Another Mr Lizard

Been a while since we had a minis painting post, hasn't it? Believe it or not I actually had some stuff well in progress shortly before everything.... went wrong in the brain department. And I've managed to get a bit done here and there. Painting is a hobby I enjoy after all. Although I'm not exactly brilliant at it, it does give me a good, constructive way to try and relax. So whilst I've somehow spent most of the day on basing and prep work for what I guess is phases 3 & 4 or of my current Dino-Might workload, I did at least manage to finish up the last touches on these new piece.

Delay All Monsters

Obviously with one thing and another I haven't been doing much writing here. This is something I'm hoping to fix going forward. And whilst I have one or two plans for things to write about in the future, there is one piece of outstanding business from the recent past that needs to be dealt with first: The new Godzilla movie.

Yes, I've seen it. And whilst I wouldn't say I hated it, or even that it was BAD exactly. But it has problems, and that's the sort of thing I find interesting to talk about. So we're going to do that for a little while. Needless to say, there will be spoilers.

The Land Of The Lost World Part 3: At Least It's Better Than The Last One

Whilst this isn't really the time to be getting into a full scale discussion on the subject, a brief overview of the current trilogy of Jurassic Park films would be that the first one is distinguished be being rather good, the second is distinguished be being shockingly awful, and the third at least has a Spinosaurus in it. I guess it's somewhat serendipitous that this series of miniatures posts is following a similar format.

Although, just for the record even I wouldn't call any of paint jobs as bad as Jurassic Park 2.

The Land Of The Lost World Part 2: The Sceneryic Route

As I may have mentioned previously, I've been working on some Dinosaur miniatures lately, with an eye to maybe one day actually using them for some kind of game. I mean, there's got to be SOME novelty value in spending on all this time and money on miniatures and then actually using them for something other than dust magnets, right?

Anyway, the idea of at least attempting to assemble the necessary components for having a game appealed to me, so I resolved to have a go at sorting out some scenery. On that note I should probably point out that this may not be the most exciting minis post of all time.

The Land Of The Lost World Part 1: Let's Get This Party Startered

So, as I may have mentioned I've been gripped by a strong interest in the paleontological arts of late. Dinosaurs are, I'm sure we can all agree, pretty cool after all. But whilst my attempts to combine this fledging interest with my hobby of video games were stopped short by the fact that apparently all games featuring Dinosaurs have to be multiplayer FPS (because what else would they be apart from literally ANYTHING EXCEPT THAT), I did recall that there was another hobby I'd been neglecting which would combine quite perfectly: that of miniature painting.

Dinosaurs are, after all, the perfect subject for such pursuits, seeing as how the group consists entirely of awesome monstrosities of varying types and sizes. Although scale could well be a consideration as, let's face it, most of the popular Dinosaurs aren't exactly famed for being small.

Try doing THIS in 28mm. I DARE YOU.

However I did recall something from back when I was working on my Silurian conversion. A range of Dinosaur models made in 10mm scale from Magister Militium. So I figured I'd get some and see what happened.

Friday The 2013th

Another year over. And you know what that means don't you? Tedious "Best Of X" lists. Millions of them, slithering out of the internet and into your disinterested eyes like some kind of ghastly occular leech intent on draining out your ability to feign even the slightest interest in the most hideous fashion possible. Only when it finally heaves it's twisted bulk through the screen it finds that there's not actually anything left to feed on as all mental resources have been depleted in pretending that you don't hate your friends, family and the miserable excuses for presents they gave you, even though you would probably be happier setting them all on fire. Thus, defeated it slinks off to die in a pit of rotting feculence and the twitching corpses of it's decaying brethren.

Happy New Year?

That metaphor rather got away from me there. Still, never mind eh? It's time to trawl the archives and try and work out what things from my past year didn't actually suck. As always actual release dates are less important than when I actually first experienced the item in question. So with the rambling and provisos out of the way, let's get on with it shall we?

And The Kitchen Sink Of Death

Let's be honest here. The Time Of The Doctor was not really what you'd describe as a great episode of Doctor Who. I wouldn't describe it as awful. It's certainly no Fear Her. Hell, I'm not entirely convinced I'd even describe as bad per se. But it's definitely not very good. At best I suppose we could describe it as an uneven end to an uneven year. And of course if we're going to have any hope of getting to the root of WHY this is we're going to have to get into full on spoiler territory.

For example, the 12th Doctor discovers that when a body dies it evacuates its bowels..

So consider yourself warned.

Terminology Velocity

One thing you quickly learn when performing even a cursory review of Dinosaurs in general is that they are possessed of a great variety of long, complicated sounding names. Now, obviously we need to call them SOMETHING, and using latin or pseudo-latin sounding terms allows us to apply some measure of appropriate description so that everybody knows what we're talking about. Even if we're not always sure exactly how to pronounce it.

Of course, one of the other functions of such nomenclature is that it all sounds very clever and official. Which is just as well really. Because if we were to actually set the TARDIS telepathic circuits to translate right down to the root meanings of terms and try to have a conversation about Dinosaurs we would sound, in all honesty, utterly retarded, if only for the number of times you end up saying lizard in a single sentence.

So that's what I'm going to do. Enjoy.

Advent (Geological) Time

It's at times like this, with the festive season well and truly underway, that a mans thoughts inevitably turn towards the one obvious subject of relevance for this time of year:

Dinosaurs.

What did you think I meant?