“Power Green Katana” – A saber for Tommy Oliver

Hello Everybody, today I bring my “Power Ranger Katanas” sub series to a close with a saber for possibly the most popular Ranger character of them all – Tommy Oliver. Tommy was the original Green Ranger starting way back in the first Rangers series “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers” and throughout his time on the show was the Green Ranger, the White Ranger, Zeo Ranger V–Red, the Red Turbo Ranger, and the Dino Thunder Black Ranger! Quite a list. He was also a member of four Power Ranger teams and he became a legend. Tommy would also make numerous cameo appearances in the show (as the actor Jason David Franks had left the show but made one-off returns for special events/storylines).

The legendary Green Ranger Tommy Oliver (as Dragon Ranger Green)

Tommy was a formidable martial artist who was a Karate black belt 3rd Dan, then later in the show he had progressed to 8th Dan. He even sparred against his fellow Red Ranger (Jason Lee Scott) in a martial arts tournament after which he became a Ranger and drew the attention of the Pink Ranger and a certain mystic character named Rita Repulsa….(Yes that Rita, who some may recall from my earlier Power Ranger posts). Rita tried to seduce Tommy and succeeded to lure him to join her by giving him a Dragon Power Coin which increased his power and skills. He also fell under Rita’s spell. But more on that later, I need to show you the green katana….Gallery One…

This is as mentioned the last of the colour schemes in the Ranger line up and is another modification of my base Katana model. As a result it doesn’t have anything new but the texturing on the leather is another variety of leather with a different grain pattern. I was experimenting with these textures to learn the best settings to get the graphics to look as real as possible and now I think I have the hang of it. You can take a look at the other Ranger Katanas in this series (and my earlier 2017 Ranger saber collection) on my site by clicking the following link: https://ftsabersite.wordpress.com/tag/power-rangers/

You will also see Rita Repulsa’s staff weapon too. I may work on making a Blender 3D version of Rita’s staff so she doesn’t feel left out.

“YOU’D BETTER BUILD ME SOMETHING TOO TYETH….I’M STILL HERE!” (<Rita)

OK! Er, after that little interruption….Tommy later was able to break the spell on him and he pledged himself to the Rangers once again, this time forever and he was called upon to return and help future teams in later shows.

Tommy was portrayed by the actor Jason David Franks who in real life was an adept martial artist having studied several fighting styles and he even developed his own fighting system named “Tosu Kune Do”. This was similar to what Bruce Lee achieved with his “Jeet Kune Do” system. For Jason’s contributions to martial arts and Karate in particular he was inducted into the World Karate Union Hall Of Fame. Around 2010 Jason became a professional Mixed Martial Artist (MMA) fighter …so not a person to mess with!

I am nearing the end of this post and series of hilts so it’s time I did a “family photo” of all five hilts together as the team they represent. Here are a couple of pictures…

I couldn’t help myself and set the image up with a backdrop of storage containers, sorta like the industrial locations where most of the Ranger’s battles took place (usually at dockyards or in parking lots).

And that brings me to the end of this series (I just have one more for Rita)…I hope you have enjoyed these next gen sabers . I think they are an improvement on my 2017 series. I can now concentrate on my next projects and I have more Star Wars movie/show props that I have modelled, some spaceship designs to come, hopefully some more costume and Nerf blaster news, and my review of my latest lightsaber in my collection. So I hope you will call back for all that content in future posts. Thank you so much for supporting me and my site, whether a new or regular visitor to this site you make it possible for me to keep designing and posting. I appreciate all of you. Till next time….

“Power Green Katana” is a For Tyeth Edition design created by For Tyeth in Blender 3D. It is inspired by Saban International’s “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers” tv series and franchise. The 3D models and renders are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2022. “The Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers” and all names, logos, images, and related material are Trademarked and ©Copyright of Saban International.

“Blaster Master Saber” – Inspired by the character from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

G’day Everybody and welcome back to the second part of the “Telling” of Max Rockatansky and his adventures in the wastelands of the aftermath. Two weeks ago I be telling you about how Max, a former police officer, became the Road Warrior – a lone wanderer who lost his family after they were killed by a biker gang. Max travelled the desert wastes of Australia (caused by a nuclear war) in his old police cruiser which he modified to help him survive. The car had turbos and expanded fuel tanks to hold as much “Juice” as possible. It was also equipped with booby traps….however in the film Beyond Thunderdome his car was stolen and Max was stranded in the desert. He managed to track his car and the thief back to an outpost called Bartertown. He eventually negotiated entry into the settlement and searched for his car. A deal went bad and because of a feud between two members of Bartertown, Max got entered into a gladiatorial fight in the Thunderdome. Here he fought one half of a character known as “Master Blaster”.

