Mirror, Mirror, on the Blog

Behold my magic mirror! I really like Citadel's Retributor Armor paint, which I used on the mirror's frame. It goes on really smoothly and has a lovely rich gold colour. I used the same company's Stormhost Silver for the mirror itself, and it's not quite as nice; it tends to slump and the sheen isn't as silvery as I'd like. But at this tiny scale, it works.
 

Harmless Weapons

Here's a collection of rifles, pistols, and melee weapons, including a whip closely resembling the one wielded by Indiana Jones. Unlike real weapons, these cause only imaginary harm on imaginary battlefields. Would that things were different here on Earth. 
 

28mm Accessories

You haven't painted tiny things until you've painted a 28mm-scale pair of binoculars, a spyglass, oars, handbags, Nuka-Cola machine doors, a camera, and various other oddities. 
 

Anvil and Chopping Block

Here they are, an anvil and a chopping block, painted by me to be put to some unknown purpose. One day a cyberhistorian will stumble across this image and wonder "Why?" 
 

Snow Trap

Almost invisible under the snow lies a foothold trap! It was used to trap the animals skinned for the bundle of furs posted a few days ago. Ouch! Pity the beasts caught in this thing. 
 

The Maltese Brain Served Up on a Silver Platter

Here are 28mm scale models of the Maltese Falcon and the criminal brain used to create Frankenstein's monster. I agonized over how to paint the Falcon so as to reveal the details of its surface, but then I watched a clip of the film and realized that yep, it's just black, and you see detail because of the light reflecting across its contours. So I just painted it black. 

The road to Castle Frankenstein wasn't exactly paved with gold, Sam Spade thought. In fact, it wasn't paved at all, except maybe with the blood and sweat of the poor peasant saps of the village that sat below and apart from the tall stone towers of the castle. That road now had a little extra paving in the form of Spade's blood and sweat, though not his tears - never his tears. 

Spade's right hand was clenched tightly around his Colt M1911A1 as he kicked open the door to Victor Frankenstein's lab. 

"Freeze, you butcher!" Spade cried. A stout hunchback carrying a silver tray yelped in surprise, and in his shock the hunchback's spastic motions launched the tray's contents - a bloody scalpel and a disembodied human brain - into the air. 

"You fool!" shouted Frankenstein, his mad eyes wide with anguish. The scalpel clattered harmlessly across the stone floor into a dark corner, while the brain plopped to the floor and was smushed by the impact. 

Spade's lips twisted in disgust as he eyed the broken, oozing brain. Horrified, the hunchback made his escape, dashing for the staircase to the lower levels as his master kneeled and scooped up the remains of the brain in hands wrapped up with black lambskin gloves. 

As Frankenstein lamented, Spade took a precious moment to assess the scene. The centrepiece of the laboratory was a human shape on a metal slab, a shape covered by a white sheet. The slab was attached to chains on a pulley system that seemed to suggest the corpus could be raised to the ceiling. But for what purpose? 

"Say, what is this screwy business?" Spade asked.

Tears streaming down his cheeks, Frankenstein offered up the smashed brains, chunks leaking between his fingers. 

"The stuff that dreams are made of," Frankenstein whispered. 

"Well, sweet dreams to you, sweetheart. Here's a love letter from Miles Archer," Spade said, aiming his Colt, squeezing the trigger, and plugging Frankenstein between the eyes with lead hot as hell.  


 

Fur Trade

Here's a bundle of freshly-trapped furs, a small accessory for the Pulp Figures Yukon Peril line--specifically, this goes in the Trapper Canoe. I've painted the canoe and the paddle, but not the trapper. 
 

Sinister Podium

When sinister villains need a spot to orate about their diabolical plans, I have them covered with this stylish podium. 
 

Letterboxd List Progress May 2022

 

In my quest to watch every movie ever made, I'm naturally devoting a lot of my time to tracking down the greats. If I don't live long enough to see every film, I'm at least going to try seeing the most acclaimed. Lists aren't infallible or unbiased, and they'll inevitably miss many great works, but they serve as an excellent starting point. Above, you can see where I stood as of last March in terms of completing twelve of the "best-of" lists selected by Letterboxd. 

Here's where I stand now. Note that Guillermo del Toro's Film Recommendations has been replaced by Top 250 Horror. For the record, I'm now at 51% of the del Toro list. The Top 100 Documentaries is now the Top 250 Documentaries; amusingly, despite watching a bunch of documentaries since last March, my percentage complete remains exactly the same. 

As you can see, I'm tantalizingly close to finishing off the IMDb Top 250--just 15 more movies to go, including big titles such as Wall-E and Requiem for a Dream and lesser-known works such as The Secret in Their Eyes and Jai Bhim. 

I'm off to a good start with the Top 250 Horror list, which comes as no surprise since I'm a fan of the genre. I've made quite a bit of progress on the Top 100 Animation List, discovering incredible works like Perfect Blue and Waltz with Bashir alongside the formulaic Disney stuff that gets more and more grating as I grow older and more cynical. 

