At first I wasn't entirely clear on what you were planning here but having re-read the entire thread i have to say I'm very impressed. The colour corrections look amazing and the alterations and fixes are subtle enough that they don't stand out or look awkward.
I never really got into the comics but I'd be far more inclined to check out your reworked versions Darknikos.
GREAT WORK GUYS.
@ ben_danger: i'm reuploading them all!
about TotJ: great recolouring work, obviously, but I think the episodes are better divided like they are now... mostly, the title "Knights of the old Republic" really bug me because it is overused (the ulic-nomi-exar TPB comic, then the video game series, then the new ongoing comic series) and because it reveal clearly that the point of view of the entire saga is the rebellion era; no one used the term "old republic" during the republic years, only after its fall... if we want the EU like real episodes and not only spin off of the movies we have to see every episode for itself, not related to the movies.
but, yes, i totally agree with you that the EU must be one with the movie!!!
@ Johnny Ringo: Thanks! i'm pleased to read that! :)
@ TheoOdo: the work on thrawn trilogy it's almost finished and i'm now working on dark empire. I was planning to release together Thrawn, dark empire and crimson empire, beacuse in this editing are now (finally) one cohesive story!
but i'm now thinking to release soon only the Thrawn trilogy, and then share here my plans for dark/crimson empire, so anyone intersted can discuss about the new storyline (and, i'm sure, improved it).
That sounds like a great idea, As long as you don't mind letting other cooks into your kitchen ;)
Darknikos said:
@ TheoOdo: the work on thrawn trilogy it's almost finished and i'm now working on dark empire. I was planning to release together Thrawn, dark empire and crimson empire, beacuse in this editing are now (finally) one cohesive story!
but i'm now thinking to release soon only the Thrawn trilogy, and then share here my plans for dark/crimson empire, so anyone intersted can discuss about the new storyline (and, i'm sure, improved it).
Well, I would love to read the Thrawn Trilogy soon, to see what you've done with it.
But I'm interested most in what you plan on doing with Dark Empire, because the Palpatine clone plot is so silly. Can I ask, what are you planning to do about that?
TheoOdo said:
Darknikos said:
@ TheoOdo: the work on thrawn trilogy it's almost finished and i'm now working on dark empire. I was planning to release together Thrawn, dark empire and crimson empire, beacuse in this editing are now (finally) one cohesive story!
but i'm now thinking to release soon only the Thrawn trilogy, and then share here my plans for dark/crimson empire, so anyone intersted can discuss about the new storyline (and, i'm sure, improved it).
Well, I would love to read the Thrawn Trilogy soon, to see what you've done with it.
But I'm interested most in what you plan on doing with Dark Empire, because the Palpatine clone plot is so silly. Can I ask, what are you planning to do about that?
well... what have alwais bugged me is that the 2 trilogies are 2 totally different story, badly united with a poor mention of Thrawn in the crawl of DE. now the story is one. the tedryn holocron is in the thrawn trilogy, the noghri and a mention of mara are in DE. there is no more clone emperor (a poor idea that, after the release of the prequels has no more sense) and there is a certain link with legacy of the force! I've already written an abstract of DE and i'll post it as soon as the thrawn trilogy will be released (i hope in some days).
Stay tuned!
Johnny Ringo said:
That sounds like a great idea, As long as you don't mind letting other cooks into your kitchen ;)
well...help-cooks ;) but if there is someone with better ideas then mine, i'll be pleased to use them!
I have a little idea, with regards to Dark Empire, take it or leave it.
Perhaps instead of the clone Emperor being the source of conflict in DE it could instead be Janus Greejatus and/or Sim Aloo, the two robed figures who appear temporarily in RotJ aboard the Death Star II. Having been trained in the ways of the Sith by the Emperor, they are attempting to reconstruct the Sith Empire just as their deceased master had instructed them to do. They do this with the assistance of a young Force-sensitive apprentice (actually one of the younger looking Emperor clones).
Or have you already decided what you're going to do with DE?
TheoOdo said:
I have a little idea, with regards to Dark Empire, take it or leave it.
Perhaps instead of the clone Emperor being the source of conflict in DE it could instead be Janus Greejatus and/or Sim Aloo, the two robed figures who appear temporarily in RotJ aboard the Death Star II. Having been trained in the ways of the Sith by the Emperor, they are attempting to reconstruct the Sith Empire just as their deceased master had instructed them to do. They do this with the assistance of a young Force-sensitive apprentice (actually one of the younger looking Emperor clones).
