Hobby Weekender 16/11/2018 – Back before you can miss it!

[dawfyddParticipant 11937xp 0]

@limburger I have two pieces of PC hardware that still work after decades of use – my Microsoft Sidewinder Pro joystick (came bundled with I-War and the first VHS tape for Babylon 5  Season 3!) and my Soundblaster speakers and bass unit. These things were made to last 😉

Thanks @rayzryr , I might not be too hot on real-world skills but I can ramble for an age about various fictional properties 😀

My only thought about the Witch Elves is that the one with the paler skin could perhaps benefit from a wash/glaze on either the skin or hair as they do blend together somewhat (that might just be the pictures though).

[rayzryrParticipant 22410xp 0]

@horati0nosebl0wer and @dawfydd thanks for the feedback. I’ll go a little bit brighter on the stone work. Not too much, it should be “Dungeon-esqu” but hopefully it’ll differentiate it from the feet a bit more… make them… stand out. Sorry.

The hair/ skin: do you think if I went a little darker on the hair? I’m loath to try to change anything on the skin at this point. But if I made the shadow in the hair darker that would seperate it from the skin?

 

@horati0nosebl0wer I’m the same as you with Monday’s ? it’s my “Sunday” and has been for the last few years.

I have a couple of McFarlane toys, but I stopped at two. One of Spawn seated on a throne of garbage. One of Rob Zombie. Both packed away in the garage until I have my own place.

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Goblins complte

 

View post on imgur.com

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@rayzryr I have one or two also. One is Spawn with Wings standing very sentry-like. Wish I collected more of them back in the day, like the Conan ones.

 

And thats all the feedback I have for page 5 haha. Ill go back through the others. Eyes hurt a little.

 

[woldenspoonsParticipant 3557xp 0]

I had a few wave one that I bought as ‘an investment’. Obviously ended up opening them and no idea where they are now. (I have moved house four times since I got them,).

I think I had Violator, Overtkill and clown. Looking at them now they are terrible figures.

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@rayryr Thanks for posting those commercials for classic games! As for the noodle snorting, eh, dunno what to think there.

@voidifremoved Welcome (back?) to the thread!

@arkmechanicus Welcome back dude! 🙂

@dawfydd loving the amount of 40k you pump out on these threads! 🙂

Please explain the Third Party Transformers. How are they allowed to do it, what do they do, where are they from, are they good, are they worth it? Fill me in!

Damn those are cool Trnasformers. Are they yours or pics from blogs? I see Dinoboats, a few others, and an Overlord is it?

Do you have a link to the new official ones?

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@evilstu Kind of! Played some Arcworlde and D&D. Hoping to get in some other games of stuff too!

Cool arrivals. Love the foot soldiers, are those shields transfers or freehand?

@arkmechanicus Damn those are some awesome Fyreslayers, they really pop. I love your painting

@rayzryr Such a cool Megatron gun!

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Not much to say on page 4, so here is this!

 

[dawfyddParticipant 11937xp 1]

@rayzryr i’d be tempted to try something like a Carroburg Crimson wash on the hair, possibly just around the roots, but go with what you are happy with. they do look awesome as is 🙂

I think I have some MccFarlane toys figures around here somewhere. I know I have a few that were brought at university when they were cheap from the Spawn range, and I’ve their take on Hicks from Aliens here I’m sure….

@mage Third Party Transformers is a funny area. Hold on ‘cos this is a deep dive:

Knock-offs have been a thing since the Generation 1 era (hells, I had a couple myself brought at markets back when we lived in Hong Kong), and have become increasingly sophisticated to the point that some collectors wait for a figures KO as several companies take pains to improve on the original release, either through paint, articulation accessories, die-cast parts or some combination thereof. Completely illegal of course but the manufacturers are all based in countries where copyright is more a suggestion than a legality. Which leads us to the Third  Party market. The initial instances that I became aware of were folks who were making conversion and add-on kits for existing figure – my profile pic is my Generations Kup figure with one of the heads from the I-Gear upgrade set for the figure to give him a more comic-book accurate head sculpt (cy-gar included). Think how there is a burgeoning market for third-party 40k parts. eventually several companies started to look at designing their own figures for parts of the franchise that Hasbro would most likely not touch, a great example being the Hearts of Steel mini-series that had steampunk takes on the classic cast. Or filling out the Fall of Cybertron designs. Others decided they wanted figures that more closely resembled the designs from IDW’s ongoing comic book series (CHUG style), or decided to fill gaps in the masterpiece range. Still others decided they would focus on producing figures in the smaller “Legends” scale. Prior to Combiner Wars this also meant many, many combiners, in various scales.

