TIE Defender Elite version two – “SkyStrike”

Hello Everybody and welcome. Can you believe we are nearly a third of the way through 2023? I guess I can’t waste much time so had best showcase this week’s offering. This time I have the TIE Defender Elite that I brought to you a while back but this time it is in the colours of the Skystrike Academy. The Skystrike Academy was sort of like the Empire’s version of “TopGun” where the best of the best new pilots went to train. The facility was commanded by Commander Vult Skerris, who I introduced you to in the original post in which I debuted the Defender. (You can view it using this link: https://ftsabersite.wordpress.com/2023/03/04/tie-defender-elite-skerris-a-recreation-of-the-galactic-empires-new-tie-fighter/) Skerris’ was given command of the academy and he flew a Defender with red markings to denote his superiority whilst his cadets had yellow trimmed ships. This yellow banded version also became the colours adopted by Defender Squadron One when the cadets passed their resting and entered service. So this offering is really a repaint of my “Skerris” red version, but I thought you might like to see it, plus I have more of my travel pics for later, so here is Gallery One…

The changes are subtle, but when in space the yellow actually shows up more than the red paint on Skerris’ personal ship so these ships were easier to spot. Skerris was ruthless and hated the Rebellion, so used whatever tactics he could to achieve victory – unfortunately this was accompanied by an arrogant and rule-breaking attitude. Skerris would even fire on damaged or unarmed vehicles if it meant another victim for his logbook. His student pilots weren’t so aggressive and regularly incurred Skerris’ wrath in dressing downs when they failed missions. Anyhoo, I had best show you the close up detail pictures and bring you the Glamour Shot gallery, enjoy…

In the end Skerris came to a sticky ending whilst pursuing some Rebel targets when he was hit by friendly fire launched from Grand Admiral Thrawn’s ship. Thrawn attempted to stop Hera Syndula from escaping but Skerris wanted the kill for himself and wouldn’t retreat. His ship was caught in the crossfire and partially disabled but Syndula’s was less so and Hera was able to fire upon the unshielded Skerris and make her escape to hyperspace. Skerris and his ship were destroyed but Defender Squadron One continued.

And talking of things continuing it’s time to showcase my next batch of travel pics from my mission down under! Last week I posted pics of Mt Ruapeha and the SkyWaka gondola and I mentioned some other nearby landmarks that I visited. First I went underground when I visited the Waitomo Glow Worm Caves. These caves were mesmerising – to get into the main caverns you had to travel through a cave corridor formed by the flowing water passing through over thousands of years (Wai in Maori translates as “water” whilst Tomo translates to “hole” hence Waitomo is called “Waterhole”). The corridor was made of a limestone like rock and there were rock formations known as Stalagmites and Stalactites, making the the corridors look like the catacombs of Geonosis (seriously). Sadly though I couldn’t get photos because the caves have some creatures living in them that were sensitive to bright lights (so photography was banned) …Glow Worms! The worms lived by dangling on the ends of the roof formations and emitting a neon-like blue glow to attract food which they catch on a sticky silk line they extend . The worms pupate and the “insect” that hatches give birth to the next generation. We passed through these caves in boats powered by our guide pulling on ropes. The views were out of this world, especially when a large batch of worms were gathered – it looked like a starfield inside a cave! I did manage to get a few pics outside the cave and the chalet complex I stayed in that night…

I also mentioned last week a place named Lake Taupo which could be seen from the top of the gondola ride on Mt Ruapeha. This lake was 23km away but could still be seen easily and I took a boat trip on it….which was interesting! The boat captain gave his commentary during which he told us some disturbing news…the lake actually fills the top of an active volcano crater! And it was overdue to erupt by 1600 years…but the risk was worth going out onto the water for as there was a hidden treasure on the island in the middle of the lake….

The first pic shows the approach road to Lake Taupo which my relative described as a “small lake”….turns out that the lake is so big that the whole of Singapore could be built in it’s footprint (and remember this is an active volcanic crater!). The lake even has it’s own horizon on which you can see the curvature of the planet’s surface, it is that vast…but on that horizon was a lone island which had a surprise…massive Maori rock carvings! The carvings were beautiful and could only be seen by boat. The sculptor erected scaffolding made from tree trunks and carved representations of a face that has facial markings which told his family history. But this carving isn’t small by any means as this last picture shows with me in the foreground…

And that I’m afraid is about all the time I have for today. I really hope you liked the repainted TIE Defender (I know it was basic but I made up for that with travel pics😎). Thank you so much for calling in and checking this post out, all the support you give is much appreciated. So please call back next week when I will have a new design and more of my adventures. Till next time….

