Ok, well i've had some sleep now
You have actually misquoted me over at stardestroyer.net Kurgan but as i can't register there i have to reply to it here.
Kurgan said:
Edit: Also, he says that the TIEs added in the special editions of ESB were gray, rather than blue. However, without specific pics (which he may provide) I am not sure what he's talking about, other than perhaps the "TIE Shuttle" (which was just a bomber without the bomb chute) that Needa flies to "apologize" to Vader.
This is what i actually said:
ANH:R has grey TIEs so suddenly jumping to having all blue TIEs really doesn't fit with continuity with my edit. The whole bollox explanation that the Death Star TIEs were a different squadron so were white/ grey is just more EU bullshit to explain an error. If that's the case then why did ILM add the CG TIEs for the SE as blue/grey ones? That totally screwed up that theory.
As you can see, i was talking about the CG TIEs added to ANH for the SE. They used a blue/grey CG model which threw the theory of the fact they were white/grey as being that they were the Death Star Squadron.
Now the main reason, apart from that i just don't like the TIEs such an over saturated blue is this: They have all been recoloured in post production. Being an artist this is something i just cannot stand. An object should ahve many degrees of light and shade and highlighting. When recolouring an object you lose the light tones of highlights and it becomes a block colour. This existed ever since ESB was released in 1980 and nothing to do with the latest 2004 screw up. Even the black panels have become blue, which is down to the colour enhancement. Something like this jumps out to me and i just can't overlook it. It pulls me right out of the movie. You can tell the ones that haven't had any sort of colour filter added and they are grey and have white highlights when next to them is a blue one and the highlights which should be almost colourless is blue. For the AVCHD restoration it was easy to restore the colour to blue because of the techniques used originally. If i were to try and keep the blue to a degree that i would be happy with i would have to mask every single area for highlights, panels, cockpit etc. Here's a quick diagram to show what i mean:
Now the yellow areas are the mask for the black panels. Each section has to be done separately with a separate mask. The red areas are the highlights. Again each area is a separate mask. The green is the cockpit window to turn it back to grey. Now after i done the masks and applied the correct colouring/ highlighting to them each point then has to be matched, frame by frame, to the motion of the TIE fighter. All this has to be done by hand. Now when you have one TIE this can take days to do one split second shot. That photo has about 18 separate masks. Each point of that mask has to be moved to match the next frame. Thats could be anything in the region of 100+ points that have to be keyframed and moved to match the origin point for every frame. For one TIE alone thats insanity. Now add the other TIEs and every shot in the film and it becomes even more of a nightmare, and something i am not willing to do. It would take me so long just restoring these colours could take me the next year alone. I know i am too much of a perfectionist, which can sometimes be my downfall, but that's just the way i am. If they had stuck to the original colouring when doing ESB then i wouldn't have any problem whatsoever with the TIES being blue, but the fake colouring i just cannot stand, and never will. Now the TIE bombers are a different matter. They didn't have anything done to their colouring . Now strange enough they didn't mess with the colouring for ROTJ and the TIEs are a light blue/grey. Highlighting is intact and the panels are black.
Now what i am going to do is this: All the TIE fighters will be grey. TIE bombers will be their original light blue/ grey and the TIE interceptors will be their original colouring also. This will keep the consistency with the colours of the TIEs throughout the saga and also give the newer models of the bombers and interceptors their own colouring. the interceptors are a newer and more advanced TIE fighter so having a different colour , i have no problem with. If ILM had done the same to the bombers and the interceptors as they did with the TIEs in ESB then they would probably be grey also.
Its just soemthing, that to my eyes, that i spot straight away and hate it. Its the same with recolouring old black and white movies. It always looks fake to me and i just can never watch anything recoloured. Some movies, however, use recolouring for style and this can work. But not when you are trying to recolour an object because its just a new techique you can do, whcih is what happened with ESB