Archive for the ‘Crafts’ Category

NYCC 2015 Day 2

Friday, October 9th, 2015

 
Three shots taken from our hotel room which costs an arm and a leg and boasts a ‘deluxe city view’. The view earlier this evening during a heavy rainstorm was quite stunning. 

 
I’ll get the obligatory ‘insane lines’ comment out of the first. Yes the lines are insane and yes it can be frustrating but as old hands we knew what we were in for and endure it calmly like saints… but Christ there’s a lot of people here! 

 
That’s KLS getting her lips glittered. From the hundreds of exhibitors you can buy almost anything: it’s not all comics and toys. There’s actually a surprising amount of vendors selling clothing (mostly costumes), wigs, contact lenses and cosmetics. KLS bought some eyeliner from this booth last year, loved it, and was happy to find they were back! 

 
I particularly like the guys selling the ‘vintage’ collectibles because you never know what you’ll find. Take the above shot: a view master reel next to nazi memorabilia and a vintage Star Wars toy. Wonderful! Occasionally these sorts of vendors have some treasures like this: 

 
Which pales next to some of the ‘serious collector’ comics on offer, such as this: 

 
There are also a dozen or so original art dealers, from which you can buy the original art created for comics over the years. It’s a bit daunting browsing their wares though, when tiny pieces of art run into the thousands! 

 
No real comment on the above, other than its about 60 cm tall! 

 
That’s the sort of thing I would have gone berserk for as a kid. Not only does the set contain 12 gargoyles and 6 titans, but it’s also got 12 dragonriders and a mind-boggling 40 demons!! The fun I would have had πŸ˜‰ 

 
I wonder if this prototype shown at the Kotobukiya booth is a Force Awakens spoiler? 

 
The last silly item photo of the days goes to these perler bead faces of Stephen Colbert. Each (that’s 2 different items) costs $400 and is (much) smaller and in fewer colours than the one I made of Bernard earlier this year…

On to cosplay! As usual it’s everywhere, and sometimes you feel like you’re in the minority not being in costume. The eye-catcher at the show so far is this massive Hulkbuster that towers over everyone and is build around a sort of power suit the guy inside is wearing: 

 
You can see how popular it is! Here’s a shot of him putting the whole thing on: 

 
Impressive as it is (and it really is), I tend to prefer quirky stuff like this: 

 
Or creative (and pretty!) stuff like this: 

 
I don’t even know who she is cosplaying πŸ™‚

We’ve also spent hours walking ‘Artists Alley’, where hundreds of artists display and sell prints of their work to the public. Much of this is comic-related, but there’s also a bunch of other genres and themes and a good amount has made its way into our bags destined for our walls at home.

Tomorrow is the big day, and the only day with panels we are interested in (we missed the Rebels panel, which was held too soon after opening yesterday). Assuming we beat the lines and get wristbands hours ahead of time, we may even be able to sit in on panels with (omg) celebrities! I’ll swoon with excitement! Wish me luck πŸ˜‰

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:

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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

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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

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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!

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 πŸ™‚ 

 
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?

The Fair

Sunday, August 30th, 2015

Once again we visited the Duchess County Fair. It was great as usual, and here’s a list of ten things we saw:

1) Lots of rides! They were a little less dazzling after what we’d seen in Hamburg, but I still cursed my craven sense of balance that prevents me from riding them these days! 

 
2) Prize winning wheat! Nearby were sunflowers about 10 feet tall!

 
3) Delicious fair food, absolutely worth the incredibly inflated prices! $9 for a cob of corn and some lemonade? No problem πŸ˜‰

 
4) This amazing first-prize winner of the 7-10 year old ‘non kit’ Lego assembly contest. I kid you not, this was indeed the blue ribbon winner:

 
5) Some extremely sporty sheep! 

 
6) A legion of Minions! 

 
7) Fine, fine art: 

 
8) Porky the giant pig! Enough sausage for 1000 people! Two 100 pound hams! (No we didn’t enter to see what was probably a sleeping pig) 

 
9) A baby cow, born only minutes earlier: 

 
10) And last but not least many animals for KLS to feed. She was scared of the camel because of his teeth, but he turned out to be a gentle (slobbering) fellow πŸ™‚ 

 

Blast From The Past

Tuesday, June 30th, 2015

A few weeks ago, I visited Notre Dame in Paris. It was a spectacular place, and I remember it fondly.

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On that trip I purchased the following papercraft kit of this very same cathedral:

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This was originally intended as a gift for my brother, but as these things tend to happen, I decided it would be mine! Here’s the contents once opened:

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The fact all the pieces are pre-cut and pre-scored is a big plus, since craft kits of this type that require you to cut the pieces out of a book are massive pains in the butt (which I know from personal experience). Even so, the kit was a bit tricky to put together, mostly because of the complexity of the curved surfaces (especially the steeple). Here it is completed:

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Impressive isn’t it! It’s about 20 cm long and stands about 15 cm high, and is quite sturdy and a decent recreation of the original building. For a model made of paper, I was quite impressed.

But I thought I could improve on the kit with a little modification of my own…

…such as by making a few additions:

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That’s five fireworks, 4 small guys and one ‘Mini Californian Rocket Fountain’ (from which I had snapped the stick to raise it from the ground). I put my considerable pyromantic skills to work and filled the empty space inside the Notre Dame model with these five bundles of fun:

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If all went well, this would faithfully reproduce the great fire (that never actually happened) that caused irreparable damage to Notre Dame in 17XX (that never actually happened). A quick trip outside, and here’s the completed modified kit sitting peacefully on our ‘fireworks launching log’ waiting for the flame…

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Three fuses. Five fireworks. Could I light them all and get to safety in time? What would actually happen? Would it fizzle out? Burn? Be spectacular? There was only one way to find out:

OMG! Just… omg! Here’s the aftermath:

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My Notre Dame papercraft model: it lived fast, died young, and went out in a blaze of glory. What more could it have wanted?