Ruinous Powers Grocery?

My painstaking research is complete, and I have come to the only reasonable conclusion. My local Kroger has turned to Chaos. "Certainly not Kroger," you scoff. "Are they not a purveyor of fine foodstuffs, including affordable Kroger brands?"

Let us consider the evidence.

At first glance, this appears to your average sign announcing to the world that fine groceries, produce and sundries may be purchased within, but upon closer inspection we find...

Spiky bits! The whole sign is covered with spikes, presumably a mutation provided by the dark gods when Kroger gave their devotion, indeed their souls, to Chaos!

The far entrance, like the main sign, looks innocent enough. "Clearly if it is food you seek, here you will find satisfaction," it beckons.

But no! More spikes! The only food you will find is the taste of your tears as you fall before the unstoppable hordes of the Ruinous Powers!

A closer inspection below the "food" sign reveals the image of some dark goddess or daemon! Could this be the work of Slaanesh?! Or is the entire pantheon of Chaos in league to corrupt this establishment?

Shameless! They are even advertising that they will intentionally inject flu viruses into your very blood! There can be no mistaking the noxious touch of Nurgle upon this wretched place!

The final piece of evidence. The siren song of Chaos, set before man to appeal brazenly to his basest of instincts. "Buy one," the seductive voice croons, "and get one free." Who can resist this foul temptation?

On the down side, I will have to start looking for another grocery store at which to shop. The =I=nquisition will undoubtedly have  purged this one by the time I need groceries again. I suppose I should be happy that it's not just planet-wide Exterminatus. I must remember to look on the bright side.

Opportunity For Improvement

Steve brought in his Nikon again today. I knew the Belle needed some fixin' up, but ... wow. We created a custom backdrop, since all the cool kids on CMON are using purple in the top 10. Dramatic as it is, I don't think it would elevate the Belle's score at all.

I decided to point out the flaws, so that in future posts you can critique my improvement. They are many and varied. Well, not that varied. The base is also a custom job that was meant to resemble my resin bases from Secret Weapon. Justin is in no danger of losing business from my homemade bases, that's for sure.

For reference, here is the same model from my HTC Evo 4G phone camera.

EDIT: It's also pretty clear from looking at the model that she must be wearing some sort of corset. Two -thirds of the breast volume is above the material, so my choosing to paint the material sheer was ill considered.

Need: Miniature Bat Wings

Does anyone know how I can get miniature bat wings.  Something 1/4" to 1/2" long (.6cm-1.3cm) per wing would do the trick.  Thanks!

The Eerie Silence After 9/11

This picture does not convey the sober
tone of the post, but I loved the image
as a child.

Ten years ago I heard an NPR news report on my morning commute that some sort of aircraft had hit the World Trade Center. I was not immediately alarmed by this, since I had very recently read of another aircraft striking a New York building. When I arrived at work, a coworker asked me if I was aware of what was happening and informed me that a second place had hit. We decided to walk to the McKenny Union (the nearest place on campus we knew of that had decent TV reception) to watch the news. A crowd had gathered around the TV's, which were high enough that everyone could see, and we watched almost silently until the collective gasp when people realized the the South Tower was collapsing (it wasn't immediately clear what was going on when it started to collapse.)

I want to convey the confusion of that day to those of you who were too young to really grasp it at the time. We had absolutely no idea what was going on, or what the scope of it was. I heard a remembrance over the weekend of a man who was in Ukraine at the time, and all he saw were videos and images of buildings and explosions and fires. To him and his travelling companions, unable to understand the audio of the news stories, it looked like every city in the U.S. had been attacked. To those of us huddled before TV's on that day, we wondered if that was going to happen. Tension and uncertainty remained even after it was clear that the attacks were complete. I remember one of my coworkers saying, "The first person who makes a joke about this gets punched in the stomach."

In the days following the attacks, all U.S. commercial aircraft were grounded. My workplace and home are in the flight path of passenger and commercial airports. Seeing and hearing planes, and a sky filled with contrails, are commonplace here. The complete lack of all civilian aircraft during those days was eerie, evocative of a time at night when all the crickets and frogs suddenly go silent. The sky was clear and free of the normal vapor evidence of air traffic. It looked like air technology had been set back 100 years.