Master and Blaster (aka MasterBlaster)

MasterBllaster was in fact two people, a large hulking giant named Blaster that carried his companion, named Master, around on his shoulders. They lived symbiotically but Master wanted to control Bartertown. The problem was that Aunty Entity, an Amazonian-like woman (played by Tina Turner) ruled Bartertown. Max came to Aunty’s attention due to his efforts to regain his car, and Aunty decided to manipulate Max into a situation where he had to fight Blaster in Thunderdome in an attempt to retain her control of the outpost. Well I think it’s time to show you my version of Blaster in lightsaber form, this is Blaster Master Saber…

I attempted to recreate Blaster and build a saber that was imposing and leather clad. I also tried to recreate the iconic helmet. The emitter is obviously intended to be the helmet with glowing eyes created by cutouts to allow the blade to shine thru. It also has the metal rings that adorn the helmet, and in my design these rings also act as the controls for the saber (they are press switches). The blade is an orange colour that replicates the lights in the underground power plant facility where Blaster and Master live (the power plant is fuelled by Methane gas produced by pigs which they keep). The hilt body is clad in a thick, heavily stitched leather wrapping similar to Blaster’s singlet trousers. And finally I gave the hilt a no-nonsense pommel to look like his boots. Finally one small detail on the helmet is the wire mesh texture inbetween the ribs of the metal cage that forms the headgear. I was tempted to try and 3D model the mesh using a Wireframe but realised it would make the model too complex so I settled on using graphics to show a mesh pattern. I think it works still. Anyhoo, you can decide as I bring you Gallery Two with some close ups….

So, MasterBlaster and Max were fighting for survival in the ‘Dome and Max discovered that Blaster was vulnerable to high pitched noises and used a Bosun’s whistle to deafen and disorientate Blaster, eventually giving him the upper hand. Max was in position to end the battle but in the process he knocked blaster’s helmet off as the giant fell to the floor. As Max approached, about to deal the fatal blow….he saw that Blaster had Down’s Syndrome. Shocked, Max refused to kill Blaster as he believed Blaster was being used just as he had been manipulated by Aunty Entity. Refusing to kill broke the rule of Thunderdome of “Two men enter…One man leaves” and Entity was furious. She had Blaster killed anyway and exiled Master to a life in the pig pens beneath the outpost. This would have been tough for the now lonely Master who himself suffered from Dwarfism. Then Entity dealt with Max by having him stripped of his possessions and tied to a donkey which was then forced out into the desert. Eventually the donkey collapsed and Max freed himself, only to come into contact with a tribe of children descendant’s of the survivors of a plane crash years earlier. They though Max was a hero who fell from the sky, the Captain….but that be another “Telling” for another time…..

A few interesting facts: The Master was played by Angelo Rossitto, who had Dwarfism and measured just 2 feet 11 inches in height. Blaster however was portrayed by TWO actors, the first being the giant man named Paul Larsson that measured in at 6 feet 8 inches tall (and was a plumber from Sydney in real life)….but the “face” of Blaster was played by actor Stephen Hayes, who did indeed have Down Syndrome – and was one of the first, if not THE first person to land a substantial film role whilst having the condition.

And that just about brings me to the end of this “Telling” , I hope you enjoyed the post. I have one final Mad Max themed hilt to come but I also have a tribute to Lt Uhura from Star Trek, a Magnum PI themed red sports car saber, some new land/air speeder vehicles….and a whole collection of Phase Two Trooper lightsabers all coming in future posts. I hope you’ll return to check those out. But for now thank you so much for your support and visit today. I couldn’t blog without an audience of fantastic followers and you have kept me blogging for SIX years now – I received a notification from WordPress this week congratulating me. So thanks again and Till next time…..

“Blaster Master Saber”  is a For Tyeth Editions design inspired by the movie Mad Max 3 Beyond Thunderdome. The design, 3D model and renders were created by For Tyeth/FTSabersite and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2022. “Mad Max 3 Beyond Thunderdome” is a Warner Bros/Universal Pictures movie directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie. “MasterBlaster”, “Mad Max”, “Thunderdome” and all other names, logos, images and related material are Trademark/©Copyright of Warner Bros/Universal Pictures (1985).

