Rock and Roll all (Christmas) Night

Gingerbread KISS Pinball Machine

Every Christmas season, I try and produce a fun and novel gingerbread creation and post it here.  Longtime readers may remember my avant-garde church, windmill, or light-up lighthouse.  This time, I was non-architecturally inspired by the 1978 KISS pinball arcade machine.

Side panel portraits of the band; almost recognizeable as human.

Four player scoreboard with logo.

For reference, the original item.

So, happy holidays everyone!

Diecast Drive-by

I just made a few good finds in the grocery store while on an emergency cat food run.  Inspired by Spacejacker's amazing Hot Wheels repaints, I thought they might work as 15mm scale vehicles.  First, the "International MXT", in desert drab:

Wow!  Probably a bit off-scale, but it looks perfect next to some average minis.  This is a real military truck, but not so well-known you can't field it as a fictional one.  Detail is a bit soft, but I don't know if that's from the casting or the kid-proof paint layer.  Apparently even this durable paint can be stripped with solvents or oven cleaner, but the metal body has to be separated from the plastic frame and wheels.

Next up we have this tracked dump truck thingy.  Some greasy sci-fi potential here, for sure.  The cab is not at all big enough to be 1:100/15mm, but I still feel like something could be done with it, or at least the track portion could be used as the basis for a kit bash:

There are probably a bunch more interesting things available along these lines; I've been keeping an eye out for that cool fire engine Spacejacker used, but no luck so far...

Something a little different

Carcassone Scoring Markers
28 mm

I thought our copy of the tile-laying strategy game Carcassone could do with an improvement - namely giving the players personas in the form of figures matching the colours of the "meeples" used as game pieces.  These will go on the scoring track rather than being used in the game itself:

So now when you play our game, you're not just picking a colour you like, you can play as a character... do you want to be the Abbess, the Burgher, the Warrior Lord, the Noblewoman, or the Warrior Lady?  My original plan was to do proper paint jobs with the respective colours as themes, but "ain't nobody got time for that" and this way I won't feel as bad when the paint gets all banged up :P (hopefully the thick gloss varnish will protect them somewhat)

Thief of Catan
28 mm

And another board-game-related project: a tabletop quality paint job on a nice Werner Klocke sculpt.  This figure is destined for a friend's copy of the addictive game Settlers of Catan, where one of the pieces is a thief who can steal players' resources.

Gingerbread 2012

Since, shockingly, the Mayan Armageddon failed to appear, I put together this year's Christmas gingerbread house.  Or, in this case, castle.  No real-life architectural inspiration this time; if anything it's inspired by the plastic tower from "Battle Masters" ;)  Little plastic men (unpainted, alas) were an obligatory addition.

"Camelot!"  "It's only a model!"

"Get me closer, I want to hit them with my sword!"

Two men enter... one man leaves!

Why am I not painting?

I'm a busy man these days:







Freaking "real life". I'll try and post some proper content soon, I promise :P

(no that's not actually our sonogram, I don't have a digital copy of it)

Gingerbread 2010

A yearly tradition of mine. Yes, it takes away painting time, but it's a lot tastier in the end! These were all made as gifts for friends.

Toronto, Ontario
350 mm



Christmas trees
250 mm

Something not painted

My Christmas creation this year:



A Dutch-style post windmill. It's not easy convincing cookie to be a structural material :P

Gingerbread in excelsis gloria

Merry Christmas/Eid/Chanukah everyone!

I made a gingerbread house again this year. It was modeled after Le Corbusier's avant-garde church "Notre Dame du Haut", built in 1954 (which I visited as a child). Lighting was a white LED inside.

Ho ho ho...

It being the holiday season, I've been busy with some less metallic, more.... edible crafts:

"Nightmare Before Christmas" gingerbread house
~22 cm





I'll be back to the painting soon... since I have a few more days off :)