Copyright and the Hobby Blog

A little over two years ago I wrote a couple of posts about a particularly nasty round of GW copyright policing.    Lots of people were quite irate with the Workshop at the time and the message boards and BoLS posts of the day were so full of vitriol, hate and misinformation that I considered reformatting my hard drive just to ensure my temporary internet files hadn't preserved any of it.

An average argument on the internet

At the time, I was trying to help edumacate people on the actual nature of copyright and how it played into what GW were doing at the time.  I think it went over well and I know I reached at least a few people.

Games Workshop, Copyright, IP and Bullshit (PT.1)
Games Workshop, Copyright, IP and Bullshit (PT.2)

The information is still pretty accurate and relevant, so I've linked them as part of the larger conversation I'm wanting to have today.  Also because:  please go read them!

A few days ago, the whole issue of copyright reared it's malformed head again.

Tyberos the Red Wake - Supplemental #2

So, no progress last night on Tyberos.  Though the mighty Japanese nation was fully absorbed by the far superior Aztecs and their Giant Death Robots!  At least there's that.

And this:
 
On Sunday, Nikephoros hit me up with a question:

Oh man that looks incredible. If you don't mind sharing, what gold do you use? I don't get why GW silvers are so good but the golds are so bad. I'd love to know your recipe.

Because its a good question and because he's having such a completely shitty week, this one goes out to Nikephoros.

Allright, the first thing that you (plural here) is that most acrylic gold paint is shit.  It's not an issue for a specific brand - its an issue for the color in general.

Most of the gold paint you're gonna come across is formulated for a specific consistency that's usually ready to use out of the pot/dropper.  The problem comes from the fact that the pigments typically used in gold paint have the same issues as yellow paint - the pigmentation isn't all that opaque.  The coverage is shit.  Some brands will play with consistence to get a paint that'll coat well... but it's usually goop.  It's bad either way.

Tyberos The Red Wake - Day 4

All right, now I'm starting to get into the part of the project where it actually looks like I'm making progress.

The putty filling on the actual model turned out really well - there's only one section I wasn't completely happy about - but there's not too much I can do about.  Thankfully, the flaw is in an out of the way place that won't be seen too much.  But would definitely harm my chances at a serious painting contest.  Good thing I paint mostly for myself.

After some sanding and general clean up, the model gets some black primer and gets to warm the bench for the next 24 hours.

most exciting picture ever.

A note on my system:  You'll notice that all the parts have a nice little section of wire sticking out of them.   This is a nice little two for one deal - when I trim them down it'll be a pin and before that happens, its a great handle so I can stick the piece in a hemostat for painting.  With models like this I usually paint the individual parts before assembly.  There's a lot of detail here and I plan on using an airbrush to get the base coat down.  basically, I get better access to all those hard to reach areas.  Once the bits are ready for assembly, I'll scrap the paint off the joints and assemble just before I seal.

The Monster Mish-mash

Been suffering a bit of writer’s block with a mild case of apathy of late. It’s been kind of difficult to get momentum built back up on my own blog on top of keeping the posting schedule over on the HoP on track in the face of Dethtron’s increasingly glamorous lifestyle. What with the fancy degrees and the metal and all. The lucky bastard. Lol.  Brent too, for that matter. Man, I forgot how much of a bitch school could be this time of year if you’re a student.

My main issue has been getting posts to a full length. So, I think I’ll just go ahead and try and scotch-tape two ideas together..

Using Your Personality When You Blog AKA Strictly Stealing

Seems like I've settled into a nice chunk of writer's block.  Oh sure, I've got the amazing internet adventures to work o, but I'm just not feelin' it right now.  I'm also not feelin' making a light box and photographing some plaguebearers or even mailing my buddy his Silent Death minis back.  I guess its more of a general motivation problem now that I think about it.

But I'm not totally without ideas!

One thing that's been on my mind a bit is the question of what exactly Laubersheimer Industries is about.  The overwhelming response I got for my mini-rant on Slaanesh and some Brent related madness over on Blood of Kittens kind of got the ball rolling on that thought process.

Tutorial Tuesday: Glaze Medium

Man, things have been a bit rough around the edges this week with the new semester starting and the House of Paincakes taking off considerably faster than Dethtron and I had even dreamed possible.  Actually, the fact that new blog has more followers than old blog is one of those things that makes me jealous of myself.  Thankfully, day two has been much more subdued and allowed us both to get our feet back under ourselves.

In any case, since I imagine that some new traffic is headed my way via the super cool new network I've helped create, Its pretty important - paramount, even - that I keep up the post schedule.  Wouldn't look right if one of the founders dropped off the face of the planet now, would it?

Probably not.

So, I find myself at the nub end of another Tuesday and in need of another Tutorial to link the two concepts together Voltron style to form blazing sword and Tutorial Tuesday. 

Tutorial Tuesday: The Elusive Vyper Shuriken Cannon Upgrade

[Pre-game Groveling:] For large portions of my day of late, I've been saddled with an absolute dog of a laptop.  More of a crap top actually.  Between it and whatever pack of lies it has that's claiming to be IE, its eaten three posts now.  This was one of them.  Hence the lateness.  Please forgive me, faceless peer group!

I'm back with another Tutorial Tuesday!  We're back to Vypers (which are not here to vash and vipe your vindows) tonight AND we back to a tutorial that I have first hand experience with.  Well at least I should anyway. I wrote it!

No Pants Friday: Wood Elf Motivational Seminar

3rs party profits are up this quarter at Laubersheimer Industries!* As a reward, please enjoy this mandatory motivational seminar brought to you by Matt from S/Energy Global (a wholly owned subsidiary of Amalgamated RoboDynamics, Inc). Lets all give him a big round of applause for hosting today's No Pants Friday.

Motivation made manifest.  Now, go out and sell, sell, SELL

Since most of the 40k blogosphere is losing their collective mind over the NOVA open tonight (myself included), I thought I'd post up some very cool advice I got from Matt.  Way back when, after a post on Wood Elves, Matt was kind enough to drop some science on me and was then kind enough to let me post it.  It's solid stuff that I think is worth sharing and comparing.  It also gets me out of actually writing a post so I can get to the business of obsessing over the NOVA Friday Night Exhibition Matches. 

Thutorial Thursday: MORE DIY Light Boxes

Here I was thinking I had successfully staved off the first Thutorial Thursday for another week. I thought my clever combination of lies, excuses and techno-wizardry had been enough.