Now there is a cost to this. Due to the vastly smaller production runs most third party Transformers figures & kits cost a marked amount more than an official Hasbro product, but in turn they are typically engineered for the older collector. For example – that Overlord I posted a picture of is one of the single largest figures I own, outside of the titan-class figures, and cost me £150. But the engineering is frankly superb, and the company behind it -Mastermind Creations (MMC) –  have filled a lot of holes in my collection through their ReFormatted line. Their take on Impactor (Spartan) is a figure I waited 25 years for, and their Predaking (Feral Rex) is a beast (even if each component was £70 a pop). Equally my shelves have 3 members of the Decepticon Justice Division, a version of Death’s Head and several other characters that I highly doubt will  ever see official figures. I have several Perfect Effect kits for my Combiners that provide vastly improved feet and hands, Planet-X’s FoC Dynobots are the version of the team I’ve always wanted, and several other figures picked up when funds allow because they looked cool and filled holes in the collection. Now, are these legal? Surprisingly Hasbro have appeared to take a rather prosaic approach to the scene, and quite often use interest in a TP product to gauge interest in an official version. This is most apparent in the Masterpiece line where official releases have reduced  the value of an existing third party figure massively.

Now are they worth it? it’s down to you as the purchaser. They are not normally cheap, but I’ve rarely been dissapointed. And in fact a good upgrade kit has encouraged my to buy a Hasbro/Takara figure I’d have skipped otherwise. Toyhax’s reprolabels  have done something similar. I would recommend checking out some Youtube reviews – Bens Collectibles, EmGo, Thews Awesome Review and Bobby  Skullface to name a few, all offer honest opinions, and a number of the companies maintain extensive Facebook pages where you can see how a product develops.

And to go about purchasing said loot? in the UK I use Kapow Toys primarily as they have a good spread of ranges at reasonable prices. Outside the UK TF Source has a frankly staggering range and Big Bad Toy Store is just a monolith. You do end up paying shipping and import fees that balance out any pricing deals they might have. Otherwise Sir Toys is a fantastic source for KO’s and official figures (and have some neat display items for helping with photography….)

[dawfyddParticipant 11937xp 0]

Oh,  and here’s a link to Kapows selection of the War for Cybertron: Siege range 😉
https://www.kapowtoys.co.uk/transformers-types/war-for-cybertron-siege.html?fbclid=IwAR0ardmBGMVx3kbkuoQ6Yeh1t_XqMLYNemRmOX3ioxgZpNyoRaAI7pc6IKQ

[evilstu 15298xp 0]

@rayzryr apologies, missed your covers when typing out my reply. And yeah, that pic 🙂 dark elves are coming along nicely. Personal preference is for the darker shaded skin tone. I went through a similar thought process re choosing dark elf skin a while ago before just giving up and shelving the project. I’m probably leaning more towards an elder scrolls type skintone on them although if I was going to go for D&D canon Drow surely they would be albinos from living underground for so long? dark skin to help them blend into the rock. Lulz, darkvision is black and white so it wouldn’t matter…. OK will stop with the geek rant 🙂 60 Silver Florins for hobby progress, tunes and repsonses.

@sundancer sounds like a terribly busy weekend – rest up and recuperate good Sir, we shall handle the hobby from here 😉 10 Silver Florins and best wishes for some restul time to recharge your energy levels.

@dawfydd Yep on the mass shifting topic I’m happy to go with ‘because reasons’ and not dive down that particular rabbit hole 🙂 Agreed, some of the G1 designs were fairly ordinary, but there has been a good 30+ years of experience to build upon. Hrm you are right that Siege line bot version of Soundwave is the business. The transformed mode sort of looks like a cross between Super dimensional Fortress Macross and the garbage truck from Ghost in the Shell? you lived in HK? Cool 🙂 60 Silver Florins for detailed responses.

