The Stormtrooper Variations

I’ve always been a huge Star Wars fan from 1976 onwards, when word first appeared about a groundbreaking new film on the horizon. Since then, George Lucas first outing, shortly after subtitled ‘A New Hope’ has since generated 12 feature length films and a whole galaxy of series and animations. In 2012 Disney bought up Lucasfilm and proceeded to extend the original saga of six films with a further three, which were met with a mixed reception. The final film, The Rise of Skywalker, had the unfortunate task of papering over so many cracks, closing pot holes, tying up loose ends and accounting for the real life passing of Carrie Fisher, that it became an unintelligible mess. Luckily, the franchise was rescued somewhat by Dave Filoni and  Jon Favreau with a new live action series called The Mandalorian, which entered around a Boba Fett type bounty hunter in the period just after the fall of the Empire. This led the way for more similar series, such as the decidedly limp Obi Wan Kenobi and the excellent Andor, which was a prequel to Rogue One. The long running Clone Wars animation introduced various other new characters, who appeared in other shows, such as Rebels and one character was given her own stand alone show.

Ahsoka Tano appeared in the Clone Wars series as Anakin Skywalkers young padawan, before eventually spotlighting in The Mandalorian series and Rebels. Filoni created a new series, centered around Ahsoka, which followed the events of Rebels and the Mandalorian. Once more set in the period before the rise of the First Order and with the imperial forces now reduced to remnants scattered across the galaxy, the show reintroduced a very popular figure who had originally been created or a series of books written by Kevin J Anderson, many years before. Such was the popularity of Grand Admiral Thrawn, that he became the chief villain in Rebels and also in Ahsoka. The final episode of Rebels finds Thrawn and his Star Destroyer, The Chimaera, transported to a remote galaxy, along with his troops and the hero of the story. Ahsoka finds Thrawn plotting his return to known space with the help of the Nightsisters of Dathomir, a coven of dark magic wielding witches. 

As Thrawn has been exiled for many years with limited resources and troops, he has enlisted the witches help to transform his troops into an undead army called Night Troopers. Standard stormtroopers have been made almost invincible by dark magic and their battered, patched and retrofitted armour has been repaired in a similar fashion to Japanese kintsugi - using gold material to fill in the cracks and reattach the shards of shattered armour. To hold the spell which re-animates the fallen troopers, the Nightsisters bind the troopers limbs and bodies with ensorcelled fabric, rich crimson in colour and potent in strength. As the troopers fall in battle, the dark magic brings them to their feet once more, in a zombie like state, the eyes of the helmets glowing green.

The show is definitely one of the best of the new stable of Star Wars material, with a strong mythical element, which was the original basis of Lucas’s first film, following the writings of Joseph Campbell and the ‘Hero with a Thousand Faces the archetypal figure who features in the myths and legends of every country in the world. It’s well worth watching if you are a fan of Star Wars and science fantasy generally. The series of helmets issued by Deagostini in 2016 continue to dominate my eBay wants list and I recently bought a job lot which included two duplicates from what I already had, one of which was the Stormtrooper, so rather than shelve the second one, I considered customising the helmet. The series includes almost every variation of Clone Trooper Helmet from across the sagas, but only one standard trooper helmet.The franchise does show other versions of the white helmet, such as Artillery troopers with yellow accents and Shock Troopers with scarlet decoration and insignia, but it was the Night Troopers which caught my eye as they are extremely weathered and individualised, with cracks in the armour, scorch marks and bare metal replacement parts.  So I set to with a razor saw and scalpel, to create a custom version of the Night Trioper.

I took out the large solid rubber bung that sits inside all the helmets and removed the black eyeshades. These were replaced with irridescent green ski goggle material and the main helmet was patched and weathered with acrylics. Then I got some metallic copper tape and high gloss gold enamel, filling in the deeper cracks and fissures and dropping in small gold panels. Finally, I cleaned off any excess grey and gold and scraped the cracks to make them look a little sharper. Red paper ribbon was used to add the magical fabric wrappings. In the show, the red fabric is mostly used on the limbs, but as this was just a helmet, I decided  to add a few pieces, as it is very distinctive.

Once dry, I decided to photograph it with a side light, but soon realised that the close up shots are not at all forgiving and I could see every little smudge, scrape and speck of dust!