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Let's get meta!! "Now where were we...let's see. Last session you had crashed Miss Minver's jalopy in the cemetery in your attempt to stop the cult. The Professor's apotropaic rituals and Xiufang's first-aid skills kept you alive while Sirhan's Vickers gun and Lady Rutherford's etheric disruptor devastated the cultists--but not before the high priest's chanting reached a crescendo! An awful rift forms in the fabric of reality, swirling with colors beyond human description--and from it, with a horrible squelching sound and a smell like an electrical fire in an aquarium, a forest of loathsome ichor-slicked tendrils protrude, flailing hungrily towards you! Roll for Sanity!" 50231 is brilliant, containing three flavors of tabletop geek. These are wonderful sculpts, from the dice bag on the trim GM to the soda in the large gamer's meaty hand to the young lady's minifig case. I feel like I know these people already. More pics: A furnished basement, much like many others. Shelves of books and trinkets on the wall, a table with a map and several figurines atop it. BUT! this basement is about to become an escape to other, weirder, more adventurous realities! You know the Nerd from 50091 will be here, maybe the Chick too. Not-Velma most definitely would roll some polyhedral dice. When the gang's all present, we can begin! Perhaps on an alternate week, another game: "The scent of mildew and rock dust is heavy in the air, and the sound of dripping water echoes from somewhere nearby. You would guess Saraneth's sorcerous witch-light, glinting off crystals the size of tree trunks, is the first illumination these caverns have seen since they were formed in the primeval chaos. --Liliander, your elven senses pick up faint movement from beyond this cluster of stalactites--a dark-dwarf ambuscade! Between Red Serris's sword and Ulma's bombs, this shouldn't be much trouble. ...But wait! Vistaril, as the reverberations of your thunderwave subside, they are answered by another...deeper...rumble--coming from below! Everyone make a Dexterity save!" Click for more forays into other genres! Let's take a bow, nerd to fellow nerd.

Some of y'all may remember going to school in the 80's in your brand new corduroy pants.

The last of my July paint binge is Sophie.

I am going to be gluing this guy to a clear round base; the shoes will be painted last after I dislodge him from the tiny bit of metal used to hold him. I don't do much basing so I avoid this type until I find a perfect figure for my needs like this. This fellow will be a gift for the nerd who has been repairing my computer. Thinking blue hair, green skin, red shirt, gray coat, jeans. The eye turned out okay. Face is alright so far. Just started the sweater, but then I started hacking up a lung and stopped. It is tough painting right now as I sporadically am having hideous coughing fits. Both that and hot toddy remedies are bad for painting :( Anyway, current WIP. My rainbow fairy should get some updates tomorrow.

[WARNING: I am a horrible photographer.] So, as some of you may have saw, I spent yesterday at Amazing Hawai'i Comic Con. Here's how the day went: Woke up, made coffee, had some waffles with coconut syrup. Then I went and got gas, and headed to the mall to park. I got there at about 9AM, so there was a lot of parking. (I wasn't sure how much parking was going to cost at the Convention Center, so I played it safe, parked for free and walked the half-mile to the Con.) Got to the Convention Center, got my wristband, and stood in line until the doors opened at 10AM. Went inside and wandered the Dealers' Hall and Artists' Alley until the first panel I wanted to attend at 11AM, on the Main Stage: Saturday Morning Cartoons! The panelists were: Alana Jordan (@AlanaJordan) Emma Fyffe (@EmmaFyffe) Uncanny Megan (@UncannyMegan) And they talked about cartoons. Mostly cartoons from my era: The original TMNT, the original Transformers (but that one kinda strayed into newer stuff) and Jem (no, not the new craptastic live-action movie). Fun times. Then it was off to my second panel in Panel Room 2: Super Anime Smackdown. The premise of this panel was the panelists (Emma Fyffe and Xander Jeanneret (@Xanderrific)) pull two volunteers from the audience and each of them chooses an anime character. They then have to describe the anime character, the anime the character is from, and why they're better than the other character. This one was fun. The only one that sticks out in my mind was Goku vs. some hamster princess, whose name (and anime) I can't remember. Goku lost. After listening to the arguments in favor of each one, I wasn't surprised. In the second photo, that's Uncanny Megan hiding in the corner. Supergirl FTW.

