Step One Complete

Hey folks.  Its been a busy Thanksgiving week and weekend.  My best friend Matt came to town.  He is a resident doc at a Big Deal hospital on the East Coast.  He and I met in college, and despite being one of, if not the smartest people I have ever met, he is completely down to earth and cool.   He is a giant video game nut and we spent plenty of time (when we weren't stuffing ourselves silly with too much food) on the playstation, hanging out, and just having a good time.  It was great.  I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving too if you celebrate it, or a good "lets celebrate the help that the native peoples gave starving strangers in a strange land, only to have those strangers decided to take over and kill the people who helped them" weekend, or, if you are not from the USA, a good "oh jeez, those crazy Americas are getting even fatter this weekend" weekend.

Oh shoot!  All my fellow readers from the USA are gone!

Anyway, for the 30% (now 100%!) or so of the readers from outside the USA still here...

When in doubt, read it out.

First announcement- my wife Laura, Matt and I ran to the mall at some point this weekend.  Laura picked up a present for me: Acrylic Painting for Dummies.  I'm a huge fan of the For Dummies series.  I've gone through at least a dozen of their books for IT related stuff, including Excel 2003 for dummies, Networks for Dummies, PCs for Dummies, Photoshop for Dummies, TCP/IP for Dummies, Unix for Dummies, etc.  They are great books written for beginners but have a tremendous amount of information in them and can serve as great references later on.  Each chapter is pretty well self contained, so you can skip the sections you aren't interested in reading or don't need to read without screwing yourself later on.  I would love to take some classes on acrylic painting to learn some brush techniques and just general tips about painting, but what I have found doesn't really fit into my schedule.  We have an extensive community ed program in St. Paul, MN where I live, but the classes tend to be at night, and I already go to school at night, or, since I work as a life skills worker with teen guys, tend to have my client sessions at night, and thus, those classes don't work.  Between Acrylic Painting for Dummies and the book mentioned grabbing in my last post, How to Paint Citadel Miniatures, I think I'll be able to teach myself plenty in the weeks ahead.  It makes me feel like I'm going to have the know how to pick up my figure painting game and make some progress detailing my figures.

Yeah, that was a pretty intensely dorky sentence.  Moving on to the real meat of the update.

So where am I with the current project?

Revisions with the master plan have already taken place.  I was originally planning on dremeling down the rub zones, such as the knee, shoulder and elbow joints, on the figure, and then taking it apart.  Well, I tried that but the dremel had a hard time getting the joints without rubbing on the rest of the figure.  I didn't do much damage, but I noticed that things were not going according to plan.

So an alteration is in order:

Old:

1. dremel down the the rub points in the shoulders, elbows, hips and knees. 
2. disassemble the figure, including removing the lower legs/arms from the upper legs arms through the use of a hair dryer. 

OUTDATED.  DELETE OBSOLETE INSTRUCTIONS.  OVERWRITE.

New: 

1. disassemble the figure, including removing the lower legs/arms from the upper legs arms through the use of a hair dryer.
2. dremel down the the rub points in the shoulders, elbows and knees. 

INSTRUCTIONS UPDATED.  

PLAN ALTERATION COMPLETE. 

Score one for the The Corps action figures:
They are easy to take apart.

The good news is that it is really, really easy to take apart action figures from The Corps line. A single screw in the back holds the figure together.  That screw is easily reached by a Phillips head screw driver (sorry, don't remember the size, but it isn't an exotic gauge or incredibly small or anything like that- I had the right sized screw driver in my work bench.) Once the screw is removed, the front and back torso of the action figure come apart, and the waist, arms and head are easily removed.  Besides the screw itself, there are no other methods of fastening the figure together. No body cracking with a vice like you evidently need to do with modern GI Joe figures is necessarily, which is kind of nice.  The less opportunity for screw ups, I think, the better I will do at this point.

My wife's hairdryer to the rescue!

At the same time, this level of disassembly does not make it any easier to actually dremel down the knee, elbow or shoulder joints.  More work needs to be done to separate those parts.

