Fanboy at STGCC 2009

Well, it's the Singapore Toy Games and Comic Convention this weekend and I had a chance to check out some of the artists. The thing I liked about this year's Con is that there seems to be more things to see in the artist's alley. Where I met and got a signed The Secret Robot Spy Factory book from Sonny Liew.And a couple of comics and a book from Camilla d'Errico
Inspiring!

Optimus Prime Repaint

Here's a quick repaint of a mini-optimus prime figure that came on top of my softdrink cup from the movies. It also gives me a chance to shout out how much I disliked the movie. Grrr...'nuf said!
Click on this link to see how the original figure looked like.

mech popper w.i.p

You can't buy gum in Singapore but you can chew it and the guy with the gum in the office is most popular. It so happens my friend's gum comes in a ball type packaging. I procured one for my kitbashing projects and here are the work in progress photos.The bits and pieces are stuck in with super glue. The current stage of painting is less than satisfactory. I envisioned a brushed metal finish but the sprayed on silver paint came out too grainy. I'm letting it dry for now and will attempt to salvage it with drybrushed layer of buffable metallic paint. Stay tuned!
P.S. I'm not entirely sure what this thing is. I initially imagined this to be some kind of futuristic grenade, but now I'm wondering if it could possibly represent some sort of mine as a companion piece for my trex-mech project.

Book Binge 1a

Apparently the book binge wasn't over just yet. I ordered this about a month ago and it came in about a week after the first book binge. 2 back issues of minitracks, a small scale modeling specialist magazine from France. Just had to check Patrick Lapalu's articles on making 72nd scale figs and it's a good thing it's bilingual. I ordered them online from Tracks and Troops. Lovely magazine but the cost of shipping from Europe to Singapore is about the price of 1 copy of the mag. Bummer but highly recommended. This lot cost me around S$62.
And the binge goes on. This military reference trio came from a local bookstore. Not where I'd normally find this kind of stuff but what the hey. The machine gun book outlines the invention and development of automatic guns from the 1800's to today. Ties in nicely with my braille scale WW1 Maxim MG 2 posts down. The Mechanized Warfare book is huge. Around A3 size, but cost only S$30 before discount. This one has nice big photos of tanks in action from WW1 to present day. The only downer was the use of modern day photos of WW2 re-enactors without mentioning this in the captions. There was a photo of a Tiger and Stug "in action" and the stug was a modern recreation based on a modern tank chassis, same with the tiger. This can be quite misleading and there should have been a mention of this in the captions.
This lot set me back by S$50.

Book Binge

The Great Singapore Sale is here! And coinciding but not related to it, I went on an almost uncontrollable book binge this weekend. Resulting in my wallet being S$204.14 lighter. The culprits from left to right are:
Military Modeling Manual 19 - some really cool vignettes are feature in it.
Mak Profiles 1 Falke - one of the poorest price/value purchase I made. Still if you bought the new hasegawa falke model kit and can read japanese, then this book is highly recommended.
AFV Modeler Tamiya Anniversary Special - a nice compilation of built Tamiya models and a great selection of interviews from well known modelers. Including our very own Dinesh Ned.
Shimada Humikane Art Works - features girls (cyborgs?) that have parts of military aircraft and vehicles fused to their body. I think this is from a computer game. More on this later.
Exodessey - a great selection of concept art from Steambot Studios. Totally inspiring art works ranging from landscapes to characters and vehicles. I'm well pleased with this piece.

Minimized Maxim MG 08

It's a scratchbuilt 1:72 scale Maxim MG08. Used by Germany during WW1. Built from bits and pieces of plastic sheet, plastic rod and metal foil.
The machine gun itself is about 2 cm long.
When finished, it will be part of a ww1 diorama where a FT-17 is attacking a German trench.
The whole thing is built up from 3 main components. It is still missing the muzzle, handles and a mechanical bit on the gun mount. I'll also probably need to build an ammo box, ammo belt and the water can that cools the barrel. Stay tuned.

DIY laptop

Well, not really. It's actually my home made backdrop holder for taking photos of my projects. The photos from the last mazinger Z stikfas post made it painfully obvious to me that I need a nicer background to have better photos.
The list of materials used:
2 x cheap balsa wood framed cork boards
2 x metal hinges
4 x self tapping metal screws
2 x packaging string
3 x paper clips (made from sheet aluminum)
double sided tape
Various colored papers for use as the backdrops.
Process:
The hinges were aligned with masking tape and then screwed onto the back of the boards. A couple of screws were then attached to both sides where the strings were looped over. I made sure the angle of the boards was more than 90 degrees when opened to prevent it from closing on itself while I'm photographing.
Aluminum sheet was cut into small squares, corners were rounded, the edges were sanded and then folded over to form clips that would hold the paper backdrop. These were attached via double sided tape. 2 at the bottom and 1 at the top. Locations were based on the size of my paper backdrops.
The sheets of paper I got were quite small but were big enough for small projects. Eventually I'll need to get larger sheets and I might need to adjust the clips position or add new clips.
We'll see the backdrop in action for my next posts.