Ho, Ho, Fucking Ho!!
Hello there! It seems ages since I posted here on the blog, so with the new year promising a new positive start and the fact I am starting to get settled back into posting and some constructive stuff, I wanted to wish you lot some seasonal jubilations, and the hope that you dear readers have had a better time than I over this festive season.
Merry Chrimbo! (Photo credit: miss.libertine)
I’d just like to take a moment out of my festivities, to wish you all out there a great Xmas/Yule/whatever the hell you celebrate it as!, and a great new year!
Sure, things aren’t great for many of us economically, nor can it be said that things aren’t really tough for the many who have experienced recent bad weather and loss of power, but for the rest of us I think that we have had this season pretty ok.
I do hope that for all of us, were going to have a renewal in 2014 and things for everyone do get better than these previous few years, a chance for new opportunities and prosperity.
We can all hope, can’t we!
Merry Chrimbo everyone!!
So I thought I would share my latest finished alien plant terrain piece, I regret, I wished had more time to spare between my projects, wargaming, sculpting and real life commitments. Usually I would have taken some WIP shots as I made the piece, but due to time constraints and not having my camera charged, it didn’t happen. With that in mind, for those of you who would like a little insight into how it came about, I’ll give you a brief run through.
At Xmas, my daughter wanted mainly art and craft materials, one item of which was some DAS terracotta self drying clay, and she wanted me to show her how to use it, so I was given a bit to play with while she made various bits of stuff (I don’t know if I should start worrying about the latest fascination she has with making “poppits”, charms and worry dolls!) and I made something useful with mmy bit. So, I thought I would do a terrain piece.
I’m not a DAS fan usually, I find the smell of it a tad sickly, smelling like a hospital ward, and the material is usually brittle and shrinks slightly when dried, so is a bugger to attach the dried bits to other components to make it a staple material for me to use regularly (however, I probably will try to use it a bit more often down to the results of this) I opted to create an alien swamp to be part of my alien death world scenery for my 15mm scifi games. You might remember my fish tank man eating plant conversion (as I have several other bits I am working on also) The idea is to make enough to play a smallish board for this type of game, but for ages I have meant to make a small swamp, so now was as good a time as any.
When the DAS clay had dried a day or so later, I got to sticking it down on a flat bit of plastic, taken from a broken DVD case. Like I said about DAS, it does have a habit of shrinkage, so to make sure the bond was good, I used “Hard as Nails” adhesive, which worked out great, as it filled any gaps caused by the shrink, created a layer of padding under the clay piece and stopped it from breaking if mishandled (due to its rubbery texture) it was pretty good to blend the edges too, feeling like a polyfiller rather than adhesive.
After that it was just a case of painting it up, which consisted of a few black undercoats, followed by green/yellow/brown and white tones and mixes, followed by a few washes of chestnut ink, badab black and devlan mud inks.
The swamp was achieved by a mix of inks, paint and PVA mix, with a handfull of mustard seeds which were carefully dispersed in the area required. It was then washed with ink when dry, and subsequent coats of gloss varnish give a slimy and swampy effect.
A few details of the creepy eye, some extra tufts of fronds (taken from various bits of artificial flowers dotted around my home, without my wife knowing, sorry dear!) a few touch ups with paint, and parts of the tentacles were gloss varnished with a highlight, to insinuate a slimy effect. Follow this with some brown and dark green flock, static grass and moss and, thats about it!
You may notice my Criat Merc, lurking about in shot, as well as the GZG UNSC trooper, these were the only 15mm figures I had on hand for some idea of scale, I could have used 28mm, as this would fit perfectly too, as would 10mm. It’s pretty versatile like my other terrain, and I can see this getting use in WFB, 40K (when I eventually play again, my son keeps blagging me to get an army, so it may happen this year, if I find time…) Warmaster, my other homebrew games and even my dungeon bash I’m planning (I can fit it in all over the place…) It’s making me think that I should build an alien dungeon too, again if I get time, something that is lacking recently.
I hope you enjoy…
English: Mayan calendar created by a modern craftsman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Harold Camping in 2008. A few years before it would be revealed as a lying fantasist. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Well, what a surprise. It’s the Mayan day of apocolypse and we are still here. Still there are some that are citing that it’s still coming, to be invaded by saucers over the remaining temples that the sun shines on at the exact point of the equinox, as well as other crazy ideas that are floating around, as of 5.30am UK time, we are told that we have just 6 hours left.
As I and lots of others expected, it goes down in the long list of stupid predictions foretelling the end of days.
It kind of takes me back to last year with the prophecies that Harold Camping came out with, first stating that the rapture would come on May 21st 2011, with earthquakes and related fire and brimstone god bothering balloney. The earth would apparently shift its axis, and pretty much destroy humanity, taking 3% population to heaven….but on the 22nd, nothing happened.
When this date came, he retracted what he’d said and “rescheduled” it for October 21st 2011, which of course never happened either. Quick to escape from the shame of being a total lying douche, he retired from the prophecy business to study the bible better (Apparently he had a stroke, what he was stroking is up for issue, it seemed like he had been stroking his ego for years, I fear it was more like stroking his cock as clearly he was a wanker!)
Humanity has a primordial fear deep inside them, this comes out as a strange self hate that almost begs the question if we all have a inner self destruct button, each one of us secretly praying for the end of days. Just take a look back at the countless foretelling of earths destruction. Sure, the world will end one day, when the sun swallows us whole in a great red giant, but by that time if humanity survives to that point, we will probably have developed the technology to escape of planets fate and find new places to infest in true Star Trek style (Lets hope the fashion will not be as crap)
I’m also sure that the many people here all over the UK suffering from severe flash flooding today, I’m sure that they feel as if a biblical flood has been visited on them on this auspicious day, plus countless others around the world who are really suffering in natural disasters, famines and wars, but hey lets have our press and media focus on this total crap “Mayan Apocolypse” prediction to make us all feel even worse about what it means to be human and living here on earth.
I’m no christian, and I feel that again the old establishment is trying to derail what is potentially a quite hopeful start for our future, after all it’s the equinox, or “Yule” to us paganistic types, the original celebration of the winter and end of the year until the brainwashed god botherers warped it to include biblical rubbish for our pagan ancestors.
Yule is the real basis of Xmas, nothing to do with baby jesus and donkeys, even good old Father Crimbo has more of a basis as an original (The bearded one bears resembelance to the winter king of old), Yes my friends, your Xmas may well be more ungodly than you imagine!
This day should be time for celebration in a world of economic uncertainty, wars and suffering, not fervently bead jiggling and praying for salvation from Nibiru! The fact that this cycle of the Mayan calendar runs out should be cause to look ahead to the start of a new cycle. Not our end.
Happy Mayan Apocolypse day all!!
Oh and happy Yule too!!
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