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.

Recently I have mostly been playing -- Star Citizen

You may have heard of Star Citizen- it began as a crowd funded "Elite" type MMO game, and its been going quite a while and racked up both adherents and doubters, controversies an conspiracy theorists.

At the end of the day however, its an ambitious project that it appears its owners are working really hard to deliver - yes its monetized, and some people have spent a crazy amount of money on a game that inst out yet, but its also got a $40 minimum buy in and no reason to spend any more than that.

Its also free to play this week, so if in the next few paragraphs I Manage to incite your interest in a free week, pop over and sign up - and if you do decide to join, please use my referral code, cos if you do, I get free stuff. - MY Code- STAR-G3YX-P9V2

Its interesting to me for a number of reasons, firstly, I teach game design and the crowd funded model is changing my industry, second I love Elite games and wing commander clones and Chris Roberts, the guy behind WC 1 through 3 is behind this project.

Take a look at some footage -

Its also interesting to me technically, because this team are doing some very ambitious nay crazy stuff, and all with everyone able to watch, they post weekly updates and bug fixing videos, its a real insight into the process. I've worked with Cryengine and they are bending it to purposes it was never designed for in some really creative ways.

I have a decent PC so I might have a go at capturing some game play myself for my YouTube channel, if you'd be interested in seeing more about it on the blog, let me know.

Theres not a whole lot to do in the alpha right now, but for someone with at best a couple of spare hours a week its a good diversion.

Blog update

Hi Everyone.

Apologies again for the quiet over here, It's been a full academic year in my new role and as I near the end of the term I cant help but reflect that I haven't really put brush to a model in this time. I've done a few things with action figures and 1/12 scale figure kits, some of which I've shared, I've played a few games of X wing - its easy and little work is required (oh and I made some asteroids for that, I'll share those eventually) I've managed to play one or two computer games, but not in any real depth.

While Ive been away the blog has closed in on 600,000 page views. that's insane. my most popular post source is google and the top viewed post is the blood angel assault squad here



Followed after an odd post, by the old KasrKin conversion here



It's really heartening that my content is still out there and still getting views, even if much more slowly when you aren't regularly updating.

I have, as most of us do, an unpainted crack pile. I may get to a little of it in the summer break, but no promises, I have some larger scale painting to do (it's time to decorate!)