Knuckle down

This Gamorrean Historian post shows the sketch for the finger knuckle mentioned earlier. This might be a bit overly ambitious, but wait until you see what is planned for facial animations on the head. It'll make the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles seen in the 90's movies look like sock puppets.

If I'd only ever sent my resume in to 'Henson' this would all be easy.

Hand Drawn

This Gamorrean Historian post shows the original sketch of the hand mechanism mentioned previously. The dimensions are a rough guess at best. Figure a 7" middle finger is about 2 x's the size of an adult male hand. The Gamorrean foam undersuit image indicates that the Gamorrean arms are long enough that the operators hand will really be in the forearm so we don't have to worry about concealing a fist in the mechanism's palm. This complicates the possibilities for a functioning wrist. The device will have some sort of buckle (more rigid than velcro) to firmly attach it to the wearer's arm. The real fun will be figuring out the correct lengths needed for the pull wires to get proper closure of each finger. Making the fingers return to the straight position requires strips of spring steel be pop riveted along the the tops of the 'finger bones'.

As a bonus detail the 1st finger of each hand will have a special hinged finger tip that will bend backwards slightly when pressing buttons.

Gotta hand it to ya

The Gamorrean Historian presents This which was spotted at gizmodo today. It looks very much like a sketch I recently drew of a puppet hand for Voort. Hope to add a scan of the original image tonight. Imagine a skeleton where the fingers are made from 1/2" or 3/4" dia. PVC plumbing pipe, with three articulated sections per finger. They would close via pull wires laced through the inside of the tube sections, and be forced to return to the open position by strips of spring steel (possibly cut from an old slinky?) as tendons attached along the outer tops of each digit. The trick is to scale the things so that a full grown man's hand looks tiny by comparison. Remember this will all be covered by the big black leather gauntlets.

Voort Support

Some new visitors to the Gamorrean Historian are no doubt wondering ‘Who the heck is Voort saBinring?’ Clearly you didn’t activate all the links in the previous post . Shame on you. Voort is a Gamorrean who was abducted by Imperial stormtroopers and subsequently used as a ‘guinea pig’ in something called Project Chubar. The experiments performed on him there imbued him with an intellect increased beyond genius levels, as well as control over his natural Gamorrean tendency towards an explosive temper. He's sort of like 'The Incredible Hulk' in reverse.

Anyway a costume depicting Gamorrean X-Wing pilot Voort saBinring should be a fair bit easier to put together than the full Jabba's palace guard get up by virtue of the fact the only thing needed is the head. Granted the body will have to be a padded oversized orange flight suit. It also calls for the construction of a custom set of hands and feet. These however do not have to be the intricately detailed green hands with fingernails, or feet with large rubbery toes and thong sandals. Instead they should be properly shod in black leather gauntlets and boots as befits a pilot of the Republic Navy as seen below.

A custom pilots helmet will probably also be needed. This image is interesting in how it points out how huge Voort is using the scale of the grey chest box for reference.

This is not to say it will be easy by any means. The head is the most complex and identifiable part of the character and it behooves anyone who would seek to undertake the construction of this costume to get it right. To that end It must be clearly a Gamorrean but also it must have some features to it that make it distinct as not just any Gamorrean. As there is almost no reference imagery for Voort specifically and Gamorreans in general this will be no small task.

In a Pig's Eye

The Gamorrean Historian.

If there exists on the web, a site that seeks to gather into one place a comprehensive study containing all information regarding the Gamorrean race of the Star Wars universe, I haven't found it.

This too, is not that place.

Online references for Gamorreans are few and their content sparse:
Wikipedia
Wookieepedia
and this pathetic paragraph from the Star Wars databank

As well as the completely non-cannon bits of fan fiction found at:
Plotpedia and this Voort origin story (for which your humble author, is personally responsible)

Image-wise aside from a few pictures of small statues, and action figures, Gamorrean helpful references are almost impossible to come across. A small gallery of images snagged from around the net can be found here. These include behind the scenes images, and stills from Return of the Jedi and a collection of fan made Gamorrean suits. The Disney Star Wars weekends feature a Gamorrean guard or two, and there may be some shots of those suits included as well.



The purpose of this blog is to document the creation of a fan made Gamorrean costume, but not just some random Jabba palace guard. Sure having a ‘guard’ costume such as the one seen above would be neat and they certainly seem to be not just rare, but obscure fan favorites. Still, the focus of this ongoing web-essay will be on creating a accurate representation of the character Voort saBinring from the X-wing novel ‘Wraith Squadron’.