Thankfully, I have done enough research about taking action figures apart to know there are two good and worthwhile methods to use here: either heat a joint with a hairdryer or put the pieces in a cup of water that has been in the microwave for a minute or so.  Because it seemed the hairdryer method would be easier to use if I needed to reheat the plastic, I went with that. 

Protect your digits.  Don't put them in front
of  streams of super hot air from hairdryers. 
Instead, put  plastic held by clothespins in front
of steams  of super hot air from hairdryers.

In order to keep from burning my fingers, I used a clothespin to hold the plastic limbs.   This kept my fingers from getting fried and allowed me to hold the plastic in front of the hairdryer set on hot for about 60 seconds, which is about what it seemed to take to get the plastic warm enough to pop the various joints.  While holding each joint in front of the hair dryer, I slowly turned the limb so that the joint was heated on all sides.

Another tool that helped to pop the joints apart was my Eklind multihex key tool.  These are great little tools that can be found for about $2 or $3 at the hardware store.  I used the smallest hex key on my foldout set to pry into the spaces of the joint and push the hot, flexible plastic apart.  The smallest tool on my kit was 5/64th inch or thereabouts, and the metal on plastic gave me a lot more leverage than I could have mustered using my fingers and fingernails alone.

And this little piggy pries plastic
joints apart all the way home.

The key to this step was patience.  The plastic is pretty malleable after 60 seconds of hot air from the hairdryer, and I was worried that I could tear it with the hex key if I got too rough.  Also, the plastic becomes cool fast.  I found that I had a good 20 seconds to work with the plastic after 60 seconds of heating.  Using my fingers alone didn't seem fast enough to take the joints apart.  If I couldn't get the joints popped in 20 seconds, I applied another round of 60 seconds of hot air to the joints, and tried again.

Eventually, everything worked just fine.  I went to school on the first few joints, and applied what I learned to the rest.  Each joint in this action figure was held together by a little peg.  The pegs had big end and small end, which will be nice later on because when I reassemble the figure, there is only one way for the pegs to be put back into each joint.  I learned quickly that trying to pry the small side of the peg from the joint was a much faster way to take the joint apart than by trying the big side or trying to pry both sides at once.  In a few minutes, I had all the joints popped apart.

Woo hoo!

I gotta say, it was pretty satisfying to see Shinto-San all taken apart without any parts broken or other mistakes made at this point.  I could have tried to break the figure down even further: the pin joints of the elbows have pegs in them that attach them to the upper arm, allowing the joint to rotate in 3 dimensions, and the hips are connected to the lower torso by peg joints as well.  In both of these cases, I didn't think there was much give going on there to pop the joints, and I also didn't think these were vital areas to pop to make painting easier or dremel work look better, so I let sleeping dogs lie.

Because there were so many parts and because my wife and I have two loving, wonderful, sweet, and completely ADHD cats who will play with *anything* they can get their paws on that isn't nailed down, I have put all the pieces of the figure into little compartments to keep them secured. Each of the joint pegs are unique to the joint they fit into, so finding the correct peg for each joint should not be a deal later on, but I still separated the parts by portion of the body.  Even without cats, I didn't want to throw all of the parts into a drawer or something; they are small, and I figure the work I am putting into this project make taking a little care of accounting for all of the parts well warranted.  I would *hate* to get nearly done with all of this only to realize a forearm or knee joint was missing.

So that is where I am at the moment.  Finals are coming up, and I've got a ton of papers to research for and then write, but I hope to have at least all of the rub areas dremeled down and have an update on the project inside of a week.  Take care.

Until next time,

David D.

999 blog hits

Hey folks-

When I logged in today to start writing my next post, I saw that I have had 999 hits on my blog since I started.  To all of you who have been out there reading my blog and sending me emails or posting comments of suggestions, ideas, encouragement, and your own stories, thanks very much.  I can't tell you how much it means to have a little section of the internet that people actually find worthwhile to check out, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your support.  Gracias, amigos y amigas.

David

A new project begins

Brushwork worthy of kindergartners!

