"Duel of the Fates" part I

Over the last month or so we've been working away improving the blog, along the top you should now see links to some new pages. Mainly an A-Z directory of all blog posts by character, for example to find this post you'd navigate to Qui-gon, Obi-Wan or Darth Maul.

We've also added a page that documents our progress through these movie re-enactments retelling the six films. By clicking here you'll find these photos with the other TPM photos we've taken in order of appearance.

By having these separate pages to act as a gallery of the photos I want to go back to using the actual blog posts to leave some short commentaries around the images, figures and collecting habits.

If you've been following us the few weeks I've added the new Darth Maul, Obi-wan Kenobi and Qui-gon Jinn to my collection. My original collecting goal was to have every character once, regardless of what era or costume, one was enough.

However since starting to shoot these movie scenes at the end of last summer I've changed my focus, and not just for the purpose of this site, I now want to can I re-enact every shot from Star Wars using my collection. (Obviously my wallet loves this idea, so I don't expect to finish anytime soon).

So now, I have two Darth Mauls, both are used in this blog post. Directly above is the new one that came with the Sith Speeder bike, it looks good but unfortunately it's articulated to sit comfortable on the bike and not necessarily for fighting. In the image above this one, and in the first image in this post, I've used an older Darth Maul, this one is from the original TPM line in '99 and while very limited in its articulation has a better stance for these shots.

Qui-gon Jinn is now up to two, I have the one in this post and this one posted back here, (which I've griped about before and will avoid going on about it). This Qui-gon is excellent, after attempting this fight, I can easily say its the best articulation of the three figures, which is surprising given the bodies of Qui-gon and Obi-wan look very similar, however there  are subtle differences.

For Obi-Wan Kenobi action figures I believe I'm up to seven now and worryingly I can think of a couple of characters were I have even more, haven't counted in a while but my Luke Skywalkers is probably pushing ten or more at this stage.

We still struggle with shots like this one above, there's the issue of space but also the issue of sets. This shot from the film really shows off the scale of the environment, here I used very basic photoshop to create a spot light effect making up for the fact I didn't have an area of black big enough.

Black was simply the original backdrop I choose when this blog was simply a record of my collection, one figure at a time with almost zero composition involved, and we've stuck with it. You may though have seen we don't always stick to it, for example in all our Hoth photography we use white sheets or for Dagobah we use sticks and leaves to create a swamp look, but I like the stylistic choice to stick with the black where we don't have an obvious way to convey the environment. It reminds me of a RSA production of Macbeth I saw in school where it was done without sets, characters just stepped in and out of shadows.

One of my favourite shots from the movie here, Darth Maul picks up a piece of scrapped droid and Force throws it into the door release, re-enacted here using a disassembled TCW battle droid and some black thread.

This week I've left the walkways out and opted to have just a shadow where you can see it in the film shot but I have a few ideas for next weeks shoot to make (I'm hoping) the best set we've done yet.

Also to point out, the new style of these images. Assuming I've gotten my html right, clicking any of the images will link you to the full size photograph we've taken and here on the blog you should be seeing the image with a little insert of the shot we've tried to do and a caption shot, although this post isn't the best example as it's a fairly wordless encounter.

The movie scene pages are in the process of being updated to this format as well, at the time of writing the prequels are all up to date and we appreciate your patience as the original trilogy is gonna take a bit longer,  escpecially Empire.

Also appreciate your patience with the rest of our improvements. The A-Z directory should be completed now, however the links section is still under construction, all the old links are still available there however the code that shows most recent posts for the blogs hasn't copied over, bare with us however as the plan is to replace it with blog descriptions and tidy it up into categories such as other collectors, other star wars fans, other photographers and generally awesome blogs. So other bloggers and creative types, if you're reading this, follow us and leave us a comment on the links page and we'll see were you can fit in.

Don't forget to like us on our new Facebook page and check back next week for Duel of Fates part II.