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.

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!)

The New Order

Another Kit, this time it’s the First Order Stormtrooper.

 

The Trooper contemplated his new kit.

 

As I said in my previous post, I love that these snap together and remain posable. takes about 1-2 hours to build one. and you can finish up with the stickers, waterslides or some paint.

 

Previous generations look on in anticipation

 

In this kit, the baton needed quite a bit of paint as its body is black, wheras on screen its mostly white.

 

And my paint application to the required bits, a bit rough due to the gloss plastic, in future I'd abrade the surface first..

 

The gang’s all here (except the phase two clone, for which there isn't a good, affordable option at the moment in this scale.)

Way too old for toys

So what am I doing with the action figures and model kits? Where are the 40k models? why isn't there an army being built?

Well the short answer is I haven't had time for anything much on the personally creative front since September. But I also have the same problem a lot of you out there do, an obsession with geeky things and a need to do something creative with my time.

These kits and figures are allowing me to collect.. (an illness a lot of us share)  to obsess (yep there's another) and to be a little creative in that I can take pictures like the ones in this thread, and I can build the kits, and I am looking to get into some customs. I’m going to start with a repaint or two and maybe even do a little sculpting or recasting and modifying of parts here and there.

So what does this mean for the blog? I guess if there's interest and I have the time and energy going forward I’ll keep you up to speed with what I’m doing. If I can I might make a tutorial or two for some of the photography and post-processing I’m doing along with any builds or customisation.

Let me know in the comments if this is something that anyone would be interested in.

Bandai 1/12 Scale Stormtrooper

 

Having decided I wanted a Stormtrooper and in my mind, one that wasn't too expensive, wasn't to small or large and was a decent looking model, I looked at what was on offer, everything from the Mafex, SH Figuarts, Black series, Revoltech and finally the model kit.

I quickly realised that for me, the model kit was the best looking option, as far as visible joints, scale and proportion it just looked better than the others. So I asked the lovely people of Japan to send me one.

This is what you get in the box, some white styrene parts, lovely and shiny, some black hard plastic elements, and some softer plastic elements. and the eye lenses are smoked clear plastic. you also get some decals and whatnot.

The kits are interesting in that they don't require any glue, the whole thing just snap fits.

and once complete, the thing retains its articulation, what you are building here is an action figure in kit form.

Instructions are easy to follow, and while some of the kits will need a lot of paint to look awesome, the stormtrooper is largely already the correct colours. a few dabs of blue and grey are all that's needed.

He stands up well

And I love the way the head sits low, and the shoulders are narrow. this is what Stormtroopers should look like.

Here he is with his black series clone cousin.

Yes at this stage the plan was “just to add a first order kit” so I had the three iconic armours I loved.