“TIE Defender Elite – SkyStrike” is a For Tyeth Editions design inspired by the ship seen in Star Wars Rebels. The design, 3D models and renders were created by For Tyeth in Blender 3D and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2023. “Star Wars Rebels” and all other names, images, logos and related material are Trademark/©Copyright of Disney/Lucasfilm ltd.

“Chopper V2 Saber” – Time for an upgrade!

Hello Everybody and welcome to today’s offering. Recently Star Wars Celebration, the travelling SW convention took place in London and all the big news about upcoming shows and movies etc was made public. Well there was news about the Ahsoka Tano live action series and that brought about speculation about other characters and one name popped up, that of Hera Syndula that appeared in Star Wars Rebels as the owner/captain of the ship The Ghost. I thought “hm…I haven’t done any Rebels inspired stuff for a while so how about if I did another saber or two?” The problem was I have already built a saber for Hera which you can see here> (https://ftsabersite.wordpress.com/2020/09/19/syndulla-a-saber-for-hera/) and I have built hilts for Zeb, Kanan and Ezra too. I even built a lightsaber inspired by Chopper, Hera’s Astromech…then I realised that his saber was done many years ago using the old software and looked like this:

Realising how old this design is now (and that Saberforge who offered the old software and ASP system no longer support it) I felt I had to redesign and build a new saber for ol’ Chopper! So I have….here is the new updated “Chopper V2″…

This saber I designed to be a “Shoto” or a saber that is held in your non dominant hand as a defensive weapon, alongside your main regular sized hilt in your main hand. Because Chopper is er, slightly shorter than most Astromechs he kinda suited the role of a Shoto! I again as with all my “droid inspired” builds tried to include as many little details as possible. From the chromed eye socket parts, to the LED bargraph lights on the side of his dome (which also has the antenna dish on top which is removable to allow the blade to extend), all the way down to the panelling and access doors. I even 3D modelled his spanner shaped arm appendage (which I then curved to fit his shape). I did however leave a couple of panels out that were situated at the lower half of his bodywork so I could fit in the handgrip portion of the hilt Anyhoo, enough chatting…here is Gallery Two featuring the glamour shots and details…

I feel this updated “Chopper Saber” looks even more like it’s inspiration, I’m just apologising that it took me so long to realise the fact it needed refreshing. Hopefully this is a worthy inclusion into my Astromech collection. And now….onto other news and more from my trip to Mordor…I mean New Zealand! Last week I posted an image of me with a Skywaka…no, not Luke Skywalker but the Mt Ruapehu Skywaka gondola ride! Early on in my trip I got to visit this attraction and it was stunning, even at the start of New Zealand’s autumn/fall (meaning there was less snow). But how could you not be impressed by a cable-car ride upto 2020m and which has a length of over 1.8km! The ride takes 12 minutes to reach the summit and the views are incredible and for good reason…Mt Ruapehu is an ACTIVE volcano (having erupted in 2006 and 07)! Though my Kiwi relative didn’t tell me that beforehand 🤨. From the summit you could see all the other peaks in the area. To get to the site however requires a drive down (or is that up?) State Highway 48 and what a drive that is too. Here are a few pics…

The first two pics show just how BIG Mt Ruapehu is (well it is the largest volcano in the Tongariro National Park) and a building that looks like a Swiss chalet style house, which is in fact an exclusive hotel. The gondola ride itself is as stated 1.8km long and carries you up to the Knoll Ridge Chalet (a restaurant and viewing point) in one of 48 carriages. On a day like I visited on you can see to the horizons. You can even see another fascinating landmark called Lake Taupo which is 23km away but I’ll chat about Taupo in an upcoming post. Oh yes…I mentioned Mordor? Well, Mt Ruapehu is sorta part of Middle Earth as Peter Jackson filmed bits of the Rings trilogy films on it’s slopes (namely scenes for Mordor and Mount Doom).

And sadly that is all the time I have and I need to end this post. I hope you enjoyed Chopper’s upgrades…they were well overdue, And I hope you enjoy what you see on FTSabersite in general. I want to thank you all for visiting and supporting me and the site, it means a great deal to me that folks like what I do and keeps me inspired to create more. So whether you are a regular caller here or this is your first trip to FTSabersite, please call back for future posts a I have much more to come. Till next time….

“Chopper V2 Saber” is a For Tyeth Editions design inspired by the droid character “Chopper” seen in Star Wars Rebels. The 3D design, models and renders were created by For Tyeth in Blender 3D and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2023. “Star Wars Rebels”, ” Chopper”and all other names, logos, images and related material are Trademark/©Copyright of Disney/Lucasfilm ltd.

