Subject:
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Re: Disappointment with Snowtroopers
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.starwars
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Date:
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Sun, 27 Apr 2003 20:33:29 GMT
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Viewed:
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686 times
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In lugnet.starwars, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
> Those are just pre-production pieces. The actual
> helmets may look different; after all, if you recall
> in the Nuremburg pictures they had no helmets *at
> all*. So I'd say hold your final assessment until
> we've seen some that are guaranteed to be final
> production models.
The helmets shown at Toy Fair were prototypes, and they appear to have
been made with some sort of rapid prototyping machine. You can clearly see
the signature layering effect in this photo:
http://www.maskofdestiny.com/archiveimage.asp?i=2545
When using any sort of rapid prototyping method, you take a 3D CAD file
of some sort, feed it into your chosen machine, which then takes the 3D
object and slices it into lots of thin layers. It then builds the object
one layer at a time through one of a variety of methods. I've heard of some
machines that use extruded plastic to build the object, and others that
cross two lasers in a chemical bath, fusing the liquid wherever they cross.
I'm sure there are other methods of building the rapid prototype, but they
all have those odd stepped lines in the shallower curves.
If you've ever wondered how TLC can continue to crank out so many new
specialized pieces and still turn a profit, rapid prototyping is your
answer. A friend of mine and I went through all of the 1999 Star Wars sets
and counted at least 22 brand new pieces in that one year alone. Since then
they've made at least 25 more specifically for SW sets, nearly half of which
they can't legally use for anything non-SW (mostly heads, helmets, and a few
bodies). Even that pales in comparrison to Bionicle, which is responsible
for at least 80 so far (and at least another 22 this summer). Rapid
prototyping is a wonderful process that allows them to try out a design
without having to spend thousands of dollars and a lot of time on a
completely new mold each time they want to tweak the design. With luck
it'll help bring us more SW aliens and droids (I'd personally love to see
all six TESB Bounty Hunters, Greedo, Momow Nadon, Jawas, Ponda Baba, Mon
Calamari, a Tessek, Klaatu/Barada/Nikto, and some non-human Jedi that aren't
Yoda).
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Disappointment with Snowtroopers
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| (...) Those are just pre-production pieces. The actual helmets may look different; after all, if you recall in the Nuremburg pictures they had no helmets *at all*. So I'd say hold your final assessment until we've seen some that are guaranteed to be (...) (22 years ago, 22-Feb-03, to lugnet.starwars)
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