Some more Miniatures Waffle 5

Howdy!
Another break from reflecting on some of the other issues facing us,
to take a moment to appreciate some miniatures.

Did you know that Chess-like games, with miniatures, have been around since Gobekli Tepe times, and older elsewhere? The figures were originally carved from stone and composites, such as clays and muds. Some of those artifacts also contain fragments of hair and skin etc... very interesting features of these ancient minis! It must have taken/take much skill to make such fine art and figures, and this is one of those common touchstones that humanity has: all cultures on earth have made miniature study figures or game figures. Its a fine tradition!
On the larger end of the scale, you've got of course some statues from Ashoka's temple building rush, the terracota soldiers, Egyptian warrior figurines, and the Easter Island heads (which some have speculated might have been a bit like Risk Tokens in addition to being culturally significant 'tiki'/totems). People like their minis!

In a more recent addition, well at least I feel strongly that this is the level of awesome being made,
I requested a goofy lizard space monk replete with space wrench from ExManus Studios, along with an optional extra "I'll fix you!" attitude:
and this is what I got;

 As an outraged customer, I have the right to complain here:
this figure's attitude is too loud, the costume is too accurate, the wrench head is sold separately, oh and the heads are swappable...  (ie, I can get different heads and slot them in snug with ferrous materials so this base mechanic model can be from a bunch of species... how crazy is that?!)

Seriously now though, all satire/joke-age aside: This is one extremely fine lizard goofball that ExManus has made: ExManus Studios has done a fantastic job and I can't wait to get a lick of paint on this thing and start gaming. You can bet your bottom dollar that we wont see this in Imperial Assault or in SWCommand figures, I can tell you that now. Too bad if you wanted a space lizard...
This'll be a good token for my local RPG game of space checkers: "King Me"
I'll say when this is on the table for the first time heh.
The king fixer monk will be on the field, and will probably team up with Paratus (I understand Paratus was apprenticed to this monk, might explain the loopyness of paratus).
If not paratus, then this guy'll be an independent character as per SW40K v3 rules... which is good: it'll make him a sitting duck (if he is goofy enough not to cling to cover) for a CIS strafing run!

Now, on account of someone dropping and completely shattering their Cannon camera,
(butterfingers was yours truly)
We'll have to wait for the upcoming pepakura series, (pepakura dagger, dianoga and morningstars a/b/c anyone? papercraft trifighter too)
the "how to customise" guide and the next update batch of figures. That, and real world will probably gum up the works for the short term (its not a wrench in the works level of mayhem... yet hehe).

Enjoy, and I'll see you next time!

PS: I have some new stuff to ramble about exponentials/variable compounding rates perspectives,
some very funny gaffes in a few places about rates of expansion, and then several cross-comparisons for sources... Al Bartlett said it best about humble rates of modest exponentials... those lectures are dearly treasured, as are Williams's reflections on that in actors masterclasses.

Miniatures Waffle 4

Hi there!

In this installment, we look into the world of pepakura/papercraft and minis making in general.
I can do google hangouts and waffles if youd prefer that way: its always fun to shoot the breeze sometimes about stuff and ideas bounce, and I sure could use a hand or two on some printer troubleshooting!
I prefer to tinker in the 1/48 scale range, though I've worked on all sorts of projects.
you'd be surprised just how many packaging items can be useful for making miniatures! The tops from Ramune (lemonade) bottles are excellent for many engine cowlings and turrets, as they come already in the correct diameter and pre-drilled in the correct wall thickness for magnetisation!

Above: Remember the v1 papercraft dagger kit and limited run of MDF/Cardboard kit i did for it back in the day? Some like that '80s boxy chic' styling...

Above: A visualisation of "DAGGER FIGHTER KIT" in acrylic, 1:48th, mk 3. Its bigger, nastier, and angled-y. Did I mention its in 1/48th? MDF+Cardboard and Pepakura/papercraft variants to follow.
 The canopy is inspired in part by shotglasses in plastic, and in part by the turn dials from WizKids Heroclix: those also make handy shotglasses! (clean your heroclix turndials before trying to drink from them, drink responsibly, and don't mix drinking/customising games/playing games... also, don't eat food or drink in your customising/miniatures/electronics lab!)
This kit will be in acrylic pieces and in 3D printed parts: The entire frame could be made in the printer, but it is cheaper to break the assembly down into parts and have them made and folded in acrylic elsewhere. For scale, this thing is roughly the same length and width as the droid fighter mentioned later. Roughly.

