What's in a name?

This isn't really much of a post, more of an observation.

As my last post stated I am thinking about starting a business. The naming of the business raised it's head and was causing me a little mental effort. Coming up with a net friendly name is looking more and more like a googlewhack (which is not a hobby despite having a book and a TV series devoted to it). Words such as game and hobby sprung to mind. I wanted to use hobby so I went to look for a synonym. I looked on wikipedia and there was a list of hobbies.

Wargaming, toy soldiers, RPGs, and modelling weren't on wiki's list.Not all that surprising I guess? Well when I looked on the list I was surprised at what was. Herping (which sounds stranger than it is) gets a reference. Cubing is listed as a hobby. This is about rubics cubes and the like. I don't recall actually seeing one of these for years. Apparently gongoozoling is a more prominent hobby than wargaming. As is disc golf, flint knapping (how many of them can there be in the world?) and locksport. Gaming was in there but in the sense of computer games.

Anyone else find this strange?

I'd decided that as the Fallout game was over I would give painting a rest for a few weeks. I have a couple of games coming up involving the wild west so have been looking at some figures online. This is my current "temporary obsession". Does anyone else get this? The sudden desire to look at stuff that is out of their normal gaming comfort zone? This struck me as odd enough to want to record it so I thought I might as well start recording it at the bottom of pages as it occurs. If anyone else has a temporary obsession (gaming related obviously) please let me know.

Figures painted since last post - 0
Temporary obsession - 28mm wild west

Laser Cutting?

Laser Cutting has been on my mind for a while now. My family need a second income as I think our current second income is about to run out and I am finding the prospect of going back to work in Social Housing simply terrifying. So I am thinking of setting up a laser cut terrain and bases company.

I guess that this is not a new idea. The market is relatively busy but I think I could make a go of it. I have some skills that I can bring to bear. I guess that I have a few advantages in as much as I don't need to make a huge amount of money and I have fairly low overheads.


SOOO...Any suggestions? About products, the market or setting up a business in general?

This is what I have the money for at the moment but I might hold on to get something better. This might take a little while. Has anyone ever used one of these type of things before?

Catchup - Some More Bodies

I was working in these a while back and have a few more on the table at the moment as a background project. I posted some pictures previously but now these are more or less complete.

I wanted a slightly more civilian look for the bodies. evn with there being a fair number of duplicate poses I think I have managed to make them look pretty different not only with paint schemes but with base colours as well.

I have shown some of military and SWAT ones already so I thought I'd take the chance to post a picture. These are a mix of world war two and modern militia casualties. Lots of blood seems to be the order of the day. The blood is Tamiya x-27 clear red. I got it after being tipped off by Mathyoo on his blog "The Necroleadicon" formerly 28mm Later. He has great ideas for blog names.

Body Bags From TheScene

I've had a couple of days where I've had a cold and didn't feel like doing much so not real painting has been done. I have had a chance to get my camera out and take some catch up pictures.

I like the stuff I have from TheScene. My only complaint is that they don't do more than they do. Being a big fan of zombie films, I am always on the look out for stuff that would improve the image of a zombie game. The opening episode of the walking dead and an early scene in the original dawn of the dead featured corpses covered up. Not really body bags but close enough. It's clearly a dead easy paint job and some more terrain was done. They have already been used in the Fallout game so apparently worth buying and painting.

Catchup - Fallout Hired Hands

The Fallout game was keeping me really busy for the last few weeks even though it had more or less finished. Time has been really tight anyway. I had some figures that needed to be done which were finished on the morning of the game. Still a bit of touching up to do.

These were the hired hands. A small group to support the good guys. The ten men of the groups fought hard and took a lot of casualties. I think there may be some touching up to do yet. I never really do finish anything.They have had some spray on varnish since these pictures were taken so they have lost a lot of their shine since. Just need to be put on some proper bases now.

Fallout - The Battle Of The Vault

Well to finnish off the RPG game I've been running I decided to have a final battle to let it go out with a memorable end. Lots of figures and about five hours of gaming. I have begun to believe that one of the characters called Merle is actually Chuck Norris. He charged two of the biggest baddest robots in the game on his own and more or less took one of them out. Legendary in savage worlds is quite a thing.

The club I have been going recently is full of pretty good people. I had a couple of people jump in to help out the bad guys. Thanks to Mark and Andy.

Anyway here are a few pictures of the game. It's nice to see it some of my hard work of the last few years all laid out on a table. I had some nice feedback from the players and few hangers on. If you are reading this, thanks to you for making it all happen. You made the plot and made it work well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Swimbo is currently looking at the blog. I have run out of cute kitten videos to distract her with. This may well be my last post. It may well be the last thing I ever do Don't bother with flowers, give money to my favourite charity combat stress.I always like to give them a plug.

