Magacon =D

Magacon War torn ticket - Checked.

Goodies - Awesome!

First trophy on my trophy rack - I am in luck....

(Considering to custom make a shoulder mount trophy rack like those on terminator armor and impale it on...)

(or maybe not.)

Fanboi achievement - Fail, shy of Ultramarine the movie =..=

(see below)

Bigger, meaner, smellier thing in life - IT SUCKS.

(This is the reason I can't watch Ultramarine the movie from head to toe under supervision. Barely catch up to  fetch my 2 weeks old laundry before my local friendly laundry dobi closed up and send in this batch that I packed in my car....)

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Footnote (Wall of text)

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First thing first, man, Magacon is all thing geeky, huge fun! Me and my mate (Shout out: How Jit dailow and Foo Siong, SORRY DUDE, I ignored you guys half of the time to get the achievement thingy... and maybe drag you guys to be involved in one or two of my achievement thingy... =p) was trolling around, XBOX kinect, boardgames, card game (I guess my mate is starting to loath space hulk : death angel the card game already...), 40k, MTG, we've seen/try it all... good stuff. LARP is not our cuppa, but I'm secretly reading whitewolf's RPG (World of Darkness, Vampire the Requiem) and maybe... just maybe, on the next Magacon LARP, I will... consider take part of it... (or barring that, ooze out rm200 or so to get FFG's Black Crusade RPG for my reading pleasure..). 

Also manage to meet Salleh (Battle Brother Bob) in 40kmalaysia forum and pestering him almost whole day to work on my achievement thingy, it's great to match another face with forum ID =D Thank you dude! for sacrificing all your fun time to baby-sit all the Fanboi through the achievement thingy!

Was VERY tempted to get Skyrim from CK Media (I brought almost all my physical PC game from them at youbeli.com). But well, after checking my puny wallet's content and considering the outstanding mini to paint/books to read, I give it a pass~_~)

Unfortunately Space Marine the game is unable to be played at the PC gaming area too (unless you are willing to sign in your Steam account on public PC.. I'm a bit paranoid about that....), it could be a potential crowd pleaser if we can get a team of player to play the MP of Space Marine, it's fun in an old-school way (like Quake and Unreal) and could be very competitive too. (And hopefully, it could attract more potential 40k players to the miniature aspect of it!)

Manage to chat up with Khairul and Jeff (of Legio fame) while they are not busy with tournament on the second day, hey Khairul, shout out to you, Thanks for letting me taking a peep on the awesome Flames Of War campaign set and imparting the knowledge of the file/sand thingy, I really don't know that we can use those on the annoying mold line/break point, I will *definately* get those and add it to my hobby arsenal =D And sorry Jeff, LOL, my english is really so-and-so and sometime when you are talking fast, I can't really get you (same applies to TJ...I hope I get his name right.. LOL, my bad) =p, but well, you had open the door for me to look into the potential of alternative paint and maybe an airbrush, man, I wish I could visit Legio more (will try to!) and chat up more with you guys!

Alvin of Hobby Forge is as friendly as usual, and thanks for the time for the demo game, you are da man! I will try to finish my Chaos ASAP and visit forge soon for a game (don't.. steamroll me, pls, if we happen to able to get a game... as you can see from the demo game, I'm a bit (okkkeyy, maybe more than a bit) slow on rules and tactic.. LOL), and finally I manage to chat up with Yip too, ah, man, I forget to personally thank you, face to face, for the Space Hulk.

And oh, the dude on painting demo (ARRGGGHH! Sorry I didn't get your name, but I think I saw you somewhere, Comic Mart?) table too, thanks for letting me trolling around and kill time there when waiting my fren to finish his boardgame =D

Another shout out is for Wai Yan of boardgamecafe and OTK fame, ha, glad you still remember me =) And also Aaron and Kenny from Meeple (and all the chicks that you guys hire to attract the crowd =p) for the demo game of Ticket to Ride and also Space Hulk : Death Angel (I'm glad we haven't dabble the territory of Horus Heresy the boardgame..kekekeke)

And finally, to Chang, the organizer of the event, thank you very, very much for this awesome event! I will be there for the next Magacon! I've never anticipate this kind of convention will be available in Malaysia and you guys make it happen! 

