[CHARITY] Headshots from the Heart LIVE ONLINE

As you're reading this, we're in the process of kicking off a fundraiser to help sick kids. Last year we raised $2,700 for Childs Play - this year the event's just starting and we're well past the half-way mark to beat it!

The full 24 hour event is being streamed online RIGHT NOW.

GO WATCH

Help us!

• Spread the word
• Website
• Where you can come watch and find all the info
• Facebook
• Interact and share with your friends & family what's going on!
• Twitter
• Interact and RT!
• Donate
• Money
• Donate a flat rate
• Pledge
• Offer a few pennies per headshot kill. (1 penny will be apprx $36)
  Feel free to limit your pledge.
• Check in Sunday at noon to see what you owe.
• Auctions
• Going on throughout the full 24 hours
• Check the page to know what's being auctioned when and for how long.

I'll be posting updates from the LAN section of the event on my Twitter account, so check in over @InDavesLife.

100% of profits goes to Childs Play... we use their ChipIn! widget and eBay Giving Works so we're not handling the money.

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[CHARITY] Headshots from the Heart, ramp up

As you're reading this, I'm with a bunch of friends setting up for tomorrows Headshots from the Heart gaming marathon. Last year we raised $2,700 for Childs Play - this year the event hasn't even started and we're well past the half-way mark to beat it!

The full 24 hour event will be streamed online tomorrow, Saturday 18th 2013 at noon, Eastern Time.

Help us!

• Spread the word
• Website
• Where you can come watch and find all the info
• Facebook
• Interact and share with your friends & family what's going on!
• Twitter
• Interact and RT!
• Donate
• Money
• Donate a flat rate
• Pledge
• Offer a few pennies per headshot kill. (1 penny will be apprx $36)
  Feel free to limit your pledge.
• Check in Sunday at noon to see what you owe.
• Auctions
• Going on throughout the full 24 hours
• Check the page to know what's being auctioned when and for how long.

I'll be posting updates from the LAN section of the event on my Twitter account, so check in over @InDavesLife.

100% of profits goes to Childs Play... we use their ChipIn! widget and eBay Giving Works so we're not handling the money.

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Realistic Moss

The Tin Can Tree project is coming along quite well. Now that the base is all flocked, it's time to add a little more character to the setting.

Imagine you're walking through a forest.
Brown trees surround you.
There's grass and brush underfoot.

What's missing?

All those little things: Leaves, moss and other organic features to fill in the terrain.


There's not actually a ton of stuff to say about this article, but if you continue to read, I'll talk a little and show you more examples of how you can use hobby moss.

It comes down to basically just gluing a bunch of moss around your terrain where it looks goodn while trying to keep realism in mind. You're not just distracting from the basic green of your flock, you're building an overall scene that every little detail adds to.

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Flocking Terrain and Bases

So I got to this point by painting with sponges on my Tin Can Tree project. But now, everything is brown and black and needs some perking up.

Whether you're creating terrain or just working on a base for a model, some form of flock will make it look more realistic.

What's flock you ask? Green powder, tea leaves, sand, small rocks, etc - in other words, stuff that looks like grass, forests, deserts, mountains and so on.

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[CHARITY] Headshots from the Heart (2nd annual)

You may recall that last year I spent a solid 2.5 months painting some themed miniatures (donated by MiniWarGaming) for charity. Specifically, for Headshots from the Heart. A small group of us put on a 24 hour gaming marathon where we played Borderlands without pause, gave away prizes, auctioned off a bunch of phat lewtz, accepted pledges by the headshot and streamed the entire event online. In the end we raised about $2,700 for Childs Play.

You can tune in Saturday May 18th at 12.30 pm Eastern Time or catch a practice before hand.

This year I'm just volunteering, but you can bet I'm still going to pimp this out on my blog. With the release of Borderlands 2, that's the game that'll be running 24 hours straight... but instead of 4 people the entire time, there's only going to be 3... why? Because people who donate to play in the LAN party won't just get chances to win some cool stuff, they'll also have a chance to join in on the event!

As for the lewt up for grabs, we've got some amazing sponsors this year... Awesome gaming gear from Steel Series, Steam codes for Torchlight 2 donated by Runic Games, an absolutely beautiful leather mask from FeralCrafter and plenty of other geeky items, like, oh, a baby wyvern skeleton! Y'know what, just go LOOK AT IT ALL. There's a lot of stuff, but they're still accepting more so now's the time to contact them if you'd like to help a good cause.

If you don't have anything monetary to give, you can still help. Tweet this, Facebook it, post it on your own blog and help raise awareness for what's going to be a great time! They've also got banners you can use!

Last year I also posted an article detailing the steps on how you too can stream this sort of event online. I went with the software method and used a professional sound mixer with mics around the room to capture all the audio for the event. We were also prepared incase we had to reset anyones crit counters.

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Painting with Sponges

Now that I've got the trees built and gel textured for my Tin Can Tree project it's time to paint them.

Plan A was for Airbrush. heh. Well, that was a bust. Few reasons:

• My airbrush has a small, gravity fed reservoir. Great for fine detail, tedious in large areas.
• Paint in an airbrush gets thinned down, many layers are needed to truly bring out colour.

For small details close up, you have a lot of control. Over a large area, noooooot so much. (Unless you take a TON of time) I've included the photo below to show how far I got with the airbrush and where I took it using a sponge. Worth noting, I probably spent significantly less time with the sponge too.

