[Imperial Officer (Battlefront II) Build and/or CRL proposal]

21 minutes ago, Tonydragon said:

By that rationale we shouldn’t be making crls based on anything from Rebels either then. 

Rebels is made by Lucasfilm, not a 3rd party licensee. It's also stylized as opposed to battlefront which is following the realism of the films.

[Imperial Officer (Battlefront II) Build and/or CRL proposal]

4 hours ago, Hask said:

Admiral versio however is considered canon and so by that so is his uniform, the officer uniform under the battle armour is seen in the movie scenes and also by that makes it eligible for 501st inclusion, it could be argued that the armoured version is not eligible because it can be customised 

Admiral Versio and his uniform are canon yes I'll completely agree with that, but my point was that the model in the game shouldn't be taken too literally. In the Versio CRL thread I see things being discussed like if the rank bar has something under it and bevelled edges or the code cylinders being different, and all that falls under artistic interpretation or misinterpretation by the modeller (the bar for example looks like it's lifted or floating because it's most likely to avoid clipping into the tunic when he moves) and we're over-thinking some details that already are known from the films.

 

Dice can and will get things about the costumes wrong because they are making a 3d model not sewing an outfit so theirs doesn't need to work in real life, and I'm just advising that we shouldn't be following them too closely in our CRL's, but instead defer to the films when we see conflicts or things that simply won't work on a real costume. (For some context, I also do 3d modelling, and approach these game outfits from both the perspective of a costume maker and 3d modeller. So when I see inaccuracies like the floating rank bar, I understand why they did it that way in the game and know to ignore that detail when transferring that costume to the real world).

 

Back to the regular officers, that one in the cut scene with Admiral Versio for all intents is supposed to be a regular line officer as seen in the films. In terms of canon he would not be intended to be wearing first order pants and boots nor have an incorrect collar or middle back seam, again Dice made an incorrect model with shortcuts which is then being reused for all line officers in-game and in cut scenes. However that should be superseded by the film one because we know what the Line officers in the film look like, and having first order pants and boots on an OT officer doesn't make any sense; EA/Dice were just being efficient and reusing parts to save time, not so much caring about accuracy.

 

Again, the models in Battlefront should be viewed the same way as a Hasbro figure; third part licensees don't need to achieve the same level of accuracy as Lucasfilm itself, they're just making a product to sell on a tight schedule and budget so for them close enough is good enough (this also goes for the battlefront cut scene movies, they're not produced by Lucasfilm so the films should still supersede them). This officer uniform is a misinterpretation and I believe that shouldn't be included in the 501st or it'll just result in our standards and image degrading. These kind of conflicts would have been one of the reasons we originally had the 3 points of reference rule; to avoid 3rd party inaccuracies making their way into the 501st which I strongly feel they shouldn't.

[Imperial Officer (Battlefront II) Build and/or CRL proposal]

Thought I’d weigh in on this outfit as well as the subject of battlefront being used at all as a CRL reference.  I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on the subject lately. The short is that EA/Dice shouldn’t be trusted on accuracy any more than say Hasbro. Remember EA is a third party licensee, and while Lucasfilm signs off on their game, that doesn’t mean they are giving the tick of approval that every single thing in the game is now canon and 100% accurate,  films still override everything. Hasbro for example, their figures are usually pretty accurate, but not always perfect (E.g. The black series General Veers uses the exact same legs as Krennic, including the straps on the top of his boots. This doesn’t mean this is approvable for Veers, just Hasbro reusing parts cause they’re close enough and most people don’t know the difference. And let’s not forget the 3.75 Revan figure has the wrong mask because someone at Hasbro used an image of a fan mod as reference and even that got past Lucasfilm).

 

And this officer falls perfectly into category of inaccuracies that shouldn’t be used in costuming. For starters, the outfit has every intent of being a classic line officer uniform. I’d wager the armour was decided as they’ve seen a picture of veers and that’s what the officer’s should wear. But as Lieutenant J.G. said in the other thread, they only received the snowtrooper chest and harness as reference so they just used that, but the intent would have been Veers’ outfit.

 

The pants are the part where they have just recycled assets, as shown in the picture below. They have used the exact same model for the pants/boots as the first order officer on both the Imperial and Republic officer. This is just Dice taking a shortcut to save time, but we should be ignoring things like this because we know what those pants are supposed to be.

 

The collar is just another casualty of EA not being a stickler for details, same goes for the seam down the middle of the back. People are making 3d models (generally on a strict timeframe, they can’t spend as much time as they like on one character) and those errors in accuracy really shouldn’t make it into the 501^st. Just take a look at the pictures below, the metal rod on the back of the helmet is poorly aligned and just floating off the surface, there’s no chin strap and there are 2 belts clipping through each other because they just slapped the FO officer belt on him (you can even see the FO buckle poking out); doesn’t really inspire confidence in accuracy.

 

I’m always reminded of the Armoured cavalry corps view on the lone AT-ST pilot in Return of the Jedi who was wearing Veers’ helmet from Empire as a clear case of “dressing to fill out a scene”. Their view is this helmet isn’t approvable because the consistent look of pilots is more important than being literal to costuming errors.

 

At the end of the day, this outfit just seems like a bit of a mess resulting from incorrect references and modellers taking artistic liberties to save time, neither should be used as reference. The same can be said for Admiral Versio; that outfit would have been intended as your standard ANH ISB uniform with a standard admiral rank bar addition, and has gone through modeller interpretation.

 

Apologies for the essay, I’m more a lurker on the boards but wanted to speak up as I’m quite passionate about costume standards, but following video game models too closely can start to degrade costumes we already know inside out.