MAGNUM TC – In remembrance of Roger E. Mosley (Theodore “T.C.” Calvin)

Hello Everybody….Now I know what you’re thinking, that little voice in my head has been telling me I haven’t done any TV show related sabers recently. Well unfortunately recent events have made me realise this big time with the sad news of the passing of a gentle giant of 80’s television, Roger E. Mosley. Unfortunately Roger was involved in a motor vehicle accident and died from his injuries on 7th August. And the reason this news hit me so hard is that Roger was a big part of a TV show I loved as a Youngling, Magnum P.I. – where Roger played the part of Theodore T.C. Calvin. TC was a Vietnam veteran chopper pilot who set up an Island Hopping helicopter charter company in the show. TC was a member of the same platoon as Tom Selleck’s Magnum character and after the war became Magnum’s “unofficial chauffeur” flying Thomas to the various islands during cases. It was because of watching Roger “flying” the now famous little helicopter that I got interested in flying myself.

Seeing the little Hughes MD500 helicopter swoop down over the water of Honolulu’s Waikiki beachfront past the Rainbow Hilton hotel was amazing and I wanted to do the same. I couldn’t in real life but I did in Flight Simulator – I found an addon of the helicopter and repainted the texture graphics to look like TC’s helicopter and I then flew many hours of simulated action in Microsoft Flight Sim (even recreating scenes from the show using scenery I made). Sadly when Roger was TC on the TV way back in the 80’s it was difficult for a kid to find out much about actors and characters due to there being no internet to access so I didn’t know much about him. I am now looking back on his life and finding stuff out I couldn’t discover back then. I also wanted to pay tribute to Roger so I quickly designed a saber that might look familiar….this is for you Roger…

This is the MAGNUM TC saber, based on the iconic helicopter Roger flew in the show. It has the same curvy sleek shape and I managed to recreate the same colour scheme. Surprisingly this colour scheme was not specially commissioned for the show, it was a factory regular paintjob, but boy did it become famous. The helicopter in real life was a Hughes 500 , which a military version saw service in Vietnam and was nicknamed “The Flying Egg”. But it was a tough little bird and because of it’s Egg shape, it saved many flyers’ lives as during crashes it “rolled” and absorbed impacts that would have killed occupants of other helicopters. In the show Magnum called upon T.C. to fly him to the outlying islands of Hawaii during cases and he always promised to buy T.C. a beer or pay for fuel…but rarely did! So basically the helicopter and Roger became iconic and was an obvious choice to replicate as my tribute. Here is gallery two with a few close up details….

I made the emitter to be as curvy as I could reasonably to replicate the forward fuselage and cockpit area of the chopper…I even added small landing gear skids on the bottom to act as a a built in display stand! The sweeping handgrip represents the tailboom whilst the pommel area features a “tail rotor” in the endcap as a pommel insert. The saber also features “aircraft registration” numbers – in this case N1095A, which is the number seen on the helicopter in the show intro. Then to top the design off, and to just reinforce what this saber represented I added the iconic “Island Hoppers” charter company logo on the activation switch.

As I mentioned above, while I was a kid I never got to really “know” Roger or learn of his other works because the Internet of things hadn’t took off but I have since learned he starred in “Roots”, a biopic film about Sonny Liston the world famous boxer and countless supporting roles in other US dramas and action shows like Starsky and Hutch. Roger loved Magnum so much that he even took a role in the recent 2019 Magnum reboot playing the part of the “new” TC’s barber named “Booky”.

Roger was and still is THE original TC and played the part from 1980 through to 1988. He insisted that the character of TC was “straight-edged” as Roger himself never smoked, drank or took drugs. In the show a stunt double was brought in to replace Roger during flying/stunt scenes with the stunt pilot wearing a padded bodysuit to mimic Roger’s massive physique but…during the show’s time on air Roger actually acquired a real world helicopter pilot’s license but was prevented from doing dangerous scenes by the studios, however in some shots you may see Roger at the controls! (And this is no small feat, I know flying a simulated helicopter is difficult enough!). And Roger seems to have been a great family man as he was married to his wife Antoinette Laudermilk for nearly six decades. My thoughts and prayers go out to all his surviving relatives and friends. I am just sorry it took me so long to really get to “know” him.

Now I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the sad passing of Nichelle Nichols who played Lt Uhura in the original Star Trek shows and movies. I chatted with my friend Resa about Uhura and said I’d do a saber inspired by Miss Nichols too but I ashamedly got side-tracked but I will complete that design too. I am slow sometimes but I usually finish what I start!

So with that I am at the end of this post of remembrance, again my condolences go out to Roger’s family and friends. My thanks go out to you, my readers/viewers for checking this tribute out. I hope it was fitting and that you will call back to see the Lt Uhura/Nichelle Nichols tribute when I complete it. Till next time…..soar high in Hawaiian skies….

“Magnum TC Saber” is a For Tyeth Editions design built as tribute to Roger E. Mosley aka “Theodore T.C. Calvin”. “TC” and “Thoedore Calvin” are creations of Belisarius Productions and Glen A, Larson Productions and all names, images , logos and related material are Trademark/©Copyright of Belisarius and Glen A. Larson Productions. For Tyeth’s tribute designs (including the 3D model and renderings) are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2022.