Even after the air traffic started again, we found ourselves pausing when an aircraft passed over. Conversation would stop until it had passed. It was months before we stopped reacting to anything passing overhead.

Oh, and it only took until Wednesday for someone to make a joke about it. We were sitting in the break room flipping through channels on the crappy TV there to watch any news, but stopped trying and left the TV on "J.J. the Jet Plane" on the local PBS affiliate. A coworker (Sheila) asked, "They aren't going to crash into any buildings are they?" We all just stared at her. Sure, some people react to stress differently than others. Other people are just idiots. Nobody got punched.

...And Rankin/Bass Begat GW Orcs?

John@Plastic Legions mentioned the 1977 Hobbit cartoon created by Rankin/Bass in a recent post, and it inspired me to post something I've been thinking for a while.

What was the artistic interpretation of Orcs prior to Warhammer? I know Warhammer Orcs aren't Middle Earth Orcs, but we can agree that there is definite artistic lineage between the two. So let's take a look at a few pieces of art separate from the GW interpretation.

Captured by Orcs

The Hildebrandt brothers had an animal-snouted impression of Orcs. This reminds me a lot of the artwork for Orcs in the Dungeons and Dragons books I had in the early 80's.

The Great Goblin

John Howe's Goblin King interpretation is more human looking, and is closer in line with the artwork for Grom the Paunch than anything else I've seen in GW terms. The goblins to the lower right look somewhat in line with earlier edition GW goblin artwork I've seen.

Rankin/Bass Goblin

Rankin/Bass Goblin King

Rankin/Bass took a very different approach that suited their animation style better. The design of these creatures fascinated me as a child, especially since I hadn't read Tolkien but loved fantasy. That said, what they did with Gollum's design was.... regrettable. (But, oh my, Brother Theodore's voice acting of Gollum is a thing of pure beauty.)

And now we come to the current look of GW Orcs, represented by the artwork from the last army book, the image on the Warboss box and an Orc Shaman mini.

7th ed. GW Orcs & Goblins book cover

GW Orc Warboss box

GW Orc Shaman

They certainly seem much more in line with the Rankin/Bass imagery than any of the others I found. What artwork depicting Tolkien Orcs have you run across, and how similar to GW Orcs is it?

Weekly Poor Photography Update - Nurgle!

If you don't like the blurry photo, just pretend
Papa Nurgle gave you some seeping eye disease.

Jimmy stopped by tonight to work on Kroot-a-saurus, which got some armor updates.

I worked on Angelos's Forge World Nurgle Chaos Sorcerer. I've been working on this guy on and off since Sunday, and I'm very fond of how he's coming along. I need to paint all the bony spikes coming out of him, and give some love to the Nurglings on the model. I wanted some positive texture on the spearhead, so I applied some watered down Vallejo Black Lava selectively. I really liked the result.

An observation about FW resin... dip a bent spearhead into some heated water and it will immediately straighten from just gravity. Seriously, this stuff gets soft with heat.

Oh, I was supposed to ship Tristan's Harlequin tomorrow, but he's not packed to go. Curse my meandering thought process!

Weekly Hobby Group: Kroot-a-saurus Coming Together

 Kroot-a-saurus looks nearly done to me, which probably means that he only looks 60% done to Jimmy (aka "King Kitbash.") Tonight he magnetized the top turret and attached both... sponsons? I dunno, what would you call the little booms with Kroot gunners on them?

 I managed getting quite a bit done on a Malifaux Punk Zombie and Crooked Man. Jimmy, Seth and I spent a lot of time just gabbing yesterday, so I'm surprised I got as much done as I did. All that's left to paint in my Malifaux crew are the three belles (one is WIP below) another Punk Zombie and Crooked Man, half a nurse and two more Canine Remains. Well, not counting the Nightmare Teddy, Dead Justice and Miss Demeanor I picked up GenCon weekend. I really want to sculpt a second Teddy to use the alternate head supplied, but multiple Teddies implies I'm starting a Dreamer list, doesn't it? (Resist, Mike. Resist.)

Seth mostly worked on some wood (shields?) on Harry the Hammer's base. I don't know if I mentioned it previously, but he got some Forge World Chaos Dwarfs that he's been painting and the models are fantastic.