Then some helpful jackass super-pal posted up some additional light box alternatives.

Then it dawned on me that my posting was a bit light this week and I was still saving all of my juice for AFTER the NOVA open and for when people aren't gonzo for tourney's.

Begrudgingly, It's.... Thutorial Thursday.

Tutorial Tuesday: DIY Light Boxes

When I sat down to write today's Tutorial Tuesday, two things happened.  1) I had no idea what to write but I managed to figure something out.  2) Blogger conspired with IE and ate my post.  In any case, I figured I'd better get off my duff and re-write this thang just so I can move those creepy Asian guys further down the page and further out of our memory.  I do believe I've managed to gross myself out.  Ugh.

Lets talk about some macro photography rather than dudes in suspender mankinis and their bulging whonngs.

No Pants Friday: Net Liszts

Ahhhhh, the sweet smell of the same Franz Liszt joke Dethtron and I keep using that nobody seems to care about....

For those of you fleeing the latest Friday Night Internet Fight, here's some good news - the  refugee camp that is No Pants Friday has plenty of room for you.  So lets begin the orientation and begin your re-adjustment to real life so you can reclaim your place as a productive(ish) member of society.  I may have to let the Surgeon General know about this FNIF stuff and what it's doing to the populace, she* may need to get some warning label's ready.

The start of the process begins.... NOW!

I'm more than willing to help rehabilitate you, but nothing is free.

As previously stated, this week's No Pants Friday is all about net lists.  Or, as I like to think of it, a great way to avoid wasting time and money. 

Tutorial Tuesdays: Foam Trays

Tutorial Tuesdays is still kicking and still holding off the nearly inevitable dawn of Thutorial Thursdays.  Continuing along with my theme, today's super useful and way sweet tutorial is yet another that I've put into practice myself.

But first, some exposition.  Here we go!

In the race to get our models painted, we often forget about the most crucial aspect for ensuring that your minis have a long life - storage.  Or we flat out ignore it.  I've done it myself in the past.  I can't tell you how many times it ended up that my ENTIRE Chaos army ended up traveling in the upturned lid of a copy paper box.  Just looking around at some buddies of mine, some of them are still holding on to the idea that an unpadded tackle tray will keep things safe.  Some of them don't even bother with that.

Just because it has compartments, doesn't make it safe.

Pourpre and Purpur

I Got some help requests from yesterday's Tutorial Tuesday.  As always, I am more than happy to help.  Its one of the great things about the painting/modeling side of the hobby - people are actually willing to listen to the advice they were actively looking for.  None of this "what do you think of my list but I really just want validation" crap. 

Anonymous and Orange both had some questions about the color purple - anonymous just wants a recipe and orange wants help with a Thrullg. Wall of text coming your way!

Advice dog is here to help

I'll deal solely with the color itself before I jump into the Thrullg's tentacley embrace.

Purple is one of those colors that a lot of people have issues with.  Like red and yellow, it can be tricky to do right.  Unfortunately, purple suffers from all of the problems commonly associated with red and yellow.

 - Availability of premade shades of purple - between the Citadel and P3 paints, there are a whopping 4 shades of what I would call purple - keep in mind that those ranges add up to something like over 150 paint colors.  Ouch.  Reaper has a ton of purples, but they aren't the most easily found brand.

- Purple has a nasty tendency to be a weak pigment - not nearly as bad as yellow, but you will still need more coats of paint than you probably want.

- Its hard to highlight purple with out running into the whole pastel colors issue.  You have to be pretty careful with just adding white and hoping for the best.

So, how to sidestep these issues or at least try to?


As far as finding pre-made colors goes - you have to either deal with the fact that you can only get your hands on a select few shades or you can bite the bullet and order some of the harder to find stuff.   Reaper Master Series paints are a good place to start due to the wide range of colors available.  That's pretty much it.  You can always mix your own, but then you run into the problem of consistency of color. 

As far as good base coverage goes, the only solution here is hard work.  I notice this a lot with the weaker pigments - its real easy to slip into an over-thick coat of paint complete with a lumpy surface and noticeable brush strokes (I call this 'artifacting').  The only way to deal with this is to be prepared to use multiple thin layers.  Which is something you need to be aware of anyway.*  Its just a matter of thinning the purple down a bit and doing multiple coats - making sure each coat is dry before the next one goes on (a hairdryer on low helps immensely with this).  Sometimes one or two will do, for others it may be 4 or even more.  But that's just the way things are.  If you're in a hurry, then you can use the Citadel Foundation purple as a first layer and then layer other shades on top of that. 

Highlighting purple is the real bear.  Purple turns all pastel the more white you add to it and there aren't that many commonly available shades to work with outside of that.  Its a conundrum.  Plus, as a secondary color, purple has a distinct tendency to stray towards red or blue.  You gotta be careful when you're using one lighter shade to highlight a darker one.  Warlock purple and liche purple are very different colors. If you wanted a blueish shade, be very careful with that warlock purple.


The easy way:  if your a Citadel paint user, get all three of the purples (liche, warlock and hormagaunt).  This will give you a solid pair of blueish purples to work with and a nice reddish one.  You can use the darker one as a base (adding black to shade) and then use the lighter shades to highlight (being careful with adding white for extreme highlighting).  Just keep in mind how close to magenta Warlock purple is.  Its real easy for it to take over the tone.  For bonus points you can track down the P3 purple and throw that in the mix.  The only real downside is that ALL your purples will look alike - you won't have a lot of variation since you have so few shades.  Be aware that the purple wash just sometime wont be dark enough to matter.  Especially on top of the Liche purple.


The expensive way:  track down some of the Reaper Master Series paints.  They often come in these pre-matched trios that make it super easy to find matching tones.  The sheer number of extra purples you can find will really open up color and shade options for you.  You may not have to do as much (if any at all) mixing of midtones, shadows and highlights. Same advice as above - thin coats and careful color matching. Be aware that the Reaper paints dry to an extremely flat finish (your sealant will solve that problem, though).

Highlighting bonus tip:  Don't be afraid to use a blue gray (along the lines of Space Wolve gray or Trollblood highlight) to mix highlights for a blue-purple.  It can obviously end up a bit drab, but you'll sidestep the pastel issue a bit and get a cool effect to boot.  As far as red purples go, a pink or even a pinkish flesh color can also work.  A bone color added to either would also be worth experimenting with to see how you like it. 

