Love is a drug, but my Lady prefers Polymorphetamines

Here's another guest post from the PinkPonny, but you should already know that since it contains a model that has actually been painted ;). On the surface, the following is an article about painting a Callidus Assassin. However, delve a little deeper, and you'll find this is another angle on something that I touched on in my Wisdom of the Norns article about balancing The Hobby with relationships.

Well... Have you heard of Deadpool? He’s a Marvel comic character, he says silly things, sometimes he’s a villan, sometimes he’s an anti-hero? Yeah, that’s all I really know about him. Still I had this Callidus assassin floating around for upwards of ten years. One day I just looked at it and realized this model had the same face as deadpool (and spider-man, for that matter).

Deepthought: Accommodator (or, On the Life of a Friend)

This is a hobby editorial. I went to school to become and try to make my living as a writer. Though I love the hobby, and I'd like nothing better than to sculpt all day, posting amazing things on here for all to ogle, there are times when the urge to write strikes, and I try to use these interludes to delve deeper into important parts of the hobby. I hope you find the following article interesting, and I promise to get back to posting cool models soon!

When I started writing this, it was titled "On the Death of a Friend," but then I realized that, were I in your shoes, that is not the type of title that would inspire me to read an article. Thus, I changed it, and I like it better already.

This is an anniversary of sorts, i guess, though it's hardly a thing to memorialize. This is the 3-year anniversary of the death of a good friend of mine, who went by the name Ross Nickle under the sun and the stars, but who was known as Accommodator in the digital world of posts and threads. Ross was most active on the Tyranid forum Warpshadow, and for the years when he was as our administrator, that board ran like a well-oiled machine. You may have run into him on other boards as well: particularly those that had anything to do with Titans and Titan Legions.

Like the passing of Brimstone (for those of you who can still remember Brimstone), Ross' death was an odd thing. It happened once in Real Life, happening to families and friends and co-workers. But then it happened again Online, weeks later, when the news was released to the communities. And in those communities, that news spread further than it ever could in Real Life, for over these information superhighways we touch more lives than we know.

If you knew Ross online (as Accommodator), you may not have known him as well as I had the fortune to in Life. As an attempt at remedying any disparity, I am finally getting around to this: something I've been meaning to write for some time. In it I hope to capture the Ross that I knew, and I hope to further fill out the Ross that you might have known. I'm not sure why it came to me now, but here it is.

Hydra Has a Home

Might just be time to get back to the hobby briefly. There have been more developments in the #spacemarine fiasco, one of the most interesting of them being GW actually acknowledging the situation, if not bending low enough to actually apologize, but it's something. They even managed to leave up everyone's angry comments about the acknowledgement post on their facebook, rather than summarily deleting them as you'd expect them to do (considering @VoxCaster was blocking anyone who referenced them on Twitter).

Anyway. More on that later.
This one is meant for my dear Hydra!

He finally has a home! HUZZAH! (click the image to be directed)

He's still getting it off the ground, but I wanted to share the link so that people could find it.

For a time, Hydra, Moloch, and I formed a fantastic little team of Tyranid artists. We were active on Warpshadow, but we spent just as much time bouncing ideas back and forth through the background medium of email. We collaborated at all levels, from concept through to actual models. It was a glorious, fruitful little synergy that I've also meant to post about for bloody ever, but I guess that full story will have to wait.

Anyway, though I've posted numerous articles here featuring the works of the Moloch, I have been woefully behind in sharing the work of the Hydra. Once again, it's something I always meant to get to but didn't manage. Of our little Tyranid shadow team, Hydra has ALWAYS been the most prodigiously productive. I've described the guy's inspiration and modeling through-put as a nuclear reactor of creativity.

Also, did you know the guy can fly!?

Stop that. That's silly.
Ahem. The best thing about Hydra's creative drive is that it's very much contagious. You hang around the Hydra enough, and you start to achieve things of which you never thought you were capable.

And now is your chance to bask in the boy's brilliance. He's a very busy man, so it might take him some time to get the site up to full operating strength, but best to follow it now so that you don't miss the amazing updates later.

H-Archive

And, because I can...

Deepthought: Wisdom of the Norns

This is a hobby editorial. I went to school to become and try to make my living as a writer. Though I love the hobby, and I'd like nothing better than to sculpt all day, posting amazing things on here for all to ogle, there are times when the urge to write strikes, and I try to use these interludes to delve deeper into important parts of the hobby. I hope you find the following article interesting, and I promise to get back to posting cool models soon!

_________________________

Alright. So. I've been kind of out of the world for some time, but every so often, I think about Modern Synthesist and worry that I should be getting back to it. I've been dealing with some change and uncertainty in real life, which has caused me to switch trains, slightly, and put models on the back burner as I looked for work that actually paid.

What's more, as it's a subject that relates to this article (which I wrote MONTHS ago), My Norn Queen of just over two years is no more. Well, she's still around, just not with me. That being said, she is a remarkable person and was the inspiration for this article. In the hope that there are more people out there like her, and in the hope that some people can empathize with the weird, personal stigma I felt about 40K, here is the article. Also, I'm not going to go in and change all the language to the past tense because that seems weird.
__________________________

This is kind of a weird idea for an Editorial (as most of them seem to be), so please bear with me...