“PowerVoidKnight” – a saber for Tarrick

Hello Everybody, today I bring you a new saber inspired by “Power Rangers – Dino Fury” which is the current season being shown on my cable package. And this saber is for the antagonist)?) of the show, a person named Void Knight. Now originally Void Knight was a humanoid alien named Tarrick, from the planet Rafkon, who travelled to Earth 20 years ago with his wife Santaura and their baby. He was on a scavenging mission for the descendants of Rafkon but all three were soon captured and held in a facility known as “Area 62”. Experiments were being carried out at the plant but one went disastrously wrong and an explosion caused part of the building to collapse…and Santaura was caught in the blast and knocked out eventually falling into a coma. A hole was blown through the wall but it was only large enough to pass his baby through to the facility’s janitor, who took it to safety. The plant was eventually abandoned and Tarrick had to put his wife into a cryosleep machine and promised to do whatever he could to heal and revive her.

Tarrick

Unfortunately the machine wasn’t powerful enough to revive Santaura but Tarrick did discover some Ranger morphing equipment and modified it to morph into the character Void Knight to help his quest to save his wife and chid. Anyhoo, it turns out that Void Knight would need high powered creature things called Sporix to fuel his machine and he set about hunting the Sporix down….but most were housed in the Power Ranger’s base called Dinohenge. As you can imagine many skirmishes and attacks ensued.

Void Knight

So this seems a good place to introduce my latest design inspire by Void Knight (well I made a staff for Rita Repulsa…) and this is called PowerVoidKnight…

I attempted to replicate Void Knight’s armour and mask design and I think it turned out quite well. The shroud on the emitter was tricky as I had to create a flat object in the shape of the mask, then curve it to wrap around the handle without distorting the outline too much – it’s kinda similar. I also went with a grey and purple colour scheme to tie in with his attire. What isn’t apparent from the pics of Void above is that his armour has sections made of overlapping plates (similar to an Armadillo or Pangolin) and I tried to recreate these armour plates to form the rails down either side of the handgrip. I think a few Glamour detail pictures will show it better…Gallery Two….

The last picture above shows the plated armour handgrip nicely which is made up multiple individual plates then “glued” together.

Now as some of you will know Power Rangers is filmed in…New Zealand and during my recent trip there I hoped to visit some filming locations to get photos to use for background images for these hilts but as I mentioned last week my travel itinerary was fully booked and some places were closed off by authorities due to storm damage from the floods (they were still valiantly working to clean up) so missed the chance. But fear not I do still have a few pics to share from my trip and today I have a few from a place named Hamilton Gardens. Hamilton Gardens as you can guess was a beautiful botanical garden site that had sections showing themed gardens including “Traditional Maori Forest”, “English Tea Garden” and “Italian Villa Gardens”. There was also a Japanese riverside pagoda building that I felt a connection to – probably due to Japanese swordsmiths. Then in the final picture I meet with a….Sky….

Yes even in New Zealand there is a presence I haven’t felt since….only kidding but if you want to know what the Skywaka is then I’m afraid you will have to join me for next week’s post as I am running out of space and time today. But before I go, as always I want to say thanks for your visit today and all the support I receive from you all. It does encourage me to keep creating and posting so I hope you will all return for future updates. Till next time…..

“PowerVoidKnight” is a For Tyeth Editions design inspired by the character “Void Knight” seen in “Power Rangers – Dino Fury”. The design, 3D model and renders were created by For Tyeth using Blender 3D and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2023. “Power Rangers”, “Void Knight” and all other names, logos, images and related material are ©Copyright of Hasbro (Allspark).

“Skytower One” – Inspired by my Jedi Mission

Hello Everybody and welcome back to normal service at FTSabersite! The reason I say normal service is that I haven’t actually been at FT Towers for the past few weeks….I was away on my Jedi Mission I have teased since December last year. I had a few issues getting documents sorted but I eventually got my paperwork and I was able to jet off on my adventure. Now back in December I challenged you all to make a guess where I was going in my end of year review and I left a clue, but nobody made any suggestions. Well I posted an image that I edited to include a famous landmark building in the country I was about to visit. The image was….

And if you look closely at this skyline of Coruscant you might see a skyscraper that doesn’t belong….it looks like this….

