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My Mindflayer

Monday, August 10th, 2020

After great success several years ago, I thought it was time again for some fantasy miniature painting. So I bought myself – for only $5 – this dude:

It’s a 2 inch tall plastic model (by Reaper Miniatures) called D’Khul Bathalian. But if you’ve played D&D you’ll recognize this as a Mindflayer, an iconic evil octopoid-humanoid. As you can see the figure is astonishingly detailed for its size, and when painted professionally it looks mighty good as these examples show:

Obviously I wanted to paint mine to look as good as these, and reflecting back on my efforts from last time I considered any flaw in the final work due exclusively to my choice of paints. This time, rather than using free paint that came with a children’s magazine, I would invest in high quality tools. And so I did:

I purchased this set of premium acrylics for only $9, which I thought quite reasonable considering it came with three brushes! I’d never used acrylics before, but was sure I’d have no trouble due to my overall better-than-average artistic skills.

The figures don’t need primer, so you can just ~~slap on~~ apply the paint with little setup. Everyone knows mindflayers are purple so the first choice of colors was easy and shortly after I begun I knew a masterpiece was being made.

That’s a shot of my palette upon completion. I chose dark colors to evoke the evil of The Underdark and the bright whites and yellows were used for overbrushing (for detail) and the magic effects of the staff. I blended red and black to create a clotted-blood colour for his robe and the blue was used extremely sparingly (a few atoms only) to detail his medallion. In short my design was eclipsed only by my effort, and both resulted in a final work I’m immensely proud of:

Thoughts?

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The LEGO Treehouse

Monday, July 20th, 2020

I got this for my birthday (Thanks J & J!) and about a month ago started to build it:

It’s a massive kit, with 3000+ pieces and a 428 page manual with 894 assembly steps.

I like to build these things slowly, a few hours at a time, and this kit was well suited to that. The first part I finished was the trunk:

Note the little touches like the swing and birdhouse. The engineering that went into the LEGO pieces wrapping around the trunk with the studs facing out is very clever, and the whole thing is rock-solid strong to support the weight of the rest of the structure.

Next came the three ‘houses’:

These were the most fun to build due to the incredible detail inside. Here’s closeups of one of the bedrooms and the bathroom:

Next came the (detachable) roofs and some detail at ground level:

It’s a little obscured in the photo but the winding staircase from the ground up to the treehouse level is extraordinary. See also the ‘suspended’ walkway that wraps around the trunk connecting two of the houses.

Here’s a detail of the table at ground level:

The final step was to add the canopy:

The leaves are made of recycled plants; a preview of LEGO of the future perhaps (since they want to move away from plastic). The set comes with summer and fall leaf colours, and can be changed with the seasons:

This is an amazing kit. The engineering is first-class, it’s great fun to build and it looks incredible on display. This is the sort of kit that would have kept Bernard and I busy for months as kids, and I dare say there’s a lot of younglings enjoying the hell out of this today!

If you like LEGO and have some cash needing to be spent, you can’t go wrong with this one 🙂

Posted in Models, Otaku, Toys | 1 Comment »

Cannon Bull

Saturday, June 13th, 2020

I bought the above in Japan in January. I vacillated on the purchase since luggage space was tight but I decided in the end to make it fit.

It’s a ZOID! But not a plastic model version; this is a toy version. You still assemble it, but it’s much easier and the pieces aren’t on runners. I’ve done one like this before, but they still make and sell new ones and this one seemed to be a new release.

Assembly was trivial, but I was surprised to see (since I apparently didn’t bother looking closely at the packaging) that it has a battery powered motor in it! I selected this kit for its appearance though, and think it looks quite nifty.

That’s the finished product. According to the ZOIDs wiki this is a medium sized ‘buffalo type’ weapons platform that has a mass of 50.4 tonnes and carries a 9-barreled missile pod for long range attacks!

And there he is attacking! He moves at a good clip and the barrels of his missile launchers click as they ‘fire’.

A fun little toy. Next time I’m in Japan I’ll be picking myself up another one of these I reckon…

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Death Stinger

Saturday, February 29th, 2020

With my birthday fast approaching I figured it was time to catch up on old birthday gifts… like this guy:

That’s a silly-big model kit of a robot scorpion ZOID! Do I know anything about ZOIDs? Not really, but they look cool and this is one of the coolest. I got this kit for my birthday 2 (?) years ago and dedicated myself to completing it before this birthday. So I did!

The box is massive. Here’s what was inside:

So many runners! So many pieces! And yet the instruction manual wasn’t the biggest I’d seen in a kit, mostly since there’s a lot of repetition.

Assembly wasn’t particularly difficult, but took me 4 weekends working maybe 5 hours at a time. As I reach my dotage I find that my developing arthiritis tends to make these tasks a little trickier, and Kotobukiya kits are harder than Bandai ones because they don’t shy away from very small pieces and complex connections.

Luckily I had assistance to help with the complex bits:

I’ll spare you the interim photos and get right to the finished piece:

It’s impressive isn’t it? It’s also quite massive; easily the biggest kit I’ve assembled. I’d say it’s about 10 inches from front to back (with the tail folded up) and wider than my outstretched palm. There’s an insane amount of articulation: not only do all the limbs and guns move but you can even open lots of the flaps and vents (probably to emulate cooling systems) which can make it even bigger than it is here. Here’s the scorpion head when you open up the head armour:

It was a lot of fun to build and looks great in our glass cabinet. I wouldn’t recommend this kit though since it’s a) way too expensive and b) not ideal for a beginner. If you like the look of ZOIDs start with a smaller kit, or even better a toy version since those are much less pricey.

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