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NYCC 2015 Day 1

Thursday, October 8th, 2015

That’s the sun rising in the fog as we rode the train to NY this morning for another (our 8th?) comic con. You know the drill by now, legions of people, otaku madness, great exhaustion, much excitement.

And so it started again!

We only had to line up for a half hour or so to get in, but the crowds are truly massive. Once inside it started off on a pretty high note, as I lined up to get my very own Yugioh token card made:

I think I nailed the pose didn’t I?

Usually seeing this piece of remarkable art made entirely of Jelly Beans would be quite a thing, but here it’s just one of an endless cavalcade of spectacles. One minute you could be checking out a display of costumes from the upcoming Warcraft film, next minute you could be digging through old comics or getting a wrestlers autograph and the next moment you could be shopping at a stand that only sold Star Trek merchandise:

We saw all sorts of amazing figurines…

We saw fine art, action figures and stuffed toys…

We saw amazing cosplay:

Really amazing cosplay:

Old toys…

And even an incredibly expensive pack of trading cards:

It was a long day, and even after 6.5 hours we know there’s still much left to see (not to mention panels etc.)

But day 1 was a big success 🙂

The giant Monster Hunter cat? That’s KLS’s birthday gift 🙂

Posted in Art, Books & Comics, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Toys, Trading Cards | Comments Closed

Sunny Castle & The Pissing Bear

Tuesday, October 6th, 2015

Give me a weekend and I’ll give you some completed craft project. Here’s the latest batch:

Thousand Sunny

This is a model kit of one of the ships from the One Piece manga. While I’ve read a few volumes, I’m hardly a fan. But the kit was cheap, I needed a break from robots and I liked how colourful it was. Assembly was simple, and while the kit had a mountain of stickers to assemble they went on easily and I think makes the finished product look very nice. Bonus points for it being small.

Pissing Bear

When I saw this I couldn’t believe it was real and had to buy it. Maybe my first thought was this would be a good gift for someone that liked bears… but I ended up keeping it. It’s not Lego or Nanoblocks – it’s some knockoff Chinese tiny block company. And yes you’re looking at the kit assembled exactly as it is supposed to be – transparent yellow urine stream included. This one will proudly collect dust on a shelf for years!

Neuschwanstein Castle

This ‘Paper Nano’ kit is the first and absolutely last I will ever build. Papercraft is a hobby for the patient, and while I’ve assembled some complex and frustrating things over the years this one trumped all others. Yes it looks quite good in it’s finished form, and yes I managed to avoid making any serious mistakes, but I struggled with the less-than-stellar instructions, the need to glue it together (which I hate) and the absolutely minuscule size of some of the pieces and folds required. The rotational symmetry of some pieces coupled with the unclear instructions led to my version of the castle being slightly different from the real one. Can you see how?

KLS and I are off to NYCC in a couple of days. You can expect the usual maniac blog posts during the event, so watch this space!

Posted in Art, Crafts, Facepalm | Comments Closed

Craft Work

Wednesday, September 16th, 2015

I could fill this blog with endless posts going into tedious detail about the various model kits I always seem to be making. But that’s a bit dry for those of you not me, so instead I’ll take this chance to show off some of my recently completed kits.

The first is Imperial Girl, the second in a series of kits based on the character art done by Yuji Himukai for RPG series Etrian Odyssey. I made the first kit earlier this year and thought it was pretty snappy but this one is even better, with amazingly detailed armour (with metallic paint) and many cute faces to choose from. It was an easy build as well, and looks wonderful straight out of the box (ie. without additional paint).

Next was this ‘Metal Earth’ miniature metal Notre Dame kit, which Bernard gave me a while back. I’ve made many similar models, but this was the first of the larger ‘ICONX’ series (more pieces and complexity). It took me about a week working about a half hour per day and was certainly amongst the more difficult I’ve made. The finished product is very pretty though 🙂

I’ve always loved General Grievous, iconic villain of Star Wars episode 3, and this recently released Lego kit may as well have been designed with me in mind! Using the bionicle framework, Lego has created perhaps the single best Grievous figure yet made, that not only looks fab but has amazing poseability (including locking his arms together). It’s also quite large, standing over a foot tall. I love it!

