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Behind the Card - Baron
Soontir Fel (A)
by
Brian Weeks
Last
week, with our You
Make The Card - Final Image article, we provided a mixed-up
teaser image for another card from the Battle
of Endor expansion. There were several of you that figured
out our scrambled preview image was Baron Soontir Fel. We have covered
the Character, Baron Soontir Fel, and his background history in
a previous Behind
the Card article.
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But
this Behind the Card will be a little bit different. I had the pleasure
of interviewing Robert ..., the costumer who allowed us to use his
image for this card. Robert is also known as Vaderpainter,
a Darth Vader costumer known world-wide.
I’m
now visiting with Robert Bean, aka Vaderpainter (www.vaderpainter.com),
who graciously allowed the IDC to use an image of himself in his
Baron Fel costume. I had the pleasure of meeting Robert in 2002
at Celebration 2 in Indianapolis. How are you doing Robert?
I am
doing great. I am a little worn out from Star Wars Celebration IV
in LA. I had a wonderful time and it was one of the best Star Wars
Celebrations yet…
 Great!
Glad you had a fun and safe trip. We (the members of the Independent
Development Committee were very pleased you allowed us to use your
image for the Baron Fel (A) character card. We were very concerned
about what image to use for this card when we first began graphic
development on the Battle of Endor expansion. There’s just
not any great “real” images out there of Baron Fel and
the few that are to be found are in comics. But, then we ran across
your costume images on your site, vaderpainter.com. What led you
to decide to spend time on creating this Expanded Universe character
costume?
Well when I first
saw the Baron Fel comic “In the Empire’s Service”
by Dark Horse I fell in love with the Baron Fel character and his
story. I really have to “get into” the character to do
a costume. In many ways it is like an actor does with a part they
are playing, they have to feel connected to the character they are
portraying. The same is true of me and the characters I costume
as. I felt connected to the Baron Fel character and thus took a
great deal of interest in doing a costume. I even met Michael
Stackpole, the story creator at Dragon-Con 1999 when I and several
of my friends were in our matching inspired TIE Fighter uniforms.
He was floored and got pictures with all of us.
What kind of media
resources did you use to create your costume?
With this one it
was pretty easy as there were many images of the character in several
different costumes, from his TIE Pilot outfit with the blood stripes
to his officer’s uniform also with the red piping and stripes
in the Dark Horse Comic. Lots of incredible art with different angles
so that I could pretty well figure out what I could use or make
to do the costume. The only real hard part was the chest box, it
was not the same as the ones used in the normal TIE Fighter suits
so I had to get with a buddy of mine and have him create one for
me and the rest of the guys in black ABS so that we all matched
and still were true to the comic. If you notice the entire TIE Fighter
Pilot uniform in this comic is different than the normal ones you
see. That posed some problems but once it was finished I kinda liked
the way they turned out.
The beret was my
idea. I thought that these guys were the best of the best, the “Top
Guns” of the Empire. So they should have something to set them
apart from the rest of the pilots in addition to the red stripes.
I immediately thought of the Army Green Berets and how they set
themselves apart by wearing berets, it just seemed to make sense
to have these elite pilots do the same. I also came up with the
idea of having the “rebel kills” on the back of the helmets,
much like football players have on their helmets and the red silk
neck scarves like the old WWI aces used to wear. I figured this
honor would be only for these guys as they were Vader’s wingmen
and would be allowed some leniency in this area and it would again
set them apart from the normal TIE Fighter Pilots. The best of the
best so to speak.
Do you feel that
your costume is pretty accurate (in a media/storyline sense)?
I always try to be
as accurate as possible, but with comic characters you have to be
able to backward engineer the costume from a real-life character
so that it looks like something that would have been interpreted
the way it was in a the comic. I think I got close to what the character
would look like in real life.
 You
have several costumes on your site. Some are Star Wars costumes
and some are not. But, as the site name implies, you are most known
(worldwide, I might add) for your Darth Vader costume. It is considered
by many to one of the more “accurate” custom Darth Vader
costumes out there. When did you first decide you were going to
“create” Darth Vader and what was your first step to beginning
this process?
