Vampire Blegh

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I knew as soon as I painted the Vampire’s shirt red, and did the hack-black-wash job on the cloak that I’d ruined the entire piece.  Oh well, now I’m just slapping paint on it to finish it up as quickly as possible.

I’ve never been able to do convincing red-clothing, it’s surprisingly annoying.  Although if I did real blending instead of just wash/dry-brushing it would be easier (in the sense that blending works better with reds, but since I can’t blend well it’s a moot point).

Edit: Updating rather than posting a fresh post.  It’s finished – here and here.

Movie news link sauce with added pepper

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Some links to random movie stories (language and links in some of these pages may not always be safe for work)

Enjoy.

One meme to rule them all and in the darkness bind them

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From Marcos’ Journal,

When you see this, post in your own journal with your favorite quote from The Princess Bride. Preferably not “As you wish” or the Inigo Montoya speech.

So here’s mine,

Vizzini: You only think I guessed wrong! That’s what’s so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha.

I love this quote for many reasons, but I’ve bolded my favourite part, which used to get quoted during our games of Risk.

Bourne 4?

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Although based on the original concept from the Robert Ludlum books, the fourth instalment will follow an original story. Director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon will return, and the movie will be produced by Frank Marshall.

From http://www.empireonline.com/news/feed.asp?NID=23440

If it’s truly as good as the first three, I’ll be happy.  If not, it’ll be a travesty.  Later, I’ll claim that night time is dark because there’s no light.

Oh, and Kevin Smith in space!

Wii Fit & Toys-r-Us

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We got our Wii Fit from Toys-r-Us (not sure if I said that before).  We got it at the time by ringing up a few times, asking when / if they had deliveries.  The day they got a delivery Grete went over and queued with about 14 other people.  They handled that pretty well with tickets and assurances everyone would get one.

Anyway, about 14 days ago we noticed the Wii Fit had a fault.  If you stood in a specific place it would lose connection with the Wii.  It was either being power recycled or the Bluetooth was being reset, or it was causing a short.  It got steadily worse.  We rang Toys-r-Us and first of all they said we’d need to bring it back in, with our Wii (which we didn’t get from them) to test it and they would refund us.

We explained how hard it had been to get one in the first place, and could they not do an exchange when they got stock?  The person on that phone at that time said no.  Anyway, we rang back a day or two later, and this time the (more knowledgeable) staff member said oh yeh, no problem, they would do us a definite replacement when they got stock in, and they never mentioned taking in the Wii to do any testing.  And they said they aught to be getting some stock on Thursday or Friday.

So, Grete (who always gets to do this stuff because I’m a coward) took the Wii Fit in yesterday.  Initially the member of staff she spoke to said they couldn’t promise a replacement, but Grete explained the conversation she had on the phone, and a different staff member confirmed that was possible.  She got a slip of paper and came home.  Today, they called and Grete’s just returned with our new Wii Fit.  We were only without it for a couple of days in the end (although because of the fault, we’d stopped using it anyway).

So, Toys-r-Us, pretty good service in the end, but I think you need to educate your staff more consistently on your policy and processes.

Got some painting done

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Did quite a bit.  Finished up the Elmore piece I started an absolute age ago.  Looks ok real-size, looks terrible photographed, I have to work out if there’s a better way (been saying that for 10 years).  Made a start on three Rackham miniatures, did a tiny bit on a vampire and kept going with the 20 zombies.  Doing the zombies is kinda cool, don’t have to be too careful, slap a lot of random colours on that no self respecting heroic single miniature would wear, try out different things to see what works.  The contrast with working on hugely detailed pieces like the Rackham miniatures is incredible, everything takes longer, everything has to be planned out carefully.

The hardest part is seeing what you want to do with the miniature – once you’ve got that in your head it’s just a matter of making it happen.  I’m struggling with the vampire because I don’t know how I want it to look, blacks? purples? oranges? reds? some mixture?  Greys?  Not sure.  Once I have that sorted it’ll be a lot easier.

Good quote

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Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.

Ellen Goodman
American journalist (1941 – )

Happy Geek

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Today I am a happy geek.  I’ve ticked all my boxes.

  • Fantasy Miniatures – check
  • Blogging – check
  • Photography – check
  • Using Picasa to manage photo’s – check
  • Using Picasaweb albums – check

Pretty good day.  We popped into the Games Workshop Warhammer World shop to pick up some paints (white and black) that I’m missing (I can cope with other colours missing, but white and black are pretty essential).  The guy behind the counter was as chatty as they always are in Games Workshop shops, and he was asking what I was painting (I said undead), and if I was looking at getting any other miniatures.  I sort of laughed and said no, I had plenty to keep me going.  He asked what I was interested in, and I had to just say, “I’ve been painting for over 20 years, with some breaks, I’m really not into playing, just painting the miniatures”.

It was a number I plucked out of the air (20 years), but it turns out it was pretty accurate.  Started when I was 14ish, which makes it 23 years.  I’ve probably been painting for longer than the shop assistant has been alive.  When I started painting the miniatures were made out of real lead (probably).

So anyway, didn’t manage to get any painting done this evening but I did end up finding a lot of miniatures I’d forgotten about, and did some web geekery, so yeh, pretty happy.

Fantasy Miniatures, photos

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So I spent the evening going through my collection of miniatures, re-photographing them and uploading those pictures to Picasa.

A disclaimer before you go look (if you were thinking of looking).  Yes, there are far too many half-naked nubile unfeasibly dressed female miniatures, so sue me.  Yes, I suck at painting eyes.  In fact, yes, in general, the painting sucks.  These things are designed to look ok from about 3 feet away and are 1-2 inches high usually, so when you photograph them from 7 inches away and blow them up, they look pretty cruddy (well, mine do).

First up, a collection of my oldest miniatures.

Next, some of my more recent butcher paint jobs.

And finally, a bunch of stuff I’ve not started yet.

Click the images to link to the Picasa albums.  I’ll sort out some photo’s and post some stuff I’m half way done on at some stage.

Edit: In-progress album now up.

Smaller pictures

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Looks like just keeping the images smaller helps, they look more like they would if you were holding them or looking at them on a table.

One of those (left) is a macro shot from earlier, and the other is just a regular shot from distance.