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[Community Support] Blood of Kittens vs Battlefoam

Seems to be a week for this kind of stuff... Honestly, I'm not trying to turn into a news site, just a matter of bloggers supporting bloggers.

Apparently Blood of Kittens is tied up in some legal issues with Battlefoam, prompted by opinions and rumours shared by TastyTaste that Battlefoam disagrees with. I'm not going to go into specifics, but you can read the announcement on Blood of Kittens and help support his legal fees. (anything helps)
http://bloodofkittens.com/blog/2013/05/01/network-news-battlefoam-v-blood-kittens/
(I didn't see any releases from Battlefoam regarding this, else I'd've linked that too. There was a thread on Dakka, but it was locked.. people are pissed about the locking, I dunno... I see a forum not wanting to get dragged into drama.)

Tasty's built up BoK into quite a gaming network, focusing on many facets of the hobby as well as helping other bloggers get attention. Personally, I think it's unfortunate to see the little guy get pushed around by a bigger company. Sure, he's probably not making friends with some of the stuff he writes, buuuut it's free speech. Deal. Battlefoam also seems to have a history of this kind of action.

Now, before anyone suggests I'm being hypocritical after backing up GW for wanting to protect their IP the other day... this is different. (Plus, I even said there, "I don't fully understand what is and isn't "fair use" and what breaks "news" sites get for posting anything their sources provide them.") This is about free speech. The irony of course is that as Battlefoam tries to strengthen their brand by getting involved in legal action against people talking out against them, it makes me less likely to buy their product due to a) how they're treating a fellow blogger and b) their need to sue rather than stand on their own merits and quality... which is extra unfortunate, because I'm in the market for a higher end case.

Other Interesting Reads:
http://www.popehat.com/2013/05/02/battlefoam-learns-why-legal-threats-can-be-dangerous/
http://plasticlegions.blogspot.ca/2010/09/foam-wars.html

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Texturing with Gel

I work with gels ALL the time as they're really useful. They're relatively cheap and can be found in art supply / hobby stores. Some previous examples of where I've used gel are in my posts on Advanced Fire Effects and Making an Earthy Wall.

In this step of my Tin Can Tree project, I'm using Sandy Gel to add texture to the trees. You can do similar things by mixing sand into heavy gel or glue, but you'll get more consistency and shaping out of using sandy gel specifically.

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Yes, Bell of Lost Souls and others are down...

...and my traffic is up. Because I'm writing again, or because people are hobbying instead of reading news? Guess we'll never know... I'm not a news site, but there seems to be a lot of rumours circulating at the moment, so I thought I'd do my part to put some of them to rest. Yes, Bell of Lost Souls is down right now, but it's supposedly due to technical problems that are "looking mighty suspicious by the hour." according to their official announcement, which you can read for yourself:
http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?31218-BoLS-FRONTPAGE-STATUS-Official-Announcement

General pointing of fingers seems to be the posting of pics from an unreleased White Dwarf which seems to be the reason Faeit 212 is gone. ( http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512c/notice.cgi?NoticeID=928410 ) Tabletop Fix has also announced they'll no longer be covering GW products: http://ttfix.blogspot.ca/2013/04/public-service-announcement_30.html

Now, there's a lot of people pissed off over this, but it's actually one of the areas where I can't help but back GW. Some people are arguing that White Dwarf is just a monthly catalogue that GW wants you to pay for or that other designers post pics of upcoming stuff for free... doesn't matter... point still remains that it's copyrighted / "secret" upcoming works that GW doesn't want leaked until they're ready to display them. You can't really fault them for taking that stuff down. If someone started reposting articles from my blog, you can bet I'd take action.

That said, I don't fully understand what is and isn't "fair use" and what breaks "news" sites get for posting anything their sources provide them.

It does highlight a chilling trend that Google has with taking down data and not providing proper means of responding to take down requests. (Yes, BoLS is supposedly a "tech" problem, but even they seem to be getting a "suspicious" run around" from Google.) Google has even begun denying users the opportunity to respond to take down requests on YouTube and has even admitted that they have agreements with some media partners so that even if a video is taken down mistakenly, they won't re-enable the content.
( http://www.newmediarights.org/copyright/DMCA/youtube_refusing_honor_dmca_counter_notices )

Anyways, I guess BoLS is working on the issue AND looking at getting private hosting where takedown channels must be handled more formally.

[UPDATE]

They're running again, down for about a day, maybe less.. official word is still "technical difficulties".
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2013/05/bols-returns.html

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Building Tin Cans into Trees

This is the base for the Tin Can Tree project.. over the next few weeks you'll see how to turn this into a beautiful forest scene with tall trees, a waterfall and clear waters. This part was provided by the store / our local press ganger.

To begin, all you need is some thin wood, which you can get relatively cheap from most hardware stores. Even press board like MDF (Medium-Density Fibreboard) will work, but can be more susceptible to moisture and warp. Cut it to whatever size you want; large, small, or even a wavy pattern.

The tin cans are just recyclables which end up glued to the base but you could even use pop or juice bottles and really anything you like. Caulk was used to attach the cans to the MDF. It's a strong silicone (rubbery) glue that'll hold heavier duty stuff together. [Read more on Caulk and glues]

There's still plenty of work that needs to be done though, and this post will lead up to just before we actually start painting.

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