Above: The tools of the custom trade: this is a lite set that I tinker with, or that others in the 'factory' can help with: the kids like to help out, and or the nephews and so on; they like making little bead-craft ants and such, so its not much of a stretch to get them working on satelites and droids in 1:48th! This is inspired by Russian and Indian project gamer blogs: check out some of the awesome composite miniatures coming out of Russia and India atm! They're ultra cheap, ultra high quality: then there are MDF kits and the like coming out, as well as indie vacuformed stuff, they're awesome!
From left: wires (1/16, 1/20" florist and also twist-ties from bread/elsewhere), plastic tubing (hard lollypop sticks - 30c the bag at the $1 shop, ear cleaners!- once you've cleaned your ears, you can siphon the centre of the tube for use in projects ranging from microelectronics to bead/arts and crafts (though Audiclean spray may kill the ear cleaner).
Then we have selected 'waste packaging' which all too often either goes to recycle or worse, to landfill! We can make minis from them as-is, and prevent the need for any transport to recycle or landfill! These are from various products. The clear round disks are coffee filters from coffee maker machines: these are ubiquitous and make perfect raygun parts or space stations/satelites --- makes you think that the packaging designers might have custom-misers in mind when they make their packaging huh? And of course, $1 pliers/multi-tool from China, and a custom tradeshow screw driver that I've turned into a 'shiv' on the anglegrinder: the 'shiv' is handy for all sorts of stuff, from de-icing the fridge to working with minis.
This whole 'lite' customising kit is around $15USD tops, and you can easily make 100+ minis, more if you can source plastic packaging waste from local businesses. That means you can save more money and get tools and better paints and basing materials, or potentially aftermarket official parts for your miniature maker-y.

Above: to left, an old warnout figure from WotC (heat warped from direct sunlight and has 'plastic cancer'), to right, the beginnings of v3 Ptype DDroid: it has spinning blasters and 4 legs. The curvy back part is being prototyped for printing, as are gun parts and leg parts, but Ive found in past versions I've made, that the ribbed (can we say that without the laughing?) ring from milkbottles etc makes okay curvy back part stuff. Watch this space: I think a decent v5 variant of this p-type will not be far off, and then there'll be recipes. 

 Above: To Left, some weird floaty plant thing with a bot pal from WotC to right for scale.

 Above: The same floaty plant thing. The floaty bit is made from aquarium toys picked up at local yard sales: I tend to go to yard sales and buy things for ridiculous prices (its a win-win: i get neat stuff, they get a helping hand on their move). At the moment, I've taken to making furniture bauhaus style from stuff at yardsales, like broken speakers or old broken electronics: they make for really interesting coffeetables or desks/bedside tables, and any profit ratio that might be there helps put food on the table!

 Above: At long last, a v1 (in universe, this would be between RotS and ANH) T4 Turretbot squares off against a keldor rookie. The eyes are freehand decals made from high gloss 140GSM paper, then marker-pen'd and sealed. You

 Above: from this angle you can see the 'welds' where a v2 head has been attached: the actual printed v1 model which will be closer to the actual figure seen in Jedee Power Battles, will be moveable and twistable etc: I learned a lot from Gundam bubblegum kit models heh! Those designers are awesome btw, even if the gum was always off and the trading cards warped heh.

 Above: A front-on view: note the acrylic support stand as part of the base structure: thats only for this prototype: the printed legs will be sturdy enough to support their own weight. The printed legs will also snap together and thus be pivotable etc, and there will be internals for magnets/ferrous materials, so as this figure can be fully interchangeable and adaptable (ie, so as I send parts and you can choose to assemble them in whatever resemblancy configurations you wish). I'm working on alternate turrets for this guy, in conjunction with v3 of the SW40K conversion rules I've worked on and off for the past 5years - that seems a very popular project.

 Above: a Hasbro droid fighter "ACE" in 1/48th scale, on a 'POP freestanding stand': this particular one was sourced from Darice and is 8" tall: these stands are AWESOME as flightstands, and are a fraction of the cost of other alternatives, and look much better than if you were to just lazer etch or 3D print yourself. Did I mention they come premade/preassembled?!? All you need to do if you want is to alter the rods and increase the amount of knuckles or lengths. You can even mix'n'match with a MDF or cutnetched acrylic base and then put a rod/rods onto that: for example, in my SW40K adapted rules, as a Heavy Support AND Fast Attack Choice, you can take 1 wing of 3 fighters, or 1 ace fighter: the wing stand will be a Hexagonal etched base with 3 rods (each with 3 knuckles each),
whereas the ace base will be a smaller trapezoid with a telescoping and magnetic base instead.
Support your local retailer suppliers and local plastics companies, or buy these handy items from closing down sales etc. They are awesome, and I must thank the Macross/Gundam forums and the SW 3&3/4" forums for the tipoff on these ideas!

