Another Halloween has passed, and much like wearing an onion on one's belt, the Simian family seems to have adopted a fashion for our times - the carving of the crown.
The Crown! Most granity of pumpkin squashes. Leathery outside, amber within, and resolutely squat and green as a bad moon rising. This year's face came courtesy of Jet Jr who, instead of picking from a lineup of facial features, drew his own version, which I then transferred onto Happy Jack below and got to work. Pumpkin came courtesy of the in-laws' crop, which aren't great eating this year, but weren't too hard to carve out.
Plus, Mrs Simian approves of the smiling friendly face of Spring's waning, moreso than last year's wicked maw.
Poor Jack had a lonely vigil in the end, with only family visiting and none of those pesky kids (apparently Ngaio was the place to be this year), but he was still admired and even earned a photobomb from the neighbour's cat. If he's anything like his predecessor he'll hang around 'til Guy Fawkes Night and then take his leave for a new face next year.
Auckland sits somewhere on my radar, sure. Since I've lived in Wellington the bigger city has been a feature and occcasional destination. All trips bar one have been for work and that's ok. I now have the working traveller's familiarity with its airport, taxis, hotel rooms, food courts, and inner CBD meeting spaces. As such the city has assumed itself alongside other regular drop-offs with a similar sort of 'familiar anonymity'. I like visiting the place, and am reasonably comforable being a stranger there, but I don't really know it outside those spots, and one visit I'd really like to see its beaches, volcanic cones islands and western ranges instead of simply flying over them. And this year I'll be flying over them a lot more frequently, thanks to work.
Like any big city inner Auckland city has its own face, which fits with it being our most Pacific city, and our most Asian. Among the modestly ambitious post-80s skyscrapers the usual big city caches apply- everyone's there for business of some sort, dressed to impress. I feel older, less gainly, shabbier, just walking down Queen Street at key hours of the day. There's still a lot of life in the main drag after business hours; when the office blocks empty out and people rsh for carparks, bus stops, ferries or the central britomart Station terminus for home. After half an hour a different sort of city dweller emerges, and this year it seemed a lot of that life has taken residence in its doorways and parks, and on its benches. There's less of that in Wellington, although more than there used to be, and I wonder, with weeks to go before the general election, whether anyone notices any more. By morning, you get the impression that in some places there's the gesture of support and charity: baked goods left still in their packets on park benches down Fort Street for anyone to take and use - and it seems that this does happen as intended.
And then by night Auckland comes alive again, particularly at street level where its laneways and sidestreets open their doors, spilling light out onto the pavement.I don't often walk alone at night on any city streets, but Auckland's are so busy, so constantly in movement that I've never felt actually alone. And there's always so much light to walk by.
In their day Harlequin Miniatures were tremendously prolific and varied in their choices of subjects for their Doctor Who range. Every current Doctor, including the Eighth and Cinematic ncarnations ere represented, along with every companion, nearly every major villain and an embarrasment of riches in the monster department. No manufacturer since - licensed or not, has met the enormity of their range.
As a consequence, and with Black Tree Miniatures still runing the range in a scaled-own way, the collector can have more than one version of most their favoite Time Lord. It meant that, thanks to UK-based friends, I have more than one version of the First Doctor. One has already been painted, but recently I've been working on Harlequin's alternative sculpt - and here he is
This is the unpainted version off Black Tree's site. You get the gist of it - this is the First Doctor from An Unearthly Child, his debut. OR, from The Tenth Planet, his swan song. The Astrakhan hat and cloak give the painter a few options, really, maybe Planet of the Giants at a pinch, for example. So my approach was to take advantage of that. But first, a few adjustments:
Harlequin sculptors loved their bow-legged poses, and they weren't averse to the odd stragely-positioned arm either; and so we have a First Doctor here who not only has both, but also lacks a few characteristic accessories - his monacle, for one. Plus, blink and you'll mis his walking stick in his left hand, buried underneath the cloak. In the pictures I've seen, William Hartnell carried his cane in his right hand, so a new cane and green stuff monocle were fashioned. I'd have loved to have made a scarf as well, but there's quite a lot going on under that elongated head already.
So here’s progress to date paint chips, scuffing and dodgy painting aside. I briefly considered rendering my alternative First in monochrome, but having seen examples online decided against it (harder to make the colours pop, and it’s something this figure needs.) unlike his other incarnations the Girst Doctor has so far has three distinct faces from different actors - Hartnell, Richard Hurndall and more recently David Bradley (actually there have been four if you count Edward Warwick’s Android ‘duplicate’), so while my original First Doctor resembles Hartnell the most, this alternative will do for the others.
'Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks' by Ethan Gilsdorf (2012)
On a recommendation from the Save or Die podcast I recently read through Ethan Gilsdorf's Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, an autobiographical journey by the author, a journalist, who revisits an Eighties childhood of roleplaying games through literally revisiting and immersing himself in many of the elements past and present of a fantasy geek lifestyle. Along the way he meets other gamers, lifestylers and geeks, some of whom also tell their story through Gilsdorf.
