“Rhapsody Saber” – Inspired by Episode 2 of Star Wars Visions

Hello Everybody, today I have another new saber design to show you all while I wait for another delivery (EDIT: See update at bottom of post!). This time I was inspired by the recent anime style animation series called “Star Wars – Visions”. The series was 9 episodes long and each episode was directed/produced by a different Anime studio/artist. It was a very interesting and different take on what most of us consider Star Wars, The first episode was titled “The Duel” that featured a story mirroring a tale from feudal Japan of a village terrorised by a “gang” and saved by a mysterious “wanderer”. This episode also featured a Katana styled lightsaber and the now famous “Lightsaber Umbrella”. Well these are quite well known so I decided to look at Episode 2 Tatooine Rhapsody. It focused on a young padawan named Jay during the closing event of the Clone Wars , Order 66. Jay was chased by a horde of B-1 Battle Droids and during the chase he fell and damaged his lightsaber. Jay and the saber look like this:

Jay the fallen padawan

Jay’s damaged lightsaber after his fall(Disney/Lucasfilm)

Jay’s fall left him unconscious on the floor of a spacecraft and when he awoke found his saber no longer worked. He also discovered this when he needed the hilt to protect himself from a Hutt named Geezer. However Geezer was not hostile and Jay ended up accompanying the Hutt and even joined his band. Geezer was a musician in a touring band. Jay became the singer, and he repurposed his broken lightsaber to make a microphone! Well, I thought it needed to be repaired as a lightsaber and not gutted to make a microphone so I modelled a “factory fresh” version of his hilt. And I named it….Rhapsody….

This is a fairly simple hilt, but it is the simple ones that are the difficult ones to model and get right. This is because complex/detailed hilts can hide little mistakes but on a simple design the mistakes would stand out. Fortunately I think I nailed this pretty well, especially as I only had two decent screenshots to use as reference and they only showed one side of the hilt! The other side was always obscured. The hilt features a nice flared emitter with several recessed bands before narrowing to a thin neck section. The thin neck has multiple rings that give good grip and would make this a good saber for spinning/choreography. Most of the handgrip is a smooth cylinder with two slanted bands and an inlaid panel on the visible side I could make out. This meant I had to imagine what the other side had so here are a few more pictures to showcase what I cane up with…

I chose to keep it simple and just added two indicator LEDS in red and green to show the saber’s power mode. The activation switch is a sliding two position type. I kept it simple to keep with the anime style yet still be functional. The pommel end of the hilt is interesting however as it features four lozenge shaped fins reminiscent of the bulges and fins found on 1950’s/60’s style American sports/muscle cars (particularly like Chryslers and Cadillacs). Again to keep with the Anime style I modelled a basic pommel speaker vent.

In all I think I got pretty close to the subject matter with this hilt and still added my own little touches. I may return to this design and possibly add more detail or produce a few different colour schemes, but for now I am happy how it turned out. I am afraid once again I’m running out of time and will have to end this post shortly. I am awaiting the arrival of one of my sabers which I needed to send in for repairs and I am really excited to get it back.

I still have more new content to share in upcoming posts including more sabers and more LEGO digital creations, so I hope you’ll call back to check those out. Thank you for visiting and supporting FTSabersite, it means a lot and keeps me designing . Whether you are a new first timer or a regular visitor, you are all appreciated. I think I can hear a delivery person…well I hope….so I’ll end here. Till next time….

EDIT: Breaking news! Just after I finished typing this post and scheduling it to publish….my saber turned up at my front door. And from the limited time I have had to examine it, it is BETTER than it was before! I hopefully will do another post detailing the improvements.

“Rhapsody Saber” is a For Tyeth Editions creation inspired by the microphone lightsaber seen in “Star Wars – Visions”. The saber was modelled and rendered in Blender 3D and is ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2021. “Star Wars – Visions” and all names, images, logos and other related material are Trademark/©Copyright of Disney/Lucasfilm.