For Sama is a heart-wrenching documentary about the civil war in Syria that appears on a couple of these lists. The first time I tried to watch it, I had to stop about ten minutes into the film because it was wreaking emotional havoc on me. I came back to it about a month later and managed to finish, and I'm glad I did. It's brutal, courageous, honest, and moving, and it's also an important historical document. It's on Amazon Prime--don't miss it. 

All Aboard the Coke Train

 

Action!

Let's call this grizzled studio veteran Alfred Ford, eccentric, tyrannical, but gifted director of motion pictures. Not only is this miniature better painted than those I've been posting for the last few days, but I found a light source to help create clearer photographs in this environment. 

 

Painted a Mechanoid

Or "P.A.M." Not happy at all with this one. Looks muddy, washed out, lacks detail. 
 

Tinker Tom the Wasteland's Son

Here's Tinker Tom, a Railroader mechanic. I like his skin tones, and his clothing looks okay. I should have painted the base white, then dry-brushed the brick surfaces so that I would have had contrasting mortar lines. Live and learn. 
 

The Little Drummer Boy

Here's Drummer Boy, another Railroader from Fallout 4. Like several of my minis, this one looks better on the table than it does in a close-up photograph taken with mediocre-to-bad lighting conditions. 
 

They Call Him Mister Tims

Here's another member of Fallout 4's Railroad faction, Mr. Tims. I used contrast paints for his suit, then drybrushed on some highlights; the model looks better in real life than it does in this photo. 
 

Doctor Carrington

Here's Doctor Carrington, and only now so I see that I forgot to paint his tie. Unless he deliberately chose a white tie to go with his white shirt and white jacket. Well, he's a scientist, so who knows? 
 

Desdemona

Here's Desdemona, leader of the Railroad faction in Fallout 4. For a challenging figure, I think I did all right here. I like the base, her vest, her hair and features, and the weapon is...all right. It's playable, at least. 
 

Gunner Conscript

No wonder this guy is angry; he's been conscripted into the service of the violent and deadlyk Gunners mercenary faction. Face and hair are okay here; weapons passable, base not bad. 
 

Another Gunner Private

Here's another Gunner private. Face and hair are terrible here, weapon and outfit merely passable. Not one of my better efforts. 
 

Gunner Private

Here's a private from my small squad of Fallout: Wasteland Warfare Gunners. Face is okay, hair decent, and I like that the armor plating stands out from the rest of her outfit. The dried mud base is all right, too. But still - needs greater definition. 
 

Gunner Sergeant

Here's a Gunner Sergeant to help ensure that the Gunner Commander's orders are well-executed. I'm a bit happier with this model; I feel his various parts are better differentiated, and his face is actually reasonably human. 
 

Gunner Commander

Here's one of a handful of Gunners I painted over the weekend. This one's clad in a set of power armour, sans helmet. I regret the dark brown I chose for the base. The Gunner's face is okay, and the armor's not bad. And yet the model still lacks that sense of depth and realism I keep striving for, even after several retries on this figure. 
 

Grognak's Greatest Foe

At right, we have Grognak, the blonde barbarian featured in comic books scattered around the post-nuclear holocaust world of the Fallout computer games. I bought two of these models because they make great standard barbarian archetypes, but wound up thinking of Grognak's world and the enemies he might face. Many great heroes eventually face their mirror image, so I came up with Kangorg, Grognak's evil doppelgänger. But for their hair and clothing, you'd never know the difference--until they act. 
 

Mother's Day 2022

Sean and I helped Mom in the garden yesterday and wished her Happy Mother's Day then, but I wanted to mark the occasion today too. I'm very grateful to Mom for her love, guidance, and the example she set, and I'm looking forward to celebrating a milestone birthday with her, Sean, Sylvia, and our aunts and uncle this summer. Happy Mother's Day! 
 

The 28mm Thing from Another World

Because The Thing from Another World was shot in black and white, I don't know what the titular alien might have looked like in colour I tried to imagine what the costume designers of that time might have done, and so I settled on a metallic sheen for his spacesuit, green skin, and purple hair. 

Monitoring Antarctica

I'm pretty happy with the neatness of this console. I'm getting better at steadying my hand and applying the right amount of paint to tiny, tiny details like the buttons and switches seen here. 
 

Doctor Frankenstein

Here's Doctor Frankenstein, ready to bring down the lightning that will galvanize his grim collection of body parts into a living, breathing monster. But who is the real monster? 
 

Pig Platter

Here is a 28mm-scale roast pig, served up on a platter of fruits and vegetables. 
 

Sausage Barrel

Sausage links, just seven copper pieces per stone! 
 

A Chilly Relationship

I have some winter terrain from a Kickstarter coming soon, and in preparation I've painted and based a number of miniatures to suit that terrain. Here's a fellow lugging snowshoes (why isn't he wearing them?) and his faithful wolf hound. 
 

Old West Bank Patron

This little lady came as one-third of a set of people you might find at a bank in the mid-to-late 1800s. I'm not terribly happy with my colour choices, but what's done is done.