Alrighty, well, we'll leave that waffle there for the moment,
next time I think we'll cover futures in this hobby, some tips for magnetisation of ferrous materials/incorporating ferrous materials into your projects, and hopefully by then these printers'll be more printy and less "I don't like it when the software talks to me like that'-y.
Thanks and bye-bye.

PS.
Goodbye, that bicentennial man, Robin Williams. You were a gift and will always be remembered as one extraordinary fellow. I won't forget your reflections or your standup, which with Bill Hicks and George Carlin, told the truth that was stranger than fiction. Your song work, particularly "How Do I Feel" from Toys, that speaks eternal. Nor that awesome moment with Koko.
Deepest sympathies to the family and loved ones, what a guy!

Waffling on Anderson Futures... 1

Hi there!

This will continue the tv related stuff, and I can't be suppressed here on my own blog as had happened in the past on the Fanderson's website... (cool people mostly, but Fans will be fans).

The topic here is musings on a subject that is dear to the heart... Gerry Anderson's fantastic vision of 'The Thunderbirds'. I don't own them, but they've been around so long... I just wish they'd been adapted into a large scale cinema 'ultimate' project, or had received "The New Adventures of Captain Scarlet" treatment and gone digital. The 2015 WETA project holds a lot of promise then...

There'd been a string of adaptations, which frankly, didn't fair too well out there in the community:

(the 2004 thing, prior fan projects and adaptations, and potentially counting chickens before they've hatched, the 2015 show might well suffer from that same curse).

Thats why we're musing here, we're waffling about a potential 3D/FFVII:AC style variant of the show

- if we could have anything and anyone from anywhen involved in a 'live action' TV/Cinema adaptation of that iconic show, how would we do it? (how could we take a leaf from JJ Abrams or Joss Whedon's book while we're at it? While staying faithful to the interpretation and perhaps spirit of the original we all know so well...).

So, with that all in mind... and yeah, I have written a few fandom-ish episodes (4 to be precise); I'd probably get a whole load of more writers in on the project hehe.

In my canon, Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds universes are set in the same common 'Anderson-verse' -- though things like Stingray and UFO or Supercar are set in some other alternate verses...

There may be a slight crossover in this canon with the 'Fallout-verse', that post-apocalyptic-esque styled 'verse that is set in the near future, and which as I've waffled elsewhere and elsewhen about, is likely also the same universe that ST:TOS is supposed to be set in also...

It's gritty, its edgey-er. But not overthetop grim or depressing, nor are there incessant explosions or throwaway characters/lovestory arcs...

The Thunderbirds would have to have been on the radar for some time, and its likely a stolen project/subcontracted massive project: International Rescue must be something like Anonymous, a huge organisation world-wide... over a very long period of time.

 Some disaster happened; maybe global warming, maybe overpopulation etc... and the consequences of those are panning out... in come Thunderbirds, to try and mitigate some of this, as a supra-national organisation.

As with Abrams masterstroke in ST reboot, we want to do a slow reveal to make 'the old new again'. We want to start with vehicles that aren't quite what we know or the full number or completeness... but they morph into the characters and vehicles and ness that we know.

Also, Toshiba's model of Tracy Island, while we're on it, is the Canonical Tracy Island. They made a model for a display in Tokyo: that thing was so massive and so cool! It looked very Derek Meddings!

(same dude that worked on SFX for Thunderbirds and Superman, just imagine if he and Ralph Macquarie and John Eaves and Doug Chiang & Ryan Church and Mike Okuda all teamed up together, possibly with Da Vinci, to work on a project...)

So,  with all that in mind... if you're still reading this and keeping up, you've got some willpower!

Lets get into the fun bit, casting waffleage!

The beauty of 3D is that we can hybridise people! We can make people that resemble hybrids of multiple people all into the one 'character'. We can take people from anywhere and anywhen (unknowingly from futures though). I feel that a little bit of the original supermarionettes would still make it through to the final 'character', but I'd also like some real-world actors to stand in for the roles, possibly with other Voice Actors to do impressions.

So;

Geoff Tracy: Michael Keaton*, Liam Cunningham, Liam Neeson, Kenneth Welsh*

Brains: Brian Cranston*, Robert Downey Jr (as an aside, Brian is an anagram of Brain-s, so he was made to have the part).