It has been a dark time for David's Workshop.  While David did enjoy building the HQ display and painting the coyote, it was clear to David that he had reached the limits of his painting skills, especially in terms painting individual action figures. Despite the fact he researched action figure painting techniques like crazy on the web, he was stuck just not quite getting it.  His figures looked like a mess, and David was frustrated.

Hope seemed lost.  Nothing seemed to be working out the way he wanted it to, and the path to improvement seemed lost.  Buying action figures to practice with was expensive- Joes were $8.00 a pop at least at the local Target and Walmart, and David didn't seem to have the hand control or the sense of what he was doing to justify painting figure after figure after figure with the same cruddy results time and time again.  David was about to throw in the towel.

Spay paint that looked horrible!

But Lo!  In his darkest hour, David walked into the store Air Traffic at the mall during a break in holiday gift purchasing.  Air Traffic is a great store based out of the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis that carries games, smart kid toys, kites, disc golf, model rockets and juggling supplies, as well as Warhammer 40K items and Games Workshop painting supplies.  Basically, it is a nerd store camouflaged as toy/game store.

David loves Air Traffic.

Even before he started work on his workshop, he would often walk in and look at the display cases of Warhammer armies with longing and wish he was skilled enough to paint as well as the people who had painted those miniatures, as well as the guts to actually buy miniatures like them and paint 'em.  David was raised by parents who were good, but not very open to their son being interested in nerdy pastimes like RPGs and minitures, so David was forced to enjoy them from afar.  Since his teenage days, he had been especially impressed with the folks who painted miniatures.  The people who did it well had crazy amazing skills.  The creativity to come up with a plan and the ability to execute on that plan, resulting in such such awesome final products made him a fan of anyone who can paint figurines well, regardless of how annoying anyone but their mother finds them or their ratio of years on this planet to the number of sexual experiences they have had with people other then themselves. These people were doing something they enjoyed, and it was something David did not have the guts to try on his own.  He feared the disapproval of his parents, and he feared sucking at it.

By the power of Grayskulll! 
I HAVE THE POWER!!!!!

But times change.  On this day at Air Traffic at the mall, (just last week), David found the book How to Paint Citadel Miniatures on the shelves next to all the other Warhammer 40K guidebooks.  It was a sign.  He picked up the book and flipped through it.  It wasn't just the full color illustrations that caught his eye-it was the step by step instructions on how to paint plastic miniatures in a bunch of different ways.  There were sections of preparation, color theory, blending, techniques to steady one's hands when painting, how to add effects like rust and wear to the painted object, dry brushing, diluting paint, washes, the list just went on and on.  The book was $30, which seemed pretty insane, but he had tried so many times and really wanted to get good at this.  So he bit the bullet and bought the book.

On top of this, his local Walmart sold a line of figures called The Corps, which were only about $1 each when you purchased in 3 packs.  The figures are not as nice as Joes, but they are inexpensive, easy to take apart, identical in size, and nearly identical in complexity of figure and accessories.  Take the guy I have over here.  His name is Kinji "Rain" Shinto and according to his packaging, he is part of the Corps Shinobi Squad specialized ninja assault team.

I am going to be fodder for David's next project!

This brings us to now, and I'll leave more summary third person past tense and switch gears to more intimate first person present tense. 

Ok, save your cracks about western stereotypes about Japan and far eastern culture. David thinks: duly noted.  Especially since Mr. Shinto-San's skin is as white as the peachiest of peachy peaches.  But this figure has potential.  He has nine points of articulation- knees, hips, elbows, shoulder (ball joints) and head.  He has three accessories- a bad ass looking pistol, a ninjaken (aka ninja sword, thank you google). and a totally inaccurate but still cool looking spinny throwing knife looking thing.  All of these items can be carried on Mr. Shinto-San's person.  The figure has a built-in sheath on his back, a holster for the gun on his right shin, and the handle for the spinny throwing knife fits into the hole in his back where the screw that holds the figure together goes.  In addition, the detail in the figure, while not great, isn't horrible.  His boots and chest armor are especially detailed.  He needs a new skin tone, and the copy paper white pants need to go, and his weapons need some paint as well, but I think this guy could be slick.  And now I'm armed with the book and I've got the courage to try a new project.

