Commissar-General Seraya

Alrighty then, here's the last of the photos from my January 2014 snow day photo shoot. Commissar-General Seraya Reichhart has been my chief bad guy girl/ antagonist since back around 2006, although she went through a couple of previous iterations before arriving at the appearance you see now.

Seraya herself is an Obitsu standard hard torso body with a very Obitsu-like pre-painted head I bought on eBay several years ago. At the time, I call this head and some others I bought "HK mystery heads" because they were sold through a few Hong Kong based eBay vendors but had no brand attached to them. She's wearing a WW2 German female cut Luftwaffe uniform from In The Past Toys and her hat is from DiD with new insignia from some self-adhesive scrapbook bits. She also has a white Azone dress shirt and marching boots from one of Dragon's Soviet female solders.

Adventurer's Club - Feb. 2014

This month's Adventurer's Club theme is "local attractions" which proved to be surprisingly difficult for me to come up with an entry. I've been feeling a bit grumpy about my locality so it was hard to think of something attractive to post. Finally, I looked around my house and came up with something neat and bit more classy than the sewer access cover out in the alley!

Here, Lycee is posing with two West African carved wood statues that are in the collection of the Bookshelf Museum of Post-Modern Antiquities and Random Stuff.

Lycee is... well... Lycee! More correctly, she's an Azone PN Lycee Progression who I hope to have as one of my regular Adventurers. The African figures are exactly that. They are Ibeji figures from the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria. Ibejis are nearly always made in pairs as they represent twin siblings; the Yoruba have one the highest rates of fraternal twin births of any people on earth.

I'm glad I managed to get this done before the end of the month and now I'm ready to find out what Heather has planned for March. Stay tuned!

Back to the Goon Squad?

In the days before he was the de facto Dear Leader of the Caelian Democratic Republic, Alrich Stahl was the officer in charge of my old goon squad, the Generic Evil Minions (GEMs). Befitting such a position, then-Capt. Stahl wore a black uniform that exudes an aura of smug, nasty authoritarianism and he wore it quite well I think. Recently, I've been getting bored with Stahl in his Dear Leader role and I've been playing around with ideas for a reconstituted goon squad. Who knows when that will happen but in the mean time, I dug up some photos of Alrich back in his GEM days. I was happy enough with this look that I would re-dress him more or less exactly the same way. BTW, there's not one WW2 German item on this figure. It's mostly a combination of modern law enforcement and WW2 Soviet stuff.

Oh NOES!!! Caelians in the yard!!!

While the back yard slumbers beneath a blanket of snow and ice, members of the Caelian National Defense Force are seen patrolling near the southwest corner. This is a clear violation of the sovereign territory of the back yard and raises concerns that the Caelians may be looking to launch a "pre-emptive  counter-attack in self defense" to "liberate and secure the back yard in the name of The People for The Greater Good"... or something like that!

Anyway, this is another set from my recent snow day photo session. The Caelian National Defense Force is my fictional military, based on the armies of Eastern Europe during the Cold War era with a particular nod to the East German Nationale Volksarmee. Long time reader(s) may recall seeing one of these guys here before, back in late 2011- Minions, pt. Dos, although I've made a few changes to them since then. The big difference with this guy is the reversible winter coat which has camo on one side and white on the other.  I also dumped the "Chi-Com" style chest rig in favor of a belt with a four-magazine ammo pouch, which is much more typical of Soviet and Eastern European armies. When or if I get the whole squad together for a group photo session, I'll discuss and show this stuff in much more detail.

Meg's snow day- 2014 version

Back in 2008, I posted a series of photos featuring Meg, my Obitsu "muse", walking in the snow. Snow days don't come around often in my part of the US nor are they usually very impressive compared to what you see in more northern regions. (Although people in the Southern US are almost embarrassingly bad at driving in relatively small amounts of ice and snow.) Anyway, snow days provide a great opportunity to get some outdoor photography done and that, combined with Heather's newly announced Adventurer's Club over at The Majokko Shop, was all the motivation I needed to get in a mid-morning photo shoot.

Meg's attire consist of a t-shirt and purse from Dragon; sweater and jeans from Azone; jacket from OJI; boots from Obitsu and a hat made by Andrea of Dolls Ahoy! fame: Dolls Ahoy! LJ and Etsy shop.

'Bash of the Day- a GI Joe for my son.

OK, first up for 'Bash of the Day is a GI Joe inspired by my son. He grabbed this guy the other day and ran around with him so I thought "hey, why not at least dress this figure in a uniform?" to see what happens. It beats just having him lay around in a dark cabinet doing nothing and my son got a kick out of it, so I guess it worked out OK.

The figure itself is a GI Joe that I picked up in a lot purchase either on eBay or from an online vendor. I don't believe he's stock since IIRC, the head was from one of the early 2000s Joe vs. Cobra figures while the body is a Super Articulated type that wasn't used with the JvC line. The uniform and t-shirt are from Dragon and the boots are BBI. I skipped any other gear or accessories because this was just a quick bash and my son is a year and half old so no reason to put on tempting things that could go in his mouth, nose or whatever. As it is, the uniform probably has too many small bits so this is something he only plays with under close supervision and doesn't keep in his toy box.

In spite of this being really simple, I thought he looked pretty cool. His uniform has tiny insignia including Ranger tabs, Sergeant stripes on the collar (looks like he's a Sergeant First Class but it's a little hard to tell) and the name and service branch tags above the pockets, which denote the he's in the US Army and his surname is Kelley. So, in a burst of serious creativity, I'm calling him Sgt. Kelley! Anyway, enough blabbing, here are some mediocre pics.
 

Kitbash of the Day... another dumb idea!

So, having mentioned in my previous post that photography has been almost impossible lately, I come up with another dumb idea that requires photography!

Slightly less involved than doing a photostory blog, this would be simply to take a doll or action figure, dress him or her in some kind of outfit, photograph the result and post it here with some explaination or back-story. This is something I used to do quite a bit back some years ago but it just doesn't happen as often any more. There would be no real theme other than the figure in question couldn't be completely stock from the box and ideally would be assembled specifically for the shoot or at least newly completed. Moreover, I don't think I would stay with any particular theme or limit myself to any specific dolls. It would just be whatever I was in the mood to work on at the time. Also, the project would be Kitbash of the Day not Kitbash a Day, so new figures would be posted irregularly. I can also see such a project being useful as a clearinghouse of random ideas that don't fit my "usual" themes and areas of interest. For example, I've never had a figure of a WW2 German soldier or an Old West cowboy, so those could be possible subjects, or something more off-beat like a school girl wearing a gas mask or a robot playing a guitar.

Hmmm... maybe this isn't such a dumb idea after all.