Sorry for disappearing again, the end of the semester is coming upon me and things got a bit out of hand. I just need to finish a paper and I will pretty much be free of school obligations.

Anyway, after much thought I think it is finally time to make this piece go fully live. And like with all my previous works I have finally decided upon a name (although I had one a  long time ago but I forgot), “Rebels vs the Empire – A fight between father and Son”. The theme of this piece is set in the 1940s when WWII took place. A lot of influences were drawn from Germany for the Empire after all, and of course there’s the whole Japanese influence (mainly the ideas of samurais, ki, etc.).

So with that in mind I had Darth Vader use a German uniform. I really liked the baggy pants which aviator divisions (among others) used. I thought of making his buttons different colors, but decided against it. The idea of making a communication device provide those light did come to mind, but the place I wanted to place it on would be covered by his arms so again I decided against it. I thought of making him go in all black, but I decided for a mainly three color scheme of black, gold and grey. I really wanted some more variation within Vader’s uniform. Plus I had the idea of having some type of armor beneath his jacket and pants (some of which can be seen on his arms). The idea is that the technology isn’t there for fully robotic prosthetics, so what if he just had his burnt skin replace with metallic armor?

As for Luke I wanted him to portray some influences of Japan, but also the Allies from WWII. I eventually decided on a combination of Yankis (specially since he represents the rebel forces) and some parts of the uniforms of the allied forces (which pretty much just ended up being the boots, undershirt and maybe, just maybe the pants). I could’ve gone for a camo pattern, but since he is supposed to be like a delinquent he wouldn’t follow the rules would he? So the decision was made to have him in all black like in the final movie (0f the original trilogy).The jacket I wanted to look like those that Yankis wear. They tend to put nonsensical (usually) kanji together that sounds cool and tough into a completely made up word or phrase. So I decided to do the same. It was actually quite fun to do and now understand why Yanki do this (and why they get some weird words and phrases that don’t make sense). I used Kanji for “Rebel + Alliance” on the right arm and “Defeat + Evil Spirit” on the back. I was going to add something else to the left arm but decided (mest up/forgot) to not put anything on it… The Rebel crest is also there. As for the red cloth on Luke’s left arm, I was thinking of the headbands used by Yanki, but I decided to put it on his arm.

Finally, as for the swords, I used the colors from their final confrontation.

The setting was originally going to be inside a battleship, much like in the movie. But after much thought I figured I could do more on a cliff where I could add air and sea battles to the background.

This was a bit of an annoying piece due to the amount of details and objects I had to keep in mind as I worked on it. Not only that, but as I added new objects and colors I had to go back to previously finished areas to have them meld well together…

But it’s now, finally, officially done.

-XERO