Alas, time has run short on this weekend, and I don't have time to start work on the project, take the pictures and write an update.  I haven't done an update in a while, so I thought I would take care of that, and then over the next week start work on the project.  When I have some results, I'll post it.  At the moment, here is my plan: 

1. dremel down the the rub points in the shoulders, elbows, hips and knees. 
2. disassemble the figure, including removing the lower legs/arms from the upper legs arms through the use of a hair dryer. 
3. wash all the pieces in water to get grease and whatever else is on them off.
4. spray paint the pieces while for a base coat with plastic friendly spray paint.
5. pick a color theme.  I am thinking either black/green/yellow or silver/blue/black, plus a more asian skin tone. 
6. engage that theme with the painting skills I pick up from the book!
7. go slow.
8. have fun.
repeat 6-8 over and over.
9. profit!

We'll see how it all goes.


Until next time,

David D.

Dusty Presents: the Bravo Team M3A2 Bradley

Hey kids!  My name is Dusty.  Since David has been busy
as hell, I decided I would write up a blog update for him.

It is pretty sad that David can't do his own updates,
but honestly, I don't think he's up to it.  He has been over
there at the computer writing page after page for his classes,
and crying like a baby all the while.  Something about lit
reviews and analyzing test results.  Since when is that hard?

Frankly, I'm a little worried about him.  I may not be the one in
school to become a doctor of psychology, but based on his late nights.
the piles of books and journal on his desk that he just doesn't stop reading
and all the open weeping, I think there may be some self-hatred going on
there that he needs to address.

But enough about cry baby pants.  Today I want to talk to you about
my new ride, the Bravo Team US M3A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle. 
Its 1:18th scale and ready to rock.

And Meesa friend Dusta said I could help!

::sigh:: yeah, I did say Jar Jar could help.  In any case, this thing
is THE SHIT.  It isn't part of the GI Joe line.  It part of the  Bravo Team brand,
made by Unimax and sold in the US, exclusively, as far as I can tell, at Target. 
Don't try looking for it at KMart, Walmart, or TRU.  You won't find it there.

Now different minds can disagree, but there is a lot of toy here.
Unlike most GI Joe toys, however, this thing comes completely
built out of the box.  No pieces to put on or parts to assemble.
Don't slip, Jar Jar.

But this thing is solid as a rock. There is some high grade, sturdy
plastic going on here that is far nicer than the stuff you see in
the current crop of action figure vehicles out of Hasbro or Mattel, let
me tell you.  If this thing fall out of your hands, nothing is breaking
or coming apart. Its going to stay together no problem.

Far more so than the Sky Sweeper.

Also, there are no decals or stickers of any kind going on here. 
All the labels and graphics are painted on at the factory.  If you
have some left over 'Joe stickers, you would easily add them.
There are plenty of flat spaces where they could be applied.

And the painting applications are great.  So it looks great, right?
But what about those all important action action features???

First of all, the turret turns...

a...

full...

360!  Stop playing under the APC, Jar Jar

Jar Jar: Messa stuck! 

The gun tracks vertically as well.  Down...

...and up.  See, I'm a gentleman, and I will not be making
and crude jokes about the Bradley being happy to see
David's Natalie Portman poster collection, which
is posted up behind the photographer.

Two of the hatches open and close, and can each fit
a single standard sized 1:18th action figure.

However, this hatch is just for show and does
now actually open.  Hey modders, you have
your objective.  Finish this bad boy!

Finally, we have an opening back access way and room for
4 regular sized 1:18th scale action figures, although the ceiling
is pretty low, so it makes kind of a cramped fit.

I think Jar Jar can attest to the fact that the Bravo Team M3A2
Bradley fighting vehicle also has real rubber treads and 6 working
wheels on each side.  When this thing rolls out, it moves right.

All in all, I think this is a really nice item.  I need to go take
Jar Jar to the Hoth Medical Bay playset to fix his broken
bones and crushed internal organs.  But I'll see you around!