To recap:  a good purple needs a solid base coat and highlighting scheme that doesn't make it look like your model is ready for Easter Sunday.  Multiple thin coats and judicious use of white as a highlight are key. 

Now, on to the Thrullg

First up, one thing you can always do is hit up the PP forums and see if they still have an 'ask the studio' thread and ask your question there.

However, if you've ever seen one of the GW master class articles or virtually any PP how-to, you'll notice that the studio painters very rarely use a color straight out of the pot.  Their base coats are almost always some 2+ color mixture and, overall, their schemes are always complicated.  For the purposes of this section, I'm probably going to have to dip into that a bit but I'll try to keep it in terms of what you're likely familiar with.

General Notes:  Be prepared for a lot of layers.  Since this is a mono color monster, a good, even base coat is going to be key.  It will make or break the paint job.

It looks like the scheme goes to ways blue to gray and blue to red.  the base coat is obviously a a blue purple that then transitions to a redish color.  In other areas, the base coat fades to a blue gray.  Both of these are relatively easy to achieve. 

Base coat - Pick a nice dark blueish-purple.  Liche purple would be my guess.  Be sure to thin your paints a bit and do as many coats as it takes to get smooth, even coverage.  Balck or white primer would both work.  If you have both, do a test on something other than the thrullg to see which one purple covers better.

Easy Shading - on another model, do a test to see if the purple wash is dark enough to matter over the Liche purple.  If not, add a touch of baddab black to it and try again.  The key with adding the black is to make it darker without making it too drab.  since we're going to be highlighting up so much, you wont have to add too much black.  I think a 25/75 black/purple mix is a good place to start.

base coat some more - Touch up your base coat.  Layer more liche purple leving the black wash visible in the crevasses.  Then begin layering up to a pure hormagaunt purple.  make sure that at least some Liche purple is still visible.  This means mixing lots of intermediate shades between the two colors.  be careful with the foundation paint as its pigments can take over really quickly.  The key with layering is to not cover up ALL of the previous layer. 


Build up the gray - Troll Blood Highlight is my weapon of choice here.  If you don't have it, either fortress gray or space wolves gray are good subs (mix some experiments with the purple and see which one you like better).  Using multiple thin layers, build up a gradient from the hormagaunt purple to a about a 50/50 mix on the areas you want gray.  The keys to this are, again, thin layers, and patience.  Smooth coats are also going to be important to this transition. 

Finishing the gray - Use a wash of Shadow gray very sparingly in the shadow areas - this is NOT the kind of thing where you slather the whole area with the wash - JUST THE SHADOWS.  Use a very thin wash and use multiple layers for best results.  Do a couple of quick highlights with a mix of the purple/gray color.  These should be much closer to pure gray than when you were creating the gradient.  Do some very sparing extreme highlights with pure gray.  For best results on the tentacles suckers, use simple line highlighting and go straight to pure gray.

Finishing the purple - begin doing your highlighting by mixing warlock purple into the hormogaunt.  Paint a smaller and smaller area with each mix (same as above). Leave plenty of the blueish purple showing to maintain the effect you want. Do some extreme highlights with pure warlock purple and a few (not hardly any at all) areas with a touch of white mixed in. The various bands and banding lines on the muscles on the model are good places for the last highlights.

Note: use a fairly fine brush for all your extreme highlighting.

Note 2:  When thinning your paints, the GW stuff does pretty well with just regular old water.  For our purposes, just a little bit will do you though for everything but the wash.  Also, if you see the paint separating, stir it back together. 

And that's really it.  the rest is just easy details.  Though I would recommend painting the claws and the mouth black before you paint the details to make them stand out better.

Also, please snap some pics of the model when its done.  I'd love to see it.

If you two guys (or anyone for that matter) have any questions on any part of this post, please feel free to contact me.  Either in the comments (I have email notifications set up) or email me directly. I may not be a Mike McVey, but I'm happy to share the knowledge and experience I have.

------[Foot Note]--------------------------
*Not saying you have to use this technique or even that your wrong if you're not, its just best practice.  But best practice is not always useful depending on your own situation.

A Worthless Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum

It's no secret that many people in the 40k blogging community are kinda anti-forum. Myself included. Hell, Dethtron has made a career out of it.

I obviously can't speak for the likes of Stelek, Kirby or My Liege Elessar, but I find much of what gets posted to the various big boards out there to be thoroughly useless. Especially once you get into ANYTHING that has to do with tactics and list building. As vaunted as the 'community' and 'open discussion' aspects of forums are, they're often the biggest road blocks to good advice.

[Side note] Seriously, how much of a community can you form from a collection of random and anonymous strangers? In my opinion: not very much of one.

All of that 'community' and 'open discussion' leads to a very common end point of the army list/tactics thread - total uselessness. Too many people talking and too many people allowed to talk.

Essentially, you have a lot of 'experts' with no credentials being allowed to voice their opinions so long as they follow the letter of the rules. As with any event involving people who think they're experts - ego's tend to run into one another. Fights start to emerge, side fights emerge and then the actual idiots get involved. To top it all off, most of the people who want advice or opinions are really just looking for someone to validate their thinking.

It's even worse when someone posts a legitimate question and then no one can be bothered to answer. Or sure, its monumentally important to discuss how awesome Ogryns are but as soon as someone needs genuine help, not even the crickets bother to post.

To bring home my point, and to continue the high I got from my FNIF, I'm going to snowmobile a perfectly normal advice thread. For an added layer of journalistic integrity, I'm going to go back in time and make fun of myself.

Here's a question I asked on the Bolter and Chainsword during the end days of 4th edition 40k and my brief and catastrophic flirtation with the Dark Angels. Click here for the original.My comments are in classic Laubersheimer Industries Boo-berry Blue and my intelligent comments are in luxurious Dethtron Red. There will be far fewer red comments.

MainLauby - So, I'm building and painting my first Dark Angel Tactical Squad (10 man) and, being a noob, I need some advice. Which should have been - quit painting Dark Angels while you're ahead What weapons do I equip the models with?

I've alrady built and painted the sargeant with a chainsword and plasma pistol (now knowing full well I should have equiped a power fist - 20/20 hindsight, drats!). Score 3 for spelling errors and lose 1 for every point wasted on extraneous wargear. Total: -12.

