Project 365: Day 104 - Bane Lord Tartarus

Jeff's Bane Lord Tartarus at tabletop quality.

My photographs having been getting worse lately. Not that it was any good to begin with.

The biggest difficulty I had with this model is that, while a well-sculpted model in it's own right, it has one of the worst silhouettes in PP's miniature line. It's hard to tell what's going on with Tartarus without picking him up and examining him closely. I found it hard to make the model standout from arm's length. I did what I can :p

Project 365: Day 103 - "Thought of you" by Ryan Woodward

I had goosebumps. He blended a relatively simple dance with the magic of animation to produce something that is more than a sum of its parts. It's powerful, emotional...beautiful.

Project 365: Day 102 - Japanese XMen openings

Yep, these are for the 90s cartoon that we all saw. As much as I liked the 90s series...I reeaaaaaally wish the cartoon was more like these:

Project 365: Day 101 - CBD (Cheesesteaks, Burgers & Drinks)

The past weekend we were able to eat at CBD Ayala Triangle. The place is forthcoming with what it serves (Its in the name! yay!) and I do like me some cheesesteak :)

Philly Cheesteak sandwiches are made with green peppers, onions, beef strips in a bun covered with cheese sauce.

I've tried some local Philly cheesesteaks in Charlie's and Army/Navy and Iceberg's and so far Army/Navy seems to be the best one in terms of bang for the buck. Charlie's cheeseteaks just seem to overloaded for me and Iceberg's was nothing notable.

 The place is a bit hoity-toity for me but since its in the Ayala Triangle I guess that's to be expected. The idea of eating a blue-collar lunch in an uptight place just seemed odd to me. While going over the menu, Roxane and I decided to get an order of wings along with a sandwich to split.

The cheesesteak sandwich. And let me just say that this is just DINKY. Not a good sign to be honest. Flavor-wise its decent, the cheesesauce pretty weak almost making a non-appearance. On the upside, the onions and peppers weren't soggy and the beef was tender. But again, for the price this sandwich is TINY.

The sandwich came with shoestring potatoes. Meh. Tiny sandwich with a miserly portion of mediocre potatoes :(

The 6 piece buffalo strips were decent enough. Boneless wings in some pretty tasty sauce, we got both the mild and hot. Roxane liked these better than Chicken Bon Chon's but I disagree. We both agreed that you get better value from Charlie's

Reading everything again, I am coming off as a bit of a Charlie's fanboy. I don't mean to but they pretty much set the benchmark for burgers and wings for me so far in terms of taste and bang for the buck.

CBD offers tasty decent grub that's let down by small portions and a comparatively high price. I don't mind paying for food as long as I get value in return and CBD just isn't offering that incentive. You'll find better prices and servings elsewhere.

Project 365: Day 100 - Oyumaru!

I was about to write another rant but ah, screw that. Let's just get back to fun stuff.

We'll be casting stuff using Oyumaru. Yosh!

I got a packet of Oyumaru from Junex at a pretty good price. Oyumaru is the japanese equivalent of Instamold and from what I can make out from the packet its primarily used for sculpting itself rather than casting. I could be wrong though. There are a lot of youtube videos showing folks how to use instamold so I didnt have to worry about the japanese instructions.

I apologize for the crappy pics. I was taking pics as I went along and I didn't have time to set up a tripod and better lighting.

The festive packet held 7 sticks of material. Seems like a better deal than Instamold in that regard...

You can see that the sticks came in different colors and I decided to use the sparkly one. I promise to keep the Twilight jokes in check.

Oyumaru and Instamold are softened by putting them in hot water for a few minutes...

While the Oyumaru is steeping I went on and prepped the model I was going to cast with talcum powder. In this case, its a Cygnar Cyclone Heavy warjack. Oyumaru supposedly doesn't need a release agent but I didnt want to take chances since this is a painted fig and the fig isn't mine :D

The stuff kneaded easily while hot. You can feel it get cool real quick though...

... so I had to work fast and start pressing it against the part I wanted to cast. I made sure to push the Oyumaru into every nook and cranny well.

After I was satisfied with my mold placement, I cooled the mold with an ice cube so I can pop it off.

I was able to pop the Oyumaru off. I decided a couple minutes on the ice cube should let it set real well.

And here's my mold. You can see the detail that was retained.

I prepped a blob of milliput using talc on my hands to keep it from sticking.

Now this is the part I should've spent more time with in hindsight. I pressed the milliput  into the mold in little pieces to minimize the air bubbles.

The mold flexes a bit but goes back to the shape it had when cooled. I tried to push the milliput in all the crevices as best as I could.

After an hour I was able to pop off the Oyumaru from the milliput. The milliput is still soft at this point but stiff  enough to hold it's shape.

I think my first mold went pretty well. If you look at the last picture closely you'll see some creases and air pockets that I missed. For my purposes though this is perfect. The milliput hardens up really nicely after 24 hours. It's pretty strong but still easily workable. i tried to snap off the smokestacks but I couldnt. Neat!

I'll trim some of the excess milliput off which is easy with a sharp blade and drill holes into the smokestacks.

So what will I be using the finished piece for? Well, the last post should give you a clue ;)