What's New

If there is one thing you can always count on me for is to not be focused on any one project or thing, and thus this update.

As I mentioned in one of the October posts I was thinking about trying to make a t-shirt on one of the zombies from TWD - and this particular guy looked like a 70's punk.

Originally I thought about a Sex Pistols shirt but decided on a Clash shirt instead as I'm a much bigger fan of them :)

I found an image I liked and shrunk it down to fit on the model.

But I'd forgotten that I needed to reverse the image for it to work properly with the Mod Podge Photo Transfer Medium, so I had to make another one.

Through some sort of witchcraft and wizardry that is way beyond my understanding, when you wipe off the paper with some water and a sponge it leaves the image on the figure.

Crazy! But it opens up a ton of new possibilities. Still not happy with the skin tones of the zombies - I tried to start with a normal skin tone and work up to the "undead". Fail. So frustrating.

I got to spend two days down at UC with Jakob for parents weekend two weeks ago after not seeing him for over three months, so that was fun. This is his design classroom.

His desk - organization, meh. Apparently not a priority in the entire DAAP department :)

He spends most of his time in the art department despite having an apartment as a freshman because his roommate is awful - which I can verify lol. But we did watch the first 4 episodes of Stranger Things at his apartment, which was a-may-zing!!

Back home, I had such a successful go at my first attempt using the Photo Mod Podge I thought "why not put some graffiti on one of my 4ground dumpsters".

Like most of these small 4Ground kits it went together super quick.

They even have the wheel details.

I found some graffiti images online that were all together in one photo - I think they are from some kind of Japanese Anime show. I just shrunk down to size and printed them out.

I cut some out and I applied the Mod Podge and put them on the dumpster.

So here is one huge tip I can give anyone else trying this - you have to make sure not to leave any white when cutting out your images. You can see what a train wreck I ended up with above.

Pro tip number two - I was so excited by the success of the shirt transfer that I forgot that I was going to need to apply water to the sponge to get the transfers off the garbage bin.

As you all know, 4Ground kits are mdf. And as I'm sure you all know as well, mdf doesn't take to water at all. So train wreck part duex! I had the start of some peeling in places and a bit of warping.

I ending up painting around the graffiti to cover up the white parts and then added a bunch of weathering effect. Thankfully I think I saved the model, but a lot of good lessens learned!

Last week I took Therese to see Casablanca on the big screen for the 75th anniversary of its release. I absolutely love this movie and Bogart in particular. Of my top 5 favorite movies, 3 are from him. Way back I put my small homage to Casablanca in my first Pulp Alley game by making a "Rick Café Americana" sign for a building Ricks

It was great to see it on the big screen! Fathom Events are doing these types of showings (classic movies) once a month or so, looking forward to seeing the line-up for next year.

Back at the desk, I completed a few more bits and bobs for scatter terrain from TT Combat and the terrain set from Mantic Games.

This one is my favorite, as I used a piece of an actual garbage bag to put in between the two boxes and it looks the business.

Backpack objectives.

As we are in the middle of fall here, I had to take a photo of the gallop track at the farm - the burning bushes looked amazing!

Two years ago I helped put all these in, there has to be hundreds!

And finally a shout out to blog follower Tristan - these are some photos of his old west models he's been working on that he sent me.

I've been in email contact with Tristan for quite a while now. He reached out to me asking questions and advice on the 4Ground kits, which honestly is extremely humbling because there are a ton of much better terrain makers and artists out there!

Anyway, he's knocked it out of the park with these models, the weathering and additions make all the difference. I especially love the church! You can see what an improvement the shingles make on these kits. Now I want to purchase the old west church lol!

Jakob will be coming home for the holidays soon, so hopefully I can drag him up to the studio to try out The Walking Dead or roll some dice with any of the other hundred games I have up there - fingers crossed.

As always, thanks for looking!
Ivor