Necromunda Ash Wastes inter-spire light haulage rig and escort runner

In anticipation of the release of the new Necromunda Ash Wastes vehicular combat game, I've dug out a handful of unfinished models and given them a coat of paint.

At the time of writing there's some speculation about the forthcoming game, but not many hard facts. As far as I can tell it looks set to introduce something like the Road Warrior aesthetic of the Mad Max films into the Warhammer 40,000 universe. And not for the first time either. Games Workshop has gone down this route before. Previous instances of the company riffing on George Miller's post-apocalyptic Australian action film series have produced the games Dark Future, Gorkamorka and Speed Freeks.

These three games all have various crossover points with what I imagine the new Necromunda expansion to be, but Dark Future, released in the late 80s, was the only one that focussed on human gangs – even if the models were in a slightly different scale to everything else. Coming in at roughly 20mm tall, the miniatures were way bigger than 6mm Epic scale, yet smaller than the 28-32mm of most of GW's other games.* But that didn't stop them being brilliant. Here are a few pages from White Dwarf around the time.

The game bonded a kind of sports car, go-faster aesthetic with the darker Mad Max look and feel, and the results ended up being occasionally grimdark, and occasionally colourful, and occasionally somehow both.

This started me thinking about what I call the Star Wars paint-job. It's the colour schemes we find throughout the Star Wars franchise, where vehicles are painted in predominantly flat, neutral colour tones: greys, creams etc, with a single, brighter, accent colour injected for detailing. And then the whole thing is beaten up, battered, and generally made to look as if it's seen better days. Luke's X-Wing in the original movie is a classic example, and it felt like an interesting direction in which to take a couple of ground vehicles.

The car below is a Marrua Gaucho from Antenociti's Workshop. It's a solid chunk of resin, and I've talked about the pre-paint clean-up here. I've decided this is going to be an escort runner; a fast set of wheels used to accompany a slower moving vehicle, providing extra tactical options, and additional manpower.

Meanwhile, I've called the truck an inter-spire light haulage rig – mainly because I'm anticipating the land train in the forthcoming Ash Wastes boxset to do a similar job, but to be significantly heavier. The model is actually a Pegasus Tactical Vehicle from Puppets War. You used to be able to buy the trailer (seen in the top image of the below set) that afforded a few different ways to construct the whole thing. I wanted to keep this modular capability as open as possible, so I talked about magnetising the various parts in an earlier post, here.

Below are some of the various different possibilities from the kit, seen from a few different angles. It was important to me that the two alternate cabs had individual paint schemes, but that the rest of the parts would be completely compatible with both.

And last, and probably least, I also quickly painted up the following little fella. It was kind of a test model for the other two, where I could brush up on the techniques and see what worked. The model itself was just a cheap toy car that I found in a pound shop a few years ago, and thought might be good for just this purpose. I don't love the paint job or the vehicle, but it's good enough to pass as a bit of background texture, tucked away in a dark corner, out of full sight.

So now all that remains is to await the new game and see if these models fit with its as yet unseen contents. That and paint the other 6 or 7 hundred other miniatures I've already got kicking around at home.

*And, of course, a lot smaller than the 54mm of Inquisitor. 

Fast forward 12 months

It's been almost exactly a year since my last post. That's a huge gap, but the good news (at least for me) is that, although this blog has been dormant, my hobby activity has not, and I have plenty of bits and pieces to share over the next few posts.

But firstly, let's start with why. Why have I been quiet for so long? Well, the main reason is that this time last year, my wife and I began to undertake some fairly extensive work on our family home. Work that saw us completely pack away all my models, tools and paint, that saw us remove most of the top section of our house, that saw at least one ceiling fall in, and two people fall through them (neither were injured), that had rain water pouring down internal walls, a bedroom completely open to the elements for several days, and that ended up taking more than twice as long as originally estimated. But after everything was over, and finally complete, work that gave us a whole new floor on our house. I'm talking, of course, about a loft conversion, but after the painful, drawn-out process that we went through, it feels like so much more than just those simple words.

When we first started the work, I had no idea that I'd be putting this blog into such a long slumber, even though the building work had been planned many months in advance. I just never put two and two together and realised quite how disruptive it would be. I hadn't accounted for some of the intense mental anguish that would occur, while watching one's home being quite literally torn apart.

But it's done now and the upshot of the process, as far as this blog is concerned, is that instead of a dingy space, in among the rafters of a dusty roof, I now have a properly appointed office for all my work and hobby pursuits.

When fitting out the room we ensured there was plenty of shelf, desk and storage space. Me so that I could fit everything in and it would still be neat and functional, and my wife so that she could guarantee there wouldn't be any of my toys elsewhere in the house.

One of the biggest boons of this, and of being forced to organise everything from scratch, is that when placing finished models on shelves, I was able to set them up as little displays – almost like dioramas. 

Chaos troops man the ramparts of a town they have taken...

