Caricatures

Hello!

Back from a break in blogging, these are some caricatures ive done during this time, commissioned by some of my colleagues.

Stan Lee's Superhumans!

Stan Lee, the creators of legendary Marvel superheroes presents a show where the worlds most flexible man goes around the planet to find other humans with special abilities.

Name: Dennis Rogers aka The Oldetime Strongman

Ability: Immense physical strength

Place of origin: USA

Name: Shi Yan Ming aka The Shaolin Master

Ability: Immense punch strength, Shaolin mastery

Place of origin: China

 

Name: Raj Mohan aka Current Mohan

Ability: Immune to electricity

Place of origin: India

Name: Isao Machii aka Super Samurai

Ability: Heightened reflexes / instinct

Place of origin: Japan

Name: Jyothi Raj aka Monkey Man

Ability: Grip strength, heightened climbing agility

Place of origin: India

I'll be back!

 

...but in the meantime, here are a couple of shots of the two ultimate terminators, the T-800 and the T-1000, produced and crafted by Hot Toys with painstaking detail. I love T2 and it's layers of storytelling, the story of a boy and his faithful protector, the duel between two iconic archetypes, and the struggle of a woman against a fate that haunts her.

Action figures have come a long way from the plastic toys i've collected here and there since i was a kid. The Hot Toys Movie Masterpiece terminators have some of the best sculpts and proportion for any collectible figure i've seen, with a ton of weapons, spare outfits and other items to fully recreate the scenes seen in the movies.

Of course, what I geeked out about in the movies from the start was the very terrifying, and very conceivably real killer robot underneath the menacing Arnie exterior. It's form just looked so... functional! This design has captured my imagination since i first saw it.

My photography skill is currently at Lvl 0... may need to spend my next experience points towards that a little bit. :-P.

Seacrest out!

Scorpion Tank!

Scorpy. For lack of imagination.

Closeup of moss and pebbled surface.

Scorpy's home, with cave, cactus and Japanese contemplation pool.

Well, you can clearly see that the pictures are not from Halo so i'll just explain. I used to have a pet Malayan jungle scorpion. I assembled it a pretty nice tank too.

BugTank
For the tank, or as i prefer; terrarrium, nmrgh but it's so hard to spell.. so nah it's tank... i bought the following items:
1x glass aquarium with rounded front corners
1x bag small pebbles
1x bag medium pebbles
3x cacti of varying species
1x bag soil.

...and found the following items:
1x rock / cave roof
4-5x pieces of moss for decor

First, i needed a water dish. I also wanted it to look nice and natural. So i used a clear plastic container's top cover (mine is square and roughly 5in x 5in) as a dish.

Then i poured in the small pebbles to fill the bottom of the aquarium. Now the dish is hidden. I made a small pool side area for Scorpy using medium stones and then poured in the dirt and transplanted the cacti. I kept the dirt in a mound to the side so there was some layering to the terrain. Then i found some moss (growing on the side of certain trees) with lovely lichen leaves on it and sliced off a few pieces to transplant to the tank for a grassy finish. I also found a nice rock that made a nice cave once a hole was dug around one side and that provided Scorpy with shelter.

Tuesday Transformer Tribute!

 

Bumblebee Boy

Hello peeps! I'm back in my room to chill out with a few very cool stop motion animation videos made by the awesome and still unknown French Canadian director - Patrick Boivin! You can check out his other videos on Youtube, but in the meantime, some of my favourites are his Transformer toy animations. These go out to Azharie as well who runs a Transformers blogsite and has just become my 3rd follower. High five dude!

Jazz with a General Problem

If this isn't the best use of action figures ever, i don't know what is. Robot Chicken has nothing on the amazingly life-like animation quality of Monsieur Boivin's short clips! I also love the sound effects and music selection, all coming together to create an amazing piece of work... I can't imagine how long it must have taken to animate this.

Evolution of Dance with Optimus Prime

The last video parodies a video of a comedy performance called the 'evolution of dance', presumably Optimus was blackmailed by Megatron into humiliating himself with a reenactment of that skit. 

Enjoy!

Gundam Base Taiwan

Here are some photos i took from a visit to Taipei's Gundam Base which is a museum for all things Gundam. There lies the entire line of the famous plastic models on display at the store, most probably reaching the thousands. 

I'm not particularly a Gundam geek, though i love the design and detail that goes into each robot - the extent of my knowledge of this is limited at best.. so I'll just let the pictures do the talking. 

 Oh, and while i'm at it, i would recommend that you visit Taiwan sometime! I'm glad i did, the natural sights and attractions are spectacular.

 

That's me

MGBC

Micro Gardens Bring Cute things

 

Red Riding Hood - Continue this story...

Some sketches i did in 2007 for a Little Red Riding Hood comic with werewolves and assassins.

Some 3 years back, i drew a sketch (not the one above) of Red Riding Hood reclining on a giant wolf with a woodcutter in the background. I thought that the original tale superimposed on an action oriented fantasy setting might make for a good comic book story... which still hasn't come to fruition. Perhaps now is a good time to reignite my passion for drawing. 

Just for fun, anyone is welcome to post your continuation of this story, and then let someone else pick up from there...

Here are the characters: 

• Little Red Riding Hood (aka. Sarah)
• The Werewolf (aka. the Beast of the Forest, aka, Snarl)
• The Woodcutter (aka. Jonn)
• The Grandmother (aka. The old One, aka, Tomasina)

LITTLE RED

Once upon a time... there was a tragic love story between a prince and a great beauty that culminated in the birth of a little girl named Sarah, and the death of the mother that very night. The child was born on the night of a strange full moon. She had beautiful fair skin and soft golden hair. But her pale eyes turned blood red in the darkness, piercing and shining like crimson rubies in the night, and lovely though she was, all knew that she carried with her a dark omen. When she turned 18 years of age, she was to be sent from the orphanage to live with her grandmother, the mysterious woman called Tomasina...