“Thunderdome Saber” – Inspired by Mad Max 3 Beyond Thunderdome

G’day Cobbers……this be the telling of a man, a myth….a Max. The man was Max Rockatansky also be knowing as “The Sky Captain” who came to our space after the big explosion and the black gold ran out. He was to save us and return us to the big shining Tomorrow-morrow Land. But first Max had to survive a journey….through Bartertown and the THUNDERDOME! Yes today folks we travel “down under” to Australia of the near future and the world of Max Rockatansky. Max was a former police officer whose family was killed by a rogue biker gang that prowled the wastelands of Australia after a nuclear war. Max set out to bring his own form of justice onto the bike gang and hunted them down, earning the name the “Road Warrior”….then later he came upon an outpost town named Bartertown. Here he tried to get more “Juice” for his vehicle but fell foul of the trading post’s traditions and ended up fighting in the Thunderdome.

Well, back in reality my friend The Vintage Toy Advertiser (his site: https://thevintagetoyadvertiser.org/) “challenged” me to design a saber (or two) inspired by Mad Max and this is the first of three designs I have accomplished. This saber is inspired by and modelled on the infamous “Thunderdome” fighting arena seen in the third movie. The dome was a metal cage which two combatants entered and fought to the death to settle arguments and disputes. The dome had two rules…Two men enter, one man leaves, and the second rule was “There are no rules”. Inside were a variety of weapons as well as Bungy-cord harnesses which allowed the fighters to jump and climb about the inside of the locked dome – and allow them to grab weapons hanging from the roof. Well that brings me to the first gallery of pictures….prepare to enter “Thunderdome”!

This saber is based on my previous “Rapier” designs I made for Inigo Montoya and Zorro and I used the “basket handguard” to replicate the Thunderdome itself. The dome was made of metal grating so I created a half sphere then added a Modifier to turn the sphere into a “Wireframe” mesh which I then thickened the struts to form the cage structure. I then added the single (and locked) cage door on one side. To give the dome an old frontier look I applied a texture of flaking painted metal. The dome protects the users’ hand and covers the activation switch module that I shaped to look like a coffin (morbid I know, but it does represent the rule of only one man leaves the dome). The leather handgrip is reminiscent of Max’s jacket and the clothing worn by his adversary, the Master Blaster. But more about Master Blaster in a future post, for now I will present the second batch of images and some closeups of the details.

In the first image you can see how the dome would look if it were a freestanding object. You can also see the “doorway” that I added which is highlighted silver. The second image shows the “coffin switch” and leather detailing. The switch is basic but the whole Bartertown and Mad Max setting is dystopian and kinda apocalyptic so I didn’t want a fancy activation box…just something that looked thrown together and functional. The leather I am really pleased with as I am getting better at setting the texture up to show off the details – I have nailed the function which creates the illusion of “bumps and ridges” known as Bump Mapping. This makes the stitching on the leather appear to pop out (and the grain also looks as if it is rough). Finally just as a reminder of the rules of Thunderdome, I added the text around the pommel which reads “Two men enter….One man leaves” in a metallic silver to match the doorway. I managed to find a suitable background image that looks like the post apocalyptic outback too.

This is just the first basic saber I did to get me in the mood and I have TWO more Mad Max themed sabers to showcase in future posts but I also have news of a new arrival at “Tyeth Towers”. I mentioned a week or two ago that I was awaiting a parcel from America…well it arrived and here is a sneak peek at what that parcel contained….

My new saber…a beautiful gift!

You might recognise this lightsaber as it is modelled on the one owned by Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi. This is a fully working replica and was gifted to me by an extremely generous member of the saber community as thanks for my designing. I will have a special featured post showcasing this hilt more coming soon.

And that just about wraps up this edition, thanks so much to The Vintage Toy Advertiser for his newest challenge to me, and thank you to all my viewers/readers. You are all very much appreciated and I hope you enjoyed this post and will call back to check out my new saber and all the new designs I have coming up (the Mad Max trilogy and a new collection of “Phase Two Trooper” lightsabers). I’m off to visit Tomorrow-Morrow Land…….Till next time…..

“Thunderdome Saber” is a For Tyeth Editions design inspired by the movie Mad Max 3 Beyond Thunderdome. The design, 3D model and renders were created by For Tyeth/FTSabersite and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2022. “Mad Max 3 Beyond Thunderdome” is a Warner Bros/Universal Pictures movie directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie. “Mad Max”, “Thunderdome” and all other names, logos, images and related material are Trademark/©Copyright of Warner Bros/Universal Pictures (1985).