It's half term.

Which means this is happening:

It also means that I'll be trying to do something geeky. I still cant even begin to contemplate anything 40k, its been so long, I'm not liking any of the recent releases and i'm likely a whole 2 editions behind. The churn of their need to shift product to sustain the size of company they have become is something I just cant keep up with and at this point I've no desire to.

what I have done, and light post about, is build a couple more of the star wars model kits, and buy a few more of the 6" figures to indulge my modelling/modifying and photographing urges.

Examples from a recent photography and photoshopping session can be seen below, with more to come If weather, time and energy allow..

as well as photoshopping lightsabers here, I was trying to get the right colour balance form the film I remember, I might have gone too far..

Had a spare day to play with some toys!

Well, play..

I'm still here, still alive, and still working 60+ hour weeks. so while i'm getting a little gaming in on my PC (played a little for Honor and a little of the ghost recon beta) I'm not army building. I haven't really painted a "mini" since last summer, but I have got a few Star Wars figure customs and repaints if those are of interest to anyone.

These are what the heads of these models look like out of the box, plain plastic. its such a shame as the sculpts are really good likenesses.

after a little paint, they really come to life, so I find I have to do this with each one.

This Jango Fett head helped a clone trooper come to life as helmetless

and Luke and Han are looking much more themselves now.

Of course all this repainting then sets me thinking. this is a "Guavian Death Gang" member, you might remember them as the red dudes that boarded Han's ship then got eaten by Rathtars in the Force Awakens. unsurprisingly this 6" toy didn't sell well as they are in the film 3 minutes and all they do is get eaten.

So forbidden planet had them on sale. I bought a couple.

I bought a 3rd party ebay head or two, and went to work. behold - a Duros bounty hunter.

and how he started.

and with a donor gun.

well that started something. I had a spare Jango fett (also cheap, also not selling well it seems)

So I set about making my own mandalorian.

Helmeted and helmetless (its removable) and again with custom guns.

This last head also found a place on a second Guavian body..

 So you can see my brushes haven't been totally Idle. I don't really have a use for these other than to pop them on a shelf, but since that's whats been happening to my gaming miniatures these days anyway - whats the diff?

Wot I did during the summer holidays

"We have so much time and so little to do. Strike that, reverse it."
Roald Dhal

So, I decorated. and I manged to play a few computer games, read a couple of books etc.. I haven't touched a model per se.. though I might still build an astromech as it's a bank holiday this weekend.

Nothing but walls got painted though.

I did have to work out for my job a decent way to do video capture, and have, so i might upload a few videos of me playing computer games and talking crap as opposed to building models and talking crap.

I'll put one in this post, let me know what you think.. I think my audio is capturing quietly and i'm not sure why so I'll have to take a look at that..




 If I get around to building Artoo I'll capture that oo, though such videos tend to be long, and need editing, which then means I need to find more time and.. well, see above..

I do still enjoy reading all of your blogs on the train and vicariously soaking in hobby goodness, though my enthusiasm for GW stuff is pretty much totally exhausted now - I saw the new Deathwatch stuff and while I think I should have been excited, I couldn't find those stirrings in me.

I cant shake the uncomfortable feeling that its got something to do with their digital process too - as someone who loved digital art, to think that is a little worrying, but the shortcuts in process it enables you to follow and the temptation to re-use base meshes, I think I'm seeing in their work, Or it could simply be that they are flooding the market with just too many Marine army variants..

So, Rambling over for another post, many thanks for enduring it ;)

Oh one further thing, the blog site just passed 6 hundred thousand page Views, which is amazing, and it still gets a ton of views a week, (kinda wish I'd put a discrete advert on it somewhere when I started, might have been able to supplement the hobby pot here and there) And even better is till occasionally get emails form people about the tutorials and videos posted here. so its nice to know that while I'm out in the world to busy to make content and contribute, that all the stuff I have already got here is still helping people out and providing some value for them.

What an age we live in eh?

O summer where art thou?

Like most educators in the UK I just broke up for the summer.

If you see a very tired, yet relieved person wandering aimlessly in the supermarket near you, who looks like the aren't used to being out in the day, looking at the sun like they aren't sure what its for, then spare a kind thought for them, they are probably a teacher.

And those of you with children, thinking "what the hell do I do with these little people for FIVE WEEKS" just spare a thought for the people whose lives are educating and entertaining them for the rest of the year.

Me, I'm going to be building models, photographing models, playing computer games and also panting the biggest model I own. - my house. (decorating time)

Here's a couple I snapped and hadn't uploaded..

I've got a model kit here of C3PO and an R2D2 that i'll have to build and weather which I'm looking forward to and will try to document..

Star Wars Black Series Obi-Wan

In working on these 1/12 scale Star Wars Model kits I struck upon a similarly scaled action figure line, and some of the models are very good. - what I'm most interested in personally are the armoured models, such as stormtroopers, mandalorians etc.

The main reasons for that are that cloth items at that scale usually look terrible, and that the flesh looks awful too.

However, Obi appears to be a bit of a peg warmer, so can be had quite cheap - that being the case I thought I'd try a face repaint.

Oh, and a quick and dirty light saber Photoshop :)

Results, and step by step follow in pictorial.