I Just Started Reading Star Wars: Thrawn (2017) And Im Really Fascinated With The Attention To Detail

I just started reading Star Wars: Thrawn (2017) and I’m really fascinated with the attention to detail that Star Wars has when it comes to characters’ accents.

The closer to Coruscant, the more regal the accent is. For example, characters from planets in the inner core tend to have English accents. In contrast, characters from the outer rim planets tend to have American accents.

Characters like Jedi, most of which were raised on Coruscant because of the location of the Jedi Temple, tend to have English accents. However, there are exceptions, such as Anakin Skywalker. I believe Anakin has an American accent because he spent his early childhood on Tatooine, which is located in the outer rim.

Because this idea of location-based accents seemed to be created during the prequel era of Star Wars production, I didn’t expect the sequels to continue with this pattern (Seeing as they hardly cared about other canon ideas, such as the Sith Rule of Two). Surprisingly, Jakku is located in the inner core, which makes Rey’s English accent support this idea.

I know John Boyega was told to use an American accent because there were “too many” characters with English accents in the films, but this may actually support this idea also. As a low ranking stormtrooper, it is less likely that he would have a more regal accent that officers, like Hux, would have.

I also think it’s is interesting that many Imperials from mid to outer rim worlds, like Tarkin and Pryce, would hide their native accents and adopt more sophisticated English ones.

The Thrawn novel states that “Arihnda [Pryce] herself had worked very hard to get rid of her own Outer Rim accent, but she still felt very self conscious about her roots” after she recognizes Eli Vanto’s “Wild Space accent” and notes how uncomfortable he feels in the higher class Imperial gala. Pryce’s homeworld is Lothal, which is in the Outer Rim. This is also where Ezra Bridger and Ryder Azadi are from, and they don’t have regal accents.

In the novel, it is explicitly and repeated stated that Eli Vanto has a “wild space accent” and he’s even bullied for it. What do y’all think the equivalent of his accent would be to us? American? Southern (yee-haw) American? Australian?

I’d love to hear yalls thoughts about this!!😳

I wanted to play around and “redo” the clone model, bc frankly it stinks. first I studied and rendered a version of Plunketts original clone sculpt as a base, then I sketched and intermediate, and then finished it off with a final render. The final render that I made is just a piggy-back off of Plunketts original design, a suggestion of some geometry changes they could make, but it if we’re me I would do a complete overhaul of the model to make it anatomy more like Temuera’s. Because I wanted to start at the (sort of) same starting place as Plunkett, I started with one of his original sculpts of the clones (the one I used is a sculpt of Fives).

Here is a written outline of the ALL changes I made:

removed extreme cheekbone geometry from the sides of the face in favor of a smooth plane

removed the extreme angles of the jaw in favor of Temuera’s rounded jawline, also lowered a tad

change of hairline to match Temuera’s hairline shape

complete change of the nose geometry, flatter, broader. Still “shapely” to fit the general style

lips are smaller and rounded

brows are lowered and relaxed like Temuera’s

added crease above nose and in between eyebrows

removal of wrinkles (they’re in their twenties what were you thinking)

added texture to the hair. I would suggest starting with large textured shapes and then do a painted texture on the model similar to how they did Trace and Admiral Rampart’s hair. the textures are simple but the painting makes the hair patterns more apparent on top of the model’s geometry.

(not pictured) add a more appropriate skin tone (I understand that the raw animation the clones are already pretty dark, but the shaders they use make the final rendering for animated clones SIGNIFICANTLY lighter, to combat this, make the ‘true color’ of the animated clones darker to compensate for the lightening in rendering or fix the shaders)

(not pictured) get rid of the grey/golden eyes, idk what it is about LFA’s refusal to give POC characters their dark brown eyes but just give em back, man. use the dark almost black eyes Temuera has.

I am NOT a 3D animator or a 3D modeler, however all of the things that I changed are completely realistic and achievable in 3D. (i elaborate on this more in the post)

When I started this process I made notes of some of the most glaring features on the first clone model, such as the extremely chiseled and angular face, large Eurocentric nose, straight hair, and (while it’s not pictured in my render) the obviously-too-light skin. This looks nothing like Temuera, not even if you squint. I made some notes of the features that they excluded from the model (1st image) and some notes of features that Temuera has that would help capture his likeness better (2nd image)

I’ve heard the argument a million times that the model isn’t whitewashed it’s just “the art style”. ABSOLUTELY NOT BABE, SIT DOWN AND TAKE A GANDER. This is Captain Typo’s character model, based on a Polynesian actor. LFA is clearly capable of sculpting and rendering Polynesian features and curly hair textures. They have dark skin, rounded face, DARK BROWN EYES, curls, rounded flat nose, etc. the argument that it’s ‘just the art style’ is a hot pile of garbage, stop using it.

Hair texture time! To elaborate more on the proposed hair texture in my model redesign, I wanted to explain what I’m talking about a little bit. LFA is capable of animating lots of different kinds of hair textures, they just elected to exclude it from the clone model for whatever reason. They achieve geometric texture, which is the actual geometry of the model, and painted textures, where there is simple geometry but most of the texturing is done with paint, the colors you see on top the 3D geometry. Either of these options would be acceptable for curly hair like Temuera’a. (Looking again Trace Martez’ hair might fall a bit in between the two categories, but the point is still the same)

I also understand that animation, especially 3D animation is hard. But that’s not an excuse for LFA! they’ve updated the clone model significantly about 3 times, and that doesn’t include some of the smaller geometry changes they’ve made to characters like Hunter and Rex. They can achieve rounded faces (Fennec, Typho, Trace Martez) and other appropriate features for people of color. With 3 major overhauls they should have at least tried to make them resemble Temuera Morrison.

Now you tell me, which one of these looks more appropriate for a Māori man in his twenties? (If you say the first you’re lying to yourself!)

those speeder bikes were way too colorful for star wars. what do you think this is, favreau, star trek? that shit has to be BEIGE

Made this for my dad for Christmas! Enjoy!

Charlie Cox knitting fo the day

hera 🌸