Last but not least is this Gundam, or to give the correct full name of this kit: RX-0[N] Unicorn Gundam 02 Banshee Norn (Destroy Mode) Full Psycho-Frame Prototype Mobile Suit. Mouthful of a name aside, this is one hell of a kit that includes about 10 colours of plastic (including 3 transparent types) and seemingly-zillions of pieces that snap together to form a very angular and almost overdesigned beast of a robot. This was a fun kit to make and looks great with the contrast between the black armour and yellow ‘crystal’ innards. It’s a 1/144 kit which means it’s a tad smaller than the 1/100’s I prefer, but the price was low (~$20) and the quality extremely high. I enjoyed making this one a lot!

I’m finding myself spending more and more time making models like these. I find it very relaxing. Maybe you should give it a try?

Posted in Art, Crafts, Models, Otaku | 2 Comments »

Spaghetti a la Supertaster

Wednesday, September 9th, 2015

Over five years ago I introduced the world to my personal spaghetti recipe. Since then I’m sure you’ve all been wishing I’d given more detail and today I’m happy to oblige!

I present therefore the step-by-step pictorial recipe for my delicious version of spaghetti bolognaise!

Start by cutting about 1/3rd of a yellow onion into small pieces.

Sweat the onion in a light sprinkle of oil. If it gets clear (or even worse brown) you’ve gone too far!! You’ll want to put a big pot of water on high heat now as well for the pasta.

Add half a pound of 93% ground beef.

Stir it up with the onions, and cook on medium heat until it looks like this:

Have a nibble at this point. If it’s delicious and meaty you’re on the right track!

Next you want to add a single beef stock cube and stir it in. Let it simmer for a minute or so and taste it again. Unless you’ve ruined it, it should taste a bit like Vegemite now.

The water should be boiling now, so put in a decent portion of spaghetti. The exact amount is up to you, but you’ll want to have enough so you won’t be sad but not so much you’ll get fat! Leave the spaghetti cooking and return to the meat.

Open a small tin of tomato paste and remove a small amount. There are two important notes here: the paste has to be unflavoured, and you need to add less than you expect! It’s more for colour than flavour!

Stir it in well until it looks like this:

And last but not least, add a pinch of salt, ideally from a Rilakkuma shaker:

Now cover it and let simmer on low heat while the spaghetti finished cooking. It will look like this once it’s al dente:

Everything is ready! The recipe is enough for two portions, so plate half the meat and pasta with style…

And enjoy with an adult beverage:

This is an easy to prepare meal with a refined and manly taste. The delicate blend of salty and salty tastes is sublime to those with the unique palette of a supertaster and I’m sure if you give it a try you’ll enjoy it as much as I do 🙂

Posted in Art, Food | 2 Comments »

Things We Saw At The Computerspielemuseum

Tuesday, August 25th, 2015

A couple of weeks ago (it’s been that long?!) K, B and I visited a museum in Berlin dedicated to Computer Games. It was small, but it was very good, and perhaps even the best of the few I’ve visited over the years. Here’s a random selection of things we saw in the museum…

In the earliest part of the museum they had the landmarks of pre-computer gaming, such as (very) 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons:

And the first gamebook every written, Sugarcane Island (written 1969, published 1976):

They had holy grails of the Golden Age:

Crazy game art from the 1980s:

A small but good condition arcade:

A well-done series of rooms decorated to resemble certain ages of gaming. Here’s Bernard in the 1980’s attic room (presumably a typical German household attic from that era):

They also had Germany’s own homegrown console from the early 1980s. Only about 40 games were ever released:

You could design your own sprites:

You could post with Lara Croft(s):

Or you could look ridiculous playing Atari Ms Pac-Man using a titanic joystick:

And you could even risk your life playing the Painstation:

This is a massive two-player Pong game where the players are penalized for mistake in the form of heat, electric shocks or whips to the hands (see details here). We watched two people play it and as the game progressed they certainly seemed to be feeling the pain. I would have played it, but my compatriots were hesitant 🙂

As I said, a small museum but a goodie. If it wasn’t hot and we weren’t already overcome by ruination, I would have liked to have spent hours there reading all the information. Recommended if you’re in Berlin.

Posted in Art, Games, Tech, Trip | Comments Closed