The New Essential Guide to Alien Species

So Say We All

 

What, you expect to get the novels and comics for free too? The video games? The DVDs? The Insider? Why should web content be different just because it doesn't exist in hardcopy?

 

For me I think it's more of the principle of not being able to send stuff in for Bantha tracks etc if you don't have Hyperspace membership :/

 

Oh I've paid them. I've paid them for the theater admission, VHS, DVDs, posters, books, comics, and numerous action figures. They can eat my nards if they want money for stuff that should be free. Without HS stuff, starwars.com is just a very crappy website. Thankfully, the internet being a wonderful, wonderful place, much of it turns up elsewhere.

 

You do realize that Lucas is using all of this income to build an authentic Death Star, don't you? The movies, the DVDS, the games, the NEGAS -- all of it. And when he's done, he's going to start asking all of his Hyperspace Membership fans if they would like room reservations.



At least that's what I keep telling myself.

 

I just bought The new essential guide to alien species, and it states that the Iktotchi have clarevoyance abilities. Whereas in every other source material it states that the species is in fact telepathic. I was wondering if this was forgotten when TNEGTAS was written or do they have both abilities? By the way the book was well done in case any one was wondering.

 

Right on, RWR. Paying to look at concept art and movie (or other product) hype is absurd.

I realize there's more to it now, but we all know that's mostly because, with the movies gone, they'd lost their cash cow.

 

And isn't it worth paying a little to keep StarWars alive, beyond the rotting corpse of it's Cinema body?

 

Sure, when I'm picking up the latest comic or book, or the occasional Insider which managed to slip content past the editors. I don't pay for that which isn't worth it; that's why I tend to avoid hardcovers, hyperspace, and Legacy of the Force.

 

In my opinion, most things are worth it. At least right now.

But well, to each his/her own.

 

*Smirks*

 

I'll concede that point. Paying to buy content is one thing, but paying to get special membership & submission privileges is another sort of animal.

That all having been said, I do wish they'd have a "phased-release" schedule for freeing HS content into the wild. Say, a year or so after being posted, content automatically moves over to the free section of the site. They still make their money from it, but we avoid the problem of that content being locked up and inaccessible in perpetuity. Take things like Abel's Insider supplements; it would be really really nice to have those publicly accessible at some point.

 

I find the Hyperspace website to be worthwhile...which wasn't always the case, back when it was only a supplement you had to pay extra for. But between the webcomics, the comic archives, the fiction archives, the Bantha Track archives, the Insider supplements, and What's the Story, it's worth the price of a magazine subscription. If all of that stuff was released to everyone after awhile, I wouldn't pay for it. As far as I'm concerned, for better or worse, Hyperspace is the uber-SW magazine, while the Insider is a glorified set of ads with a newsletter tucked between the pages.

TC

 

I bought the RPG guide to alien species. I'm still way happy with it. The only Essential's I have is the New guide to characters.

 

Did anybody see the explanation for Hutt marriges? Good stuff there...

TC

 

What's that?


Side note: please, make me a mod. I'm sick of this one-post-per-minute rule.

 

Ha, that's awesome about Jeisel.

Anything else that seems like it might come from Wookiee?

 

Hello all!
I thought I'd drop in on the board to see what the response has been to the new book.
I skimmed through the pages upon pages of posts and it seems it's been pretty positive.
Thanks for the compliments!
I can't really address any of the writing concerns since I had nothing to do with that, but if you have any art questions feel free to shoot!

I'll address a couple things I did see in past posts...
Kaleesh and other masked characters - There was some discussion early on whether or not we would show what's beneath the masks. I brought it up with the editor when I saw species like the Gand, Kaleesh and Kel Dor on my art list. Ultimately the decision was to leave them all on. I think it was Lucasfilm's call IIRC.

The Mon Calamari - That was my call to do the Episode III female dancer. The standard Mon Cal fleet officer had been done to death (I've even done them before for other jobs) so I wanted something different. Of course it made sense to tie the newest edition of the book into the newest movie too. As was mentioned the dancer also offered the best view of Mon Cal anatomy.

As for the overall stereotyping of the species... the general direction was to picture the aliens as typical examples of the species as we've seen them in the movies (or other sources). I tried to develop some new things here and there. I admit I gave into some sterotypes like the Chadra Fan - I'm sure they're not all drunks

Chris
www.christrevas.com

 

Colors, stat!

I haven't read the book, but I've seen the art, and I'd have to say that overall it is very impressive. Congratulations on excellent work, Mr. Trevas.

 

Stat? Stat is short for statim. Why do actors speak latin when you could just say "Now!" *shakes head*

 

Actors? Actors who play doctors do it. Which, by way of implication, means doctors do it.