My initial plan was to equip a plasma gun and a heavy bolter (because I had the model). Hoever, are there other, better or more tactically flexable combos? I was thinking maybe a Rocket Launcer and melta. Ah, some re-occurring themes with me before my discovery of YTTH - poor spelling and building things because they look cool rather than because they are good.

Keep in mind that my only heavy wapon choices are the bolter and rockets.

Thanks in advane. God damn, that's some poor spelling. A genuine question on my point, but hard to answer since its not in the context of an army list or anything useful like that. at all.

Isiah - The missile launcher and meltagun are good all-round choices. The meltagun is better than the plasmagun in my opinion as it allows you to assault after firing and doesn't overheat. The ML is a cheap versatile but no-frills weapon that can be used v armour and troops. With this combo you will have a solid take all comers squad. Granted, the lascannon and plasma cannon would be excellent choices but each are very focused on a certain type of target. So maybe bear those in mind for the next Tacs you build. Sadly, this is about as good as the advice gets. What really should have been said is play regular marines instead. Other than that, Isiah here, does a good job of trying to answer an poorly asked question.

Stella Cadente - for first squad........well it depends, what do you want it to do? Good point. And one I had not ever considered. And never did.

for standing back like cowards: pay attention to this choice of words 10 men Lascannon and plasma gun
for running in like heroes: Power fist and Meltagun
for a unit who are mixed about what they are and not good at any of it : power weapon, Heavy bolter and Meltagun

at least thats what I think I think that people who give advice shouldn't be so wishy-washy about it

Chaplain Lucifer - IMHO you should gauge your words more carefully. You are, apparently, easily offended Stand and shoot is a perfectly viable tactic and has nothing of coward of shameful. Why the fuck do you care? Is your membership for the All-Inclusive Super Best Friends Lifestyle Tolerance club up for renewal? Different folks, different strokes, and if for you having 10 guys running forward with a meltagun fits your style, for others, standing and shooting till there is no enemy alive is their style. And this is where the thread starts to become really useless. At this point I haven't learned anything and a stupid fight over semantics has sprung up.

MainLauby - all quibbling aside, I'll think I'll rock the melta and heavy bolter. Thanks for the advice. To this day, I have no idea how I came up with this combo. I'm pretty sure it revolved around how cool I thought the heavy bolter looked. Later on, I waffled back to a plasmagun. I then proceeded to waste a lot of time building and painting this squad only to find out that it sucked within playing two games.

At this point the thread devolves further into some people sniping at each other and then a bunch of stupid shit about how awesome shooting things is. Then there was a brief rules argument and then someone who has no pride in his models told me that yanking off the fully painted sergeant's arms was a good idea. One other person tries to give me actual advice, but fails because it didn't involve quitting the Dark Angels and, instead, convinced me to take a plasmagun with my heavy bolter.

I just don't have it in me to bother snowmobiling the whole thing. Its all pretty stupid and nothing interesting or useful gets talked about. Which is really what this whole blog post is about.

From this terrible advice to my own pathetic army list with an equally pathetic army, I ended up dropping 40k for a year or more.

Fucking forums.

[Edit:] gonna go back and add some pictures later tonight.

Tutorial Tuesday - Magnetic Vypers

Just got back from a cross country trip back to the homelands of Illinois to visit various friends for various reasons. Along the way, I got to hang out with Dethtron, traveled over 2000 miles, got hit on by a gay dude, met a collection of drunk stupid bitches and went to a wedding. Also, another good buddy of mine's wife went into labor during the wedding ceremony.

All in all a good trip.

Importantly, for blogging, I drunkenly chatted with Dethtron about blogging and my relative lack thereof. Between a good conversation about Not Brent and a polite decline of my drunken offer to piggyback on his success, I learned something:

I spend too much time damn writing my blog posts. So, I'm gonna experiment. Instead of spending the hours (and hours) writing my posts, I'm just gonna try the shotgun approach. I'm just gonna write what comes to mind within an hour or so and limit my editing. You get more content, I get more practice and, hopefully, more readers.

Thus is born - Tutorial Tuesdays.

Every Tuesday, I'm going to try and hold myself to a goal of finding a great web tutorial on... something and then share. Kinda like what the Painting Corps do, only with swearing. The bonus here is that if I miss Tuesday, I can always have a Thutorial Thursday instead.

Right before I went on vacation, I was getting ready to paint some Eldar Vypes for the much overdo Project Future Boys. On the verge of permanently affixing the turret weapon, I suddenly remembered that I could probably use magnets or something to make the weapons swappable.

After a few minutes, I found this: The Magnificent Magnetic Vyper.

Beauty.

Overall, its a pretty good tutorial. I think it suffers a bit from what many web tutorials suffer from (my own included) - namely, poor photography and less than precise language. Good nonetheless.

Anywho, I ordered magnets and went on the trail of tears I call a nonstop drive to Illinois.

When I got back, my magnets had arrived and i got to work (after a nap).

Here are my Notes:

- I didn't bother with all the frou-frou of making the turret fully pose-able. I only did the bit where you can swap the weapons.

- I used the same magnet supplier as the poster - K&J Magnetics. They make all the sizes you'll need at a reasonable price.

- There is no such thing in K&J's stocks as a 1/16" dia x 3/16" long cylinder. Just go ahead and get a bunch of the 1/16" dia x 1/16" cylinders. You'll also need a mess of 1/16" dia x 1/32" discs.

- I also didn't use any greenstuff. I find it to be a pretty great option when you're filling joins and such on more organic or small parts. But pretty awful on flat surfaces and straight edges since it doesn't take well to sanding. I used Milliput, but any sandable putty will work.

- Back to that communication and precision of words issue - because of the magnet size that does not exist and some personal preferences with measuring and drilling, I had a significantly different approach to the weapon magnetization. See my kewl diagram.

- Be extra careful with your polarities. The goal is to have all the weapons be interchangeable so make sure all the magnets line up the same way on all parts before gluing. If you put the magnets in wrong, then the thing won't work.

- When gluing the magnets into the sides of the mount, I stick the 3 cylinders and the disk together and then push them all through the hole I made. This allows you yo check to make sure things are level and properly spaced before you glue.

- I added the disk magnets to the bottom of the weapon and the seat on the mount to increase stability. Its a good idea to do this part first before gluing on all the horizontal stuff as the side magnets will tend to grab the seat magnet.

- Do a bunch of Vypers at the same time to avoid confusion and save time.

That's all for now. Lets see how long I can keep up the pace.

