Star Wars Episode IV - E-11 Blaster Rifle

[Jehudah Design]

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.

Hmm, Gøteborg, I'm not too sure, Ive been there many times though, it all just depends on when it is. It would be cool to try out my Stormtrooper armor in an event for the first time, I've only been at one event as a Tusken.

Will let you know if I can make it:thumbsup

 

[Jehudah Design]

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

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

I tried to resample the photos now, but it seems none of my programs can do that, what program do you use to resample photos? I think its best if I did it myself rather than annoying other people with it, I do have many other tutorials out there.

I dont know if I can have 12 photos in each page really, I had 100 photos in each page before, and now 50, and as you can see I have 10 pages now that there are 50 photos in each page, and having 12 in them will need too many pages.

I thought about the chapters before, but the thing is that I started building something, then built something else, then built on it again and so on, so everything will just become a mess if I chapter it all up. The current layout just shows the way it was built, and that was pretty much the idea of that page, just to show how I built mine, not to show others how they should build one... Sorry if that sounds bad, I do like helping people really, thats why I put the photos out there, to give people ideas on how to build stuff.

Sorry if some suggestions arent possible to do, I do really want to make those pages as userfriendly as possible.

 

[exoray]

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

I tried to resample the photos now, but it seems none of my programs can do that, what program do you use to resample photos?

Usually you open the photo, then select "SAVE AS" select JPG and in many programs there is a box you can check to "INVOKE OPTIONS" "SHOW OPTIONS" or something along those lines, with that clicked it will usually open another window and let you choose the compression ratio...

Make sure you don't save over the originals

 

[Jehudah Design]

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

Ok cool, will check that out.
I always keep a folder for itself with all the original photos in it

 

[Nexus6]

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

The program I used to resample your photo on page 2 of this thread is called: IrfanView.

In my experience it's one of the most effective, yet easy-to-use, graphics manipulators available. AND it's free. As in: "free". Not to be confused with "expensive".

Just make sure that if you download/install IrfanView, to download/install the plug-ins as well.

 

[Jehudah Design]

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

Sorry, I just need to ask because I have many many photos from tutorials that would need resampling - Does the photos upload in such slow speed that its a problem? You do eventually see all of them right?

If I have to resample every photo, then there would be very many photos that would need resampling, and my main photo albums contain very many photos that I would then need to copy and resample, and that would fill up my machine with even more photos that I have to keep a track of:wacko

One needs to know before remaking the helmet and armor tutorials for my Stormtrooper costume.

Thanks.

Dark Side Sith Lord.

 

[defstartrooper]

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

Yes the photo's do eventually load but pretty slowly if you're on a slow line.
If storage is a problem you could always upload and store the photo's online there are plenty of free hosting services just use one that doesn't delete files after a set amount of time if they remain inactive.
Although i don't really understand the problem once your sites uploaded the photo's are stored on your webhost so you can delete the copies on your PC.

 

[Jehudah Design]

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

Perhaps, perhaps. I will check into it some more then.

 

[wannab]

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

Well I timed it last night to get you an example. It took a painfully slow ten minutes (no kidding) for it to load for me on DSL and 13 pics at the end had red x'es that I then had to click with the show pic option for them to appear. I never wait that long for any page to load no matter the content, therfore, I would guess that there are others who would not wait either.

As far as pic filing, here is what I do. I have the original pics in their own "master" folder then I have "corrected" master file folder for photoshop tweaked files, then I have "for web" subfolder. I just upload the "for web" files to host sites and then hard drive and DVD archive (backup) the rest.

Yes it will take awhile to resample the huge amount of photos you have, but if you did just a page or two a week it would be a breeze. Just a lot of button pushing. Hey we could call you "George Jeston" after all that button pushing.:lol

Doug

 

[TK9120]

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

I have DSL also and using Firefox they loaded for me in about 15 seconds. I waited about that long then read the first caption and looked at the picture. I scrolled down and did the same. All the pics were there and I didn't have to wait for them to load. I know I don't have a super fast connection but it isn't that slow either. On one page I did try scrolling right down and they weren't ready yet. I waited a bit and it worked fine.

Great job on that build up. That is incredible. I was a little disappointed that you didn't make the Hengstler counter yourself though. :lol Great work and very inspiring. I might have to make one someday. I might even try to make it out of metal instead of plastic.

 

[Jehudah Design]

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

Hmm, not good, I just about hear a click and the page is done over here.

Anyway, I have now resampled all the photos and uploaded them all back into the site, and at one point, my computer crashed and Windows said that there was something wrong with the harddrive where I store all those photos, but it eventually turned out good (press panic button and select ignore)

So the pages should theoretically upload much faster now, and if they dont, theres nothing I can do about it, sorry. I have also moved the text away from the photos, but thats as far back as I can have them now, so hoping thats ok.

I just keep two sets of photos, I have the folder for my website, the Stormtrooper folder, E-11... Then there is the folder called "The Creation Of The E-11 Blaster Rifle" where I have a folder named "Template Photos" where I store all the original photos, then copy which ever photos I will use for the website directly to the "The Creation Of..." folder where I rename them to 001 and beyond, edit them to make them brighter and sharper and all that, then upload those.