I finished the back of Tristan's Harlequin. One more good inspection for mistakes and I think he's as good as in the mail. The polyurethane coating (Minwax Polycrylic clear gloss) seemed to have worked, since I haven't knocked any more paint off the model despite quite a bit of handling. A little Testors DullCote takes the shine form the polyurethane off nicely.

40k Terminology: Skarboy vs. Sarkozy

In an effort to alleviate some of the confusion caused by similar looking words, allow me to highlight the differences.

Skarboy

• Ork veteran, named for impressive battle-scars
• Green and ornery
• Poor interpersonal skills
• Almost unique to Goff clan

(source Lexicanum)

Sarkozy

• 23rd President of France
• Pink and smirky
• Married three times
• Is one of the Co-Princes of Andorra

I hope that clears things up a bit.

An Island of Internet Nice

My wife is a big fan of Asian drama. She watches far more on dramacrazy.net or mysoju.com than she does on regular 'mrcn TV. One interesting little community phenomenon is the user contributed captioning that some of the sites have, where viewers can basically type messages that get seen by others when they watch later. I'm not sure of the particulars, but I believe it's done through Viki.com membership.

Example:

What struck me was how un-horrible the captioning added by the users was. None of it was overtly defacing, and Stef said she has hardly even seen anything inappropriate. Maybe I've just read too many forum/youtube comments, but I'm a firm believer in John Gabriel's internet anonymity hypothesis. To find a pocket of like-minded (albeit niche) enthusiasts behaving like actual adults made me smile.

Final WM/H Parking Structure Battle!

Since our exile from Pray-Harrold is ending and we are moving back into luxurious (hur hur) new cubicles, we fought the final battle in our luxurious (hur hur) temporary offices in the parking structure.

I played:
The Testament of Menoth
Crusader
5 Exemplar Bastions
5 Knights Exemplar
Anastasia di Bray
(note: for the first time ever, no choir!)

Brian took:
The Old Witch
Behemoth (aka "Big B")
The Three Bears

I have never played Anastasia before, but right away she helped out by allowing me to win the deployment roll. We tied (shown in the picture) but Anastasia gives +1 on that roll.  I threw her card into the picture just to emphasize the win of that.

Take +1 on my deployment roll and win?
Why yes, and thank you Anastasia!

 The Menites surged forward, but Anastasia stayed hidden... waiting for the right moment.

"Field of Staplers" is a very obscure portion
of the Iron Kingdoms

Big B kept on a blasting, but everything he killed got immediately brought back by The Testament.  Ha! Take that, stupid sub-cortex bombards!

Check out that custom "Murder of Crows" template.

 I was stymied by the Murder of Crows template, scared to death by the thought of taking the hit from them. In actuality, I had confused the strength of the Witch's feat with the hit from MoC. It's not as scary as that. Rats. The Old Witch parked herself on the second story of a building and made it basically impossible for me to get to her with infantry. Stupid Old Witch.

When my dudes got close enough, I brought Anastasia out close enough to the Old Witch to use her little ability. All my units were able to move forward and attack. The Three Bears took a serious beating but every last Bastion missed Scrapjack.

I got your porridge right here, stupid bears.

I did what I could to prevent it, but Scrapjack ended up walking through every last Bastion using that crazy upkeep spell the Old Witch has that lets him keep attacking as long as he's killing. Each Bastion had wounds from the scuffle, so it didn't take much to do them in. Meanwhile, Big B pounded yet another Crusader into scrap. Seriously, how can the Protectorate not be out of these things?

The battle was looking quite promising
until the enemy killed all of us.

The one thing I didn't get to do was use the Testament's feat. Between Anastasia's ability and The Testament, I figured I could cover a ton of ground in one turn. The Old Witch being on the second floor of a building with no egress on my side made her impossible to reach. With only a few Exemplars left against the inaccessible Old Witch and Big B and only one turn left to go, I conceded the game.

Protectorate is now 0/10. Go Menoth.

PAINT ALL THE THINGS!

My take on a recent meme, based on "Hyperbole and a Half."

Harlequin Nearly Complete

Wow, that's a blurry clown.