... in defence against the approaching Undead horde

Dredd style Arbites Enforcers bring riot suppression weaponry to bear

An Ork armoured brigade starts to amass in preparation for their next Waaagh.

The streets of Kruenta are alive with all manner of Imperial citizenry

There was a lot more to the last 12 months than just the moments I've touched on above, and there's a fair bit more to my office than just these images, but I think it's probably best to leave it here for now, to ward against the dreaded approach of boring and excruciating detail.

What's that? Too late?

The Giant Robo Alphabot, part twelve

Following on from my previous entry, last month, I'd like to share another poster. This time not about great movie pairings, but instead the culmination of the robot alphabet project that I've been banging on about since 2015.

We've finally reached the end now, so this will be my very last post on the subject. I promise. 

So much time has passed since I first explained it, way back here, that quite a few of the robots used in the project are now more commonly known from updated source material. What do I mean by this? Well, for example, since I compiled some of the original images, (before I even started writing this blog), we've had an updated Ultron in one of the Avengers movies, a new ED209 in the Robocop remake, and a new Warlord Titan from Forge World. In fact, with this last one, and the release of the Adeptus Titanicus game, we've technically had two updates, in different scales.

It's been a fun journey for me, not just compiling the robots and trying to come up with background styles that feel relevant to the subject, sufficiently different from one another, yet also somehow related, but also delving deep into the history of each of the subjects in order to write the blurb. And the best thing about it is I now have a Robot Alphabot poster ready to hang in the corner of my house where I pursue all things geek.

If you're interested you can see all the individual posters on Pinterest here, or read all the previous entries from this project here.

Into the Unknown: A Journey through Science Fiction at the Barbican 3rd June - 1st September

"We live in a world of science fiction.

"Once considered niche, science fiction is now all around us. The genre explores the mysteries of what is still to be discovered, and the power of human ingenuity to unravel them. Whilst doing so, it has created a rich iconography within the pages of novels and comic books and on the big screen, uncovering countless worlds, and revealing the hopes and threats of what lies just beyond our reach. This ever-elusive horizon and the will to approach it lies at the core of science-fiction.

"Depending on the period, the journeys taken by science-fiction can transport us to mysterious lands, cosmic expanses, megacities, virtual universes and within ourselves. As the real world seems to become smaller, science fiction fills in the blanks of the maps, looking for the next boundary to cross, and unveiling hidden dimensions. Today, science fiction's ever-growing corpus, wide-ranging in its themes and ambition, sometimes stills wears – ironically enough – its 20th century attire: lost lands filled with dinosaurs; swashbuckling space exploits to rescue princesses; spandex costumes to disguise the perpetrator of impossible but heroic deeds.

"As we begin to recognise the long-lasting influence of science fiction upon contemporary culture, it feels to be – alongside us – on the cusp of taking a bold leap into the 21st century, encouraging us to embark on a journey that is truly into the unknown."

So says the accompanying blurb to the Barbican's current exhibition on science fiction.

Yesterday, during a rare day off, while his older brother was at school, I took my two-year-old boy to see all the robots, spaceships and terrifying space alien props that make up much of this exhibit. It's jam-packed with models, drawings, films and books from over 100 years of science fiction – much of which would be easily recognisable to even a casual fan.

Here are some of the photos I was able to take in between cuddling my son and telling him that everything was going to be okay.

Some original Ray Harryhausen maquettes

Masks from Enemy Mine, Close Encounters and Species

Harvester bio suit from Independence Day

A Harkonnen chair by H.R. Giger for Alejandro Jodorowsky's unrealised Dune project

And a close-up of the headrest (for fans of servo-skulls)

Starfighter from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

Spock's space suit from the first Star Trek film

Twiki from Buck Rogers

Sonny from the movie iRobot and, behind him, Robot B-9 from 1960s TV show Lost in Space

Of course, these photos hardly do the exhibition justice. There were plenty of other interesting props and costumes throughout the exhibition, not to mention all the films, books and artists' installations dotted around the place. So if you're interested and you want to see it for yourself you could start by checking out the Barbican website here.

The Giant Robo Alphabot, part four

In my first post of 2016 it's time to atone for one of my final posts of 2015 - this one about trying to make Jar Jar Binks cool. The karma sprites need appeasing, so I'll try to do that by showing some Star Wars things that are genuinely cool. In fact the Star Wars things I want to show are, arguably, the genuinely coolest, most influential vehicles ever seen on screen. And while I'm showing cool robotic things from movies I figured this other entry, the versatile, murderous offspring of a beach ball and an iMac, from the film Oblivion, was an interesting counterpoint to the heavily mechanical transports of the Galactic Empire.

To see all the robot posters together on their Pinterest page look here, or if you'd rather just see all the relevant posts from this blog in one easy-to-find place then try a slice of this.

