LED Life

 BY THE POWER! The kickstarter santa came today and left a wonderful package full of LED's. This is the fruits of Powered Play Gaming kickstarter. It shipped close to on time and did not hit the common snag of being months late.

I picked up the Alpha kit which included 4 boards, 4 on-off switches, and 4 9V battery connectors. As well as 16 light cables with 2 lights per connector.

 My previous attempts into the world of model electronics involved tea lights at the basic level and the more advanced model railroad transformer set-ups. That was fun figuring out useful tips to how actual lights and wires work but a pain in the butt for small modeling situations.

This product is AMAZING. I highly recommend this to anyone looking to add lights to the table top. It runs on a 9V regular batter or as seen in the first photo, a mini 9V battery they just finished.

Currently in post production is the light effects board for strobe, pulse, fire, and many more options, those will be shipping later in the fall.

Summer progress and plot lines are going according to plan; so the triumphed return of Dol Guldor, Fubad, and the LEDs will hit the project table again on September 1st.

So now that I have the wires and lights, check out some previews of what will be coming down the assembly line...

P.S. check out the daily puppy pic at the bottom of the page, moving up in the world!

80s Rock & Roll

GO JOE!


I might be late to the party and I do not usually do movie reviews but this is the exception.



Before I jump into the amazing movie that this was, we must first pay our respects.

A good friend was lost today. Close to 5 years of service I retired my primary Winsor and Newton. It was time as the side by side of a new brush can attest.

And we are back to GI Joe Retaliation!

Starting off, this review is close to half a year late. I don't get out much.... 2nd spoilers ahead, and 3rd, I grew up playing with the 3/4 inch toys so this is totally my jam.

If you saw the first movie, forget about it. It was good for a laugh or two, but took itself too seriously and when it tried to be campy or cheesy, just forced it. Retaliation throws it all out the window. Opening scene kills off Channing Tatum's Duke and somehow he still gets top billing... but enough of that, THE ROCK is in this movie. He is all you need. Big fan of the rock and he sells the part.

All the vehicles, costumes, and plot is just ripped from the classic TV show. Throw in modern fight scenes with cliche fight music and slow motion explosions and works on all levels.

They do not even spend a single moment explaining how Storm Shadow comes back to life after being left in pieces at the bottom of the ocean Darth Maul style; and it did not matter, no one cared, it was a reboot without a reboot. I hope the new X-men movie can take note and just not mention how Xaviar will come back to life, just accept it.

Yes there are plot holes, yes there are cheesy lines and the acting is bad, and yes things seem unbelievable (London has been an unfortunate victim since the Fantastic Four sequel targeted it), but it is exactly what a GI-Joe movie should be. At one point The Rock picks up a .50 cal machine gun and fires it with no recoil to his body, just cause he can. The Rock's main antagonist is Ray Stevenson from the most recent Punisher movie, so you know a lot of ass was kicked. 

Two thumbs up for a nostalgic wild ride, cause knowing is half the battle!

Back Logged WIP

After finishing building my new orc army; which was hard to put to the side, I jumped back on my promise to finished some back logged projects before going forward with too many new ones.

A while ago a little adventure began for the White Dwarf rules, "movie marines". That transformed into different plans to adopt into Forge World's Zone Mortalis, and the independently made, "Special Operations Killzone.

Lease to say, right now it is a bunch of converted space marines, terminators, and a flying rhino. Coming into the summer my goal to get through the 15 or so marines before jumping onto the previously dominated posts about Dol Guldor and Biblo's Birthday Bash.

So here we have 3 more space marines almost ready to get chewed up by some bugs. Some work on the bolters remains.

 A Boarding Shield terminator with custom lightning claws. Going to have a busted up adeptus mechanics decal on the shield. 

 This the leader/sgt of the group, built his own tyranid light saber.

  Then there is the Iron Man warmachine inspired jump pack marine. The power weapons and missile combustion were chosen to offset the black power armor.

The Gang is All Here

Zoinks! Another mystery is on our hands; the case of the missing green stuff and who broke all those pinning drill bits....

Scooby's house of horrors is developing nicely with the pouring of it's dried up river bed.

 This was the first layer of sand and will be getting a couple more to develop some contours. The whole left side of the cliff is glued down now, the castle is waiting on the electronics to arrive.

 Finally found a use for the last bits of moria goblin ruins....

Here was the concept art of the river bed.... I totally passed 1st grade.

