What's happening?

Well, I was at the San Diego Comic Con last Friday.  I think I've been going to it now for about 19 years.  Technically 20, but I didn't actually get to go in that very first trip (still annoyed about that).  I know it's been 19 years because the very first thing I ever bought at the Comic Con was the Dragon Gundam from G Gundam, and that came out in 1994.  Crazy that I remember that after all these years.  Hell, I remember a few of the other things I bought on that trip.  My oldest brother bought be a Geara Doga from Char's Counterattack and my dad bought me a vinyl kaiju of Gudon from Ultraman.  I seem to recall that my dad also bought me the GI Joe Ghoststriker X-16 jet fighter at Toys R Us that day while we were killing time.  Awesome day.

I'm rambling a little, I know.  The Comic Con just isn't the same as it was back then though.  Back then, there wasn't really any internet, so there was no online shopping.  All the stuff I'm into these days, Japanese toys and models and whatnot, I couldn't buy those with just a click of the mouse like I can now.  SDCC used to be pretty much the only time of the year when I could easily get them.  I used to look forward to it so much.  Plus, we used to be able to get a hotel over the weekend, went to the convention multiple days, attended the costume contest, hell, you could even actually attend panels back then and even walk through the sales floor's aisles without having to shove people out of your way.  The 'Con is a very different beast these days.  Way too bloated and overblown thanks to Hollywood pretty much taking the thing over.  Anyway, I have a few pics from the convention.  When I get around to uploading the rest to my computer, I'll go ahead and post them here as well.

This crowd shot is from early in the day, taken from the front of the convention center.  That crowd is nothing compared to what was inside and what would be there later in the day.  Also, that street I'm aiming at, that's where Syfy had their Defiance Cafe.  I have pics of it which I'll get around to posting at some point.

 Adult Swim had this fun house in a parking lot to the side of the convention center, towards Petco Park.  I'd have gone in, but you had to pay.

This was in the same parking lot.  They have a Walking Dead Run and I guess it starts here.  I don't know who this guy is, he was busy posing when I was trying to take the picture.  One thing that was kind of neat though, in the convention center itself, the Walking Dead booth was done up like a big prison yard with prisoner zombies milling about you could take photos with.  Huge line though to do it (naturally) and I guess cast members would go in there to have their pictures taken with the zombies.

 Dr. Who.  Yeah, I'm a Who fan.  The show's 50th anniversary is coming up soon and it was quite a big deal at SDCC.  A large portion of the convention's brochure was dedicated to Dr. Who with guest art and articles.  Sadly, the panel for Dr. Who was on Sunday, so I couldn't go.  Apparently most of the main cast was present.  I'm still rather disappointed to see Matt Smith, the current Doctor leaving the roll.  It's always a shame to see an actor leave the roll, really.  Hopefully he goes out with a blast and not whining about not wanting to go like Tennant did.  Maybe they'll surprise me and replace Smith with Benedict Cumberbatch (I wish!) or maybe Mark Gatiss will step out from his production roll and play the Doctor.  That would be kind of cool.  He's apparently been in the show before.

I had to take this photo.  I wish it wasn't sideways.  Hasbro announced at SDCC that they're going to be doing Dungeons & Dragons Kreo sets.  That' spretty damn cool.  I have some pictures of the prototype figures they had on display, but I'll have to upload them later.  They looked decent though.  I kind of hope that they try working the toys into the actual game system, but I know that'll never happen.


Now, I've been told I've been slacking off in posting miniature pictures.  So, I have a couple to share.  First up, a couple weeks ago I picked up some Bones zombies and painted them up.  They've been done for over a week, but I just haven't gotten around to posting images yet.  I swear these guys look like they're dancing.  Not the best pose for the first zombie figure.  At least the Kickstarter is giving us a better looking zombie with a more neutral stance.  I'll have to grab a handful of them when they come out to retail.  With these guys, I figured I'd try reposing and using different color schemes to differentiate them a bit more.   They're not so bad once they're in different poses.  They glue together surprisingly well too, which kind of surprised me since the material is so flexible.

Here's a work in progress of my third Mercs Kemvar figure:  the Assassin.  I've got the sniper all painted up and dipped.  I need to pick her up on Friday and do some touchup, especially since I dropped her twice during the dipping process and scratched off a fair bit of paint from her backpack.  Anyway, onto the assassin.  This guy probably has the worst mold quality of the three I've done.  Huge mold lines all over.  Plus, his groin has almost no definition to it.  All of the details seem to be missing, not to mention there was a huge blob of metal between his legs (sounds bad, I know) that wasn't supposed to be there.  And the flash.  Good lord the flash!  It was everywhere!  Well, that's all done now though.  I've got to wait for the greenstuff to cure, then I'll prime and probably paint him tomorrow night, hopefully.  I thought I'd do something a bit different and actually texture the greenstuff on this figure.  I thought I'd go for more of a rocky, rubble-y look as opposed to the muddy look of the other two.

So, a Morat and an Orc walk into a bar...

