“Colossal Saber” – Inspired by SW: Resistance – The Colossus

Hello everyone, this post will be quite short as I have had more issues as my mouse has died. No, not a pet rodent but my laptop’s mouse has broken – the wheel/third button has snapped and collapsed into the shell so I can’t scroll within Blender how I’d like. Luckily I had a design already partly rendered so I will show you that while I await delivery of my new peripheral. Sooo , today I return to the animated show “Star Wars: Resistance” and the world of Air/Space Speeder Races and the heroes Kazudo Xiono, Yeager, Neeku and Tam Ryvora. Their activities take place on the watery planet Castilon and an aircraft refuelling platform named the “Colossus”. The Colossus was originally an Imperial facility but after the fall of the Empire it was inhabited by regular folk who developed a love of Air Speeder racing (a bit like airplane pylon racing here on Earth). The Colossus had communal areas above the ocean surface, including a market place, a tavern, add to that numerous “workshop hangars” for the racing teams and a store to get spare parts. Unseen beneath the waves there were the Engineering Bays for the station. Sounds like a great place and it looked like this…

Unfortunately as with most good things, this station attracted the attention of Pirates and suffered from attacks. Due to these attacks security needed improving and the First Order learnt of the troubles and offered their “help and assistance” to keep the station secure – in other words they took over. Kazudo was sent by the Resistance to secretly gather intel on the First Order and report it back. Obviously his mission didn’t run smoothly.

So as mentioned the station held air races and in the first few episodes I saw the Colossus and from the angles I saw, imagined it operated like an off shore oil rig found on Earth. I figured the main platform was probably triangular and supported on a submerged leg – and I thought that might lend itself to a saber hilt! The platform could form a handguard and the leg would be the main handgrip. So this was what I knocked together…

It worked better than I initially thought! The upper platform formed a Tsuba (handguard) that I added elements to represent the “hangar bays” which housed the Air Racers – I even added “landing light strips”. Atop at the emitter I added a ring of windows to replicate the “control tower” where the administrator of the station, Captain Imanuel Doza, lived along with the “Elite” flyers on the station. The handgrip features a basic activation switch and leads down to the pommel. As I mentioned I hadn’t seen much of the station structures and nothing below water so I figured it was somehow attached to the ocean bed so I modelled the pommel to look like some type of anchor mechanism. Little did I know that later we would discover the Colossus was MOBILE and not just floating around on the ocean. The station has a Type 2 Hyperdrive and that leads to some dangerous situations and dilemmas involving the First Order and…a famous female Stormtrooper.

Later in the series after I had built this saber I saw this angle of the station and realised it wasn’t triangular. But I’m not sure this diamond arrangement would have worked as well anyway. The station in real life was designed by veteran Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) model maker Bill George. The Colossus was also present during the Battle of Exegol in “The Rise of Skywalker”!

Well that just about wraps up this post, hopefully I will have a fully functioning mouse by the time I post next week and I can bring something more up to my usual level! But thank you all for checking this design out and for all the magnificent support you show me and my little site. It is appreciated. Just in closing I may have a few “arty” fashion pictures to share as well as a modified lightsaber with a “K 26 spring”….Puzzled? Keep tuned and all will be revealed! Thanks again and till next time….

“Colossal Saber” is a For Tyeth Editions design inspired by “The Colosssus” station seen in “Star Wars: Resistance”. The design, 3D model and renders were built in Blender and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2021. “Star Wars: Resistance”, “The Colossus”, “Kazudo Xiono” and all related names, logos, images and related material are Trademark/©Copyright of Disney/Lucasfilm 2020-2021.

“Racer Saber” inspired by Star Wars Resistance

Hello Everybody and welcome to another new saber(?) design! We have all been living under crazy conditions for the past year or so and we have found ways to occupy our time and entertain ourselves. Well I took the extra time to binge watch the cartoon series Star Wars: Rebels which I was hesitant about at first but I really got invested in the great story and characters. It inspired a range of new designs for sabers so after finishing Rebels I decided to watch the next series Disney/Lucasfilm produced and that was Star Wars: Resistance. It centred around the character of Kazudo Xiono or Kaz, a young man that was a bit of a “flyer” in his own opinion (though he did have skills) and he somehow gets recruited by Poe Dameron the Resistance hero to do some spying on the First Order.

Kazudo Xiono front and centre, Poe Dameron on the right and Neeku Vozo on the left!

Kazudo after meeting Poe and being recruited finds himself on an ocean planet aboard a large ship refuelling platform named The Colossus. There here spies on the ever increasing presence of First Order troops arriving on the station. He also becomes part of the Aces Squadron – a group of “Air Racers” that take part in high speed pylon/gate racing. The “Aces” also double as the Colssus’ air defence squad protecting it from pirate activity. The Colossus looks like this..

Very exposed and at risk from attack I would say! I can’t divulge too much of the story here as a pleasant young lady named Tina I met recently (and also publishes a Star Wars blog you can check out here: https://mystarwarsthoughts.com/ – it has great articles such as Top 5 lists and thoughts on the SW universe and community) is currently in the middle of binge watching Resistance herself so I don’t want to spoil anything! But I can say that there is a particular Air Racer ship that caught my eye and it is called the Fireball and it is that ship which has inspired this next design, I call this “Racer Saber”…

The reason I love this ship and built a saber based on it is because the Fireball looks like a cross between a World War 2 Vought CorsairF4U fighter plane and a competition aerobatic race plane like those seen in the “Red Bull Air Race” series from a few years ago. It also looked as if it was a crossguard medieval sword hilt…perfect I thought for a saber! The cockpit windshield acts as an activation switch and power level indicator, otherwise this hilt is a very basic recreation of the Fireball (though much smaller so it can hang off your belt 😁! I mentioned this ship was primarily used for pylon aerobatic races so here is a second gallery showing “Racer Saber” going through it’s paces…

The last two images I just added so you can judge how close I got to recreating the Fireball and my little attempt to recreate a Resistance show logo for my post title image! I will say I struggled a little bit with the colouring of this hilt and the renders seem a bit “washed out”. I used regular background images and not Environmental Images which are spherical background images that provide lighting for your models and they didn’t render as well. But hopefully the slightly faded colours give the impression that my model is actually part of the animation screenshots!

That just about brings this post to the finish line, but as always I have my usual sign off and thanks to convey. Please if you have time go and check out Tina’s blog – https://mystarwarsthoughts.com/ and if you like what you see leave a comment and likes. And talking of comments, likes and support, thank you to each of you who have checked out this post and my site, whether a new visitor to FTSabersite (and I know there have been a few) or if you regularly check in you’re all much appreciated. I still have many new designs upcoming including sabers based on famous blasters, The High Republic, more Resistance saber designs, Star Trek (yes that franchise) AND long awaited news on my costume. All this and more in future posts so I hope you can call back and check it all out. Till next time…

“Racer Saber” is a For Tyeth Editions design inspired by the ship “Fireball” seen in Star Wars; Resistance. The 3D model and renders were created by For Tyeth and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2021. “The Fireball”, “Kazudo Xiono”, “Star Wars: Resistance” and all other names, logos, pictures and related materials are Trademark/©Copyright of Disney/Lucasfilm.