Tristan's Harlequin is nearly complete. I worked on him for a while during regular weekly hobbying with Seth and Jimmy. The symbol on the forehead ended up being a frustration. I tried to paint it on, didn't get it right, tried to fix it, etc., etc., and finally ended up doing this:



There's always the nuclear option. In the end, after doing, undoing and redoing, that I realized that I had made the top of the symbol a triangle and not the "spade" (card suit) that is on all the other Harlequins. Whoops.

I also knocked an epic amount of paint off the model just handling it during painting, so I fixed all the damage and game him a nice coat of Minwax polyurethane protection. I'll go over him and fix anything else I don't like, then dullcote him and he's on his way!

Create Your Own Inside Joke

Insert your own value for X in this equation.

This is the white board comic of the day, concerning IT's return to Pray-Harrold after more than a year of being in temporary housing.

Our submissions, mostly inside jokes:

1. But Bill Heilman said it was ok!
2. Nooo! My pilot's license!
3. Now who will run Appworx?
4. This still beats The Bay.
5. I wonder what's in the safe.
6. So what's for lunch?
7. 4...8...7...3...1...4...1...
8. Just when I got WiFi signal...
9. echo "Fail"
10. Is it safe?
11. Shoulda... worked... from... home.
12. Hey, the Black & White manual!
13. PRETTY BIRD!
14. Shoulda gone to the zoo...
15. Whatcha know about "crushed by falling safe"?
16. Falling safes are bordering on assault.
17. This will affect my ECD.
18. First of all, it's safe.
19. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
20. Do you know what kind of safe this is?

Now that you have read through our many inside, work-related jokes that are most likely completely unfunny I invite you to come up with your own caption... and to celebrate, IT'S CAKE TIME!!!

Another Case of "Better Camera Than Mine"

Betterer Eldar. Seriously, if I had $1000 to spend, I would totally buy a camera like this one.

Oh, who am I kidding.  If I had $1000 I would totally waste it on miniatures and then make my coworker photograph them.  Ha!  Take that, priorities!

More Harlequin WIP ... Two Nights Painting?!

Blue Shirt... I'm sure that gives a cover save all by itself.

What manner of madness is this?  Two nights of painting in a row?!  At this rate I could have kept doing commission work!  Seriously though, another couple hours on this guy and he's progressing nicely.  I can't figure out what to do with his shirt though. The pants really called to me for diagonal stripes, but the shirt... I got nothing. It's blue right now as a sort of placeholder color while I work on other things. It really is the most retina-burning shade of blue, wouldn't you say? So Tiny Power Fist(tm) got some work tonight, as did the mask and the dangling cloth thingies. Come to think of it I don't know how I'm going to do the gun either.

Maybe having a "plan" would have helped me. Or not. My only concrete plan right now is to make sure I give this guy a nice coat of polyurethane before I ship. For all the paint I've knocked off the model (including the right foot pictured) I want to make sure he's durable once he's done.

Maybe more soon... I seem to be on a roll right now.

Wonderful Vacation, then Painting

I have returned from a relaxing, fun week at Portage Lake Covenant Bible Camp.  Good worship, good gaming, good food (defined as "I didn't have to cook it") and all that.

We played Seafarers of Catan, Carcasonne, Infernal Contraption, and Star Munchkin.

One of many Carcasonne games

My son learned how to ride a two-wheeler exactly one day before leaving for camp, so he was an unstoppable cyclist the entire time we were there.

He seems pleased with the lack of training wheels

Now that we're home, I decided to break out the paints and give Tristan's Harlequin a little more love. I like the direction it's going, but it needs more "pop." Come to think of it, I still need to send something for him to paint for me... Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping... into the future.

Fear my tiny power fist!
I should have posted this pic first to get more clicks from FTW :-)

I also worked on a Rotten Belle to go with pimped out Nicodem. Next time I go to RIW to play (with school starting, that may be September) I hope to have Nico and his three lovely ladies ready to roll.

The Mysterious Duration

I went to wish well to my soon to be ex-boss (he is off to a new position in a different state next week) and returned to this mysterious post-it on my monitor.

