Rock My World

Well that was interesting.

I've been through several tornadoes, but today I experienced my first earthquake. The epicenter was in northern Virginia and had a 5.9 magnitude. I was sitting in my office when I started hearing a low rumble. At first, I thought it was the air conditioning system acting up, or maybe a freight train was especially loud, but then I felt a shaking. I looked over and all of my fish specimens that are in jars were doing a little dance on my shelves. Something told me that this was an earthquake. It lasted for maybe five minutes. Some people in my office felt it, some did not.

I hope that there was little damage.

Sci-Fi Concept Art

When I was a kid, I was really into the space exploration. I couldn't get enough books on the subject. One of the things I loved was all the speculation on future space travel. I was a big fan of the works of Willy Ley. I not only enjoyed reading his stuff, but looking at the concept art that went with his work. My favorite articles in Weekly Reader (anyone remember those?) were the ones about domed cities, flying cars, and other speculations on what the future held. I'm sure my mother has kept a number of my own drawing of rockets designed for the Moon, Mars and beyond.

Discovering science fiction later as a teen opened up whole new realm of spaceship concept art. I took a chance on a number of novels by unknown authors based primarily on the cool cover illustration. Two artists that really stood out in terms of spaceships was Chris Foss and Syd Mead. Their styles are very different, but both produced ships that had a hard feel to them that made them look plausible.

As it seems that I am moving into the realm of sci-fi gaming, I have been more on the lookout for anything to give me inspiration. These blogs came up the other day on TMP and seemed worthy of note: concept ships and concept tanks. Both of these have lots of illustrations that are pretty good and provides inspiration for models.

More 15mm Sci-fi

Whoa, two postings in one day! That's crazy!

Part of my zeal for posting was to try out a new camera. It a Nikon Coolpix S6100. Its for research. Long story of why I bought it, and not worth going into.

Anyway, I've managed to get a number of minis painted over the last several weeks. First off, from Rebel Minis is their Wild CATS robots. You get two in the set.

I should have photographed a human-sized figure next to him for comparison. He comes with these large claws and a missile rack for distance attacks. I decided he was going to be part of my not-Terminator army, hence the silver body and the grey rubble on his base.

Next is the a corporate head and his body guards.


The these guys are all part of the civilian contractors w/VIP from Rebel Minis. I didn't realize until now that I gave him a grey suit like that on the Rebel Minis' site. I've been playing with the idea of using the Yogurt Town scenario that I played with my daughter awhile back as the basis for a scifi campaign.

Places for a Late Night Snack

All over the streets of Mexico City you will see small snack bars or kiosks. They range from just a thrown up tent, to a small shack. I have not seen too many mobile ones like you do in the USA.

In addition to painting up yatai lunch cart, I built a more permanent structure. It sort of reminds me of something you'd see on a beach selling burgers and hotdogs.

Yatai Food Cart

Snack Shack

The snack shack took all of a few hours to build, and only because the glue had to dry. Forgive me if my Spanish is off. I used a translating program. I was very tempted to try and make a menu board running along the top, but I decided not to press my luck. No snack shack would be complete without some sort of beverage advertisement. Its probably hard to tell the name of the drink, but its a sign for Dr. Enuf. Dr. Enuf is a local soda found in east Tennessee. It can be best described as a sort of a mild lemon-lime soda with a certain "Je ne sais quoi" herbal flavor to it. My daughter and I have grown to like it and always get a bottle when at the farmers market, so I thought it would be a major drink found on the continent of Gambusia.