The Best Thirty Pounds I Have Ever Spent

Suffering withdrawal symptoms is hard work. As I wrote last week, I have lost my beloved. She was pretty, smart and had everything I ever wanted including a shiny red lid. Things have changed for the "better."

So I have finished the first batch of native Americans.I was a bit rush so the pictures are not the best I have ever taken. There are shortage of suitable figures. They are not quite Apaches or Navajo but I guess that the are close enough for my purposes. 
I still need some more riflemen which is what's next in the paint queue. Hopefully these will look a bit better when the paint dries. I am not looking forward to doing another twenty five of these but hopefully I will be able to crack on with them during the week. 

I have also all but finished ten cowboys which are going to be part of the good guys force. Some of these are really out of focus but the ink was still wet when I took the pictures so I didn't want to mess them up. The Fallout game is starting to look more and more like New Vegas. The cowboys are starting to look perfect fr a Firefly/Serenity game. I wonder if I can get that to fly?
 
Well I have a functioning lap top again.This is what she looks like after three years of dust has been removed. I've had to  buy a new power supply for my old laptop. I used to love the thing and it was a hard choice to get another one a few years ago. It's just like a regular laptop only much slower. I paid a fortune for it at the time and now I can't understand how I could cope with a lap top with 120GB of hard disk. It's a bit like getting an old friend back then remembering why you haven't seen them for a long time. I have found some pictures I thought I had lost so it was probably worth while. It's tax deductible so it can't be all bad.

Need Another Suggestive Title Here

It's been a busy morning. Swimbo has been out of the house so eberything has been nice and quiet but it is starting to get much noisier now she is back. This will be folloed by being asked to do things that I really don't want to do. So I have had to post another picture of a kitten to keep Swimbo quiet and distracted if she reads this post.

I've done a bit of work on the wild west indians. In reality they are pretty much done and I am just doing a bit of titivation (it is in the dictionary and I am hoping may improve by web traffic from illiyerate people (yes I'm English and I do understand irony)). I'll feel better when I have a computer that make doing even basic photo editing a process that does end up with me tearing out my suddenly white hair.

I have been thinking that maybe I could do someSavageWorlds Deadlands. That would give me an excuse to use the figures. Now if only I can get hold of some 15mm wild west zombies. I am open to suggestions if anyone knows where I could get some suitable figures.

As well as doing a bit of painting and eating I've done a bit of house cleaning on the page. A few blogs on my list have gone the way of all things which is sad but time that they were moved off. I've replaced them with a few others. I have been meaning to put Carmen's Fun Painty Time on for a while. This is one of my faves for the quality of the work and a nice little blog with some really nice ideas on it so I thought I would give it a shout.

Thought I would also use the time to say thanks to my best mate Ric for the paints, brushes and other bits. I've already used the paints and donated one of the brushes to Special K.

Work Bench Madness

I can't settle. I do one thing, then I do another. I want to do this I want to do that. Not to mention the real world getting in the way. After some bad news yesterday within the foster family, things seem to have moved on quickly so I figured that it was time that I got round to putting up another post.

The painting seems to be all Peter Pig at the moment. I seem to be in a Peter Pig Mood. Some of it comes from a big purchase at York and I got an order of some odds and sods from the Hey You in the Jail range which arrived this week. I'm still waiting on an order from TheScene. Not as long as I used to wait for Rebel Minis but not far off.

The background project has progressed a bit. I have over twenty dead bodies done already and put away in the box. I mean to get them out and take some pictures. I do have some more on the go pictured here. I wanted to turn the military looking figures into stuff that looked more civillian.One looks like a US policeman and another lookslike a postman, I hope.

The large number of Native American Indians are there for the Fallout game.  There are twenty five almost done and another fifteen ready to go along with some western gun fighter types.  These a going to be the "bad" guys. OPFOR might be a better term as lets face it everyone in Fallout has done some pretty didgy things,. These are going to core force for the opposition. These are figures that may get used again but I doubt it. I'll have to work on an idea to use them again.










Lastly there are some pictures of the vehicles I started working on at the begnning of the week before the Peter Pig stuff arrived. They are still a bit on the shiny side thanks to the liberal use of inks. Some matt varnish should sort this out and make them a little more durable.

On the whole I think I have had a good year of painting so far. Maybe I could have done a bit more buy I haven't had many alternatives. I have painted more than I have purchased. I have even managed to get some very old projects off the ground.  I'll have to get round to buying some more foam storage trays. I suspect I'll paint a few hundred more before the year is out not to mention vehicles.