I really hope the rest of the CD is as good as this one track is.

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Linkies first, explainations later (can you believe the name Jushiro was already taken?!)

Finally finished (well, mostly anyway) the Forge World Mk. IV Dreadnought that I ordered over two months ago.  I have to say, with all modesty aside, this is probably the finest thing I've ever painted.  It took me over a 3 weeks to paint.  It's a custom resin model produced by Forge World.  I'd never worked with resin before, and it carries its own set of unique challenges.  First off, its a real bastarisation of the properties of pewter and polypropeline plastic.  It's slightly lighter than metal, but softer.  Therefor the same glues and treatments dont exactly apply.  It's heavier than plastic, therefor it has the dangerous potential to want to rip itself apart under its own wieght when glued.  The absolute biggest problem to overcome was the mold release compound that is smeared generously all over it.  The kit came on sprues, much like a plastic model, but with much, much, MUCH (much) more flashing.  Flashing is the extra material left over by the casting process, where the resin was poured into the mold.  Several days of prep time went into just cleaning the flashing away.  The mold release was the last challenge.  Paint and glue will not bond to mold release.  Each piece had to be painstakingly scrubbed with a toothbrush and dishwashing detergent to get the stuff off before any work could be done, primering or otherwise.  The legs were horrible, as they have the most mechanical detail.  The first primer job had to be scrapped, stripped, and reapplied as even liberal scrubbing wasnt enough. 
I spent hours and hours of work with the dremel and hobby knife, just to make the pieces look right.  The right arm(the black one) was the worst of the bunch.  It was flat out poorly molded, and I almost shipped it back.  Ideally, it should look completely symmetrical to the left, complete with the little sensor package and everything.  That part was a mess.  I just opted to completely dremel it off, where I replaced it with the honor seals that I had lying around from another model.  The right arm was an entirely new experience for me, as I've never done freehand work like that before.  I'm good at shading and blending, but I've never just... painted... something on a flat surface, especially something that small.
The only thing that makes me sad about that model is the lack of a name tag.  All Mk V dreadnoughts have a sort of scroll embossed on the front of the sarcophagus where you can add a name, since technically a dread is a half-dead marine whose been hard-wired into the chassis.  I've always left the tag blank before, since my older dreads were never painted well enough to worry about, plus I never thought I could actually add a name without fucking it up.  I like this guy well enough that I think he deserves a name.  I liked Brother Cedrian, but unfortunatley, I have no place to stick it, and I dont just want a name sorta chilling out on a random piece of him.  I may think of a way to add it later, I suppose.
The base was just a standard Dreadnought base that comes with all Mk V dreads, but I never use, because they take up space on the tabletop, and sometimes you just want them freestanding.  Plus the ultra-light plastic dreads dont wiegh enough to worry about them tipping over and breaking.  You can pretty much drop a plastic dread from shoulder hight to the ground and you *might* lose a piece.  This was not the case here.  I needed a base, because with the amount of work that went into this guy, I didn't want to risk any of that.  In fact, every joint you see, including the ankles, waist and shoulders, is reinforced with a steel pin to help support the weight.  But even with it's simple paint job, the base adds a little something to it, overall.  I may go back over it with some flock or sand to fill in the gaps and make it look more realistic.

Overall, this thing wont win any Golden Daemons, but I think I'll have a hell of a time ever topping this thing.  I dont know that I even want to try, as long as this guy took to slap together.

And very drunk.  Just wanted to get that out.  I swear it wasnt my idea.   Totally.  I'm typing pretty good, though.

...how freaking disturbing this video was.  This shit gave me nightmares as a kid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MzShg7yXik

http://www.destinationcreation.com/informatives/?p=128

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[	music	|	Eric Johnson - Cliffs of Dover	]

So my local Gamesman called me to tell me he was able to successfully get everying I requested from Games Workshop to get back started with 40k.  Most importantly, the paints.  ....except for one item, the pots of Brown Ink.  GW cancelled thier line of Brown Ink.  The most innoculous of colors, and quite possibly the color I used THE most next to say, Choas Black, or maybe Blood Red.  I use it for everything from tarnishing Necrons, to rusting tank tracks, and making gun barrels look sooty.  
See, GW puts out thier own line of paints called Citadel Colour, and they're expensive, but are of unusually high quality.  They have perfect consistency, dry fast, and are sufficiently durable, without being too thick for modeling.  You'll pay $3.00 for 12mL, but its 12mL of pwnage.  I've always used Citadel paints since the first day I started modeling, and I just sorta know how to work with them, the inks especially.  Now I have to find an off-brand brown ink of the proper hue, and it has to be suitably water soluable.  I suppose regular ole' India Ink will do, provided I can find it in brown.  Pflargle...

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I've pretty much stopped trying to figure myself out.  Damn near everything I do anymore these days is about as random as can be.  Like this, for example.  I haven't popped on LJ in over a year, but for some reason I started going through it this week.  Not even going to try explaining that one.  My last entry was pretty damn Emo, or whatever the kids are calling it these days, I guess.  A year ago I'd have called it seething rage.

So, what have I been up to?  Lessee...

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Curry chicken attempt #2 success!  Attemp #1 occurred on Thanksgiving, and was a sad failure.  I'm not -entirely- sure what I did wrong, but it was pretty bad.  Pretty sure I overdid the chicken, since it was dry as hell.  And the whole thing was just a big, gloppy mess.    Pretty sure I screwed up the rice, too.  Yeah. I pretty much failed everywhere failure was possible.

But this one came out pretty good ^.^  I used Fat Free sour cream this time instead of Low Fat.  And I cooked the whole thing at a lower temperature, too.  It tastes good, good texture, and I added enough curry to make my eyes water.