Well, I'm lucky Dusty had the time to update the blog.  It's been too long.  I am grad that I am finished with last week.  Six papers to turn in between Monday and Friday, and that meant over 70 pages of writing.  And all of it was stuff the required work before hand- article critiques, assessments to give and then write up, a preliminary doctoral project proposal... so glad it is behind me.  On the bright side of things, it was my wife's birthday on Friday, and we had a great party here at the house on Saturday.  My wife's cousin, Abe, was one of our guests and he is a professional graphic designer and artist.  He's a fan of the Warhammer: 40k game, and has a really impressive Chaos Warriors army.  He came down to the Man Lair where I keep my stuff and saw my little workshop, and said he would help me with the clipper.  So that's cool as hell.  To be scheduled, but its nice to have someone who knows what he's doing offering to help me out on that one.

I'm also a very lucky guy to have such a wonderful wife, Laura, who has been there for me these last 6 years.  Laura pointed out a few weeks ago that we've not been together for 10 years. That's a long time.  She is the light of my life and every day I still feel, in the words of Shakespeare, nothing can be ill if she be well. I hope all of you have or find someone who is as good to you as she is to me, and who you can be good back to in return.  In any case, I should get back to work.  I hope you have all been well.  I'll be back in less than a week with a new update.  

Until next time,

David D.

Sorry- No real update this week.

Hey folks- sorry, there won't be a real update this week.  I am over my head in work for school.  It seems like all my classes have papers, reviews, assessments, tests or exams coming up.  I have been studying and working until midnight or 1 AM for the last few days just to try to keep up with everything.  I wanted to have time to work on the clipper, but it isn't happened before next Monday at the soonest, unless a prof decides to cut us all a break, which I don't think is going to happen.

But get this.  I was planning on taking a picture of my workshop desk (which is next to my computer and the is place where I have been piling up all my text books and notebooks and packets and whatnot), because its a pretty impressive collection of accumulation of academic amassment; despite the unplanned way I have been picking things up and putting them down, there is also a chaotic beauty in the pile.  BUT I pick up my digital camera, and what does the screen say? "please recharge battery" and ker-putt! the camera turns itself off.  Camera fail on top of blog writing fail.

But hopefully these fails are the price I will pay for not only NOT failing my classes, but actually doing ok in them.  I can only hope.  But I need to get back to work.  As soon as my head is above water again, I'll get some work done on the clipper and write a post about it.  Hopefully soon.  In the mean time, be good to yourself, and have a good one.

Until next time,

David D.

Final Build-A-HQ related post for a while...

The title says it all.  This will be my last post related to my Build-A-HQ project for the foreseeable future.  If you have been here at all for the last month or so, you are aware that I used the plans from Vexar Designs to build my own diorama of a lobby/security desk and tactical operations center for 1/18th scale action figures.  I made some mistakes, but overall things went pretty well.  I learned a lot and ended up with a pretty cool little dio.  But now my problem is, where do I put the thing?

The finished model is 22 inches by 8 inches by 6 and a 3/8ths or so inches.  I put a base of foam board under the styrene floor itself to protect it from scratches and wear and tear.  I can't just put it in a gap on my self between various action figures on a shelf.  Its too big.  I need some real space to place this thing.  Hmm.  The good news is that I have plenty of book shelves in my little basement Man Lair where I built this model.  The bad news is that those book shelves are mostly full of books.

But but but!  Not all the shelves are packed.  I noticed that there was some space on the lower shelf of by bookcase next to the computer where I store the boxes for video games.  Plus there were boxes of games I am not playing again any time soon.  Games like World of Warcraft; I had the box for WoW, The Burning Crusade expansion and the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.  I haven't played WoW in about a year, and I have no plans on doing so in future.  Goodbye, WoW stuff.  That's 3 inches of shelf space liberated.  I also realized that if I turned the boxes for Medieval II Total War, Rome Total War Gold, The Orange Box, Star Wars: Best of the PC, and Star Wars: Empire At War, Forces of Corruption on their side, it saves a bit more space.  Like 2 more inches. We are on a roll here!

