What’s On My Desk – 2/16/22

It’s certainly been a while since my last update and like I mentioned at the end of last month, work commitments and overtime had really taken a toll on my available hobby time. But things are slowly but surely getting back to normal (at least until the next major “emergency”). I have a new action figure customization write-up that should hopefully drop within the next day or two and here’s a look at what’s currently on my desk:

I’ve been doing quite a lot with mold making and resin casting (both clear epoxy resins as well as white urethane resins from Smooth-On), experimenting with different reusable molding compounds like Composimold and Composimold’s ImPressive Putty. I’ve also still been messing around with silicone molds here and there since I do still have some silicone left, but not that often since I started getting into Composimold.

As a result of all my dabbling in resin casting, I have a growing pile of figurine that I’ve duplicated and plan to customize further (sculpting, painting, kitbashing, the usual). Starting with the three works-in-progress on the left, using the Eternia Mini He-Man recasts from the same silicone mold I used on the Jungle Barbarian project where I dump any excess resin whenever I mix too much for whatever other mold I’m pouring at the time. I already started kitbashing one as a dino-man, but for the remaining two, I want to customize one as Ax Battler from Golden Axe and the other as a Conan the Cimmerian -inspired character to round out the series of barbarian figurines that I began with last month’s Jungle Barbarian.

Pictured behind them are three more recasts, this time from a silicone mold I made of a Red Hulk figurine and cast in Smooth Cast 300 urethane resin (and as I sidebar, I also tried this type of resin with Composimold thermoplastic molding material and it works just fine. It does get warm to the touch but it’s not enough to melt or distort the Composimold). I swapped the heads on two of those of two plastic party-favor animal toys I got from the Dollar Tree for what I’m picturing to be a kind of Thundercats-meets-Biomutant aesthetic. For the other figure, I’m thinking of turning it into a King Greyskull-inspired character based on his look from the 200X He-Man series.

I’ve also begun a crafting experiment involving homemade reusable moldmaking material made from unflavored gelatin and glycerine that I picked up from various youtube videos. You can see the results of that on-going experiment on the right, which thus far has resulted in the three Mirage recasts, the Solaire figure (which glows in the dark), and the very flat-looking Blaster (which I’m planning to turn into a fridge magnet as part of a separate project). I’ll do a write-up on my gelatin moldmaking experiment once the resin cures on a few more of the molds I made to further test out the reusability of the compound. One is of a vintage mini-figure of Lion-O that I got off ebay and I also want to make two more copies of that Robot Heroes Mirage figure. I want to cast one in non-dyed transparent resin and one in transparent black because my plan is to customize each of the Mirage recasts to pay homage to the character’s various color schemes, redecos, and/or bootlegs that have graced the Transformers franchise over the years. My “Four Favorite Flavors of Mirage” if you will, including his red and white Diaclone color scheme, the Decepticon Fracture (aka Crasher) deco, the Electro Disruptor Ligier variant, as well as his elusive translucent black bootleg deco. I decided against making a yellow one based on Dragstrip because I don’t like painting yellow and that one isn’t obscure enough for my liking (though I do love that character and prominently display Dragstrip’s special edition Universe figure on my Decepticons shelf) . I won’t be adding any paint to the Mirage that I cast in transparent blue though, I’m really happy with that one and I want to keep it as-is.

Oh, and I’m still working on the Ninja Hunter custom action figure that I started all the way back in October of last year. I finally got around to basecoating the poor guy. Slowly but surely, he's getting there.

Also on my desk is the draft of my still in-progress (and woefully behind schedule) science fiction adventure novel “Primeval Frontier”. Before I got super busy with work and subsequently burned out on writing (cranking out 1,500+ page technical manuals will do that to you), I decided to re-plot a large chunk of the novel’s second half. Sadly, I still have 16 more chapters to go before I reach the end and when I eventually do, I want to post it in a serialized format on Wattpad and Honeyfeed after I proof and edit each chapter. I told myself at the start of 2022 that no matter how busy things get, I want to pick at least 10 consecutive days out of each month to write at least 5,000 words a day. That didn’t happen last month for the reasons mentioned above but I’m hoping I can get that ball rolling soon.