 

The bit about Hutts and bi-gendered relationships? Good, creative, and, dare I say, ballsy. The writers took a real risk there, and I'm surprised it hasn't been brought up in a certain other contentious thread. Bravo. Bravo.

 

Chris Trevas: Okay, I'll shoot! And to make it easy, I'll restrict it to a single, obsessively nerdy query on behalf of all of us rabid Kaleesh lovers, specifically the fan artists! First though, now that I've finally seen your Kaleesh depiction, my thanks for putting some good work into that illo. It turned out a lot more detailed than I really expected and amoung the specifics I did like a lot were the character's nice, rather Old Egyptian-styled outfit and your choice to give him cyborg-Grievous-styled eyes instead of those blank white eyes as depicted by Warren Fu in that Visionaries story about Grievous's origin...it's the only part of Warren Fu's Kaleesh that always gave me the shudders. I also think I owe you a bit of an apology based on a humourous mistaken assumption. It came about a couple of weeks ago, when I hadn't actually seen any of your illustrations for NEGTAS yet, but came across the factoid that the guide's Kaleesh were described as having long black flowing hair. Oh gawd! I thought, immediately picturing a HAWT Qymaen jai Sheelal with a Fabio-like fall of tresses tumbling down his back. They've got a Grievous fangirl working on that guide! But that turned out to be wrong, obviously! In fact, I can't even see any hair--tied back in those braids, right?--and I'm fine with keeping the mask on, too. So thanks for those parts. My jury's still out on whether or not you're a Grievous fanboy now, though...

Now for the nerd query... Since you depicted your Kaleesh with those distinctive four-fingered hands, I'm going to assume you had a good look at Warren Fu's design before going ahead with your own. Which begs the question: How come you dropped the idea of the Kaleesh being digitigrade or toe-walking creatures in favour of the more prosaic human-like plantigrade look? The digitigrade-styled leg anatomy is one of the things a lot of fan artists really seem to like about that first Kaleesh design, probably because it makes them a little more alien-looking, something distinctly non-human that kept them from being one of the more usual Hallowe'en-mask styled type of Star Wars aliens. I don't mean that in a derogatory sense either, just that a lot of aliens in this universe, despite all their quintessential wackiness, do seem to be designed so that a human could conceivably put on an elaborate mask and other prosthetics and get away with playing one of them. Chewbacca and Nute Gunray are good examples and I like 'em lots. I consider them to be one of the Star Wars trademarks, the same way forehead-appliance aliens are a trademark of the Star Trek universe! So again--how come the rather fundamental change? Were you maybe thinking about Kaleesh being used in future Star Wars projects and wanted to make them an officially easier design of alien to integrate? Was it just personal preference? Did you consider styling them more like Warren Fu's version, but decided not to in the end because you weren't sure you could get a good realistic look...or what? Believe me, inquiring (and in a couple of cases, irate) minds want to know! With great gobs of slavering detail if possible!

Before closing, I'd also like to say that I really like your illo for the Nelvaan aliens...it's a real nice cartoon-to-real life depiction. And THANK YOU for basing it on one of the males before he got altered by the Skakoans, not after, whew! (Talk about a mental cold shower!)

 

Good point. The Kaleesh should be a bit more of a "toe-walker".
He doesn't quite have human feet although it's harder to tell in the front view (both heels are off the ground). There's really only one panel in the Visionaries comic that addresses the feet. In it the front foot looks very grounded and the rear has the heel in the air but he's going up stairs so the heel should be raised in that position anyway. I was going for a not quite flat foot, but not quite toe walker medium.
Next Kaleesh I do I'll make him a little more toe-walker (makes sense with the cyborg version).

I'm trying to remember why I still have 5 toes on each foot. I think that happened because I originally drew him with 5 digits per hand (3 fingers and two thumbs). I was trying to reconcile the difference between the pre-cyborg Grievous concept art showing 2 fingers and 2 thumbs per hand and the Visionaries comic version showing 3 fingers 1 thumb per hand. I wasn't sure if we just couldn't see his second thumbs in the comic very well or if Fu decided to change one thumb into a finger. Ultimately Lucasfilm said to lose a finger so I changed the hands. I should have removed a toe per foot too, not sure why I didn't.
Of course Grievous the cyborg has 6 digits per hand/foot (4 fingers 2 thumbs)- I'm not sure how that makes sense compared to his original anatomy.

Interestingly the Kaleesh article for the Insider was in production at the same time I was working on the Kaleesh drawing. LFL made the call to change his weapon to a Shoni spear (I had originally drawn a gnarled wooden looking spear with an arrowhead). I was able to consult my friends Joe Corroney and Abel Pena. The hands and the spear are still the only things that changed from my original drawing.