I figured where I wanted to put the model.  I have another book shelf near the computer where I have already started moving books off of it to make space for toys. On the top of that bookshelf I have my modern Millennium Falcon, and a Star Wars walker from the new trilogy..  On the shelf below the space I are taking books from I have totally dedicated to displaying my little urban commando team.  The team is made up of War Machine, Cable, Duke & Ripcord in their Delta 6 Accelerator suits, Black Widow, a figure from the Target "Bravo Team" line, both of my GI Joe Cycle Armor figures, a Batman Begins batmobile driven by Deadpool, and my custom Coyote.  I have my Vamp Mk II sitting on my printer and a GI Joe Steel Crusher APV there as well.  It seemed to be a good place to put the diorama, and there weren't that many books on the top shelf.    Going though books you haven't read in a while is fun.  I haven't read all of the books I have down here, but between my wife and I, we have read about 95% of them.  Nearly all of the books we haven't read we inherited from her grandfather when he died a few years ago.  The man was a dedicated bibliophile and he had a bunch of things I haven't read but should: The Rise And Fall of the Third Reich, Crisis Of the Old Order, Profiles In Courage, stuff like that.  One day I'll get around to them.

Not all the books from the top shelf fit in the freed up space on the other book shelf, but as I said, there are plenty of book shelves in the Man Lair.  I got about half of the books to fit in the newly opened up space and found homes for the other books on other shelves.  Finally, I have a suitable home for the Build-A-HQ dio that does not include it sitting on the David's Workshop project bench. 

You can't really tell from the picture here, but I have Mainframe and Helix turned facing each other in the Dio. Mainframe figured he was too much of a tech nut for a lady to ever be interested in him, but Helix doesn't seem to find him unattractive at all.  She's impressed with his skill, and under his tough shell, his sensitivity.  Who knows where their relationship will take them.  Cover Girl on the other hand isn't the least bit interested in Pit Commando.  Strictly professional on that side of the TOC.

Ok- now on to the clipper project.  Until next time.

David D.

We done, baby. We done.

Well, its official.  The Build-A-HQ project has been built. This morning, I cemented the last video panel in, just above its one inch styrene conduit, waited 30 minutes, and called it complete.   Here are the photos.

Busy night in the TOC.

First a shot of the Tactical Operations Center itself.   I played around with a few different figures, but Cover Girl, Pit Commando, (aka Red Shirt), Helix, and Mainframe just looked the best staffing the workstations themselves.  I put Mainframe's computer next to him on the back wall desk, and General Hawk's briefcase computer next to Cover Girl. They are nice accessories and fit in well here.  I've got Sargent Stone briefing General Hawk in the front.  The graphics Vexar Designs made to go with their Build a HQ design are fantastic. I purchased both clear and white project paper to print the graphics on, and my advice for anyone else trying this is to print your decals out on the white paper, and trim the white edges off.  The clear paper, especially when it is being placed on dark styrene, ends up looking too dark and the stickers become hard to see.  The white paper keeps the ink fresh and bright regardless of what color styrene you put the decal on.  If you have to use clear sticker project paper, use it for graphics that are going to go on white styrene surfaces.

Snake Eyes is glad to be home.

Next up we have the lobby; Scarlet and Snake Eyes are back from who knows where.  Ripcord is clearly happy to see Scarlet back, and Duke keeps an eye on the feeds from the security cameras around the base.  Oh yeah- one thing I still may do is build a little Cisco IP phone for Duke to have at the reception/security desk so he can keep in touch with the rest of the base.  Back before I started grad school, I worked at an IT company and we all had IP phones on our desks. They looked pretty cool.  They were also completely redundant, because when you have IP phone systems, you can actually answer your phone using your computer itself.  We all had wireless headsets anyway, so we didn't need a phone handset or a deskset.  There was a little app we had installed on our laptops to place calls choice voice mail, etc, and any calls themselves placed using this app would be routed via Bluetooth to our headsets, which we were always suppose to have in our ears.  But people are just used to having phones on their desks.  I think having an IP phone at the security/reception desk would just be a nice touch, and as soon as I can find an image I can turn into a decal, I am making Duke his own little deskset phone, which is technically unnecessary, but something I think will look cool and useful on his desk.