Or have you already decided what you're going to do with DE?
yes, i've already decided. if you watch to the cronology, just after DE, the empire it's controlled by Carnor Jax. only recently, with the release of legacy of the force, LFL has retconned that he is Lumiya's apprentice, but we have never see them together... than in DE we will see both Carnor Jax and Lumiya as villains... and some others...
isnt lumiyas first appearance in a marvel edition?
just another thought along the lines of my previous mutterings.
STAR WARS was originally a trilogy, so all references within the trilogy and themes were nicely tied up within the context of the 3 films
then (ignoring EU) the SAGA of SIX films recreated this context into the six films, references and themes then intermixing across the six films (not particularly well, but thats the idea)
what if we make all the comic material some contextualised super saga panning 1000s of years? by rescripting and reorienteering ideas it could be some greater story. Lucas tried tieing the phantom menace with ROTJ for example with the chosen one mumbo jumbo. if we were to pretend that the PT and OT arnt films, and choose to use the comics, we can create a series of omnibuses, where the skywalkers, leia, han etc are almost minor characters.
heres an interesting site
http://www.darkhorse.com/Zones/StarWars/Timeline
nicely puts a potential comic SAGA in some sort of linear form.
Darknikos has made some cool ideas just in the rewriting in the Thrawn Trilogy (im just correcting the english!:P) to make them run more coherently
I am recolouring when I can to make the imagery itself seem less like its been inked by people who eat neon for breakfast, and also to add some consitency. annoyingly though i need to go to university to use photoshop to do anything :P does anyone know of a free version? GIMP isnt too hot, and i had to wipe and restart my PC when a Photoshop crack had a trojan in it.:'(
if anyone wants to read up on the comic backgrounds just go on wookiepedia, or i can upload chunks to rapidshare, and some naughty individuals seem to have uploaded them as torrents too.
i must confess i also wasnt that bothered about the comics (excpet for tales of the jedi) for the same reason as many, but the idea of making them more consistent and more of a universal project could be fun!:) i never felt that the comics fit in with the films, so replace the films with the comic versions, and slide in the bits about lumiya maybe? expand upon dialogue perhaps? put in flashbacks? we could even do a comic version of STAR WARS reborn? and lets not forget we can always draw stuff in?
COOKS NEEDED!
isnt lumiyas first appearance in a marvel edition?
yes, Lumiya was created for the marvel comics.
she appear, first, as the rebel lieutenant Shira Brie and work with luke in some mission. after her apparently death, luke discover that she is an imperial agent (and in the same issue that she is still alive, in a bacta tank, supervised by vader himself)
she was a sith apprentice of darth vader, and later an emperor's hand.
after the death of her masters in the death star 2, she return as lumiya, dark lady lady of the sith and she has even a first apprentice.
we see her again only 35 year after, in legacy of the force, when she became the sith mistress of jacen solo. but we know, now, that she was the sith mistress of carnor jax.
and then the idea to expand the brief career of Jax and let see him with his teacher (the official EU never show them together).
and also to see an inedited big 3 vs jax story.
STAR WARS was originally a trilogy, so all references within the trilogy and themes were nicely tied up within the context of the 3 films
then (ignoring EU) the SAGA of SIX films recreated this context into the six films, references and themes then intermixing across the six films (not particularly well, but thats the idea)
what if we make all the comic material some contextualised super saga panning 1000s of years? by rescripting and reorienteering ideas it could be some greater story. Lucas tried tieing the phantom menace with ROTJ for example with the chosen one mumbo jumbo. if we were to pretend that the PT and OT arnt films, and choose to use the comics, we can create a series of omnibuses, where the skywalkers, leia, han etc are almost minor characters.
OK, it's exactly my idea. star wars is not a familiar saga that span into 30-40 years. it's the story of an entire galaxy, during the millennia!
and, yes, the "big 3" from this point of view, are "minor characters", like any other!
heres an interesting site
http://www.darkhorse.com/Zones/StarWars/Timeline
nicely puts a potential comic SAGA in some sort of linear form.
IMHO, the best timeline is the one on theforce.net
http://theforce.net/timeline/
SW is a "multimedia" saga, we cannot wipe out all the other material, like books, and i have some ideas for them... but it's very soon for this! :D
Photoshop crack had a trojan in it.:'(
www.apple.com :P
I guess most people aren't into it, but the marvel series is important, historically, because it comes from the days when Lucasfilm was MUCH smaller and Lucas and one or 2 other people were actually guiding the writers and artists. Lucas handpicked artists back then and voiced his displeasure with certain early stories/writers, and at the time anyway, it was the "official" chronicle of what was going on in between the flicks and was made happened DURING the making of the trilogy.