Now, while looking through various miniature manufacturers for strange and interesting minis that caught my fancy, I ran across "Crocodile Games" which made a series of miniatures for their own Egyptian mythos themed game. Going though their line up I noticed one or two strange minis in their "Sebeki" line of heros. These croc dudes are also the same dudes that is in their logo, and thus their mascot. In which I ran across the "Crocogamer", a special edition mini. Being a bit of a pudgy nerd myself, I couldn't help but buy this guy and basically paint him up as a caricature of myself of sorts, a fun prod at my geekyness. Not to mention he looks like he just got back from a con, so I kind of wanted this as my consolation prize for not making Reaper Con. He didn't have an integrated base so this was one of the first bases I've made, mostly using Milliput and one of the Reaper bases I got from the Bones II kickstarter. And thankfully it doesn't look entirely out of place. I worked hard on him, and I'm proud, I even added a tiny bit of glue to the cup to make it liquidy. Anyway, I worked hard on him and am waiting for a non rainy day to give him a nice dull coat to protect that hard worked over paint. Tell me what you think, don't be shy, I know I've got a long way to go :D

Time was, once upon a time, I pretty much knew it all as far as geek lore. There was a lot LESS geek lore, back then. I knew how to play Dungeons and Dragons, and can still rattle off most of the spells, durations, and components of first edition wizard spells. Meanwhile, my parents still call it "Dragons and Dungeons." I used to amuse my classmates by, when being given a rough synopsis of a Star Trek or Twilight Zone episode, being able to list the title and season of the episode, and often the guest stars. Later, when Star Wars came out, I was able to list trivia, chapter and verse. I LIKED this stuff. And if you're going to sit and watch The Big Bang Theory with me, watch out; I can identify many of the background props, and point out consistencies and inconsistencies in what they're doing (the Dungeons and Dragons episode, they were playing Fourth Edition, and not very well, and in the episode where they were playing Talisman, the board was set out with no regard to the rules; the Toad marker was on the Crown of Command space, an event impossible in the actual game. And more than once, I've noted the comics and stuff in Stuart's comic shop, and wondered if anyone else has noticed that his stock is all over the place as far as "when it came out," he has no "New Releases" shelf, and with very few exceptions, everything in the shop is either from DC Comics or Time-Warner, the conglomerate which indirectly owns The Big Bang Theory. But times have changed. I can still rattle off everything I knew... but there's a lot more to know, now, and for all the time I spend on the internet, stuff doesn't soak in by osmosis like it used to. I actually had to have someone tell me about this "Numenera" thing Monte Cook came up with. I have no idea how many Kickstarters there are, now, relevant to my interests. I rely on my daughter to keep me filled in on things I don't actually pay attention to, like Adventure Time, anime in general, and the Teen Titans cartoon (for all that I was the one who turned her on to anime, decades ago). Good lord, there are grownups watching My Little Pony these days? For that matter, there's a new My Little Pony show these days? I thought that died forever back in the early nineties... and now there's more miniatures companies than just Grenadier and Ral Partha; nowadays, there are literally more miniatures companies than I can keep track of. And a great many of then don't suck! Nowadays, I need people like Rhonda Bender and the Reaper artists to tell me things, like, "Reaper doesn't make the Matt Smith Doctor in a fez, but there's this one British company that does, and they also make Postapocalypse Elvis..." ...and today, in a discussion about Batman, I had to go on Wikipedia to find out who's wearing the Robin suit now. There had been several Robins of which I was not aware. And part of me mourns that I am not the Alpha Geek I once was. And part of me is kind of happy that I'm sort of normal, in that I have no idea who's Robin these days. Anyone else ever have this problem?

This guy was sitting unfinished for a long time; you may or may not remember the WIP thread where I was looking for T-shirt suggestions. So I thought I'd finish him up, and knocked out what was left today. As you can see, I went with a Deadpool T-shirt. Why Deadpool? Well, if you have to ask then I can't help you, sorry. I also made a half-posteriored attempt at freehand on the drink bottle, but it ended up as squiggle writing. It was kind of interesting to come back to a figure that I hadn't touched in months, since I've been painting a lot more in the meantime. I noticed a lot of little things that could have been done better, and made adjustments as best I could to try and improve the figure.