So I've got myself a girlfriend, and I call her my Norn Queen. She does sweet stuff for me, like giving me tickets to GD UK for my birthday last year, and then being so interested in the event that she accompanied me to it. That seems like a perfectly normal act if this were any sane, equal relationship. However, unfortunately, I am a Geek of the 40K variety, so when a girlfriend buys me tickets to Games Day, and then asks to go with me, it is an Event: something to be celebrated and screamed from the rooftops...solely because she showed an interest in my hobby.

And, because you're all like me, you're probably thinking the same thing: wow! Amazing! What a girl! How rare!

Except...how does that make any sense?

Somewhere along the line, I--like I expect so many of us have--came to the conclusion that this Hobby we're into was certainly dorky and possibly reprehensible. It was something to be discussed with other people who I was sure were into the hobby, and not with anyone else. All through high school it was this way: where my Warhammer 40K hobby was my dorky black spot, and I tried to keep it from my non-hobby friends for as long as I could manage.

Announcements: Winners and Workshops

Howdy Folks,

I've now gotten in touch with both winners of the 10,000 View Giveaway, and they've both come back with their model choices, so I guess I'm good to announce them here.

Winners!
Krewl Rain from Warpshadow was our first winner, and she has asked me to whip up a Tyranid Prime for her, armed with bonesword, lashwhip, and some other mystery weapon. I feel rather guilty about it, but I haven't, actually, made a Tyranid Prime since the codex came out, despite having all kinds of decent ideas for them. This project will be a good kick in the rump to get those ideas down in a model.

Next up, Natfka, from Faeit 212 won the second prize, and he has requested that I craft him a convincing Asdrubael Vect (can you believe I've been calling him Absurdrael all these years? how fitting is that?) stand-in as the only current Games Workshop model for that powerful character is pewter and wears a funny hat. I've already envisioned the dark lord striding down the deck of his Dias of Destruction with his Scepter of the Dark City held aloft. I'm taking this as an opportunity to experiment with a non-combat pose, and I'm hoping that I can make Vect look at once menacing and regal. I'm excited about making the Scepter, as it should be the focal point of the model, but I'm also keen for the opportunity to really pimp out Vect's ghostplate armour.

I can't wait to start on both models, and I'll surely be posting progress here.

Workshops!
I'd also like to plug a Workshop that Simon Elsen (also known as Terrorfex on Warpshadow or Katan on 5th Dimension) is organizing for September. He's taking a step down the road of the Massive Voodoo kids and is offering his first ever painting workshop. If you're wondering why you should want to join Simon's workshop, you need look no further than the GW What's New blog, which he has been frequenting of late, or his galleries over on 5th Dimension.

The workshop is taking place in Germany, so if that is where you hail from, or if you can get there without too much trouble, check out the details over on 5th Dimension. So far they've only been posted in German, so I hope you're fluent.

Deepthought: We. Are. The Hobby.

This is a hobby editorial. I went to school to become and try to make my living as a writer. Though I love the hobby, and I'd like nothing better than to sculpt all day, posting amazing things on here for all to ogle, there are times when the urge to write strikes, and I try to use these interludes to delve deeper into important parts of the hobby. I hope you find the following article interesting, and I promise to get back to posting cool models soon!

First off, I'd like to state that this is not going to be one of those articles.

Anyone who knows me from Warpshadow knows that I don't go in for Games Workshop bashing. Though this may start with a bit of negative sentiment, I would ask you to stick with the article and read it through 'til the end as the end, in a way, is the most important part. That being said, it's a biggie, so best to grab a cuppa something to go along with it.

Though I don't go in for Company Bashing, I got very close last May, when it seemed like The Company was doing everything in their power to squeeze more money out of their Hobbyists (heck, at one point I was planning a revolution). On May 18th of last year, at the height of the Internet furor over price hikes, Finecast (and its further price hikes), and the restriction of UK-based, world-wide online retailers, Games Workshop CEO Mark Wells sent out a letter to hobbyists. If you missed it, the full letter can be viewed on Beasts of War.

There are many things I could take issue with in this letter, but the greatest and most glaring of them is the following, taken verbatim from the letter that Mark Wells, CEO of Games Workshop, sent out to a hobbyist:

...the simple fact is that European internet traders will not invest any money in growing the hobby in your country. Their model is to minimise their costs and free-ride on the investment of Games Workshop and local independent shops in creating a customer base.

For all my lack of Games Workshop bashing, that was a statement that rankled me. Though there may well be some free-riding internet retailers, there are also SCADS more internet retailers who support themselves by selling models so that they can spend the rest of their days writing hobby articles or creating cool conversions for other hobbyists to use. Some of these online retailers who invest a goodly portion of their time into growing the hobby online took the statement as what it was: a direct slap in the face, and they posted comments like this one from Matthew over at Miniwargaming.com.

The gist of this letter seemed to be the idea that Games Workshop invests more time and money than anyone in growing this hobby, so it makes sense to pay their prices and not to support freeloading online retailers. It got me thinking about just how much time and money all of us in this interconnected, online, miniature community invest into this hobby. I had a revelation about the nature of what our communities had evolved into: I thought that if we could ever herd together the 1,000 cats of our online community and convince them to dream a single dream, we would be the ones at the controls of this hobby community and not The Company. I came to a realization that is the first main thrust of this article. It was a simple statement that belies the foundation-shaking strength of the sentiment behind it:

We. Are. The Hobby.

You, and me; what we do here, and the interactions that hobbyists have on miniature-based blogs and forums all over the net. We are the hobby.