Hello everybody and welcome to a big day on this site. The reason it is such a momentous day is that I have the honour and privilege of introducing a Guest Designer! As I have mentioned I belong to the Ultrasabers forum and on that website are a group of very enthusiastic and, in the case of my Guest today, talented individuals. My guest uses the forum name of PsychoSith and he is a talented artist but PS is a wizard with pencil, paper and tons of sketching skill. PS designs and sketches lightsabers and has a real eye for designing interesting hilts with lots of neat details. He then posts his work in a gallery on the forum and always receives well deserved praise. One hilt that PsychoSith came up with was a very distinctive saber with four aggressive looking claws and spines yet the hilt was named “The Durasteel Dove” and here are the sketches that PS posted…
This saber caught the attention of the forum members and rightly so. They loved it and so do I. It was here that things started to get interesting….as both PS and I designed sabers but in different mediums, one member commented he’d be interested to see what the “Dove” would look like if I modelled it in Blender. PS kindly commented that he liked my work and would be intrigued to see that too. So we chatted and I offered to do my best on building a Blender replica of his hilt. I was apprehensive because I had to do the design justice but was determined. At first I only had the first image to work from (the top down view) and not the Isometric/perspective view but I managed to block out a base model. And it looked a bit like this…
As you can see I made not just one version but three in total as I couldn’t quite work out the shape of the shroud plates that circled the emitter. At first it appeared to have four spines, but then on closer inspection the spines formed a “V” shaped cutout but that wasn’t possible as the spines were spaced too far apart. So I built new shroud plates but again it didn’t look “right”. Then PS kindly sketched the Isometric image that showed the shroud much clearer and after a quick chat I came up with the final version. This version was much closer, and here are the Glamour Shots….
As PsychoSith sketches in pencil and ink, I had no colour or material references to work from except for his fantastic shading/shadowing. As a result I opted for a grimy silver and brass look to fit with PS’s backstory for the hilt’s history. It was well used and worn in places, having been handed down through several owners. Each person added their own touch to the hilt. I used a silver texture with a distortion pattern mixed into it to create dirt/grime effects. The material also complimented the orange blade. And the blade which has the colour of molten Durasteel is now surrounded by four really distinct claw shrouds. The shrouds have a kinked spike and then the shroud widens with small tabs to surround the emitter cone. The shrouds also have inlaid panels stretching down their length. The large X-Guard claws have battle damage and feature chipped edges, while the handgrip/body has a broken lanyard chain that would have looped to the pommel cap. Now complete I offered it to PS to check out. In the meantime I also produced a few “arty posters” for the design…
I am so pleased and honoured to say that PychoSith approved of my efforts and posted the pictures on the forum and they created quite a stir with the other members, PsychoSith’s Dove had come to life off the page! It is absolutely beautiful and I kinda wish I had designed it…but I did get to build it so had a little hand in it’s conception! And so this is how the collaboration between PS and myself came about and it has been a pleasure working with him.
If you would like to see more of PsychoSith’s awesome art (and it is art in the real sense of the word) then you can visit the Ultrasabers forum and his gallery pages by clicking the link HERE . You will be amazed by his skill with a 6B pencil.
I’d like to thank PsychoSith for allowing me to display his hilt here it is an honour and I’m pleased to say that there will be more of his designs coming in future posts in the Guest Designer gallery! However this just about wraps up this offering and I just need to thank you my viewers and followers for checking this post out. Your support as always is much appreciated and I hope you will return to see future posts…there is so much more in the pipeline! Till next time…
“The Durasteel Dove” is a PychoSith Sabers design and is ©Copyright of PychoSith Sabers used here with permission, FTSabersite and all it’s content including Guest Designer contributions are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2019.
