“The Drac-onian” for LordDraconical

Hello Everybody and welcome back to a something different design today. In the past month I mentioned my Cosplay costume that I am working on and the prop building I am planning to do using Nerf blasters. Well I obviously did my research and looked for the best Nerf blaster for the job and so I went to YouTube to watch reviews and modding tutorials and whilst doing this I was introduced to a person named LordDraconical (or Drac for short) who is considered a Nerf Master. He not only actively takes part in Nerfing events, he also mods his weaponry and runs a business making and selling Third Party add-ons for the community. I will admit most of the tech stuff he mentioned went over my head at first but I’m slowly catching up with my knowledge but there was something lurking in one of his videos that caught my eye…Here is Drac and the YouTube video – watch closely and see if you can find the hidden object!

Did you see it? Well…there was a cylindrical object made of aluminium with black accent pieces and what appeared to be an activation switch…could it be….a LIGHTSABER? Here take a look at some screenshots and you can decide…

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  Can you see it now?

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  Zoomed in – a saber?

It certainly looks like a lightsaber and Drac does have an “alter ego” character of a Vampire Ninja soo…I think he dabbles in the fine art of saber combat which is much more civilised than blasters 😁 However I couldn’t work out what model of saber it was and I decided to attempt to rebuild it in 3D so here is my version of this possible saber I call mine the Drac-onian Saber…

I didn’t have much in the way of reference images to work from (hence why I couldn’t identify the hilt) but I took artistic license and built it how I imagined it would work if I designed it. It still has the sleek aluminium handgrip with the black accent parts and recessed panels. One panel houses a Power Level Indicator and adjustment bolt to tune the blade length and power. The activation switch has a little bit of bling with a gold coating otherwise the hilt is a sleek functional duelling saber. But I mentioned Drac has an alter ego and he has built a brand for himself and has his own “Corporate House Colours” scheme. I discovered this colour scheme and I thought, “Hang on! Drac is a modder and I design custom sabers…let’s bling this saber in his colours!”….So I did and here it is the Drac LE version…

So this is Drac’s “Corporate House Colour” scheme of deep red and black which looks pretty spicy (he says that a lot about things he likes or thinks are cool). And you will notice that I added another little embellishment near the activation switch…and that is a little logo similar to Drac’s fang logo which I made using Blender’s Extruded Text feature (so the logo is actually a 3D part too!).

I also learnt recently how to create glowing wireframe renders so I have a final gallery of two wireframe renders and a twin shot of the regular and LE version of the Drac-onian…

Hopefully Lord Drac will like this saber if he sees it. I will try and let him know about it however, I am not great with Social Media etc but I’ll leave a message on his YouTube Channel, speaking of which if you are interested in Nerf blasters and “Foam Dart Flinging” then you can check out LordDraconical’s YT Channel with this link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5IY3wtFVRFBI7bCFv_U-5w

And I suspect that Drac is really a big Star Wars fan because I also spotted a Luke Skywalker replica propped up against the back wall of his studio set up! Anyhoo I have done my bit to rebalance the Force in designing a hilt for him and just so it is truly balanced I have just bought a motorised blaster called a Nerf N-Strike Stryfe which is one of his favourites (it’s only fair I get some blasters too 😎)

That just about wraps this design so this means it’s Thank You time. Whether you are a first time viewer or one of the growing family of regular visitors, thank you so much for supporting me and my blog – you are all very much appreciated and please if you like what you see here then spread the word about FTSabersite if you can. I am continuously working on new stuff so please call back for future posts. Till next time…

“The Drac-onian” saber is a For Tyeth Editions saber and was modelled and rendered in Blender 3D by For Tyeth. The model and renders are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2021. The images, nickname and YouTube video of LordDraconical are ©Copyright of Lord Draconical.