Well. First of all
thank you for your kind comments on my Darth Vader costume. I have
spend hundreds of hours getting it to look as close as possible
to the movie version. As for my reasons for doing Darth Vader and
not some other character, well I loved the character when I first
saw the movie in 1977. He was dark and mysterious, you never quite
knew back then if he was a robot, human or both. He just went and
did as he pleased and people were scared to death of him regardless
if they were rebels or imperials. I kinda liked that about
him…
After a year or so
of saving my allowance and begging my mom I ordered the Don Post
Darth Vader mask and created a costume to go with it out of cardboard,
electrical tape, some old work gloves, a cape of my grandmothers
and her old vacuum cleaner parts. I was inspired to do that again
when I attended Dragon-Con 1997 and met Dave Prowse in person and
got the chance to talk to him at length about the costume and his
experience working on the Star Wars Trilogy. I did notice at that
time that no one had done the Darth Vader costume nor was there
any real information about how to go about doing so anywhere. So
I began to research how to create one to be as close to the movie
as possible. I was determined to have an accurate Darth Vader costume
for Dragon-Con 1998 and that in a nut shell is how VaderPainter
came about.
Did you have any
major unforeseen problems along the way?
Yes. As with anything
you do for the first time you can get overwhelmed in the beginning.
I started out by painting my own Don Post Classic Action helmet
and fan built armor I purchased online when I saw that they just
came in black and were not accurate to the paint scheme of the movies.
Once I sent the fan who created the armor some pictures of my finished
armor he started spreading the word and I soon had people lining
up to have me do the same for them. I had no website way back then
and was e-mailing out about 20 to 30 price lists a night. Soon my
garage was full of armor that needed to be painted and I was swamped
with enough work to keep me busy for months. I had to stop taking
in armor for a while I was so backed up. A buddy of mine helped
me create a website and taught me how to maintain it. After that
things got a little easier but it took me years to streamline it
to the way I now run it.
Being a costumer
myself, I know this is a somewhat personal question. But there are
so many non-costumers out there who don’t realize how much
blood, sweat and tears go into making your own costume. How much
time and money do you think you’ve invested into your Darth
Vader costume?
I have about
$8000 invested in the research and development of my Darth Vader
costume. That includes the latest, the A New Hope Darth Vader
version I created this year for the 30th anniversary of Star Wars:
A New Hope which I unveiled at Star Wars Celebration IV just a few
weeks ago. I am always updating the costume and adding little things
here and there to make it more believable. I plan on keeping this
latest version as my suit of choice for a while. There are
very few, if any Darth Vader costumers that do the original screen
version. So look for me at Dragon-Con and other conventions in the
coming years in this particular version of Darth Vader.
 Well,
your hard work and effort truly shows. Great job! This hard work
has also paid off in publicity for you too. What are some of the
most memorable advertising or Vader modeling moments that you’ve
a part of?
I have had lots of
fun working with John Hudgens on his Star Wars fan films over the
years. We even took a “Audience Choice” award at Star
Wars Celebration III for “Sith Apprentice” and an honorable
mention a few years before for “Darth Vader’s Psychic
Hotline”. But by far the most awesome part of having this costume
is posing with the man himself, Dave Prowse at conventions all over
the country including the latest, Star Wars Celebration IV. Over
the years Dave and I have become good friends. He inspired me to
do something that brings joy to people all over the world and to
work out and stay healthy. I feel very honored to be able to allow
fans to see Dave standing next to and posing with the icon he brought
to life in the Star Wars Trilogy. After all Dave Prowse is Darth
Vader!
That sounds cool.
We’ll definitely have to look for these videos and images on
the internet. As a final question, are there any charities or causes
that you help out with and that you can bring to our attention?
I have worked with
many charities over the years. Egleston Children’s Hospitals
here in Atlanta, The US Marines Corps Toys for Tots drives at Christmas,
The StarLight foundation and Make A Wish just to name a few. I always
encourage people to get involved with charities in any way they
can. Costuming is a great way to help and bring attention to these
wonderful organizations and the incredible work they do and all
the tireless devoted volunteers that give so much and ask for so
little in return. Costuming is the least I can do to show my support.
Once again, Robert,
I really appreciate you allowing us to use your Baron Fel image.
Who knows? Maybe another Baron Fel version will be created in a
later set and we’ll need an image of you with your helmet on.
Take care and MTFBWY.
Thanks for using
me for your card image, I am honored. Maybe one day I can start
doing tours like Shannon McRandle (Mara Jade) signing your wonderful
cards. Wouldn’t that be cool!
Thoughts
or comments? Visit the message board thread for this article here.
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