torsdag 31. mai 2012

Star Wars Trivial Pursuit



We sometimes meet up at my work to play a game of Star Wars Trivial Pursuit Original Trilogy Edition.
 Me, my boss, a politician and a comic book writer comprise the core group of players, but there are always others that join in, so much that we're thinking about buying a second game and have two games going at the same time. Making kind of a tournament out of it.
The comic book writer, Mads, drew a really cool picture of Garindan (The spy with the trunk-nose in Mos Eisley) as a prize/diploma, that hangs in the bar and everytime a person wins, their name gets added under the picture.

It's been a while since we've played now, so it's time to meet up and find out who's the biggest geek.


mandag 28. mai 2012

Star Wars-kubb!

Here in the Nordic countries we have a past-time for those sunshine days (that are increasingly few and far between..) called "kubb" (the swedish equivalent of "log").

I won't go into the specifics of the rules. but can mention as much that there are two teams (1 to 6 people on each) behind each line of logs that have to toss sticks over to the other side to knock down the other teams logs, just google it...

Anyways, you can buy a set of "kubb" pretty cheap, and they are basically pieces of hard wood cut to size, plain and simple. But I got the idea to paint one side with the rebel alliance logo and the other side with the imperial cog. Fun!


søndag 20. mai 2012

Parade on Norway's national day!

This year, as the past few years, the Nordic Garrison made their presence felt at the parade in Trondheim, during the national day 17th of may.
This was my first time attending the parade, and it was a really fun experience.
We used the downstairs club at my work as a changing area and hangout before and after the parade, and we ended up being 23 troopers walking the streets of Trondheim.

We tried to spread out and walk in formation to really take up space and make an impact in the parade.
Which I really think worked out good, we got a lot of exposure, and thousands of people had showed up to view the parade even though the weather was really bad.



One of the troopers arranged a pole-cam to be on top of the banner and film the entire parade, the movie will have to be edited but I think it turned out good!


Here I am being an exemplary posterboy for Norway and the 501st Legion, this picture showed up on imgur and had over 170.000 views 24 hours after the parade:


And there were a few videos that surfaced on youtube that same evening and the days after, here's one where I saw my girlfriend and ran over to give her a hug:



And here's another one I got sent by a nice girl:


 After the parade, we walked up to the westfront of the Nidaros Cathedral and took a picture of all attending troopers and support, quite fitting, as we are planning to design a patch for the troopers in Nidaros using the westfront of the Cathedral as an iconic image with TIE-fighters flying over it.







As we came back to our changingarea we already started to plan towards next years parade, shooting for 50 attending troopers, where many of them hopefully will be troppers travelling from other cities (and hopefully neighbouring countries), and many of them troopers based in Trondheim. We are growing at a rapid pace, with 16 confirmed members of The 501st Legion and at least 8 people at different stages of building their first costume! We might have our own C3PO and R2D2 even, and with 2013 marking 30 years since the release of Return of The Jedi, we might have to find a way to mark that in some way too.
See you around!

Completed AP-helmet and comparison with TM

Today I finished the ears and attached them on the AP helmet, and took some comparison photos when I came home.

The ears on the AP-kit are really easy to trim as the have trim-lines that match up pretty good with the finished contour, so I got done with them pretty fast.
I have to say I really like the AP-helmet, it gives me a really good stormtrooper-feeling.
Too bad I can't keep it (well, I can if I want to, but I made it with other things in mind...).

Completed helmet back at Trondheim Armor Factory (our workshop).


Comparison with a Troopermaster-helmet.
Some differences in assembly, but they have been assembled pretty close, one of the big differences being how the ears are trimmed. I kind of prefer the slimmer trim on the AP ones actually.

TM on the left, AP on the right.







I'm really considering buying a RS-helmet next month though...
I've been bitten by the helmet-building-bug.

søndag 13. mai 2012

Building up an AP-helmet

Today i built up an AP-helmet in the course of only a few hours.
Mads helped out by trimming out the ears roughly.
I decided to use the decals that came with the kit and the non-accurate mictips/aerators.
The only things I had to paint was the frown, vocoder and earbumps, which was done in a jiffy.

Only finetrimming and attaching the ears remains, then it is a finished helmet, ready for use.
The downside (and the reason I decided to use decals and non-accurate mictips/aerators) is this helmet is maybe going to become a lampshade at my workplace, paid for by my boss.
I thought it wouldn't be a problem to just build up a helmet and give it to my workplace, but I became a little attached to it...

Looking forward to build the next helmet though!
I really want to get an RS-helmet and build it up as a replica stunt helmet with khaki undercoat and paintchips and the works.

Here are the helmets as is, AP on the left, my TM on the right:



And here's the helmet propped up on the barcounter:


torsdag 10. mai 2012

Birthdaytroop at Bari in Trondheim

We were asked to appear at a childrens birthdayparty.
The birthdayboy was nine and a huge Star Wars fan, and the whole birthday was Star Wars themed, with all the kids being dressed in jedi robes, with lightsabers, posters and cardboard standees, Clone Wars on a big-screen and Star Wars music on the speakers.

As I live only a few hundred metres away from the venue, I put on my suit at home and walked through the streets, with only a few people stopping to take pictures, this nice sunny sunday morning.

Our job was to enter the room, deliver a blaster as a gift to the birthdayboy, mingle a little bit, then go outside for a groupshot with all the kids and us four attending troopers, The weather was nice, the kids behaved as well as kids their age should and it was a sweet troop all in all.
The father of the boy was a chef and made burgers for the troopers afterwards.
A nice and short troop!


Troop at Toys'R'Us

Hasbro wanted  the presence of the Nordic Garrison at all (most) of the Toys'R'Us stores in the Nordic countries for the release of new toys to coincide with the release of The Phantom Menace 3D at the movies, and we were only happy to oblige!

So february 20. I took the buss with Aiwei up to the Toys'R'Us in Trondheim where we met up with the other troopers and entered the storage room which became our makeshift changingroom.

We trooped around the store for FOUR hours, with small breaks in between, both to eat and just take a breather.

We had a nice time and did some shenanigans, both amongst ourselves and the kids that were there.











This is what a trooperlunch looks like:


And here we see the rare occurrence of a trooper that has cast his shell, straight from behind the scenes in the seventies (or so it might seem):


Groupphotos!