Hyper Saber – Inspired by Star Trek: Enterprise’s Engineers

Hello Everybody, Space….the final unexplored expanse….these are the first voyages of a new Lightsaber based on a tool from the Engineering Department’s toolkit found on the starship Enterprise (that is Enterprise NX-01 – you know the “first” one). Enterprise takes place 100 years before the iconic Star Trek TOS starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy etc and this prequel stars Scott Bakula and Jolene Blalock. As the lockdown in the UK grinds on and we slowly vaccinate everyone I watched a bit more TV than usual and one day opted to watch an episode of Enterprise and low and behold I found inspiration! The episode tells of a mission where the Enterprise gets caught up in a “space minefield” and a magnetic mine attaches itself to the ship endangering all onboard. It falls upon crewmember Trip Tucker to try and dislodge the mine but as usual, it isn’t as easy to do as it is to say!

Trip had to venture out and space walk to remove the mine and it was during this assignment that I saw what inspired this design. And the inspiration was one of the tools in Trip’s tool case and it was the tool known as a HyperSpanner (an original name!) It was hexagonal in cross section and was approximately 12in/30cm long making it the perfect dimensions to be converted into a For Tyeth Lightsaber. Here are a couple of photos showing the prop and you’ll see why it caught my eye:

It sorta looks like a lightsaber already and the facetted hexagonal ridges help create the impression of it having an emitter section and a pommel part. It has control buttons and a little hidden feature I’ll reveal later. So this new lightsaber I built was a little bit of an exercise in modelling rather than a full design but it was fun and worked so well (I think). So for the Trekkies (including Resa of https://graffitiluxandmurals.com/2021/03/09/o-halito/ – thanks again for the magazine you sent I said I was inspired by it 😉) here is my Hyper Saber…

So this is the “unofficial” Hyper Saber I built from an old HyperSpanner casing I picked up (just kidding, I modelled all of this saber from scratch – though I did use background images from the Star Trek Enterprise Memory Alpha wiki pages – thanks) Modelling the handgrip was fairly straightforward – I used a hexagonal cylinder (you can have a cylinder with a choice of how many sides it has from 3 to 360 so I chose 6 sides and bingo!). However, the emitter and pommel sections are in fact separate and made from….BOLTS! I used a feature of Blender that models nuts and bolts of various types and modify them to have different shaped heads and number of thread lines (the spiral portion of the shaft). By creating three bolts and lining them up next to each other I was able to combine the three together which formed the distinctive ridged sections. I used a further gold coloured bolt inside the emitter mouth to recreate the lightsaber blade emitter matrix. But on the pommel I made a Starfleet logo as a 3D decoration. It isn’t the complete badge of the Federation of Planets but just the basic A shaped badge with the elliptical ring because this tool predates the formation of the Federation.

The activation controls also got some 3D treatment too, look closely and you will see that the text on them isn’t just a flat texture but actual 3D parts (here you go Neil, extruded text for you!) which I gave a nice shiny gold material . There is also some engraving I added so here is a second gallery showing some finer details…

In the first two images you can see the On/Off/WP buttons with 3D text. On and Off speak for themselves but the WP I thought could stand for “War Power” and be used as a Power Boost if the blade needs a bit more cutting edge! But then while I was watching the episode of the show Trip and Captain Archer actually opened up the HyperSpanner and there was a CRYSTAL inside it! Now Trip’s crystal was probably Dilithium so I had to tweak the internals of this saber to accept it but it worked and to my surprise the blade it produced has a nice Ice Blue shade! Red crystals usually produce a red blade – must be strange Star Trek magic 🙄.

With that mystery blade effect I have just about wrapped up this design, I hope you enjoyed it – whether as a Trekkie or as a Star Wars fan! Trip and Captain Archer succeeded in dislodging the mine and Enterprise continued it’s mission to explore and so too must I venture forwards (cos I can’t find reverse!) and come up with more new sabers.

Thank you so much for checking Hyper Saber out, if you are a Trekkie, a first time visitor or one of my regular supporters you’re all welcome and appreciated. The support and love you show to my little site is fantastic and keeps me designing. I have some more High Republic themed hilts and a range of designs based on some famous Blasters, so there is plenty more to see in upcoming posts, I hope you will join me again! Till next time…

“Hyper Saber” is a For Tyeth Editions creation inspired by the “HyperSpanner” tool seen in the TV show “Star Trek: Enterprise”. This 3D model and it’s renders are made by For Tyeth and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2021. “Star Trek: Enterprise”, “Captain Archer”, “Trip Tucker” and “HyperSpanner” are all Trademarks/©Copyrighted elements belonging to Paramount Pictures studios. Star Trek was written and created by Gene Roddenberry.

