Movie Abandonment Skinpack

many, it seems strange to give it a negative rating. However, quality has greater precedence over quantity, and most of these skins don't appeal. They come from all sorts of authors, some of the credit being rather confusing. The author included fourteen readmes from other authors, and it would be quite the collection if the skins just looked nicer. The author(s) used what the readme author Jolt calls a "tailoring" technique, "fitting existing textures to different models." I'm sure there might be a great skinner out there who can call his work that, but these aren't professional tailoring jobs. They're inconsistent: sometimes my left sleeve is two inches too short and my right four inches too long, but sometimes I get really lucky and they seem to fit just right; however, in my and perhaps many other file reviewers' experience, there is probably "no such thing as luck" (Obi-Wan Kenobi). I will give the author credit for compiling so many skins and having a select few of them look good, but it would have been smarter to submit only the decent ones. "Extra weequay" skins were included that aren't bad but, like many of the skins here, are unnecessary; the term "extra" is fitting. One of them has an icon that depicts the weequay with the things hanging out of his head, but there were none. The other had them. That is the only glaring problem, aside from the apparent lack of interest. Another case where the icon didn't match the model was any of the rebel skins, which were depicted in the icons to not have vests but had them in-game. Perhaps it was the fact that the author included so many skins that it all got over-loaded that messed up this experience, but that comes as a good thing, really, because you are given a lot of choice. However, most of these are still too dry. The Leia skins, who were perhaps a bit too quiet, and the Padme skin both seemed to be based on the same model, and this seemed to cause them both to suffer. They're both ugly, and they are the opposite in the films. Much more care could have been taken here to make the faces look decent and the clothes slightly more presentable. There was one Luke model upon which the skins were based that looked good and one that looked bad. The bad one, I believe, was one of HapSlash's earlier models. He obviously matured as a modeler dramatically after that mishap, because the model does not look like Luke the way it should. A shape of the head, or the hair, does not fit, and this model was used for "Luke_B_Pilot" and "Luke_B_Hoth"; I would avoid these, as they also seem a bit buggy (it was a JK2 model). The Luke model that I liked was the one used by the "Luke_Bespin" skin, whose shape and hair were both much more fitting, even if the hair was too shiny for the film Luke's sandy hair. This Luke I would view as entirely usable, casually. I'm not sure of the Landos included in this skin pack look as much like Lando as they should, but the skin jobs themselves weren't horrible. I thought that "Lando_Bespin" was monotonous with the dull, too-smooth texture used for the shirt, but I didn't mind "Lando_General." As a matter of fact, I would prefer the "Lando_General" in this skin pack over the default Lando. The deceitful Lando in his blue clothes I disliked in "The Empire Strikes Back," but I like him a lot better as General Lando in "Return of the Jedi." I admit that I had never heard of a Klatooinian before testing this skin pack, but the author should not have included such an obscure species from the [i]Star Wars[/i] Universe, because after looking him up on Wookieepedia, I found that the Klatooinian skins included were not accurate enough to the real thing for it to be recommendable. I liked it better before knowing that it was a race that was enslaved to the Hutts by the terms of the Treaty of Vontor. (I got scared while reading about them, because they seemed curiously [i]Star Trek[/i]–like in their origin story.) Now, about those Hutts. This skin pack includes a Hutt, a particularly famous, disgusting Hutt named Jabba. But the Jabba that I know from "Return of the Jedi," one who laughs at a thermal detonator and at a decoration of a cynical carbon-frozen human, did not appear in this skin pack. Instead I got what looked like a man poorly dressed up for (today, which happens to be) Halloween running around in a sac, and I can quite clearly see where his feet are in that sac. And the face: Why the long face? He's perhaps— You may disregard this comment: I was just eating a piece of candy (Happy Halloween), and it just flew out of my mouth. I do not know why. I am sorry for the interruption. —more of a horse now in his overly long face, which should be much wider to be proportionally accurate. The original Han Solo model released for Jedi Outcast was never really adequate for me, even though a lot of people liked it at the time. Something was distinctly wrong with his face; I think it might be too fat. The "Han_Hoth" skin included in this pack doesn't seem to bring enough of a difference to the model to be of any interest. The costume design in "The Empire Strikes Back" was a little bit dull compared to the others. The skins have fears in how far they go to make a difference, and they are quite clear. The "Grand_Moff_Tarkin" was a miscalculated skin, one that—I think—tried to be the younger version seen at the breathtaking end to the heavily flawed masterpiece "Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith," but instead imitated a plastic doll. It's face too shiny and undetailed, I see no reason why anyone would want to use this spongy toy. Now where this skin pack really, really went off was with Dengar. Dengar was one of my favorite bounty hunters, probably because he had such a depth portrayed in his short story "Payback: The Tale of Dengar" in the book [i]Star Wars: The Tales of the Bounty Hunters[/i]. Dengar can only feel three emotions: rage, hope, and loneliness. This Dengar skin could not even give Dengar the respect of the only three emotions with which the Empire left him; all I see is loneliness—loneliness sitting inside a malformed suit (and messed up animations not noted in the readme, I might add) with a wax mask on his face, melting off in the sun. That's how it looks. At least the skin managed to get me to pity it as much as I pity the real Dengar, but for different reasons. And the last icon that I found in my player menu (not all the skins in the pack seemed to show in the menu) was the "ATST_Driver" skin. No model showed up under the vest if you looked at it from a certain angle, but other than that, and the apparent lack of accuracy to the film drivers, I liked this skin. There was something about the taunt combined with the glasses that made it cool. I do not understand how a Jawa skinned to the colors, tones, and textures of a fresh-faced Anakin Skywalker makes him that. "Anakin_CIS" (Anakin Cold in Space, whatever that means) is supposed to represent young Anakin from the flawed yet under-rated (overhyped) "Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace," but where is the resemblance? The sounds weren't even fixed to not be Jawa sounds. No one, to my knowledge, has created an accurate preteen Anakin yet. Hey, he was a good kid. I will not bother to compare the original Imperial model with the "Rax Joris Young" skin; I shouldn't need to. They look mostly the same. Can't we have some creativity here? And the "Rebel Hoth," who was given goggles that were actually just textures painted right onto his head, making them look like tattoos (I am shuttering at the thought of them), with the Hoth suit "tailored" to him, is just so unsatisfying. The Imperial model has an attraction for the drab. What am I going to do with this skin pack.... It also included a decent "Vibro-Ax," which I need not explain. You've seen these before. I liked a few of these, but I felt cheated at the end, because I had downloaded such a large and comprehensive skin pack, which must have required a lot of work just for the sheer number of skins here, yet not one of them is one-hundred percent there. Sir, as I said before, the lesson of the day is "quality, not quantity." —Ra-Kom
Skin pack rating: * ½ (out of four) Bot Support: Yes NPC Support: Yes Team Support: Yes New Sounds: Yes Jolt has compiled a far-reaching pack of mostly movie-abandoned skins that contains so