I think boiling Marvel down to the main stories (ignoring some obvious deadline fill-ins and one-offs), compressing the time between Empire and Jedi and fixing the (relatively few) contradictions would be really cool. (it actually wouldn't be that hard. They had to ignore Luke losing his lightsaber after Empire, so the blue one ought to be changed to a "temporary" one he acquired along the way, there are a few he could be using that turned up in previous stories). Just a thought.
heres a possible alternate crawl for Heir to the Empire.
original
HEIR TO THE EMPIRE
The New Republic has driven theremnants of the old Imperial Starfleet
to a distant corner of the galaxy.
Princess Leia and Han Solo areexpecting two twins, and Luke
Skywalker has become the first
in a long-awaited line of Jedi Knights.
But thousands of light-years away,the last of the Emperor's warlords
has taken command of the shattered
Imperial fleet, readied it for war, and
pointed it at the fragile heart of the
New Republic...
proposed:
HEIR TO THE EMPIRE
It is a challenging time for a fragileGalaxy. The New Republic forces have
driven the Imperial Remnant ever deeper
into the dark corners of space.
Meanwhile, Leia Organa Solo, who ispregnant with twins, is being trained by
her brother, Luke Skywalker, to become
one of the first in a series of JEDI KNIGHTS.
But thousands of light-years away, the
last of the Emperor's warlords has
taken command of the shattered
Imperial fleet, readied it for war, and
pointed it at the heart of the fledgling New Republic...
@ Baronlando: I totally agree. i'm already planning the work to do with them! (and i'm buying the new versions published some years ago from dark horse, totally recoloured, to use as material source!)
@ ben_danger: great! a bit longer and complete.. and with the capitol words like in the moves! :P
(which reminds me... do you have the fonts for it?)
i downloaded the fonts, and i had to reinsert them into parts fo the photoshop files.
ive finished doing the language on HTTE (some was still in italian btw!) do you want me to send you them before i do the colour correction?
got a copy of photoshop now, i tested a few cracks on a pc at my library. one wasnt a virus luckily.;)
If I may be so bold, here is my attempt at an alternate crawl. I have excised mention of Leia's pregnancy, as her maternity doesn't seem to be quite on the same level of importance as intergalactic conflict, restoration of ancient orders and the general theme of the crawl. Mention of "the Emperor" is replaced with "the Empire", as the Emperor is no longer important; he's dead.
*ahem*
HEIR TO THE EMPIRE
It is a time of challenge and opportunity for the New Galactic Republic.
The IMPERIAL STARFLEET,
which once held the entire galaxy within their
tyranny, have now been forced to flee into the darker corners of space.
Luke Skywalker, young leader of the New Republic,
is now training his sister
Leia in the ways and traditions of the JEDI KNIGHTS,
hoping to restore the ancient Jedi Order to it's former glory.
But thousands of light-years away, the last of the Empire's warlords
has taken command of the shattered IMPERIAL FLEET,
readied it for war, and pointed it at the heart of the fledgling New Republic ....
@ ben_danger: i'm sorry... yesterday morning i thought i've posted but i was in late for the work... and i discovered now that my post there isn't.
however... what pages are still to translate? so i send you!
(and i hope, from this weekend, to return to work on this project, but this is a hard week for me)
@TheoOdo: Good, i like it. But maybe a small mention of Leia's pregnancy have to be done. the story treat it as a matter of fact, and the twins will be very important in the future... don't you think so?
That's true. It's just that I found, next to the Empire and Jedi and the New Republic, pregnancy seems a little domestic. But you're right, it's important.
Here's version 2:
HEIR TO THE EMPIRE
It is a time of challenge and opportunity for the New Galactic Republic.
The IMPERIAL STARFLEET, which once held the entire galaxy within their
tyranny, has now been forced to flee into the darker corners of space.
Luke Skywalker, young leader of the New Republic,
is now training his sister Leia Organa Solo in the ways
and traditions of the JEDI KNIGHTS, hoping to restore
the ancient Jedi Order to it's former glory. Leia, now pregnant
with twins, also faces personal difficulties beyond the task
of her rigorous Jedi training.
But this time of peace may be short lived, as thousands
of light-years away the last of the Empire's warlords
has taken command of the shattered IMPERIAL FLEET,
readied it for war, and pointed it at the heart of the fledgling New Republic ....
ok, i've redone the crawl, based on te last TheoOdo's version.