Breeeeeeeent BRENT

Brent, you get your own full on response post for asking questions and restoring my faith in the assumption that my hobby content actually gets read. Sorry for the delay as I think I've figured out that this question is in regards to your BoLScon Footdar extravaganza.

This is fantastic advice. I've got an army in the works now, with just the base purple on. I'm sort of stalled out on what direction to go, but I'll premix some colors first. As an aside, what works well with purple for a dark army? Think foundation paint highlighted up a stage. I'm thinking of Warlock Purple and some form of blue for the accents, but I'm not sure if that's enough contrast. Sorry to bug you with this - Brent

No need to apologize for asking questions, my man . Sharing, like swearing, is caring.

Before I get into my advice on purple, I'd just like to say that the problem with your Storm Raven pretty much begins and ends with the color you painted it. It should have been red. Other than that, I think its pretty good - its unique, actually looks like something that flies, carries dudes and shoots guns. But with nary a lick of red paint or Blood Angels icon to be seen, there isn't much to draw people's attention away from its shape.

Don't feel too bad about bad color scheme choices. We've all done it.*

Now, moving forward from my words of encouragement/brilliant segue, we're at the part of the post where I answer your question.

The first piece of advice for you is to do a test model - it doesn't even have to be Eldar. Just something you can do some of what I call 'sketches' to see what your color scheme would look like. You're not even aiming for a finished product or high standards - you're simply roughing out some colors to see what they look like together. I find this is great help when I'm messing around with new ideas. Its a relatively quick and low impact way to make sure that your army is on the fast track to coolsville and not clown college.

Paint the test model... don't look at it for a bit, then (later) look at it up close, far away and under different kinds of lights. Show your friends. Make sure you're happy with the colors before you commit.

As far as the color selection goes - If you're in love with the idea of purple/blue accents for the hormagaunt purple, then pick one or the other. I think doing both an additional purple and a blue will muddy the minature. I.E.: make it look indistinct at distance. So pick one.

If you go this route, you may want to consider some of the science Sandwyrm dropped on us recently. Part III of his, frankly, amazing series deals with different kinds of color harmonies and gives us some some very interesting things to consider. If you want to go with a third color, you may want to consider a split-complement kind of thing. I'd keep the third color very small areas and for picking out small details. With any paint scheme, you don't want to overload on main colors.

Just as a quick note, while I deeply respect the kind of information Sandwyrm has presented, its the kind of thing that can quickly drive you mad if you focus on it too much and hold it up as some sort of set of rules. Its just another tool in the toolbox. An extremely useful and powerful too, but remember - there aren't to many hard and fast rules when it comes to aesthetics.

Now, in regards to a split compliment - if you end up with two purples or even a blue and a purple I think you could do some pretty cool things with some of the complimentary colors. I think yellow could be good. So would a light green, but I like this idea the least. Better still, I think some gold details would look fantastic. For my money, a gold paint more on the yellow side of things would be best - something like the Formula P3 Brass Balls.

Moving beyond the colors you suggested, some more neutral colors could work wonders for accents - black has potential, but it might get lost in all the purple as they're both dark colors. Again, this is why test models are heroes. I think some grays may be a better option for this route.

Actually, back to gold for a second - I'm really thinking that no matter what you do, some gold details would look great - keep that in mind.

And there you have it Brent. Those are the kinds of things I would play with first. Just keep in mind that since painting is so subjective, that my advice is based largely on my opinions - so I may be dead wrong in someone else's eyes. Which is why test models are so important.

Above all else - no matter how good you painting skills are in a technical sense, crap color choice will always kill you.

------[Foot Note]----------------------------------------------
*The much laughed at McWorld Jacks. Ugh.

Helpful Handy Hint #3: Mix Yo Paints

Man, I just looked back through my archives. Apparently I haven't written anything about actual painting/hobbying since my Trygon vanity post back at the beginning of April.

I need to put some kind of hastily created stop-gap into place but quick!

Thank Dog for old standbys.










Standbys: no changing the Y to I and adding ES on this one. ITS CRAZY!

Anyway, the end of the eight month Helpful Handy Hint Hiatus. See how I snuck another H in there? Clever.

Premixing Your Colors to Speed Up Army Painting
The Helpful Handy Hint series is all about those incredibly simple things you can do to help your painting in ways disproportionate to the amount of effort involved (in a good way). In fact, many of them are so simple that you'll face palm once the realization sets in about how stupid it was of you to not be making use of the. Things like painting rigs and hairdryers are perfect examples.

To the old pros and people who already use these kinds of tricks, it may seem incredibly obvious. But that's the benefit of experience. As I've mentioned in the past, most of us hobbyists aren't formally trained artists. Our expertise is often a collection of trial and error, the odd flash of insight and help from random strangers on the internet. It is also, typically, very focused on only a few aspects of art. Its also fairly hard to get started. As such, its really easy for our knowledge and skill base to be a bit patchy and fractured - even for the old pros.

Which brings me to today's Handy Hint. This is definitely one of those things that feels like a "durr". For those of you who hadn't considered doing this or even were aware it was thing, it will be a revelation. So what is this 'it'?

It's the incredibly amazing and not at all hard to master concept that you can save time and increase homogeneity across your army by premixing your custom colors.

For those of us who fiddle around with custom colors that unnecessarily complicate our army schemes, the process of remixing a custom color on demand can be very frustrating. There's the time spent doing mixing as well as the problems of matching colors across the army or even on different areas of one miniature.

Lets break things down a bit:

Time Spent Mixing: If you're using a lot of custom colors then, logically, you are spending a great deal of time mixing said colors. Its hard to keep a mixed color usable for any length of time and in the quantities you'll likely need. Even if you use a wet pallet to avoid the 'paint drying out like its supposed' to problem, you still have the issue of quantity. All of this means that you're in a state of constantly needing more of your secret recipe. This takes time. More than you likely realize.

Paint Dries Out: No surprise here, paint is designed to do this. But what this means for your special color is that its quality tends to decline over time. While sitting on the pallet, paint gets thicker over time as it dries. Which can mean visible brushstrokes and other such artifacting on your surfaces. If it gets too bad, you have to make more. See above.

Color Matching Can Be a Bitch: Over the course of the army, it can be very difficult to ensure that your special color matches itself over several models. As paint tends to darken when it dries, it can be difficult to eyeball an exact match between your fresh mix and an old dry patch. The tendency is for the color to shift. In a worst case scenario, the models done at the beginning of the army are noticeably different than the ones done at the end.

