Trooper Thursday #3

A quick post this thursday on realistic future warriors. Not all science fiction troopers need be bristling with weapons, overly armored up and looking morel ike robots than the men they are. In fact, some of the neatest future troopers are the ones who are just men with guns.

Remember the Colonial Marines, or the Hoth troopers. What about the contractors in Avatar? These guys were all wicked tough and cool even when they were fighting black nightmare bugs, stormtroopers or 10ft tall blue cat natives. I wish there were more of these guys in miniature.

I suppose the reason that we don't see more of these guys in miniatures is because really they don't stand out all that much as futuristic save for the details. I might even argue that the subtlety of such soldiers is lost on todays crop of scifi fans who seem to want an ever-increasing amount of wow factor in their toys. It also might be argued that such troopers are far too close to historical figures to really be bothered with by the guys forking out the cash to get the minis produced in the first place. Don't get me wrong, there are a few gems out there, but they are few and far between. Other than a few notable few (and you know who you are) future trooper minis almost all come out looking like Colonial Marine knock-offs. But you can have more than that.

A visor there, a shoulder plate here, maybe a knee pad or a chest protector or something and suddenly you are tripping the 22nd century nice and well and giving the public a really nice trooper they can believe in. Give the man a gun that is humanly possible to wield, and that has a sensible futuristic configuration and some kit that looks like it serves  purpose other than to hold his skull collection and BAM, future trooper goodness.

Well enough of the soap box today.

Seeya when I get back,

-Eli

Trooper Thursday #2

Isn't she a little hot for a storm trooper?

I don't generally go for the sexy angle on ISLP but I figured I'd have a little fun with this post and highlight a new trend in science fiction trooper - Femtroopers.

I am a bit out of the loop on Star Wars fandom, but recently a trend in doing sexy versions of everyone's favorite evil grunts has become popular. They are all over the internet and sat nearly every convention. I personally think thisi s just an expression of how ingraned into our culture Star Wars has become that we can now have people with a Stormtrooper kink. But really this isn't all that new of a concept.

I remember back in highschool there were girls who would wear modified military jacked, hats, boots as part of their style. We see this today with military chic worming its way into the fashion world as well. Going back to earlier periods, women's fashion borrowed heavily from military uniforms with stylish upscale ladies wearing gowns accompanied by Hussar hats and jacked with braiding and epilettes.

Anyhow, that's enough intellectualism. Here are some attractive girls in Stormtrooper costumes...

Trooper Thursday

Today, I decided that to help keep the blog alive until I can start posting more regularly that I would introduce a regular feature where I post various images of scifi troopers. There are so many cool designs for troopers out there. From video games, to concept art, to movie characters, the artists and designers routinely come up with some really kickass stuff.

Rather than simply do an art dump, however, I will also post commentary on the images that I post, including my own thoughts on what they represent and how I might use them in games. I'd also love to have folks submit their own finds and ideas. Email them to me and I'll post them.

So, here goes!

This trooper is from a series called "Space Vagabonds" by artist `Ukitakumuki. He has quite an extensive Deviantart page and I could practically do this whole series with his art alone. He does a lot of different types of troopers and even does some cool treatments of Star Wars, Terminator, even a Macross-inspired piece.

This trooper really sings to me. Not only is it a nice heavy-armored trooper, it has that air of realism that makes it believable. Though it's obviously some sort of powered armor, it is not a full armor suit. leaving the wearer flexible and free for mobility. I imagine that there are servos or artificial muscles under that fabric which is likely some sort of advanced anti-ballistic weave.

In fact, the artist hasn't left us guessing all that much. If you read the illustration, this is a fully enclosed G-suit with a powered exoskeleton. It has an onboard AI and uses layers of flexible anti-ballistic materials for protection. The illustration also indicates several helmet variants and special manipulator gloves that return some of the fine manipulation to the wearer after putting his hands into the armored gauntlets.

This is really the sort of armor I expect to see in cyberpunk games as well as hard scifi settings like 2300 AD/Traveller 2300. I would love to see mins of these guys in 15mm.

Well, there we go, the first installment of Trooper Thursday.

Enjoy!

-Eli