I've only shortened it a bit because otherwise the text doesn't enter in the field.
here the preview: 
and here the PSD file: http://ultimatestarwars.altervista.org/3107.psd
looks and sounds great. i think it suits the comic well. the crawls for the other star wars films were alot shorter i think, so i was being restrcitive intially to keep with them. but i think the new one is better and we should run with it.
ben_danger said:
looks and sounds great. i think it suits the comic well. the crawls for the other star wars films were alot shorter i think, so i was being restrcitive intially to keep with them. but i think the new one is better and we should run with it.
well... i've already uploaded the photoshop file, as you can see. the good thing is that this new crawl is about the same length of the crawls of dark force rising and the last command, so fit better with the other chapters in the trilogy!
Great! I'm real glad you liked my edition of the crawl.
This whole Fixed Universe thing has inspired me to maybe work on an edit of my own in the future, of the Marevl series as Baronlando suggested. Because the Marvel series is quite kitsch, rather like elements of the first Star Wars, it would be interesting to edit it in such a way that it becomes progressively darker in color, tone, theme and style so that it bridges the gap between "ANH" and ESB in terms of both plot and style. Then the same could be done with the gap between ESB and ROTJ.
I was thinking I might label them as something like "Episode IV - II" or "Episode IV: Part II" (or, hey, maybe "Episode IV and-a-half"? :P ). Anyway, this is all up in the air at the moment 'cause I'm real busy but if I ever get around to doing something like this I'll be sure to keep everyone posted.
i've just been messing with the first page of HTTE in after effects and knocked this tiny sample together
http://img532.imageshack.us/my.php?image=comp1vq4.flv
Darknikos - if you can get enough cooks on board you could really turn out something way above what you have already planned
someone recolouring, a couple doing cut outs, more filling in backgrounds and removing speech bubbles etc. a couple of animators, an editor, more working on sound
seems to me there are a lot of talented people on these boards - a lot of who are repeating each others work (how many prequel edits are there anyway?)
if all that talent worked together who knows what can be achieved - your idea could be turned into an animated movie of sorts (maybe not on a par with the new clone wars animation - but something worthwile anyway)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R78l7v3DqkM&feature=related this youtube vid shows how effective even a small amount of animation can be
specifically the clip at 6:15 of thrawn and the emporer
what do you think?
@ TheoOdo: the marvel series is in my to do list! :) I've the scans of the comic books but the colors are horrible! so, I'm buying the reprinted version by dark horse that are completely recoloured.
the goal is to fit them with empire/rebellion series and shadows of the empire. and, yes, removing some "kitsch" elements, specially in the firsts issues, in the part between ANH and TESB.
For the episodes names I simply think that it's unnecessary to have a number for any of them. otherwise we have to give a number to any comic or book of the EU... and it's impossible.
Like a friend of mine, professor of classical letters and huge star wars fan, says the six-episodes saga represent only a portion of a larger universe story, that we can call "Anakineid". A name that recall the ancient greek and latin poems, like already do the star wars story itself (Anakin like a tragic hero, and others...)
ok... this is a bit off topic!
@ professa adyfan: awesome! my first idea was something similar, but i'm not an animator and if i want, one day, to finish this project i cannot animate avery comics that i want to edit! O_o
but, yes, if there is someone interested in doing this, could be great!
(which reminds me... there is a fan that is providing some musics for the EU, especially the Legacy comic series: http://space.geocities.jp/akihikomonnai/eumusic.html
it could be intersting to have at least one original theme for every "movie" or trilogy. in this case, for example, a theme for Mara and for Thrawn)
Darknikos said:
@ TheoOdo: the marvel series is in my to do list! :) I've the scans of the comic books but the colors are horrible! so, I'm buying the reprinted version by dark horse that are completely recoloured.
the goal is to fit them with empire/rebellion series and shadows of the empire. and, yes, removing some "kitsch" elements, specially in the firsts issues, in the part between ANH and TESB.
For the episodes names I simply think that it's unnecessary to have a number for any of them. otherwise we have to give a number to any comic or book of the EU... and it's impossible.
Like a friend of mine, professor of classical letters and huge star wars fan, says the six-episodes saga represent only a portion of a larger universe story, that we can call "Anakineid". A name that recall the ancient greek and latin poems, like already do the star wars story itself (Anakin like a tragic hero, and others...)
ok... this is a bit off topic!
The Anakineid! Ha! That's an awesome name for it! I look forward to seeing your treatment of the Marvel series, but taking things one step at a time how close would you say we are to seeing a fully completed example of a fixed universe comic?
Not to sound impatient ...
Also, the comic versions of the PT really provide a unique opportunity to edit the PT to fit better with the OT in terms of plot and other little inconsistencies. Any plan to edit them too?