Fortunately for you, there's a solution: the aforementioned premixing of your paints.

Its a decidedly simple to implement solution and will go a long way towards alleviating the above problems. All you need to do is mix up some large batches of the colors you frequently need in some empty pots. Bam! In one fell swoop, you've solved most of your problems. Quantity is barely an issue, mixing is all but eliminated and all your models will be painted with the exact same color.

Here's what you need:

Raw Materials - This means paint. You'll need to have a good quantity of the paints involved in your recipe on hand. Its best to work with fresh pots since they haven't had time to start drying out and thickening up. In a pinch, what you have on hand is good too.

Empty Dropper Bottle(s) - It goes to figure that you'll need something to store your new paint in. Little do most people know that those handy dropper bottles that Reaper and Vallejo paints come in are available without paint in them. I recommend the dropper bottles as they do much better job at keeping the paint from thickening up over time compared to regular old pots and jars. The idea is too keep this new color of yours around as long as possible so you don't have to make more and worry about color matching. I recommend the Reaper empties since they come with a paint agitator.

Pipettes and/or Syringes - Unless you're lucky enough to be using paint that already comes in a dropper bottle, you'll need a way to transfer paint out of the pots into the empty bottle with a modicum of control. Whatever you're comfortable with and can get your hands on. I personally use pipettes, but the more I look into syringes, the more I think that's the way to go.* Though unless you have the mis/fortune of a genuine medical need, you'll have to get these from a medical supply type store.

As I said, mixing the paint is easy. But there are a few things to keep in mind. Once you have a good idea of what you want your color to look like, its time to recreate it on a large scale. Now, I know there are a lot of painters out there who don't get all scientific about their ratios when mixing, but for our purposes its a good idea to be a bit more precise. This serves two purposes. One, it allows you to get a much more homogeneous mix in the bottle (more on this later) and, two, it allows you to recreate the final product more easily if there's a next time.

So, starting small, create a smallish batch of the color your after in the empty bottle while making careful note of the ration you used to achieve your results. Its a good idea to start small - or at least as small as you're comfortable with - so it takes less paint to fix mixing mistakes as they occur. Once you have the ratio settled, WRITE IT DOWN AND PUT IT SOMEWHERE SAFE! It might will come in handy later if you need to make more or someone asks you for a recipe.

Once you have the ratios down, its a simple matter of multiplying your numbers enough times fill the empty bottle. One last word of caution - mix in small stages. Don't just throw the total amount of each color you think you'll need into the pot one at a time. It will take forever to mix properly (which can harm the homogeneity of the color) and can lead to needing to put more paint in the bottle than it can hold to make the rations right. Work with small 'runs' of the total ratio at a time, and then make sure it mixes properly with what was already in the bottle. Make sure you do periodic testing with your samples.

A couple last pieces of advice - its generally a bad idea to add thinner to your bottle of newly mixed paint. In many circumstances, the thinner has a tendency to break down the paint over time and cause the components to separate and settle. Thusly ruining the paint. Unless you have some serious paint thickness problems, play it safe and wait to thin the paint once its out of the bottle and on to your pallet.

Lastly, be prepared to spend some money. You'll need to buy paint, containers and some means of transferring paint. It can add up a bit, but the time and frustration saved over time will be well worth it.

In my own experience, premixing custom colors has been an enormous time saver and a staggering help with the tedium and frustration that can crop up when painting an entire army. I first did this with my Eldar when I noticed how much time I spent mixing a mid-tone between bleached bone and ivory for some highlight. I mixed up a batch of a color I use on almost every model and blew my own mind.

I've also recently purchased the materials to make two separate colors for my nascent Tyranid army. Its going to be great.


------[Foot Notes]---------------------------------------------------
*I'm working on getting some more info on this from Tinweasel as he uses syringes regularly. For paint mixing. As I get more info, I'll pass it along.

On Paint: Revisiting GW

A little over a year ago I did a series on the types of paints that are available to us as hobbyists. Overall, I think it holds up in the face of my experience and I stand by much of what I wrote. However, the section on GW's paints bears some rethinking in the face of a year's worth of use.

Here's the old post for reference purposes: The GW standard.

The post in April was written at the beginning of my WD subscription - a subscription I'd still have if the magazine wasn't 9 fucking dollars an issue.  But that's something to impotently shake my fist at another time.  Where was I?  Oh yeah... while the gaming content of White Dwarf has gone from good to the equivalent of shit in a urinal, the painting articles have gotten really good.  They're actually promoting good techniques & habits as well as publishing how-to's for both the beginner and the expert.  The master class series in particular is extremely good.  The days of pretending that you can achieve smooth blends with dry brushing are over.*

The masterclasses ended up being particularly useful for me.  Even better than the stuff in No Quarter, I'd say.  However, the recipes used were always in terms of Citadel paints.  Dur.  Since color matching across ranges is such a crap shoot (and potentially expensive), I caved in and bought GW paints when I wanted to try a recipe out.  The end result being that I gave them a bit more of a fair shake than I had before.

Now, some new info.  I'll readdress each point from the original post and leave it up to you to read what was already said previously.

1) They dry too fast.  True, but so do the Reaper paints (now that I've used them quite a bit as well).  Acrylic paints dry quickly, its a given.  Nothing to do but thin your paints.  A wet pallet goes a long way towards extending the working times of mixed paints.  But that's another article for another rainy day.  In any case, that's one point I've softened on.

2) Consistency between colors is very spotty.  Absolutely.  But I'd like to be fair and say that I'm not just judging this on a handful of the lighter shades of colors. Or, the colors which tend to have poor coverage across all ranges.  Even some of the darker and mid tone colors just will not cover an area.

3) The containers suck.  Yep.  Still true.  Very bad for the paint and very bad for you in terms of expense, paint quality and consistency of coverage.  Now that a year has gone by I've noticed that all of the jars I stick models to are old GW pots.  More than one of them half full.

4) They keep changing the line.  I actually haven't noticed a problem with this over the last year.  But if you extend that time line out to two years, you run smack dab into the replacement of the inks with the new washes.

5) The Foundation paints... 

The real motivator behind this little look back.
When I first wrote part one of the On Paint series, it was before I had any significant experience with the Foundation line.  I had fiddled with a couple colors using my airbrush and that's about it.  Now that I've purchased a few and used them with an actual brush, a much more solid opinion has formed.