Stg. Stone updates General Hawk on global ops status

Ok, here are Stone and Hawk.  Check out the beauty and detail in Vexar's decal images. In this picture you have a world map with different hotspots in red, a satellite image at the Pit Commando's left workstation (lower right side of the image), a sound wave analysis of Destro's voice and a work screen at Helix's workstation (lower left side of the image) and a keypad just to the right of Hawk on the right middle section of the image.  Vexar spent some time putting these things together.  I printed them up at highest quality on my HP deskjet printer, and they look crisp and near lifelike, as if they could plausibly be the kinds of screens one would see on computers performing the various tasks in a tactical operations center.

Scarlet checks in.

At my old job, the company I worked for was global and dealt with some security related services.  In one of our buildings, we had a TOC with a window between it and the lobby so potential clients could walk past and be impressed with our sophistication.  I never worked in that room, but I knew people who did.  They said it was actually a pain in the ass to work in there because while they always had the newest hardware, that also meant they were also always fixing bugs in the new machines and that everything in there felt like it was for show instead of actually being useful for the business.  Which I'm guessing was probably close to the truth.  

In the next image I've got going here (just above this paragraph) is the lobby from the right side.  You can't see Duke's keyboard or mouse (yeah, I cemented the mouse to the desk- it isn't going anywhere, and I decided it was a wireless mouse, so I didn't have to make any kind of cord between it and some part of the desk.) You can see the Exit, keypad and security screens decals here.  I think we kind of have a love triangle going on here between Scarlet, Ripcord and Snake Eyes.  Sorry Rip, I've got my money on SE.  He's got the strong silent type thing *down*.  Nothing personal, but that is what Scarlet is into and I don't think anyone can compete in that arena with Snake Eyes.

Helix, Mainframe, Cover girl and Red Shirt process their feeds.

Ok- Next image is of the TOC from the left side  Yes, the first thing I will always see here is the fact that the right most screen of Cover Girl's workstation is about 1/16th of an inch lower than her other computers.  I could try to pull the screen off and re-cement it, but the desk itself is *extremely* fragile, and comes disconnected from the rest of the dio if you look at it too hard, much less try to pull a piece of cemented styrene off of it.  I have thought about redoing that screen many times, but the fear of having to fix who knows what else keeps me from doing it.  I'll just have to live with the results, even if it gives me the heebie jeebies. I think Mainframe and Helix would make a good team together.  Helix strikes me as a kind of computer wizkid, and Mainframe looks ever the tech guru, like the kind of guy who writes COBOL code in his sleep, whereas she is more a Ruby on Rails kind of girl.  Yes, I don't think you'd ever seen developers or engineers working a TOC in real life, but its a flavor thing.  More than techie, I am going for a non-combat look in the TOC, and there aren't many non-combat looking figures in the GI JOE universe.  Beggars can't be choosers.

Never a dull moment.

Here it is- the entire thing on one overhead shot.  I don't know if I mentioned it before, but all the chairs swivel. None of them can turn a full 360 because the back of the chair bumps up against the desk, but none of the chair backs will hit each other in this dio, so I can have my TOC staffers turn to each other for a conversation or have Cover Girl or Mainframe twist to check out the computers next to them on the desk.  Everyone could turn toward the back of the room if they needed to give General Hawk their full attention.  Duke, in his security desk seat, can spin there too.  It gives a little action feature capacity to what is otherwise a cool but utterly frozen in time diorama.

Well, that is it for this project.  I'm thrilled with how it went, and I hope you like the results.  I do have some plans for a next project- Dr. Mindbender is going to get a robotics lab from Cobra Commander and work on the next generation of cobra food soldier there.  Before I work on that project, I may work on the long neglected Clipper custom.  I should give that one some time.  It has been sitting on the edge of my workstation for a long time now.  ::sigh:: that means I'm going to have to brush paint again.  We'll see how that goes.

Until next time,

David D.