“Moonlight Katana” inspired by Marvel’s Moon Knight

Hello Everybody, today I dive outside of the Star Wars universe again but into another that features a familiar face. The show that inspired today’s post is Marvel Studios’ “Moon Knight” – a show about a man with Dissociative Identity Disorder that is drawn into an ancient Egyptian mystery involving Egyptian gods, and uses his multiple personas to solve it….and it stars Oscar Isaac (who just happens to be Poe Dameron so this is a sort of Star Wars post too!). Now as with most new shows on Disney+ I haven’t seen it yet but from my little research I discovered Oscar Isaac plays the character named Marc Spector and his alter egos Moon Knight, Steven Grant and Mr Knight. To differentiate the various “alters” Oscar used different accents for each one and at first filmed all the scenes for Marc Spector in order then would record second takes as one of his alters characters, allowing himself time to “get into each character”. However as he became more comfortable with each character he was able to switch between them in one take. This level of acting reminds me of an actor who also took on multiple roles in one movie…that actor being the great Sir Alec Guinness…but Sir Alec just had EIGHT characters to portray! (In the movie “Kind Hearts and Coronets….check it out if you haven’t seen it already, it’s rather good 😎) Anyhoo….this post is about a saber I designed based on the Moon Knight show and I just had a few images and non spoiler reviews to go on so I set to work on modifying my Katana and used this picture as a guide….

Look out for that Crescent shaped object!

The pic above shows Oscar as Marc Spector and on the right as the character Moon Knight himself. Moon Knight has some mythical powers and weapons based on Egyptian mythology and wears a face covering made of bandages….pretty unique so enough talk…here is “Moonlight Katana”….

I took the basic katana model I had and again tweaked the colours and textures to recreate the look of Moon Knight, using the Tsuka Ito hilt wrappings to represent MK’s facial bandage wrapping. The costume designer on the show, Meghan Kasperlik, also went to town with the design of the hero’s costume using multiple fabrics to prevent him (and other characters) from appearing flat onscreen (due to stage lighting which can bleach out details). The materials included one that had a silvery Lame texturing…and in all the costume had 803 pieces to construct it. It also featured an emblem on the chest known as the “Symbol of Khonshu” the Egyptian God of the moon and it is this emblem from which Moon Knight empowers his “Crescent Darts”. These are a mixture of a martial arts Ninjitsu throwing star (called a Shuriken) and Xena Warrior Princess’ “Chakram” throwing ring weapon. However the Crescent Darts featured heavily in the promo images for the show and it’s logo so I had to incorporate one or two into this hilt. And to do this I added an illuminated Crescent to the pommel but I also added two more to the Tsuba handguard to make a set of claws (I used one complete dart and one half shaped dart to produce three claws – this left an opening for the blade to still be useable where the fourth claw would have been). Whilst coming up with interesting angles to take the Gallery pictures I had a “Happy Accident” and aligned the saber in such a way that the graphics I used for the background actually interacted with the hilt and created a neat effect, here are a few pictures to show you…

The background image is actually a picture of a temple amphitheatre taken at night and as I rotated the camera the moon in the graphics spun behind the emitter and claws and created this eclipse-like effect. The picture had an eclipse in it but then when positioned it formed a corona for the hilt! I gave this saber a blue glow but couldn’t decide if it looked best so I did a version with gold too….

I kinda like both! Anyhoo, I am drawing short on much more to say about this show as I haven’t ssen it…but I do have a few Trivia bits you might enjoy. During the filming of scenes where Oscar had to interact and talk to his other “alters” his brother Michael Benjamin Hernandez acted as his body double! And here is a little tidbit of info my friend Nancy of Graphic Novelty² will probably know….one of her favourite Canadian comic writers named Jeff Lemire worked on the Moon Knight comic series! You can read Nancy’s great blog at https://graphicnovelty2.com/.

Well, that just about brings this post to an end, I hope you enjoyed it despite my lack of knowledge on the show (I will eventually get to watch all of these new programs). I will just add that I am going to be busy for the first half of next week on Jedi business so may be late responding to any comments you might leave but I should be back home by Wednesday – I hope!

So as always thank you so much for checking out this design and post, it’s much appreciated. I still have a few more sabers to come and other prop models in future posts so I hope you’ll call back to see those. Till next time….

“Moonlight Katana” is For Tyeth Editions design inspired by Marvel Studios comic book and TV series “Moon Knight”. The 3d model, design and renders are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2022. “Moon Knight” is a comic book series and TV show owned by Marvel Studios and all names, logos, images and related material are Trademark/©Copyright of Marvel Studios.