I’ve been working away on Lokaris but most of what I’ve done isn’t terribly interesting so I figured we’d take the week off from it and you’ll be doubly impressed next time you see it, hopefully. I did finish another key piece of the Arkham Organizer and being the master model builder that I am, I, of course, built it upside down so it looks worse than most of the other pieces thus far. It was hard to get the diagonal slats of wood to lay flush and so the middle is a bit bowed as well. At least the painting of the icons looks decent!
We’re on the final stretch now! Only two more pieces to go and I’ve already made a decent start on the next one.
I ran into a couple of unusual hobby situations this week that deserve some discussion, I think. The first is that I finally pushed myself to find some tufts that I can use for Lokaris. I have what feels like a massive collection of tufts which I mostly accumulated when I was painting MESBG. You gotta have some nice looking grass for Middle Earth and I was a bit of a connoisseur as I felt like the better quality ones I owned, the better the minis tended to look. I happened to open my tuft drawer recently and and I’ve got tufts stacked up about three deep in the decent sized drawer, plus a few others that are overflow and stored elsewhere. My first thought when I saw them was: when am I going to use any of these again? Other than a two or three tufts I use on Fallout (and will replenish whenever those run out), most of the tufts are too bright and appealing for that setting. Most are like green grass, I guess you could say.
This set me down a path of brainstorming. I nearly talked myself into getting some new MESBG minis to use them up in a display project or two. I walked over and picked up my Eomer and talked myself back out of that when I remembered just how tiny the details are on them. My tastes have really changed because I am put off by trying to paint something so small now.
I also contemplated picking up some of the Warriors of Athena deity minis, one of which is pictured above. I happened to stumble across a picture of one of them painted on Instagram and it appears that the eyes are sculpted poorly and are noticeably uneven. That is not easy to fix with paint, unfortunately. I also happened to see that Kimera Models is coming out with two new 75mm based on the Odyssey and they are mighty impressive. When the official photos come out, I’ll definitely share them here. That put me off this idea too.
I was expecting to write out of despair and admit defeat but I’m thinking I might have a solution/fun idea to try and tackle. What if I used some of those tufts on some Warhammer miniatures that aren’t too taxing or involved to paint? No Stormcast and no space marines here! I’m thinking something that resides in a forest setting would be perfect. I might even commit to painting up one miniature and display base for each season of the year. I’m thinking that should give me a nice balance between painting time, getting to be a creative with paint colors, and getting to do some proper, lush basing, which I enjoy working on. This project won’t use up all of the tufts I have and I probably do need to get rid of some of the 2mm-4mm ones at some point, but at least I can use some of the stuff I’ve bought this way and hopefully have some fun in the process. That sounds like a win-win potentially! I just need to settle on what miniatures I want to paint out of a few different options. In case you’re wondering, I do have some new 75mm worthy tufts coming as well and I look forward to using them once I get them in-hand.
One other hobby headache I’ve run into is with Monsterpocalypse. I mentioned last week that I bought an STL to 3D print some stuff and I was ready to move forward with that until I found how much the person was charging. Each miniature I wanted to print was $18-25 each! There are a total of nine unique sculpts for the smaller Kaiju miniatures for Empire of the Apes and so the cost would be roughly $180-200. That is so much money for nine miniatures that are pretty small. There is also the open question of would these miniatures have print lines or not? That is a no-no for me as a miniature snob so now I’m leaning towards just buying as many of these minis at retail as I can even if they are metal. Most of the sets come with four miniatures for $30 and while I will get some doubles, I think I’ll have more miniatures and more diorama options this way.
It is a shame that 3D printing doesn’t seem to be working out here. I have tons of ideas for other little Monsterpocalypse projects I might like to do and I think I’m going to have to get a 3D printer eventually if I want to actually be able to do them. I’m not opposed to buying one but if I don’t have to, I’d be just as happy as I don’t really want another hobby revolving around keeping it operational.
One other positive note on Monsterpocalypse, I finally bought the display base and once it arrives, I will finally be able to reallyt test out different “layouts” of the diorama and see how many more buildings and miniatures I might need. I’m really looking forward to having that and working out the diorama a bit better. It should make the buildings easier to paint as I want to think about what they’ll look like next to each other as I go.
And finally, I heard some very sad news this holiday weekend and I would be remiss not to say a few words about the passing of Andy Williams. Andy was a guitarist for Every Time I Die which was a hardcore band that almost seemed immortal to me. They released a lot of albums, had greater success than almost any hardcore band I can think of, and had a really clever and original style. Instead of songs written from the heart as we’re all used to, the lyrics were from the perspective of an unreliable narrator who is deeply flawed and sometimes even disturbed. I’m sure other bands have done it, but none come to my mind and Every Time I Die’s songs are often wry and amusing. I met Andy once when I saw Every Time I Die in college and he sold me an Every Time I Die t-shirt. I was skeptical that it would fit me and he convinced me that it wasn’t too small, which is funny because I’m 5’5 and he’s well over 6 feet tall. It turns out the shirt was too small but I was pretty skinny back then and wore it with pride anyway. While the story is mundane, I didn’t get to meet many of the musicians I saw live, and it always makes me smile when I think about how the shirt worked out.
Dave Stone and Azazel know Andy Williams by a different name, The Butcher. He wrestled in AEW for a number of years and while he wasn’t a huge star, he did well and absolutely had the look of a wrestler. Its a real accomplishment to make it as a musician and a wrestler (even if the traveling lifestyle is mostly the same). It sounds like Andy essentially died while wrestling and if he had to go so early, at least it was doing something he loved, which is something a lot of people who die older aren’t always able to say.
To close this one out, it seems appropriate to play him out with one of the best Every Time I Die songs, which happens to be more serious and melancholy. I should warn you that this is a heavy tune so it may or may not be to your musical tastes. The video depicts Buffalo, New York, which is a tough place to live and it reminds me of people I went to school with who came from tougher circumstances. I can’t think of a better way to pay tribute as I think Every Time I Die are the pride of Buffalo, in many respects.
Kuribo's Painting 