“Racer Saber” inspired by Star Wars Resistance

Hello Everybody and welcome to another new saber(?) design! We have all been living under crazy conditions for the past year or so and we have found ways to occupy our time and entertain ourselves. Well I took the extra time to binge watch the cartoon series Star Wars: Rebels which I was hesitant about at first but I really got invested in the great story and characters. It inspired a range of new designs for sabers so after finishing Rebels I decided to watch the next series Disney/Lucasfilm produced and that was Star Wars: Resistance. It centred around the character of Kazudo Xiono or Kaz, a young man that was a bit of a “flyer” in his own opinion (though he did have skills) and he somehow gets recruited by Poe Dameron the Resistance hero to do some spying on the First Order.

Kazudo Xiono front and centre, Poe Dameron on the right and Neeku Vozo on the left!

Kazudo after meeting Poe and being recruited finds himself on an ocean planet aboard a large ship refuelling platform named The Colossus. There here spies on the ever increasing presence of First Order troops arriving on the station. He also becomes part of the Aces Squadron – a group of “Air Racers” that take part in high speed pylon/gate racing. The “Aces” also double as the Colssus’ air defence squad protecting it from pirate activity. The Colossus looks like this..

Very exposed and at risk from attack I would say! I can’t divulge too much of the story here as a pleasant young lady named Tina I met recently (and also publishes a Star Wars blog you can check out here: https://mystarwarsthoughts.com/ – it has great articles such as Top 5 lists and thoughts on the SW universe and community) is currently in the middle of binge watching Resistance herself so I don’t want to spoil anything! But I can say that there is a particular Air Racer ship that caught my eye and it is called the Fireball and it is that ship which has inspired this next design, I call this “Racer Saber”…

The reason I love this ship and built a saber based on it is because the Fireball looks like a cross between a World War 2 Vought CorsairF4U fighter plane and a competition aerobatic race plane like those seen in the “Red Bull Air Race” series from a few years ago. It also looked as if it was a crossguard medieval sword hilt…perfect I thought for a saber! The cockpit windshield acts as an activation switch and power level indicator, otherwise this hilt is a very basic recreation of the Fireball (though much smaller so it can hang off your belt 😁! I mentioned this ship was primarily used for pylon aerobatic races so here is a second gallery showing “Racer Saber” going through it’s paces…

The last two images I just added so you can judge how close I got to recreating the Fireball and my little attempt to recreate a Resistance show logo for my post title image! I will say I struggled a little bit with the colouring of this hilt and the renders seem a bit “washed out”. I used regular background images and not Environmental Images which are spherical background images that provide lighting for your models and they didn’t render as well. But hopefully the slightly faded colours give the impression that my model is actually part of the animation screenshots!

That just about brings this post to the finish line, but as always I have my usual sign off and thanks to convey. Please if you have time go and check out Tina’s blog – https://mystarwarsthoughts.com/ and if you like what you see leave a comment and likes. And talking of comments, likes and support, thank you to each of you who have checked out this post and my site, whether a new visitor to FTSabersite (and I know there have been a few) or if you regularly check in you’re all much appreciated. I still have many new designs upcoming including sabers based on famous blasters, The High Republic, more Resistance saber designs, Star Trek (yes that franchise) AND long awaited news on my costume. All this and more in future posts so I hope you can call back and check it all out. Till next time…

“Racer Saber” is a For Tyeth Editions design inspired by the ship “Fireball” seen in Star Wars; Resistance. The 3D model and renders were created by For Tyeth and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2021. “The Fireball”, “Kazudo Xiono”, “Star Wars: Resistance” and all other names, logos, pictures and related materials are Trademark/©Copyright of Disney/Lucasfilm.