Jar Jar Abrams

Jar Jar Abrams is a name floating around the internet at the moment. It's what some people are saying they will call J.J. Abrams if his latest film, the much-anticipated seventh episode in the Star Wars saga, doesn't meet their high expectations. But I'm wondering if he could take that monicker and make it mean something else.

To date Jeffrey Jacob Abrams has had a pretty exciting career. From his earlier TV shows like Alias, Fringe and Lost, to Super 8 and his Star Trek reboot movies, his work has brought often niche sci-fi ideas into the mainstream. Ideas like parallel universes, time-hopping, Illuminati-style sects, occult corporate meddling, unexplained phenomena and alien visitations to name just a few.

Sure, there have been mistakes - the ending of Lost was something of a disappointment for me and most of the people I subsequently sought cathartic counselling from, and the second Star Trek film isn't loved by all - but generally he seems to be one of the world's most capable pairs of hands when it comes to putting exciting science fiction on screen. His two Star Trek films currently score 8 and 7.8 on IMDB.com, so I'm probably not the only person who thinks this.

And Star Wars: The Force Awakens could be his best film so far. Certainly there are a lot of people out there hoping it will be. And probably no-one more so than J.J. himself. 

But he sets the bar high, so might it be enough for him to simply make another decent film? What if he wanted to try to improve upon the franchise? What if he wanted to try and fix the prequels? Short of re-releasing them as actually good films, perhaps a way of approaching this would be to take their worst elements and re-introduce them in the next set of films as new and improved versions. Take an awful thing from The Phantom Menace, update it, fix it and sell it back to the fanbase as something we can't live without.

Here's an idea I've been kicking around, that I'd like to share.

In The Empire Strikes Back, after we lost Obi-Wan in the original Star Wars film, the unfolding story needed a new wise man to act as mentor and help with the plot exposition. Into this role stepped Yoda, a several hundred year old oracle of all things Force related. Any issues that the audience needed to know, great, get Yoda to tell Luke. Need a little backstory? Get Yoda to tell Luke. Need to explain to the audience just how bad it will be if Luke lets his anger run free? Get Yoda to do it. Maybe even via a conversation with Obi-Wan's force-ghost.

Not only was Yoda funny and cute and cool and dangerous, but also absolutely necessary to the unfolding plot. 

Now suppose one of the new Star Wars films needs a character to perform a similar role. An older Luke Skywalker would be the obvious choice, but what if he's incapacitated or killed or he's become a Dark Lord of the Sith or he's simply busy elsewhere? The movie makers could invent a new character, someone who wasn't around during the other films, or they could bring in Lando or one of the other unused characters from the original three films. 

But what if J.J. Abrams was able to take something utterly reviled by audiences last time we saw it and turn it around? Something that would link the new Star Wars films not just to the original trilogy, but bring the prequel films back into the fold too. The hatred runs deep, so this next bit may just be too much to stomach, but you and I have got this far together, so I'll take the punt.

Yup, that's right: Jar Jar Binks.

Bear with me. The most annoying, pointless character from the prequels, in Abrams' expert hands could be the Yoda of the next set of films.

For a start he'd be roughly, what, 50 years older? That's a significant timeframe, granting licence for the character to be almost completely rewritten. How might age have mellowed him? He could have changed beyond all recognition, away from the awkward, ungainly character we all hated so much.

When Jar Jar first came lolloping onto the scene with the release of The Phantom Menace in 1999, there were complaints that his vocal style was reminiscent of ebonics and that his floppy ears resembled dreadlocks. This gave rise to the belief that he was based on Jamaican tropes and stereotypes. George Lucas denied this, but the accusations never went away. Therefore if we're looking for a lazy shortcut to describe his accent, Jamaica would be a good place to start. But for this reboot version it won't be the impossibly annoying "meesa sorry sir" accent from the prequels. We'll base his new, older voice, on the veteran rastas that sell reggae on vinyl in various markets dotted around London. The grizzled old guys doing this, who I've met, are the opposite of annoying. They're laid-back and world wise, yet serious and profound. Interesting and intriguing. In other words, quite cool. Could Jar Jar possibly become cool too?

Not what I'd expect to draw for an article about cool things in Star Wars

To still be alive he would need to have survived the entire span of Imperial rule across the galaxy. And with Darth Vader himself leading the hunt for old dissidents (see Star Wars: Purge) any survivors from the Republic days would probably have had to learn a few new survival skills.

Not only that but Jar Jar would have wisdom too. He was right there at nearly all the crucial events that led to the fall of the Old Republic and the rise of the Empire. Right there standing next to some of the most important characters from that time. Mistakes don't get much bigger than the fall of an order and you can learn an awful lot through failure. He was on first names terms with Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padmé Amidala, Bail Organa and even the Emperor, and his best friend grew up to become Darth Vader. I would say Jar Jar Binks could easily be well placed, perhaps even the best placed to take on the role of mentor for the next generation.

So if J.J. Abrams wants to show us more movie magic, why not adopt the insulting monicker in the title of this post and turn it into something positive.