Have fun!

PART 1. Done in the style of... internet pictures!...Thanks contributors

The story so far...

What the heck.. tomato sinner..?!

Robots.. kill them now while they're small and dumb!

Iron Man's Suit - best way to use robots without them turning on us?
One day we will have robotic suits that lets us fly, breathe in the vacuum of space, and do a plethora of cool superpowered activities. Of course, by this point, job openings should include Lunar mining operations supervisor, and deep space client servicing executives. Both these positions will require an Iron Man-like suit. Mark... my... words...

Are these suits safer than independent robots which could turn Terminator and kill us? We would be the controllers, so you'd think we'd be safe. But what if they could operate autonomously, as per what DARPA has in mind with their exo-suit?.. Then.. um.. no we would still be smushed, right?

Well, we can't say we know what robots in the future might think, or even how they might think. However we do know how humans think, and humans controlling these machines may ultimately be the far scarier thought.

The Gundam Robot Wars of 2010

Japan leads the robotic arms race with the most advanced humanoid robots so far, surpassing China and the US. Yeah.. this is what i'm talking about: 

 

Too late losers.. we made 'em big and gave them laser swords! Haha..*squish*

It's not a matter of "are they really any use in battle?" or "wouldn't a nuke or orbiting space laser trump your puny giant robot?" It's all about the look on the other guy's faces when they see your massive, primary coloured death machine stomp through their city. They would just go "whoa.. that's.. so.. COOL!!" while getting their butts kicked, and why would anyone even want to blow it up? People would just want to add it to their collection, right? What? No?

My very first Hot Toy! War Machine... Iron Man's so on my wishlist now.

Hot Toys War Machine with parts and stand

I'm quite excited about my first Hot Toy. 

Background: Hot Toys is a Hong Kong based outfit that used to produce military scale action figures, and has now moved on to licensed material... such as this truly awesome War Machine figure seen here. 

Special trait: Attention to detail is second to none when it comes to Hot Toys figures. Lots of little moving parts and spare hands and stuff really adds value.

Cool: One set of hands has jointed fingers including opposable thumbs. The Don Cheadle head has a helmet face plate that is attached magnetically and the lower jaw-piece moves down slightly just like in the movie.

Not so cool: Personally the minigun could have been bigger, and the actual weight of the figure wasn't as heavy as i expected. It could have used more weight on the legs, as it's quite top heavy. It feels a bit too plasticky (but then i may have gotten my expectations up wayyy to high), and i fear any form of playing or excessive fiddling might damage certain parts. So.. yeah don't buy this for rough handling. It's a display piece.. 

...and what a display piece it is! There are LEDs so the hands, chest and eyes light up (Red for chest and eyes, white for hands, and they're very bright) and there is articulation almost everywhere. I still haven't figured out all the moving parts yet, so there is lots to explore with this figure. A solid piece from Hot Toys.. now i wish i had more money cos this thing is expensive!

Pre-order price: RM 568 

*Note: i don't sell them, this is just a review... and the pictures are from another site, until i get mine photographed and posted... someday. Hehe.

Fully decked out and ready to pose!

The shoulder minigun looks a tad small

A new beginning...

In my Bedroom
Hello, if you are reading this, then you are the first guests and i'd like to welcome you to my humble online abode. What's this blog all about then? Well I really hadn't thought about it that far.. but for now, it will be a glimpse into my very own.. bedroom. Settle down, it's not as exciting as you think, because as you might have guessed... i'm a self-proclaimed geek you see.


On the Wall
So what do i have in my room you ask? Well.. i have some photos stuck with blue tack on my wall. I also have some posters and printouts joining said photos, mostly of treehouses (what? i like treehouses) supercars (though i'm not much of a motorhead) fantasy artwork (my favorite is a seascape with huge Tremors styled seaworms breaking through the waves and hovercraft with what i assume are futuristic pirates hovering around in the seaspray). I draw sometimes, so i have some drawings and paintings hung on the walls, and i love science-y stuff, so i have a printout of the evolutionary tree also up here.


On the Shelves
Now, my place is kind of a mess, so you'll have to pardon me while i clean the place up abit before posting some actual photos, but i'll try to describe the really geeky, fanboy-ish stuff i have collected so far. I've got a few toys (or action figures if you please) from McFarlane Toys, a bunch of StarWars figures, and some assorted figures from Mattel and Hasbro that are opened, because i played with them when i was a kid. Uh, not true, i still play with them til this day... *only sometimes* honest!


On my Wardrobe
Up there, it's a disaster zone, but i have a top hat, a police cap, a cowboy hat, and a couple of toy guns which were left over from Halloweens past. That's also where my StarWars collection sits in a box. I'm pretty sure a gremlin lives there as well, but i've never seen it.

On the Floor
Everything here has to be excavated really, it's horrible. Anyway, i have a box still left over from unpacking when i first moved into my apartment sitting in a corner against my bed. On the box is an aquarium (with soil, rocks, some wood, and nothing living i hope). On the aquarium is an unopened McFarlane Toys Frankenstein Monster playset (1st version) and beside those are some issues of PC Gamer mag. I don't know what's in the box itself... i fear whatever is inside will jump out and attack me.


And we're done for the first post... i welcome you, dear reader, if you've made it through the drivel thus far, and hope you'll come back when i have this thing up and running properly. Now.. what do i press to get this thing posted? Ah, publish post. There. Clicked i