Lord of Pestilence, WIP 1

Big thanks to Sholto for the response to my last entry. I soaked the model in Melaleuca "Sol-U-Mel" and brushed all the old primer off quite easily. After a half hour or so in Sol-U-Mel I rinsed and reprimed, and it really seemed to take so much better.

So I started painting.... I like it so far. Ultraforge minis are pretty amazing.

btw, there are some on ebay right now (new, unpainted) if you are interested.

My First Brush with Resin

I have a number of Ultraforge models that I plan on painting and selling (or just selling... anyone?) and I am thrilled at how great these sculpts are. And they're big! Even this one, the "Lord of Pestilence" towers over a terminator and is almost as much mass as a dreadnought, and he's the smallest of the Nurgle-esque models UF makes.

I tried to prime him up tonight for painting, and made a discovery. Resin resents being painted. To get paint to actually stick to resin takes an act of congress or something, even after carefully scrubbing the thing in soapy water. Thankfully, automotive primer spray stuck quite nicely, but getting it in all the little nooks and crannies of this model was a struggle. I also found that a spray of Testors Dullcote would create a workable surface, but I don't think I would use that unless I needed to repair an area and didn't want to destroy the paint around it.

And yes, that is the same LR Redeemer in the background that I posted a WIP pic of earlier. I just can't seem to seal the deal on that one....

Dreadnought Arm Swaps

I've been trying out some video tutorial making lately. Here is one I put together that describes making dread arms swappable between Black Reach dreads and box dreads.

Painting for Quality, part 2

The second installment of Painting for Quality is up at mybattalion.com. Check it out. I really need to figure out how to do macro mode and movie at the same time. If I could get that working I could really put together some useful tutorials.

I bought a Targus flexible tripod at RadioShack over the weekend. It's the best $8 I've spent in a long time.

Pandemic.... ?

Swine Flu (aka "Pig Sniffles") has been all the talk around here lately. I just heard that the nearby Plymouth/Canton schools have been closed due to suspected cases. Considering how much panic has been going into this, I thought I'd give it a little analysis.

Flu kills a lot of people. About 36,000 Americans die each year from it. That's about 1/100 of 1% of the population in whole. So far the Swine Flu, aka A(H1N1), has confirmed numbers of 876 infections and 26 deaths in the U.S. and Mexico. That is a 2.9% fatality rate, much higher than the overall influenza fatality rates each year.

The WHO defines pandemic as "widespread human infection." We are currently on phase 5 of their pandemic scale, meaning that human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region has been confirmed. Assuming it gets to full blown pandemic mode, the expected infection rate is 25-35% of world population.

6.77 billion humans x (25-35)% infection x 2.9% fatality = 49.1-68.7 million deaths worldwide

Let's hope that equation is very wrong.

And not to let potential tragedy go without some attempt at poorly timed humor, this may be the time to move to Madagascar. Or not.