I hate the Foundation paints.  I think they are absolute garbage.  They are poorly made and promote extremely bad painting habits. 

The biggest problem is that they dry too fast.  Even faster than the regular Citadel range.  There is absolutely no working time with them.  Hell, the paint actually starts to get noticeably thicker if you leave the pot open over the course of a quick painting session.  Not even a wet pallet will keep it wet enough to stay workable with any regularity.  Forget about blending or even smoothing out streaks.  By itself, this wouldn't be so bad (you could almost work around it) except for the fact that the paints are almost a maple syrup consistency.  Seriously, I'm not using hyperbole on that one.  So the paint will go on in globs and then dry in the blink of an eye.  Bad, bad, bad.  The only thing you can do is throw a lot of thinning medium (not water) with a drying retarder at it and pray.

Then you get to the container.  By itself, its not so bad.  Its one of the slimmer pots that behave much in the same way as the P3 containers and goes a long way towards addressing my complaint about the regular Citadel pot.  The lid has a much beefier hinge as well so its not prone to breakage.

However, all that goopy, quick drying paint tends to run into the hinge and then squish out when you close it. Which can be kind of a nightmare because of how heavily pigmented the paint is.  Also, as little air is in the new pot, the Foundry paint still dries out quicker than old women in Florida.  I bought one a couple of days ago that had begun to turn to paste on the store's shelves before I had even purchased it.

[Pro-tip]:  always open a pot of Foundation paint to check its freshness.

There's also the issue of how pigmented the paints are.  Its great from a coverage standpoint, but it can be kinda irritating when mixing since the Foundation paint tends to overpower all other brands.  I'm not prepared to make this a negative feature of the line, just something to be aware of.

Which brings us to those bad habits.  Here's the sales lingo from the GW site:

Specially formulated to complement the existing Citadel Colour and Citadel Washes ranges, the Foundation Paints have been designed to provide great coverage, creating a solid block of colour with one application over any undercoat

So not only is the paint garbage, but GW isn't promoting good practice.  Ask any good mini painter** about what you should do with your paints and they'll tell you to thin them.  Use multiple thin coats to get smooth, even coverage.  How exactly does 'one application over any undercoat' of an an unnecessarily thick paint with a split second drying time fit in with that? All the Foundation line is doing is promoting lazy and sub standard painting. Especially since the paint gets significantly worse in quality over time.

Look, I know that multiple thin coats can be a pain in the ass.  But globbing paint on like a girl just learning how to use nail polish is not a solution. 

Ultimately, the idea behind the Foundation line is inherently flawed as it is aimed at poor practice and combines all of the worst paint qualities to get there.

Final Thoughts:
Ultimately, I'm still not a fan of the majority of the paints GW produces.  However, they aren't that bad.  In fact, most of my dislike stems from the fact that the paints dry out like crazy.  I have some original Citadel paints from 10+ years ago that are still good.  Then we get this crappy revamped in-house formula and I can't keep paint usable past 6 months in some cases. 

That being said, when fresh the paint behaves very well.  The Citadel paints are also compatible with the Tamiya acrylic thinner (which is more than I can say for Vallejo) and great for airbrushing.  They also thin well which is another thing in their favor.  Bottom line: don't be afraid to use the most easily obtainable paint in our hobby - especially if you have a recipe that calls for it as there are almost no substitutes.+

Then you have the foundation paints.  Simply awful.  I can only recommend you use these in two situations:

1) if you absolutely need one of the colors and are prepared to dick around with thinners to an extent you are more than likely mentally unprepared for.

2) You plan on using them with an airbrush.  Because in all fairness, once you thin Foundation paints for airbrushing, they're golden.

-----[Foot Notes]--------------------------------------------
*Seriously, back in the day, all of the painting articles only ever suggested dry brushing as a technique.  For the life of me, my 15 year old ass could never figure out how they got dry brushing to look so good.  Thinking back, it was lies.  GW had a tendency to gloss over the skill required to get 'Eavy Metal results.
**That's painters of miniatures, not small painters.
+The Vallejo game color range is not completely equivalent.  There are often subtle differences that make a huge difference for mixing and color selection.

Steal My Ideas - Volume 1

Gonna take a quick break from my comp hate, to bring you something a bit lighter. So without further ado:

STEAL MY IDEAS!

The sad truth of the matter is that I have way more ideas for painting and modeling than I have time or money to pursue them. I come up with all kinds of half baked, quarter baked, raw and/or double oak smoked back bacony ideas that I'll never get to use because I just won't get to them. So I'm going to give them away! That's right, a bunch of totally rad ideas that are totally free for anyone to steal and not one has to feel bad about it. Not even Jesus. And if you think these ideas suck - well then fuck you! 'Cause they're free. Haha!

Lauby's Totally Rad Tribute to Black and White World War Pictures
For whatever reason, we Americans have a boner for WWII. Its a pretty major part of our cultural identity when you think about it. But tons of inaccurate video games, a slew of strange beliefs Americans have about our involvement, a national predisposition to accusing someone of being a Nazi in every argument ever and a strange antagonism with the French aside one of the most fascinating things about the war is the photographic and film records.*

Whenever anyone thinks of a big-ass war, WWII invariably comes up and with it all these little slices of life preserved on film. Its actually pretty neat that all these records exist in the first place when you think about it. Anywho, all these WWII pictures get used all the time for inspiration and research for modelers. So go a step further:

Paint your entire army like its a black and white photograph of WWII!

How cool would that be? On a scale between 'lame' and 'totally rad' ('lame' being the lowest), I think it would be at least 12 ¼.

If you could actually force yourself to paint every last model in your army in a forced grayscale scheme, think you would certainly turn some heads. Remember, this include the bases as well.


Lauby's Totally Sweetdiculous CHiPs Themed Ork Biker Army.
This one came to me a while ago when Nob biker lists were the way to go when you wanted to pound face with Orks. I imagine that it probably still works. In any case, what is the quintessential motorcycle media experience? CHiPs!** And what is the standard example of Ork scariness? Nob Bikers! Lets combine the two!!

This one is pretty simple, all you have to do is paint all your bikes black and white like the California Highway Patrol and then paint all the boyz in tan uniforms. Genius! Hell, you could order some sweet Ork heads from Micro Art Studios and get added hilarious hat action!

