better if it loaded faster that is all I'm suggesting.

If you don't know how or the software you have won't resample I could snag them off the site and resample them for you. I could send you an example of one of your pics resampled to show how there is almost no decernable difference. It would be better if you did it having the original files though end quality would be even better than me resampling your JPEG.

Doug

Doug

Exactly. For example, here is one of your full-size photos:



It is 1024 x 768 pixels, with a file-size of almost 500 KB.

Here is the same photo resampled:



It is 1024 x 768 pixels, with a file-size of 91 KB.

Your thumbnails are about 300 KB in size. If you resampled the full-size photos as demonstrated above, you could get rid of the thumbnails, use the full-size photos, & your website would load MUCH faster.

BTW, I've had your old site bookmarked for a long time. That scratch-built E-11 is one of the coolest projects I've ever seen. :thumbsup :thumbsup

 

[wannab]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

Thanks Nexus! After thinking about my last post, I was going to do what you just did.

Doug

 

[pennausamike]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

Very cool tutorial and with cable internet, I didn't have any issues with page loading speed.
In that context, I really like the layout of not having to click in and out of pictures, but just being able to scroll down the page to read.

Mike

 

[Jehudah Design]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

Ahh, I've never heard about resampling before. So one can make the photos take less space, yet have the same resolution? Thats pretty neat. I thought normally saved JPG was as low as you could get in size.

Perhaps that could work then, resample them and use the fullsize photos in the main tuturial instead of the thumbnails I have now that are about 300kb in size. 91kb aint bad for 1024 x 768, and the quality didnt seem to get worse anyway.

As pennausamike said, he liked the layout where one doesnt have to click in and out of pictures to see them, just scroll down the page, and that was my whole idea about what the pages should be like, so having the thumbnails as 100 x something might be very annoying as one would have to click every one of them to see whats in them, thats why the photos in the tutorial are 500 x something so that people can see them.

But if that resampling works with my program over here without making the photos fuzzier, I might use them in the main page instead, and will also try to move the text further away from the photos.

Having 50 photos and 50 thumbnails mean that I have to upload 100 big sized photos for every page, and having 50 of them at 91kb might be a lot easier.

 

[TMP]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

Great to se you active on this forum again.
Will you come to Gøteborg for the Sci-fi con?
Me, Mads E. and Fredrik V. is traveling down there

Keep up the good work.

 

[wannab]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

Ahh, I've never heard about resampling before. So one can make the photos take less space, yet have the same resolution? Thats pretty neat. I thought normally saved JPG was as low as you could get in size.

Perhaps that could work then, resample them and use the fullsize photos in the main tuturial instead of the thumbnails I have now that are about 300kb in size. 91kb aint bad for 1024 x 768, and the quality didnt seem to get worse anyway.

As pennausamike said, he liked the layout where one doesnt have to click in and out of pictures to see them, just scroll down the page, and that was my whole idea about what the pages should be like, so having the thumbnails as 100 x something might be very annoying as one would have to click every one of them to see whats in them, thats why the photos in the tutorial are 500 x something so that people can see them.

But if that resampling works with my program over here without making the photos fuzzier, I might use them in the main page instead, and will also try to move the text further away from the photos.

Having 50 photos and 50 thumbnails mean that I have to upload 100 big sized photos for every page, and having 50 of them at 91kb might be a lot easier.

Yeah you got it.

My thumbnail suggestion was in case you weren't able to resample. I actually prefer the larger pics (smaller file size) option the best too. I do however like it when the page less than say 12 large pics at a time.

Also, maybe, another thing that would be cool is to have "chapters" index.
You could break the (large) tutorial into sections say, barrel chapter, grip chapter, magazine chapter, etc. This would make it easier for builders to go back quickly to the section they are needing as reference for what they are working on without having to try to remember the exact page a certain aspect was on.

Again this is an awesome tutorial, I guess that's why the eagerness for these suggestions. Hope it's taken in the spirit given.

Doug

 

[exoray]

Re: The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

I thought normally saved JPG was as low as you could get in size.

There is not such thing as a normal saved JPG JPG can be compressed from horrible to nearly identical to the original, its all a matter of the compression settings... Most software has a default setting but it's different from program to program and can in most cases be adjusted to fit your needs...

A good read on the topic...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG

And BTW nice Blaster tutorial...