"3 years 23 days   Good Luck"

What does it mean? Could it be from the same source as the Ominous "S" ?  And what does the date mean? Is that 3 years 23 days from now or 3 years 23 days ago.  Let us consult a date calculator.

Future: 3 years 23 days from now is Thursday, September 4, 2014
Past: 3 years 23 days ago was Sunday, July 20, 2008

Neither date has significance for me, and I do not recognize the handwriting.

Mike's DIY Servo-Arms

Regular weekly hobby guy Mike (not me) shared his method for making Do-It-Yourself Servo-Arms for his Chaos Space Marines this week.  The method also works well for regular Space Marines, which is what we're demonstrating since I only had loyalist backpacks to work with.

Step 1. Get a backpack, 2 combat knives, and 2 flamers.

Step 2. Cut the flamers as shown. Concentrate on
making a clean cuts.

Step 3. Cut a vent off the backpack and glue the barrel
portion of the flamer in its place.

Step 4. Glue the flamer tank to the flamer barrel.  To
get a flush fit you can either file the rounded tank side
flat or file a round section onto the flamer tank.

Step 5. Cut the other flamer barrel at the angle shown.

Step 6. Glue the barrel to the tank. Glue the other
flamer tank to the end of the second barrel.

Step 7. Cut the combat knives' blades to form the servo-
arm clamp.

Step 8. Glue the two knife pieces on to form the clamp.
You're done with the servo-arm.

Step 9. Bonus! User the two leftover pieces of the
flamer to make Blood Angels hand flamers!

And just to be double clear, this method comes from Mike (one of the weekly hobby gang) and not me. Mike is an Iron Warriors fanatic, so this sort of conversion is right up his alley. He did the conversion work on Wednesday and I took pictures as he went along.  Some more chaos-looking version he has done can be seen here.

Somewhat Better Photography

My coworker Steve brought in his Super Deluxe DoubeWide SuperFat SLR Camera (I'm sure it has a make and model, but whatever) and took some pictures of Nicodem the Pimp and my nurse.  Maybe I should name her Miss Mediocre.

This is scaled down to about 25% of original size

It sure makes my phone camera look like a piece of garbage, doesn't it? Photography is also brutally revealing.  Things like the yellow spot on the edge of his purple coat, or the poorly clipped vent on the end of the syringe or the little spots of primer peeking through the holes in the chain.  Ouch.  In reality, when I was painting for competition I used to take digital photos to find flaws to correct, so this doesn't come as a huge surprise.

No Malifaux tonight (he said glumly.) I have other things to do that count as important. I'll still be hobbying this week, which will hopefully result in a completed unit for Hive Fleet Emervac to be on its way.

Did I mention I'm never doing commission work again?  Yeah, I'm never doing commission work again. I can neglect my own models with complete abandon, but neglecting other people's models when they are trying to pay me to paint makes me feel guilty.  The only guilt I want from this hobby is buyer's remorse.

Of course, I'm still offering to paint things for friends. That's a much more enjoyable endeavor.

EDIT: The camera in question was a Nikon D5100 with a Nikon AF VR 18-55 lens, 52mm.

Pimping My Fiction. Fictional Pimp.

It's Big Pimpin' Night on the blog.

Normally, the fantastic podcast "The Aethervox" features original fiction written by one member (Julian) read by the other member (Ian.) Since Julian was away, they asked if they could use the first few chapters of my story "Confessions of an Aspiring Resurrectionist" from the Wyrd forums. I gave an exuberant yes!  The episode featuring my work is now up on their site. Ian has such a great voice for it, as you know if you have listened to the prior episodes. I'll admit it's strange hearing someone else read my words, especially since I've read them to myself so many times in very particular cadence. Having just heard both parts now, I think Ian did a wonderful job. Thanks, Ian!

Next up, here's something I've been working on. Nobody showed up at RIW on Tuesday (they were all going to Gen Con apparently) so I got to hang out and paint. I know this is the role typically given to Seamus, but something about a top hat, ruffles and a cane just screamed pimp to me. Of course, it isn't the first time.

Move over Seamus... Nicodem loves the ladies.

The leopard print was especially fun to paint. I had some expert consultation from my coworkers, who have a mightier "pimp hand" than I. The vulture pattern is based on a macaw, but everyone just thinks it's rainbow.