What I did now was just to resample the photos that were then saved in a folder called TEMP, but now that I have all of them safely stored in my website, I might replace the main second batch since I always keep the originals anyway.

Sorry if that was a boring read, here's the link to the tutorial, I hope its better now - www.darksidesithlord.com/stormtrooper/e-11-blaster-rifle/creation-01.html

Thanks for the tips and help.

Dark Side Sith Lord.

 

[wannab]

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

Ahhh, much better (3 minutes here). You could even have the large pics on the page (if you prefered) since the "link photos" on the front page are the same file size as the large photos.

Doing a happy dance here! :thumbsup

Hope I didn't come across as a pain in the a**, just trying to be helpful.

Regards,

Doug

 

[Jehudah Design]

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

Not at all:lol I think its good that you told me about that stuff, I want my website to be as userfriendly as possible, so I'm glad it got reduced from 10 minutes to 3 then

The photos you see small and large are the same photos, they are just automaticly scaled down in the main page, then enlarged to their original size once you click them. The way the photos were set up before was with a setting "generate thumbnail photos", so the program did, but the thumbnails were created as PNG and were about 450 KB's big, but now that the photos are resampled, the large photos of 1024x768 takes about 70-90 kb each, so thats a big improvement and makes it even easier to upload the photos, and I can use these in the main page of the tutorial instead of the thumbnails.

So thanks for letting me know about the resampling, I also found a resampling setting in the program I use to edit the photos, so next time I edit photos, I will save them resampled.

 

[masteryoda]

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

I did a "print to pdf" at work, so now I can at least look at this even if I'm not online. (I have dial-up at home.) I did manage to copy all your large sized images though! Wow, that's a lot of work you put into this!
Do you know (or does anybody for that matter) what gauge the steel is that you used? It looks like you just used an old chunk of galvanized ductwork. I'm guessing that would be 18 gauge?
The reason I ask is because I'd really love to draw these parts out in CAD, then have the guy running the laser cutter at work wedge them in here and there as he has space. But, I don't think we ever deal with anything thinner than 16, and rarely do we use that... It might just be a bit too thick to mess with. Though if I did manage to pull it off, they'd look super sweet and would resist any kind of damage you could throw at them!

 

[FakeBritishAccent]

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

Excellent work, my friend. But all awesomeness aside, this was probably the funniest prop tutorial I've ever read!

"Excess Metal" sounds like a magazine devoted to old school Heshers.

 

[Al May]

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

This looks as if it a great tutorial,cant wait to see it, any idea when the sites going to be up and running again?

 

[Jehudah Design]

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

Hi there.

Thou shal wait no more, I think the site should work now. I had to write a message in it, saying that my harddrive had failed, then all the buttons in the site vanished since I didn't have them in my harddrive, so no links, darn.

But here is the link to the tutorial again, I hope it works - www.darksidesithlord.com/my-costumes/stormtrooper/e-11-blaster-rifle/creation-01.html

Most stuff is now recovered from the faulty harddrives, so I shal start working on my website again soon - New costume banners, prop replicas, custom creations, and so on..

The freeware file recovery pretty much saved my a--, but alas it can't see some of the files that the file recovery you have to pay 70 bucks to use can see, so that's screwed...

[Donate 70 bucks and you will see me sew a shirt and a snowtrooper coat, build a blaster pistol, sew a tunic, braid a white wig, paint an Optimus Prime action figure, assemble a Y-Wing and an AT-AT, build a sword, a magic wand, an evil female computer and a Droid caller, and such things]
:lol

 

[Jehudah Design]

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

Spammers have reached my Stormtrooper tutorials. At first they were only spamming my main guestbook, but now they are spamming my E-11 tutorials guestbook and I don't know what to do about it.

Does anyone know where to get a guestbook for my website with spam protection and email notifications and such that looks like the one I already have?

Also the tutorial you can now see (V2.0) contains some photos that were scaled down to 1024x768, and some photos that were enlarged from 500xsomething to 1024x768 because of the harddrive failures, so I had to snatch some photos from my old website.

I now have all the original photos back of the E-11 tutorial and will soon start on V3.0, or is it V2.1, or was the V2.0 really V1.1?... Forget about that, you get my point. This time there will be better photos and a new video with my annoying voice in it saying what I'm doing, and there will be some more scenes.

Hopefully you're not all sick of this tutorial yet, and I'm not annoying you:confused

 

[Jehudah Design]

Re: (HELP! SPAM!) The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

Must I really go spammer hunting with my E-11? Or is there a way to fix this?
My old website never got spam, not even once. Even though the link to the guestbook is gone, the guestbook still gets spam, so the F'ing moronic A'holes must be searching for my guestbook.php or something.

F' them all! Join my spammer hunting club and help destroy them:angry

 

[BlindSquirrel]

Re: (HELP! SPAM!) The creation of the E-11 blaster rifle V2.0

Thank you so much for the remarkably complete tutorial. I built a plastic/PVC blaster but your functional metal version makes me want to take another crack at it! Really well done!:thumbsup