I finally got to work on my Infinity Morat infantryman.  I've had him sitting around for a while now with just one arm glued into place.  Tonight I finally got around to pinning his other arm, priming him, and painting him up.  Since I was on a roll and I've been listening to Lazerhawk, which had me fairly pumped up, I decided to do another of my Orx Marauders.  here's what I've got.

They look sort of sloppy, don't they?  Like they aren't finished or something.  Well, that's because they aren't completely finished.  I picked up some Army Painter Quickshade dip over the previous weekend and tested it out.  The main reason I got the stuff was for my metal figures, like the Morat (monkeyman on the left).  The stuff forms a hardened protective shell over the figure which will protect the paintjob and keep it from chipping.  I'd like to manhandle these figures so I'll need that protection.  The orc will be dipped as well, but more just to see how he'll turn out.  If I like the results, I'll probably do the same for the rest of my Marauders.  I have two other Infinity figures I'll be working on in the near future.  They'll be receiving a dipping as well.  Hopefully they'll all turn out good.

In other news, Wednesday night, I'm heading to Videogames Live!  This'll be the third show for me.  From the sounds of things, this show will be focusing heavily on Blizzard games.  I'm kind of meh about that, being that I'm not really that big of a fan of their stuff (MMOs and RTSs aren't my cup of tea), but regardless, the show should be good.  I'm pretty sure the Sand Diego Comic Con will be having their preview night tomorrow as well and then Thursday it will begin for real.  I'll be headed there myself on Friday.  Definitely looking forward to that.

The Fae Folk

My brother wants to have a Song of Blades and Heroes battle in the coming week, so I thought I'd get to work on my warband.  I'll be fielding a warband of Mantic's High Elves.  I'd seen somewhere someone had done up their High Elves as Fae and I really liked that idea, because these guys don't really look like normal fantasy elves (plus elves tend to get lumped in with the Fae anyway).  On top of that, these guys totally remind me of the Fae from the Seven Soldiers of Victory storyline from DC Comics. 

So, I've got two pictures.  Really, they're the same, just in one my camera focused on the rear ranks and in the other it focused on the officer.

The color scheme is based on Mantic's own studio color scheme for their Twilight Kin Dark Elves.  It gives these guys a rather sinister appearance which I really like.

WAAAAAAAAAGH!!!

Okay, I'm finally able to post again.  I've been house sitting for the past week and then I managed to misplace my camera.  Well, I've got it back now and I've been doing some painting.

Tonight I have for you, an Orc!

This is one of Mantic's Marauder Orx.  I'll come out and say it, I'm not a fan of GW's comical, goofy orcs.  These Mantic ones, even though they're reusing fantasy parts, they have more of that savage look to them that I think GW has lost over the years.  I had intended this guy to be a test model for when I get myself some Army Painter Quickshade, but I was liking how he was turning out too much to wait, so I went ahead and completed him.  I went for sort of a Bad Moonz clan look.  Something about yellow... I dunno, I kind of like it.  To break it up a bit, I've added a few markings to his patchwork armor, like the checkerboard, the goofy looking skull, the red tribal markings on his back, and it can't be seen, but there's some really poor looking harzard chevrons on his left hip.  Chances are I'll do the rest of them in the same colors, though I want to try and have a less unified color scheme to them.  When I get my Deadzone Marauders, they're going to have unified colors, but these guys are just footsoldiers with cobbled together equipment, so uniformity doesn't suit them.

 Here's something else though.

This is Hunn-Grr, one of Hasbro's latest Transformers Beast Hunters figures.  After doing what I felt was a pretty good presentation this morning, I felt I could do with a little reward and found this guy at Target.  Now, a couple things about him, he's part of the Cyberverse line, which means he's part of the smaller, more simplified, cheaper line.  These guys range in size but are generally around maybe 3" tall or so.  For some reason my camera makes him look pink.  That's actually a dark crimson, so I have no clue how it came out like that.  Hunn-Grr is part of the Beast Hunters Predacon sub-team and has four other beast-formers that join him.  I mean that literally, too.  He's part of a combiner.  Like the original G1 Hunn-Grr, who was one of the Terrorcons, Hunn-Grr is the central torso and upper legs of Abominus.  The actual combined mode looks okay, but the fact that they can combine is neat in and of itself.  Not to mention that Abominus and his ilk have all been recreated in this line, most even sporting their garish G1 colors.  Abominus for some reason is not sporting those colors though.  For some reason he's colored like one of the G1 Autobot Monsterbots, either Repungus or Grotusque. 

Here's how he compares in size to a 28mm miniature

I have to say, despite his small size and clearly limited articulation (no elbows, no knees, no neck, no waist), he's actually a pretty fun little toy.  I'm also really surprised that my nephew isn't into these, since all of the Predacons are either straight up monsters, or their dragons.  The Cyberverse Predacons include Hunn-Grr, a two headed dragon, Twinstrike (a renamed Sinner Twin) which is a two headed quadrapedal dog/dragon monster, Windrazor (a renamed Cutthroat), a Flying Claw looking bird monster, Blight (a renamed Blot) which is a bipedal gorilla monster, and Rippersnapper, a bi-pedal shark monster.  Nevermind that the larger scales include 4 more dragons (plus their repaints) and a hippogrif.  These seem like something he'd be totally into.