Yes this is a 3D model I made and rendered into the image and if you are from Auckland you may recognise it! YES….I have been to New Zealand and Australia! It was a visit to see distant relatives and what an adventure it was. I left London in an Airbus A380 superjumbo aeroplane to Singapore THEN I boarded a connecting flight in a Boeing Dreamliner to complete the journey to Aotearoa – a total of 23 flying hours.

On arrival to Auckland I was greeted by my “long lost” cousin and driven home to where I would set up camp. We took the scenic route from the airport and made a stop at a restaurant…a very impressive revolving restaurant….

The first image shows Auckland’s harbour and skyline, the next shows the entrance lobby to Skytower itself. The third is yours truly sat in the tower’s revolving restaurant and the fourth shows a view from the tower of the city below….and I kid you not, the city of Auckland must have known I was coming as there was a construction crane covered with green safety lights – it looked like a lightsaber!

The Skytower is an amazing structure. It measures 12m (39 ft) in diameter and is supported by 8 curved legs – lifting the tower to a height of 328m (1,076.1 ft) at the top of the antenna. The restaurant sits at 190m (620ft). The tower sways up to 1m from side to side in high winds and can withstand a Magnitude 8 earthquake….reassuring! Anyway having visited such a landmark I had to start off my tales with the 3D model I made of it…oh and of course I had to turn it into a saber…here is Skytower One…

I really like this design and it would make a comfortable hilt in reality – the contours and curve would fit nicely in hand. I went to town and made the emitter look as much like the real tower’s upper superstructure as possible and even nailed the mirrored windows on the restaurant floors. The antenna section is removable to act as the blade plug allowing the blade to extend. The rows of black rectangles represent the window ports that run up the column between the legs of the tower. Now the real tower has eight legs but I only modelled six to make the model less complicated, but I still think it looks the part.

And I am afraid that I’m nearly at the end of this post. I am still recovering from such an epic trip. I travelled to the tip of the north island and skipped down to the southern-most point on the south island…I stood atop a volcano, climbed into some caves, met the wildlife…met the locals…and when I left I left a big part of me behind. But I’ll share more of these stories in upcoming posts. For now I want to thank you all for continuing visiting and supporting me (even if I wasn’t really here 😉). I hope you liked what you saw today and will return to see much more content and tales. Till next time…..

“Skytower One” is a For Tyeth Editions design inspired by Auckland’s Skytower building. The 3D design, model and renders are ©Copyright and were created in Blender 3D by For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2023.

“Wolverine’s Claws” – A Katana for Logan

Hello Everybody, today I bring you yet another new saber! Back on the 18th February I showcased a design for Deadpool, well today I have the saber I designed for Wolverine. Long time viewers/friends of this site may recall I have already created a saber for Logan, aka Wolverine (you can view them here: https://ftsabersite.wordpress.com/tag/wolverinelogan/), but he is starring alongside Deadpool in the new movie Deadpool 3 releasing on November 8th 2024. Yes I’m a little early but the inspiration struck me so I had to model my idea while the metal was hot! I decided that Logan/Wolverine needed a Katana to match up with the one I built for Deadpool but one with a difference…and I think this Katana is a bit different. This is “Wolverine’s Claws Katana”…

This saber is modelled and coloured in the classic yellow and blue scheme seen in early comic books, back when Wolfie looked like this…

You will also notice that this is no usual Katana as it has not one, but three blades to mimic his Adanantium claws. This is capable of some serious damage but I know Logan can handle it. OK, enough chatter, I had better post the gallery of pics for you….

This saber is a real match for Deadpool’s and the triple blades also feature the Hamon Line inspired etching light effect on the sides. These secondary blades I imagine being used like the three pronged swords named Sai that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Raphael owns. The smaller blades could be used to trap or “bind” an opponent’s blade to control their sword before snapping it. The wrapping on the handgrip is just a classic Wolfie colour scheme as is the pommel. Now I mentioned that Wolverine is due to appear in Deadpool 3, well I decide to do a group photo of both superheroes’ sabers!

And just as a treat here is a quick picture of Wolverine holding a similar pose…

And that just about wraps up this post once again. I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has visited today to check this design out. All of your support is fantastic and has helped me out this past few weeks. Hopefully things at Tyeth Towers will return to normal soon and if you liked what you saw here then please call back for future posts. I have some new “robots in disguise”, more starfighters plus the final Puss in Boots variant . Till next time!…..

“Wolverine’s Claws” Katana is a For Tyeth Editions design created by For Tyeth/FTSabersite. The design, 3D models and renders were create in Blender 3D and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2023. “Wolverine”, “Logan”, Deadpool” and all other names, logos, pictures and related material are Trademark/©Copyright of Marvel Studios.