The last of the pin drill bits ate it while finishing up the orc and warg bases. In the end, it was just melting plastic through friction, not drilling. Here are a couple of my favorites.

 All the cork basing will match up with different parts of the river bed for the most part. These models really started to grow on me after initial distaste.

 I was able to again get some life out of 1 GW kit, and used the extra fell warg heads on the old warg models to give them a unified look.

While this guy doesn't have the Predator shoulder mounted plasma canon, Arnold would still have a little trouble with this guy if they met in a jungle somewhere. I like to throw in a bit of movie inspiration in some models.

 Thankfully the writers block on the tower left me and I got to hacking up wall sections for this ruined bell tower. The shade will be sitting up there and 2 LED lights will be fed up through the floor combined with cotton ball fog effects.

 Going to add the rest of the collapsed top to the courtyard, there is too clean a feel to the abandoned Dol Guldor.

The shade is finally where I want him to be. Added in another spooky hand coming out of the abyss and more wispy ghost goo.

Scooby Doo's House of Horrors

 Ruh Roh! Well it has been too long! No excuse here, need to keep the updates coming much faster!

In the mean time, the masons were in town and after some union trouble I got them back on task.

 Blasted through my supply of green stuff on all this brick work. The tower still needs fixing up as well as some windows but it is kinda there?

  The dried up river bed has not been textured into it yet, that will be coming next when I add the last couple orcs. They're bases will be modeled into that terrain.

 All the pink foam work has only had 1 pass with the exacto. Looking to do another fine detail carving and some sanding to spruce it up.

 The window eyelets were cut out and will feature some LEDs. All of which will run under the floor to the circuit board and batteries in the tower.

 Tales from the crypt. This door "leads" down to the caves below. This will also feature some LED lighting for that extra spooky effect.

Had some commissions that were taking up most of my orc time; but we are back on the FUBAD track now. Got to building some of the hunter orc grunts.

 2 box sets end up at 24 total models, so I went with 12 stock poses, and did variations on the 2nd set. The diorama is going to be based on a surprise attack so a couple of the orcs are drawing weapons...

and maybe waking from a nap. While GW's prices suck, the stock poses and dynamic nature of the models made it hard to come up with unique conversions....Will post up the final 6 once they get solidified. Waiting on more green stuff to start gap filling.

Now the piece di resistance, Scooby Doo's arch nemesis; oil mongols dressed up in ghost costumes...

 

Nope not that one....

There he is!

 This will be my shade stand in as per the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings rules set. As always I wanted to stray from the GW stock model. Dug out some old unused models you do not see, got some wrights from a friend and slapped them all together.

 Really extended the robes to go for a whaspy whispy look. Going for this ghost cloud look; way to beat me to it Harry Potter.

This bottom guy still needs some work, going to blend up some more robes into the twilight wraith and extend another cloth trail flying out. The goal is to make each of the models blend into 1 greater being, while at the same time having them tearing apart and trying to reach out.

Pink Foam Rising

1 Warhammer Fortress
2 New Hack saw blades
1 pot of coffee

Enough plastic shavings/powder to look like an extra from Scarface...

Keep in mind all pieces are in they're raw state, lots of repairs and gap filling await my future....

I knew going into this stage it was going to be a lot of sawing, but I completely underestimated the level of frustration one can reach with hack saw blades... waiting for the consumer micro lightsaber to be released from Apple any day now.

In complete FUBAD fashion, I was told,

 "Make the tower bigger."

"But I am going to add more ruins onto the stock tower size"

"Just make it bigger anyway."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

So the tower got a expansion.

 The concept is a mash up of what we have seen so far from the hobbit + on hand materials (fortress pieces) + original Lord of the Rings Mordor home decor.

I am regretting not adding on the giant tube of green stuff to my most recent Warstore order. The white bridge is a stand in for reference, Will be trying to match the movie bridge exactly once that step is upon me.

 The inside of the keep will have a Scooby Doo dungeon entrance leading to the caves on the outside of the walls. Originally I had planned to enclose the entire piece in walls, but it ended up looking too small for what Dol Guldor should be. The one back side will be left open ended with the floor tiling giving the impression of continuation. This is simply the gatehouse.

These had to have been bought at least 5 years ago, but they are going to add some much needed character to the stock kit walls.

Without taking a sludge hammer to the newly cut pieces, a lot of the ruined look and feel will come from the painting and scenic elements. It is a mash up, not a complete recreation. I like to think of it as a West side Minas Morgul.