Scott: Johnny Depp, Ioan Gruffudd*

Virgil: Ben Affleck, Billy Zane*

Alan: Ryan Reynolds, Channing Tatum, Jake Gyllenhaal*

Gordon: Keanu Reeves, Matthew McConaughey, Chris O'Donnell (no clear favorites here)

John: Freddy Prinze Jr, Neil Patrick Harris, Tobey Macguire*, Nathan Fillion,

Kirano: Temura Morrison, Ken Watanabe, Jay Laga'aia

Tintin: Faustina "Fuzzy" Agolley, Connie Mitchell, Betina Bush

Hood: Ben Kingsley (reprising his role) or Jamie Farr

Mister X (the dude that is Hood's Boss): Hugo Weaving?

Penelope: Helen Miren/Gwyneth Paltrow

Parker: Sylvester McCoy (possibly with Joe Pesci in there), David Suchet + the supermarionette...

Alrighty,

so thats 'the dream team'.

Mark Mitchell would make a guest star/recurring part of his choice (good, bad, whatever),

Jamie Farr would also make a guest star or recurring part.

The Kransky Sisters would make a guest appearance (a rescue set in Beaudesert or Esk...).

David Strassman would also be pretty neat to have make a cameo... (with an actual thunderbird marionette, or is that too much?)

There you go...

We will have to see how the WETA variant in 2015 pans out though, and it does look Clone Warsy in terms of feel and budget... so it's sure to be big budget and explosion/action filled for real!

What are your thoughts on the 2015 Thunderbirds situation? What would you rearrange with the dream team cast list? better yet; what's your dream team list?

Star Trek fanboy observation 1

Hi there!
This is a brief aside on ST:TNG.
I've not been a fan of the character of Wesley (huge fan of Will Wheaton, he's hilarious on his Youtube/webpresence and has a good eye as a director/producer, just not a fan of the character in ST:TNG, and was happy when he ran away with the Space Apache's)
I don't know if other fans of ST:TNG have had similar ideas for a comicbook/episode of the show, but to my knowledge at time of writing nothing similar has yet been made.
I humbly offer for your enjoyment a 'what if', a universe that never had Wesley in it... but also in which Data doesn't die in Nemesis (a fair trade, I think).


So,
here's what happened in one of the ST:Multiverses...
At the end of Encounter at Farpoint, the first episode...
there is a little postscript scene,
Picard asks Q for a favor, because Q is somewhat impressed with what Picard managed to do (and there are several other junctures where Q could offer Picard a free wish to be rid of Wesley).

Picard asks Q to 'take care of the boy'. Q can read minds, so there's a thousand yard stare and a through zoom (sorta like Weird Al in "Aluminum Foil" where he's 'cracked the code'... except with a John DeLancie laughing maniacally).
Q then quite pleasantly begrudgingly agrees to take care of the boy alright, you won't even know he's gone...
Q snaps his fingers, and screen flashes white.
When Q's gone, Picard can't remember what he was doing, then remembers that he was looking for his datapad on the desk...

(Q has abducted Wesley to the mirror universe, and effaced Wesley's existence from the 'prime-verse'. No one remembers him or will know he's gone, it's like he was never even there.)
MEANWHILE.

Wesley finds himself banfed to an empty arena, in the mirror universe, someplace...
Q appears and tells Wesley he's in a mirror pocket universe as punishment for having offended Picard/being an obstacle between Picard and Beverly. Q also reiterates that there's no way for Wesley to escape this mirror universe, and that no-one will ever know he was ever alive in the prime universe...

Q pauses, then remembers to tell Wesley that he's about to meet his mirror universe self, and that the two of them should get along great! Have fun! and Q banfs away.

Mirror Universe Wesley and Prime-Verse Wesley then duel to the death. There are many combatants initially, and so its more like a Roman Circus, until the last two standing are Prime-verse Wesley and Alternate Wesley. The two battle in scenes reminiscent of Spock V Kirk... until simul-death, and so there was NEVER a Wesley Crusher, in either the Prime-Verse Universe OR the Mirror Universe.

Thanks Q! 

(NB: Will Wheaton, or fans of Wesley Crusher, if you're reading this,
its the character itself I dislike in the show. I've seen similar rants against Neelix, comparing Neelix to Deanna Troi or to Jar Jar Binks... Will Wheaton the actor acted and portrayed a great character with a great range of emotion and verisimilitude, I just didn't like the character when taken in context of the airtime that character had vs other characters development and arcs. I also didn't like that Data dies in Nemesis; Data oughta become a Professor as seen in the last episode of the show (which was also a Q episode).