I have always opted to buy love. Really, it was the only option available to me– given my staggering menu of crippling personal flaws and blatantly antisocial attitudes, the only way I’ve been able to maintain any sort of social circle throughout my adult life has been through the balancing contribution of my works. My goal has always been to inspire in those around me, both in my physical and virtual spaces, a difficult moment of indecision.

“Okay, sure,” they say to themselves. “Spud may be kind of an asshole, and he does leave his crap lying around on four different tables wherever he goes, and the relentless bragging does get pretty f***ing irritating sometimes… but on the other hand… man, that blowfish was pretty awesome. Maybe if I put up with him for a while he’ll make me something pretty like that.”

And in that moment, they’ve unwittingly entangled themselves in my calculated cycle of grudging tolerance. Putting up with Spud does not, in the end, pay off for most people, but after years of practice I’ve perfected a manner of making it look like it might. I guess I’m sort of the lottery of human beings– a horrific investment obscured by really good marketing.

I made a thingie!

It’s for Infinity. It makes hacking less complicated by eliminating the irrelevant options in any situation. This way, even a dummy like me can figure out my options!

It’s also pretty.

That’s very important.

Each year at my local store, we run a Christmas tournament. Each participant shows up with a painted model, securely wrapped, and attaches to it a label with a handful of hints to its identity. We play Warmachine all day (the last two years, the format was Thunderdome), and as people score points, they can unlock the clues to each present’s identity and creator. Then at the end of the day, people use the hints to choose which model they think they’d like to swap their current present for, with higher-scoring players getting later swaps to better ensure that they keep what they choose.

The entire exercise, from model creation to playing to opening presents, is the most fun I have gaming all year.

Two years ago, my entry models were a pair of festively-themed Basilisks named Herb and Lindy, while last year I brought the fury of Santa Reznik, High Naughtymonger of Menoth.

This year I’ve been trying to focus more on scratch-sculpting than on conversions, so I decided that whatever I ended up making, it would be entirely sculpted out of Fimo, which would give me more leeway in creating an interesting model. I originally tossed around some ideas for a custom warbeast, but had just finished scratch-sculpting a few rather large models, and was in the mood to work on something smaller and faster. In the end, I had a fantastic idea; a counts-as Withershadow Combine in the guise of different collection of immortal magical cobblers:

Boo-yeah.

Updates have been a bit sparse lately due to my holiday giftmaking– most of my projects are super secret until delivery to their various recipients, and work on the remaining presents robs me of the time I’d need to blog about them anyway.

But fear not, seven remaining readers! For while Spud cannot show you something worth looking at, he CAN waste your time with an incomplete practice mini and a goofy piece of recently-acquired photographic equipment!

I’ve decided to do three nice things that require almost no work on my part, because that pretty well sums up the kind of guy I am.

1. Anyone wanna sculpt at Templecon?

This year will be my fifth Templecon, and the first where I’m not planning to play much Warmachine. I’ll be playing in whatever Infinity events they have and probably getting in a few games of Grind and Thunderdome, but otherwise I’m mostly just planning to hang out and do whatever. During this period of whatever-doing, I was thinking that it might be fun to sit in a hotel room for like twelve hours straight and sculpt an army man. I mean, I’m paying enough for the bloody room, I might as well get some use out of the damned thing.

Would anyone be interested in such an activity? Twelve hours is enough time to get a dude from wire to partly dressed; I’d be covering things like armature-rigging, fimo mechanics, useful tools, basic anatomy, faces, and clothing, with lots of random pointers in between about general technique and good habits.