After all the shout out and all that, below is some *personal opinion* that Magacon can.. well, improve for the coming years, I'm well aware that this is only the first year and things could be in chaos, I'm very sure it will be much, much better in the coming years!

My Rant:

1.) The official site and the information available on it -  well, it's not quite matching with the actual time table of the event itself, and the information available on it is quite scarce, I would say, maybe next year you could update the time table beforehand, say, one week in advance, instead of just announcing it on the day itself? Folks can be better planned for what they want to participate based on the time table on the official site.

2.) This is just for GW related product - dude, hire more chicks (or dude) to attract the crowd (Meeple is doing this right, their promoter actually approach the crowd to pull them into the boardgame area). And also, some eye catching banner/poster won't be a bad idea (MTG/ASUS is doing this right, when you walk past the area, you will know, oh, this is Magic the Gathering, oh, this is Asus, oh, this is something called Meeple),  more table for painting/game demo, and also, if you are going to do the achievement thingy (I personally think this is a GREAT IDEA), get more man power to oversee each achievement or assign a dedicated personel (with GW shirt, maybe?) to oversee a couple groups of participant, or maybe even setup a timetable for when can we get an achievement at where, instead of putting all this on one person to oversee everything (far as I know, there is only Salleh), so folks can get more involve in this fun activity that could open doors to a lifetime of fun hobby! As a participant, it was quite clueless where can we find someone to "certified" our achievement at first, and sometime when we want to get a certain achievement, Salleh is not available because he is engaging in oversee-ing other participant ~_~

WOW! Dang! This is the longest post for this blog!

Kor Phaeron the Word Bearer dude is attending Magacon...

This is my piece for participating Magacon Pewter Demon, was previously planning to do Huron Blackheart but can't really get the finecast at last minute, spent a few day googling cool 40k image and I found the below

(Kor Phaeron the Black Cardinal of Word Bearer)

Okkkkeeyyy, I did some poor man version of Lorgar daemon prince form previously, I just finish reading The First Heretic (though I didn't see this bloke in the book), I don't see why not to use this as a "reference" to kit bash a piece for the convention.... 

Edit (14 Jan 2012) : OMG OMG OMG, LOL, I should have read the book more throughout! Kor Phaeron is in fact in First Heretic and he is Lorgar's foster father... also, this bugger is suppose to be in a terminator armor... wahahaha, big mistake on the conversion below

Next thing I know I was kit-bashing using my left over CSM bits and also the Terminator Lord that I ignore for quite a while... was previously intending to use the terminator shoulder guard to imitate the scale on the image, but figure that I don't want to be accuse of mounting a terminator on a 28mm base, so I stick to normal marine shoulder guard.... ke ke ke ke (the terminator lord's leg even pose the same with the picture... was so tempting to use it...)

Wish me luck, I need a lot of it, as usual, things don't look as bad until you magnify it digitally, damn, there is so many flaw I could spot on hi-res digital photo..LOL

Crack out my poor man version of "Ikea" lamp (brought from Jusco=p) but the photo quality still sucks, I guess the problem is on either my painting skill, my lousy digital camera or... both.

Mr Kor Phaeron in his full glory =D

I've thrown in all I learn over my one year hobby period, OSL, green stuff-ing, washing, highlight, color blending, and a tiny bit of NMM(well.. first time experimenting), so I would consider this piece as my "year end review" as well.. heh.

Sculpting flame (or fire...) on 40k miniature using green stuff

Was kit-bashing my entry for Magacon earlier and realize that I need something to be aflame to achieve a certain effect that I'm lookin for...

After a few painful attempt, finally I get a hang on how to sculpt fire, it's not perfect at the moment, but I think this will do...

While I at it, I figure I could take a few photo and do a simple tutorial of some sort for folks who want to take a glimpse on how it was be done... it was actually easier than I thought, and I guess I'm not the sharpest hobby knife in the drawer, so everyone should be able to do it with some patient and trial and error =)

Without further ado:

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Sculpting Fire on 40k miniature using green stuff step-by-step (sort of, kind of...)

What do you need :
1.) Green stuff
2.) A big glass of water
3.) Your always faithful hobby knife
4.) Your fingers =) (seriously...)

