UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I changed my mind from using a US board to a NB. AOF will be sending out the saber tomorrow!! YAY! Here are videos that he took and sent me:
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Hi all -
I would like to share with you a custom lightsaber that I had AOF build. I will give you some background information on the build and would love any feedback, thoughts, likes, dislikes, etc.
To begin, I asked qui gon jinn a few months ago to do a build for me; however, during the design phase, I lost the money that I was going to use for the saber and needed to back out. QGJ was very cool about everything, we were only in the beginning stages of the design, may be about 2-3 email exchanges total. When I finally had the money again, QGJ posted on his site that he was no longer taking commissions at the time, so then I asked AOF to do the build.
I wanted a saber inspired by the Samurai 3000 saber he made a while back
So I first had my sister come up with a few designs similar to it. I sent AOF the designs she came up with and he seemed to like the top one the best
Based on my budget, he constructed the above saber based on my sister's design
We went back and forth with a few tweaks - I didn't want the AV switch in middle and wanted more detail on the pommel end of the saber. So he changed it around and sent this.
We were still stuck on what to do for the pommel end of the saber - we didn't want something too busy or too simple, so he suggested this. I liked it, but didn't love it so I asked my sister for help.
She came up with this and AOF made the render.
After deciding on this as the final render, after a month, I kept doubting or wondering about the choke section. I didn't know if it would be better with no grooves, 2 grooves, all black, etc. Here are some of the ideas below:
After much thought, Randy encouraged me to just stick to the original plan, which I appreciated it. So, several months later, he sent me some preliminary photos of the saber. Click below to enlarge.
Any thoughts would be much appreciated, especially would like your take on whether there should have been no grooves on thechoke, or grooves, etc. Also, any thoughts on whether the shroud is a good addition or keep it off, and there the saber's design flows from bottom to top (congruent or not, etc.)
Thanks for looking!!
Note for obi-wan from LI: hopefully i will get this saber before moving to pittsburgh, so we can meet up and duel some!