Gilsdorf is around my age, but got into gaming earlier, and seemed to stick with it larger, and yet his experiences of leaving the game seem pretty familiar to anyone who has left home, entered adult institutions and fumbled their way through the sought treasures and pitfalls of adult relationships. In fact, the author's late childhood of nursing a severely disabled mother while entering his teens weighs heavily on the narrative, as does his confessed difficulty with committing to his longtime girlfriend. In a way, the premise of the book as quest oriented helps tell his story - the work of the journalist being one of discovery, detective, conflict and intuition, much like that of an RPG character; however, it's a piecemeal journey, with interruptions, revisions and deviations. There's also an returning element in Gildorf's writing that admits to a form of arrested maturity in the writer - something he explains in part to his unenviably difficult teens, but nevertheless it intrudes into the narrative. In short, there are times when the quest seems to be aimed at more than just awakening and examining the geek in Gilsdorf's head, but also pursuing a warrior queen of his very own, and to me it sat uncomfortably.
Nevertheless, there's plenty here to absorb if, like Gilsdorf, you've been somewhat divorced from the world of roleplaying games and are interested in how its various worlds - tabletop gaming, LARPing, historical reenactment, online MORPGs and fan culture, have evolved. As anyone who has followed the fortunes of games like Dungeons and Dragons can attest, the fortunes of the game and its community have waned and waxed over the years and fought their share of demons - from Eighties Satanic Panic to the collapse of many of its gaming studios, to the emergence of new media and the digital age. I found a lot of interest in Gilsdorf's visit to the spiritual antecedents of RPGs, in particular Guedelon in France, where a castle is being constructed strictly according to mediaeval methods including manpower, and the modern re-enactors, whose lives I do not envy, but dedication and philosophy intrigues me.
Perhaps the book rather extends its stay, though. The coda, a visit to New Zealand, seemed tacked on to complete Gilsdorf's mission of visiting a fantasy world up close and offer the best chance to immerse himself in one post-Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. But anyone who has tried to accomplish this will probably tell a similar story of the variable fortunes of attempting to meet screen with reality. It's a rather flat ending, and somewhat unsatisfying. I recommend Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks with some hesitation, but will say that its coverage for the time is pretty generous, and while told from a US perspective, doesn't seem to be especially parochial. Gilsdorf himself comes across as a pretty intense individual - sometimes apologetically so, and as noted above, this personality drives a lot of his book: your mileage may vary. Fr my pafrt I finished the book a little less patient with its writer, but happy to have been on some of his journey at least.
Here, recently posted on YouTube is Gilsdorf's original films of his teenage gaming group in jittery, blurry Super 8, with the soundtrack 'Kids' from Stranger Things. As an artefact of its time it's damned near perfect.
The last three months have been a bit of a blur. And Gorillaz, some TV and film, modelling and RPGs. And podcasting, of course. And work. Lots and lots of work. Some of this will be covered over the next month as I undertake yet another wave of blog in-fill, So watch this space...
Now, I'm not normally a fan of the phrase "dairy conversion" most of the time, but here I'll make an exception.
Here's the latest on my Little Shop of Hours:
It turns out etching in brickwork can be five parts misery and five parts delight when it comes to painting! But on the whole I'm deid chuffed with the colours of the bricks (done somewhat on the fly) and once I'd sorted out a fitting colour for the sills and window frames (good old, though now a little clumpy Catachan Green) things fitted in better. Which is more than can be said for the roof section, which seems to have warped in construction, but we'll get there. Up next: winders and doers!
It's been some time since I last opened my box of Dr Who minis, some of which have been fully painted, some not, and some of which need a touch up - either through chips and flaking after poor storage, or simply because they just don't look too good. Here are the guys to date:
There are some omissions, of course. A second Fourth, Third and First Doctor two of which are still in their black undercoats; and these guys need to be completed.
Here are Crooked Dice's likenesses for John Hurt's War Doctor and Paul McGann's Eighth from Night of the Doctor - and more on these in their own time; both are, literally broad brushstrokes, and Hurt's Time Lord needs a new base, because... damn.
Winter should be the season for painting, of course, but this has been an unusual year in other things needing to be done around the home and after work hours, so Spring, maybe Summer, might be the more likely time. Particularly once the daylight hours draw longer.
There's an inescapable sense of finality to this project now, particularly as avenues for 28mm (or thereabouts) figures dry up. Black Tree's sales get smaller and more deperate looking, Crooked Dice have cowed away, seemingly as a result of a C&D from the Powers What Be, and similarly Hasslefree and Heresy's lookalikes are harder to find. In their place are Warlord's new range - taller, more recent in focus, mainly, their Capaldi regal of hair but specced and guitared up like a walking Mid-Life Crisis. So this may be it: best not rush things!
