A couple of new projects!

I haven't produced many new blog posts around model making and figure sculpting recently. This has many causes, I have been busy painting figures, several of the projects I have been working on either can't be shown or would be worth a blog post to themselves, and finally, to be honest, I haven't really had any big projects that I could sink my teeth into and write up a suitable article.

Also, my blogging is now spread over four different blogs. The others being the Steampunk Miniatures Review (SMR), the Pulp Gaming Review(PGR) and Iron Mammoth's R&R. The first two of which are easy to understand, but IMR&R is the blog where I post occasional film and TV reviews as well as book reviews, and anything else I feel like posting about. I have been busy over the summer getting the SMR and PGR blogs up to speed, but I feel they are running nicely now so I can show some love to this blog again.

I have noticed that the lack of serious posts has lead to a slow but marked decline in my regular readership. So with that in mind I am planning on getting back into some serious model making and figure sculpting. I already have quite a few projects lined up and I hope to start turning in regular articles very soon.

In the mean time, over the past couple of months I have been pretty busy working on projects with my boys. First we had Halloween, for which I volunteered to make them a couple of Minecraft costumes. Considering these were just basically painted cardboard boxes they took a lot more time than I had hoped. Still they both won their respective costume competitions (if only because they were the only home made costumes - the rest were all bought ones...).
 

There was of course also the requisite pumpkin...

At the beginning of December my boys both came home with a school project to make a Christmas themed model. The note also emphasized that "parents could help". Now, as I am a professional model maker, how could I refuse a challenge like that... of course I also had to make sure that the boys did a good part of the work and that ultimately the models were based around their ideas...

My elder son is fasinated by electronics and so decided his sleigh would be a "rocket" powered jet sled. We fixed a string of blue LEDs to the underside and then attached small computer fan to the back. The sleigh is built with balsa wood and my son cut it all himself with his Real Power Workshop. I sculpted the Santa figure with some (30 year old) polymer clay I found lying around in my workshop!

My younger son, liked the idea of putting lights in his model too, so we added a flickering LED to the fireplace and a fiber optic Christmas tree.