“Prodigal” a design by DarthProdigal

Hello Everybody, another week has passed (how quick has this year flown by so far?) and I realised “Wow I haven’t posted a Guest Designer hilt for a while – I better fix that”. Well today I have a hilt I modelled for a member of the forum I belong to, who had come up with a saber idea based on an old medieval weapon. The weapon is a mix between a mid European Halberd and a Battleaxe. The Halberd was used in the 15,16 and 17th centuries and consisted of a shaft handle with an axe style blade mounted at 90 degrees to the handle and atop the shaft there was usually a short pointed blade like a spear. These things were vicious but my friend DarthProdigal from the forum took the idea and gave the Halberd double axe blades and removed the spear blade. It looked a bit more like a European double blade Battleaxe – but there was a surprise! It also featured a smaller bladed weapon connected to the pommel end instead. DarthProdigal posted a sketch on the forum and as usual members chatted about “I wonder how this would look like this or that” etc so I decided to model it in Blender but first here is Prodigal’s sketch…

This was the picture Prodigal posted and it was interesting! I’ll be honest and say the first thing I saw was Spiderman’s chest logo but after a few seconds of scrutiny I realised this was a nice design that had some thought put into it. There were the two axe blades – very functional should the lightsaber blade fail- then a nice wrapped handgrip. There was also a second shorter “Shoto” (a small defensive blade used in your non dominant hand as a sort of shield) style blade too with a crescent moon claw shaped emitter. I liked this even more. Prodigal explained that the Shoto connected somehow onto the pommel endcap of the main axe weapon making it double bladed like a staff lightsaber. Knowing this I set to work in Blender…

This is the wireframe view of what I thought a fully manufactured Halberd might look like. You can see it is fairly complex and I have added a few minor details to just adorn it here and there (though the additions do serve a purpose). I think I have chatted enough and it’s time for a few Glamour Shots…here’s Gallery One….

I don’t know if I’d want to face up against one of these! I have faced some formidable weapons in my battles but none quite like this. The hilt I built using two cylinders, one for the regular hilt handle and a second “pancaked” cylinder which I modified to give it a “sharp” edge for the blades. I cut out segments to create the trusses holding the blades to the central plate of the axe head, I gave the blades a contrasting colour to make them stand out. For extra detail I added bolts/screws to hold the sections of the hilt together (you can see the hex bolts on the ferrule sections and pommel). The pommel features a connector to attach the Shoto blade allowing the user to form the double blade staff – the connector uses a twist-lock cog) The activation switch is custom made to represent a faction of religious believers in Star Wars known as the Sith Empire – these were a group of fanatics that promote the Sith and some even helped Emperor Palpatine come back from the dead to carry out his plan in The Rise of Skywalker. These fanatics had an emblem which consisted of a “Black Sun” – the switch represents a sun and it’s rays (not Reys 🤣). And on that bad joke I should post the second gallery as an apology…here’s Gallery Two…

Having learnt of the significance of the Black Sun and from what DarthProdigal told me I realised I needed to model the emblem and incorporate it somewhere on the weapon. It turns out that the central hub of the axe head structure provided a perfect place to fit the emblem onto! I modelled the emblem the same way that I created the Jedi logo on my High Republic hilt last week – I took an image of the logo and triggered Blender to convert the image into a flat outline object which I could then apply a thickness to, making the object a fully 3D mesh. I stuck to the red and black colour scheme of the weapon so the Sun is also red. You will see that I had to adjust the shape of the emblem slightly so it was visible over the curvature of the axe head and shaft but I think it looked perfect in position.

Prodigal Lightsaber Halberd and the Sith Throne (background ©Copyright Disney/Lucasfilm

Just before I go I would really like to thank DarthProdigal for allowing me to recreate his idea in 3D for him and to display it here. Prodigal has been very supportive of my designing and gives me great feedback when I post on the forum so it is fitting that I induct him into my Guest Designer gallery! Thanks again Prodigal,

And to you my friends and viewers, thank you also! Your support is much appreciated and all your comments, likes and and follows mean a lot to me and the running of FTSabersite. I hope you will all return to see future upcoming posts as I have more High Republic era hilts to showcase along with a few SW Resistance themed designs as well as a range of NERF inspired sabers! Till next time….

“Prodigal” Halberd is a DarthProdigal design and is ©Copyright of DarthProdigal. The 3D model and renders were created by me, For Tyeth and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2021.