@woldenspoons I think Ravage and Lazerbaek now have to be downloaded – you can either pay a monthly subscription to a streaming service or download each one as a high quality MP3 for a one off premium cost. OK, I’ll show myself out now 😛 20 Silver Florins.

@mage congrats on the goblins! Table? What do you have in mind?… Transfers on the shields – old Bretonnian infantry ones so they work with the theme and colour scheme. 60 Silver Florins for hobby progress, tune and detailed responses.

@horati0nosebl0wer think I have some of the Spawn toys stashed somewhere – a local gaming store had a few of them heavily discounted one day…  Heh, still really enjoy the first Blade movie and still love that track 🙂 40 Silver Florins for detailed responses and tune.

@limburger ah yes I remember soundcards! Wow, I sort of forget what used to go into a PC… Sort of works out well having the KS’s spread out a little as you will get to properly unpack and review each one before the next one arrives. 20 Silver Florins.

[sundancer 43003xp 0]

Still got one more for the road

[rayzryrParticipant 22410xp 1]

A couple of little tweaks to the Elves: I gave the stone on the base a final light highlight of AP Skeleton Bone. I put a thin glaze/wash of GW Baal Red over the hair of the pale elf.

@mage lotsa gobbo’s!

I recall one of the later issues of Spawn had a cover just like you describe. I’ve got it there, in the garage I’m sure.

ah Noodle Dood is just trying to get faster than instant noodles ?

yeah pretty cool Megatron gun, though just a pic I found online. I kind of wish I had one one, kind of glad I don’t. Those old transformers always became loose through the joints. Where they used to stand up fine on their own, after a decade they would just collapse unless propped up. Disappointing.

Good old Weezer ?

@dawfydd all that info about TP Transformers is cool! I might have to look into it when I’m settled… but if I start, would I stop???

 

@evilstu oh damn, Elder Scrolls Elves… another source to consider…

i was trying to go for a Grey skin tone with the other, 3rd Witch Elf. I wasn’t really happy with it, so put the mini aside. I’ll probably knock it down to a dark skin colour.

Drow spend all their time in the dark, clearly they have absorbed it ? Meanwhile GW Dark Elves are palid alabaster things. And your damn Elder Scrolls Dark Elves are anywhere between green-Grey—blue with red eyes!!! ?

My take on Elves will be: their skin colour isn’t tied to their allegiance/ belief. If they follow the Dark Path, they’re Dark Elves. If they choose to live in the forest they’re Wood or Wild Elves depending on how feral they go. Each of the various paths make up factions within the Courts: Seelie /Unseelie. To Elves there is no “right or wrong” path, just paths to dedicate oneself to. Balance should be maintained.

hmm, started a bit of a geek rant myself ?

@sundancer are you ok? I think he blacked out…

[sundancer 43003xp 1]

@rayzryr I’m allright but it seems tranfering links from peertube don’t go as easy as youtube.

Maybe THIS will work.

[woldenspoonsParticipant 3557xp 1]

@rayzryr That sounds more like the Aelves from Age of Sigmar.

[querionParticipant 2196xp 2]

Time to give you guys a little update. The last few days i only managed to paint around an hour a day and that was used to continue on with my Namarti reavers. I brought all of them to the same point the test mini was at and put some color on the armor, still not what i really imagined, but better than what i had before:

 

Concerning LEGO, i really miss some of the old Space and Knights stuff … but after i bought my best friend a set of Lego Minecraft for her birthday i’m really tempted by those, there are some very nice and small sets in that range … well and it helps that i like to play the computer game too.

 

@mage yeah i really like female lead singers, at least in some music styles.

@rayzryr those food delivery companies help in larger towns or cities, but if you live further outside of those it’s still hard to get some decent variety of food delivered. For me it’s still just pizza (love it, but i have an awesome italien restaurant just around the corner) and döner (don’t really like those).

@dawfyyd those wolves look great!

@voidifremoved oooh i love a good chicken liver. But i make those far to rarely… something to put on my next shoping list!

@arkmechanicus those fyreslayers look amazing! and i really like that you didn’t go for the usual red hair for them.

 

dang i wanted to comment a bit more, but a look at the clock told me it’s time to get working on todays dinner. See you all later or tomorrow!

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