But that's not even the best part. Nononono. Since the standard Nob biker list has two Bosses, you've got a golden opportunity to make your own Ork versions of Ponch and Jon. Now, Ork Erik Estrada and Ork Larry Wilcox can crush your enemies and keep the highways safe!


Lauby's Totally Awesome Robot Uprising Imperial Guard Army
This one was inspired by Stelek's LOLride tactics article a while back.

I've always had a secret, even... forbidden... love of the quirks of the Inquisition codices that allow for some pretty cool mixed forces type lists. Sadly this may not be the case depending on the contents of the fabled, new Inquisition book (if and when it comes out). But that's tears in beer for another day. Right, mixed forces... like I said, pretty cool stuff can be made. However, sometimes all that variety gets boring.

Let me explain: the inquisition models are some of the oldest that GW produces - lots of very static poses and little variation. On the other hand, mixing models from three armies is a real quick way to make your army look indistinct in appearance. Plus, when you get right down to it, lots of the inquisition codex users have already moved to inducted land so you're not being all that unique.

For whatever random reason, the LOLride article caused some ideas to gel in my head. Two Three words: Robot Uprising Army. This is probably the idea I'm most excited about out of the three I'm giving away. Also, I'm not entirely convinced I wont mess around with it some day. Who knows? Unholy Krondor? 'Cause I sure don't.

The basic idea comes flows from one of the underlying pieces of the Imperium fluff - they hate artificial intelligences. Big parallel to the Dune universe there. In any case, my idea was that on a remote mining planet, some miners decided to use some robots they found/made to do all the heavy work. Maybe even some forced human labor. Then: BAM! Robot revolution. Now you've got a small group of robots and their human slaves waging war on the rest of the planet using whatever captured weapons and re-purposed mining vehicles they have.

I think this list from Azarsgp is a pretty good base to work from. There are plenty of opportunities to model robot overlords - the Grey Knights in particular can be modeled as hulking mining machines. The commissar and the heavy weapons teams are others. The command squad as well. You could even get creepy and make Straken a full robot and then all the peons a collection of horrible cyborgs. The only thing I'd want to differently is somehow work in Sentinels. Because, you know... big robots.

You've also got a great opportunity to model a very random collection of humans for the big foot platoons. Maybe give them some kind of shock collar and some kind of horrible flaying machines as sergeants.

Keeping with the mining theme, you've got a golden opportunity to add drills and saws and so forth to EVERYTHING. You could do worse than basing your Terminators on the Tau Stealth suit kits. It also just occurred to me that some kind of transport shuttle carrying a shipping container would make a pretty baller Vendetta stand in. Hell, if you threw in some Sisters of Battle for whatever reason you wanted, you can make fem-bots. Please don't be creepy about this one, or everyone will feel bad.***

Other than that, go nuts. Lots of opportunities for kit-bashing and converting. Lots of ways to add character to your army. ...and lots of ways to add insanity. Also, don't get too bound by the standard metal box. About the only down side is if GW ever removes the ability to take Inquisitorial allies. Then you're fucked. No matter what, the key thing to keep in mind is that anything that is in charge of anything else or really dangerous should be a robot... or a robot vehicle.

Man, that's a way funnier picture for a robot uprising.

Right, sooooo... steal my ideas. Just be aware that I may just have pumped myself up about imperial guard for the first time ever.


-----[Foot Notes]--------------------------
*All kinds of actual, serious business downplayed for comedic effect. Man, I'm totally pussing out with this footnote.

**If you said Easy Rider, Torque, Renegade or Chopper Chicks in Zombietown you would be WRONG! Heatvision and Jack, while awesome, is also WRONG! If you said Sidehackers or Ghostrider, you're DEAD TO ME!

***Seriously, please don't go out and make a bunch of big-titted robot ladies. Doctor Thunder does enough of that kind of thing for everyone already.

Quick Hits - Volume V

1. My good buddy Colin started a new blog. Its called Dick Move. Basically its an outlet for Colin to rage against the stupidity of the internet in his own space... in the least constructive and most hilarious way possible. He's only got three articles up so far, but knowing his level of bile as I do, I can tell you that more is definitely coming.

Now, the real challenge for Colin is to not make his corner of the internet the Bell of Lost Souls is Retarded 90% of the Time: the Blog. So far so good, but the Bell of Lost Souls IS retarded 90% of the time and there have been some absolute gems lately.

2. Speaking of BoLShit, as an Eldar player, I feel I am honor bound to at least mention this... uh... this whatever the hell it is. Total foot Eldar based around the synergy that Eldrad and the Avatar. I am.... unconvinced that this is a good army. Screening units or not, cover saves or not, fearless or not, I've seen what proper mech armies do to troops out in the open. I'm not buying that 4 monstrous creatures and 8oish T3 bodies are gonna carry the day.

Fine, whatever, this guy can have his fun. I've got no problems with that. HOWEVER, there is a ton of dick waiving goin' on. Lots of grandiose statements about his win/lose record, the types of players he faces and his own impeccable pedigree. I don't give a shit about your gaming history, man. Evidence, or this army ain't shit - A battle report with pics would be fantastic.

Well, we'll see what part II has to offer.

3. Looks like I haven't had a serious painting article in a while. It also looks like I've neglected some reader questions as well. Lets fix both.

Revuk writes: He turned out awesome, well done! Any chance you could provide details on this new recipe for white? (in regards to my Autarch).

Pretty easy, actually. It's the same recipe that the 'Eavy metal team used for their Khan masterclass in WD#3XX. I don't have my collection in front of me, so no exact number for you.

You need the following colors: Space Wolves Gray, Graveyard Earth, any white, Charadon granite, Devlan Mud.

You start with a base of 50/50 graveyard earth and space wolves gray and then build up a ton of very thin layers by adding a touch of white each time. Be sure to leave some areas alone so the base color shows through. You cap it off with a few pure white (and, again, thin) layers. The rest of the shading is done with a touch of charadon granite for the deep layers and devlan mud for the rest. Remember, for the shading, just a little bit will go a long way.

Isylfe writes: Do you have a link to a tutorial for that corroded bronze technique? Thabks [sic] (in regards to Project Future Boys).

Yes and no. Here's a link to the dakka post where I found it: GMMStudios Heavy Metal Marines. The orange color is RMS Orange Brown (9201), FYI. So there's a basic overview and some examples here, but not too much in the way of a step-by-step approach. My own approach to the recipe results in a very cartoony/stylized version of the below example (which is not my work).