Thinking Outside the Box

Hobby seemed to take a bit of a back seat through July. I split my time amongst five projects, which is a quite few more than I'd promised myself I would work on. Here's what happened in my hobby realms...with far fewer photos than I'd like! The first thing I recall finishing in July was actually painting my MDF DreadBall pitch from start to finish. You can read more about that by clicking here . Stuff built for Batman Miniatures Game : - Black Canary and Batgirl - Victor Zsasz and Arkham Inmates set (4) - Titan Bane - Blackgate Prisoners set I (4) - Blackgate Prisoners set II for BMG (4) When I bought my Terminator Genisys starter set I built them the same day. This month I put some basing material on them and got everything primed in black. Although not fully complete I've painted all the endoskeletons (15) who simply lack a few finishing touches. We even had a chance to play through a few games. I may or may not do some kind of game recap or review...

My second progress report post, which feels like a bit of a mixed bag in terms of work accomplished. The month started off really strong with a bunch of stuff getting hobby and paint attention. Work, nice weather and a bit of vacation closed out the month and really put a dent in things at the end. June Progress Report - Painted sewer markers for Batman Miniature Game  (7) - Built Walking Dead prison tower set (1 of 2) - Painted 3 sets of lamp posts for BMG (7) - Painted second objective pack for BMG (4) - Built and painted set of custom riddle objectives for BMG (2) - Painted SuperFigs Emerald Alien (1) - Built Catwoman, Origins Deathstroke, Huntress and Origins Batman for BMG (4) - Built miniatures for Terminator Genisys starter box (32) There were several other things that I had were very near completion that intended to knock off in June. After returning from my trip and getting settled back into my work schedule I couldn't find the motivation for in the last few d...

"The Terminator' and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" are some of my favourite movies of all time. I remember staying up late at a friend's house as a kid watching the original on BETA video, with the volume almost completely off, sitting a foot or two away from the small television screen. We weren't supposed to watch it, so we had to keep it really quiet so we wouldn't get in trouble. The eyeball extraction scene stuck in my mind for years, and still gives me chills every time I see it! Fast forward nearly three decades and there have been more movies, toys and even a new movie on the horizon. There will be a coinciding miniatures game for the new movie, with 28mm figures. Consider me excited for that. Long ago I painted some Copplestone Castings endoskeleton figures ( check those out here ) to use as some flesh-less terminator machines. Shortly thereafter I received my Reaper Bones box containing my Vampire pledge of stuff. Inside that box was a figu...

A few months back my boss purchased himself a 3D printer. He's brought in some samples of things he's printed: a coffee mug, a pill bottle, and most interestingly...some geographic layered tiles based on 3D models from our CAD department. Those were pretty neat. This week he brought in something quite a bit different. Can you guess what it is from this printing-in-progress shot? I wouldn't be surprised if you had a hard time guessing. The shape is there, but it's hidden underneath several support structures that had to be removed after the printing was complete. After removing all of those,and spending a little time with my airbrush and paints, we ended up with this. You might be able to tell that it's not full scale by comparing it to the size of my hand. The texture of the print is a little rough, and I certainly could have cleaned it up some more with a little sanding and filing. However since we're planning on implanting it inside a pumpkin an...

Last winter I bought most of the then-available rule sets available from Ganesha Games. Recently they released Swatters  which is a set of squad based rules for soldiers vs. alien bug creatures. I haven't bought them yet, but they got me thinking about Mutants and Death Ray Guns . I love sci-fi and horror movies so naturally I've tried adding figures in that vein to my miniatures collection. Swatters ' release reminded me that I had a bunch of converted Aliens (from  Horrorclix ) sitting in a box in the closet. They had never been used in a game and thus were probably sad. Using the war band creator from Ganesha's website I put together four ~200 point lists: Aliens, Predators, Terminators and Zombies (wretched). In preparation for trying out my lists I also finished up a piece of terrain that had been sitting on my shelf for months! A few other pieces of terrain and the figures got dropped on the table and I was ready to go. The terminators were outnumbered by...

As I mentioned in my last post, I finished a whopping seventeen models last week. That's a personal best, and is likely one I won't be topping any time soon. However, I didn't show all of the models I painted in that article, simply because it didn't make thematic sense to do so. A few weeks ago I was looking around at Sentry Box, and happened upon a nice little box of figures from  Copplestone Castings . I'd heard positive things of the company but never seen any of their models in person. These were really nice, if a bit highly priced at 18-X (don't get me started on Sentry Box's ridiculous pricing scheme...), which on that day was about $19.25. I didn't really know what I was going to do with them at the time, but I couldn't pass on them even at nearly $4 per figure. Fast forward a few days and I had glued them to some bases; these ones are magnetic 25mm that bought a while ago and simply wanted to try them out. I had a window of pleasant weat...