Step 1:
Roll a small ball of green stuff

Step 2:

Important: remember to always moisture your finger with water (or water based lube, or lotion), as a wise man once said : The Green Stuff stick to dry surface.. using this attribute, you can make it stick to the place that you want it to be (and not going off with your tool/fingers while you are sculpting/shaping them...)

Step 3:

Press the green stuff into cone shape (err... flamer template shape..), actually you can go pretty crazy and go for any shape you like, but I find that this shape works for me... and make sure you press it thin enough (but not paper thin...)

Step 4:

Curl the side edge a little (you can also try to "roll" it gently), you might take a few attempt to get this right at first, but once you get used of it, it's a no-brainer =)

Step 5:

Now, gently "wipe" it on the minis where you want it to be...

Step 6:

Moisture your hobby knife, you will need it to "pull" the flame in right shape

Step 7:

Gently "push" the side curl of flame into a bent shape, make sure you don't over did it, also, if the "tip" of your flame is not shape enough, you can try and use you finger with hobby knife to "sharpen" it, the outcome should be (could be) something like below:

Step 8:

Repeat the steps above, and if you screw up a few flame, no big deal, just scrap it off with hobby knife and try it again, just be patient =) I post one more set of "flame rolling" below for your reference =)

Last step :

The final outcome after a few roll -> place -> push -> pull

Ooookey... this doesn't looks too awesome, the "rock" (cork) above is actually blocking my movement when shaping (sculpting..?) the flame and it is the best I could do for the moment (while multitasking on taking picture for this tut...), But I've got better luck on the other two earlier piece when there is nothing blocking me ;-p You could refer below:

** You could also purposely keep your tool dry when every flame is set in place, so when you try to pull/push the green stuff to the right shape, some small pieces will stick on the tool and make it easier to do your bidding, plus, you are able to cut/chip a small portion off to produce a more natural/random/jagged lookin flame

** If you are workin on something smiliar as my icon thingy (the one above backpack), you could always stick a few piece of flame under the portion that you need it to "stand", to support it so it won't collapse.

A few personal tips while working with green stuff :

Don't worry about the green stuff getting dry, from my experience, it took about 3-4 hours to be cure (harden), could last longer if you keep them wet... if you are still worry about it, just make sure you keep em wet occasionally. And oh, remember, you don't need to mix a huge portion for small scale sculpting/modelling such as this, I cut off around 5mm piece and it still have quite alot left after I done with the base. 

Have fun, folks =)

[WIP] Captain Titus Diorama (Pt3) (a.k.a"You think this is bad? wait till you see it on pixel screen")

Allow me to reiterate some interesting sig that I saw on a 40k related forum...
"You think this is bad? wait till you see it on pixel screen"

Progress this week:

Touched up and finished the weapon of this prototype boy...

A little hobby tips on painting the checker pattern (the square box on the boyz shoulder pad..), if you try to paint the box with Skull White directly, it will be pretty hard to look nice and even, but if you do a box with a shade of Fortress Grey first then touch it up with skull with, it will goes on smoothly... try this if you are having problem painting the white evenly =)

You can apply the trick above on Gold too, paint a shade of brownish color (eg: Snakebit) then the thinned down gold will easily paint and visible on the surface =D 

WAAAAGGGHHHH! (also done some rusty effect on the weapon of the boyz), any suggestion on what color would be nice on Ork hair? Was intended to go for red, but realized that there is too much red on the boyz already, so I just go for Khaki and heavy wash it with Devlan.

This will be the boy that "face" the audience on the diorama, so I did some bling on it's feature... the weapons is still WIP.

  

 

 

And finished captain Titus, was so afraid to screw up his blue power armor, I repaint it quite alot of time using the game cover as reference... can't really paint it to be 100% the same with the cover but I'm quite pleased with the current outcome... the armor end up to have (just a weeeee bit) of NMM feel on it.. The picture don't quite really capture the feel...

Now, now... 2 more boyz and the whole background base of diorama to go.. might took another week or two... 

Might also pause it to spit out something for Magacon Pewter Demon entry... any suggestion on any 28mm model that look nice to take part in it?