Patrick Boivin and Hot Toys

Hey Everyone

Thanks for all of your support and we really appreciate it! We are bringing cool to nerdiness man.

Some of us are probably aware of Hot Toys, a HK-based toy company that is perhaps best known for their sick (and pricey) 1/6 figures. They have worked with a number of movie studios and even video game companies to produce licensed figures that look really accurate and life-like.

Sometime ago, Hot Toys released their take of Hans Landa of Inglorious Basterds, admittedly one of the classiest and most brutal villains to grace the silver screen. If you ask me, it's one really really awesome figure and I wish I had seen the movie...which might be heresy to some of you :P If I did watch Inglorious Basterds, I'll probably think about actually getting Hans Landa!

Hot Toy's 1/6 Hans Landa, which would put you back by about 150USD.

Real-life Hans Landa.

This post's mainly about Patrick Bolvin, a stop-motion wizard who has made a series of fantastic videos of various toys...such as "AT-AT Day" and now he's also worked with some of Hot Toys 1/6 figures. For one, Bolvin's videos are a really good advertisement for Hot Toys, the figures not only looked great, but were really flexible as Bolvin really pushed their posing in very energetic sequences! I imagine it takes him a lot of time to actually make a single video clip.

Here's a video that shows how he actually does it, which is really fascinating stuff.



Also, here are some of the videos I found on youtube, all for your viewing pleasure! The last one is different from the rest, which is an interesting concept of an interactive video...you have to click at certain times for it to progress.

Black Widow Gone Wild:



Iron Man vs. Bruce Lee:



Ninjas Unboxing a Phone:



Interactive Joker vs. Batman Hip Hop Dance Competition:

Captain Kisuke Urahara

Greetings Again, Many thanks to Joshua and his many great posts,

I am back today to feature some anime stuff. I have yet to take pictures of other things but rest assured, there will be more awesome posts. As for Warhammer, I will give you a rundown of what I have been doing and more. And as Joshua mention, I definitely have gotten the Warhammer bug... Just wanting MORE and MORE.. :p

As for now, it is back to some more Bleach Anime PVC Figures again.


This time round, It is Captain Kisuke Urahara. Known to be the ominous stall owner in Karakura Town that helps Ichigo in his adventures as a Death God, fans of the anime will finally get to realize that he use to be one of the Captains of the Death God Squad many many years ago.


His Sword or "Zanpukto" is called Benihime. While he has yet to show his "Bankai", it can be safe to say that Urahara has lots of skill and power that have not been shown in the anime. I am pretty sure he is not a character that is a walkover against enemies.


While he dresses really shabbily in the anime, back when he was a Captain as shown in this pictures, he looks pretty awesome and cool.

And to showcase how powerful he is, this is a video showing him and Yoruichi fighting against the Arrancar and saving Ichigo and his friends.



I really gotta admire the quality and workmanship by Bandai... The figure is clean, detailed and high quality. Wierdly enough though, many of the same figures I have seen around various shops do not have the same high quality standard and the PVC or plastic looks a little deformed or dirty in various parts. It could be because they were either not original or not in mint condition.

Still haven't got a camera yet, but I definitely got much more to showcase soon

Till then, Cheers!!

Kotobukiya's Phoenix (Bishōjo style)

Hello Everybody!

How are you all doing? Hope all's well as we trudge along each day and always know that we'll find warmth in moments of geekdom :) I've also heard JQ's been bitten by the Games Workshop bug and is working to expand on 2 more armies...I won't be a spoiler and I leave it to him to reveal the juicy details.

Today, I will be going into the world of Marvel Comics by featuring a Kotobukiya 1/7 sculpt of Phoenix, or Jean Gray of the X-Men, a prominent mutant capable of telekinetic and telepathic abilities...and also one of the (many) hosts of the supernatural Phoenix Force. This time the shots are done against a black background, ala "fashion photoshoot".

Pheonix standing on top of a flame base.

Marvel and Kotobukiya (and I think DC too) have an agreement to make sculpts of well-known female characters in the Bishōjo style ("pretty young girl"), with some examples like Rouge, Emma Frost and Psylocke. I really liked the arty design of Phoenix and the series in general, unlike other female figures I've seen before that were obviously slutty and show tons of skin.

View from the top to show some of the detail, such as the sculpting of her fingers.

The Phoenix figure was designed by Shunya Yamashita, a designer known for working on Final Fantasy X and for illustrations of female characters. You can view some of his work from his website. I really liked the sculpt for the graceful posing and nice details such as Pheonix's hair and cloth sash. Cost was about 50 USD, not too bad for such a figure.

Close up shot of Phoenix...seems like she was intentionally sculpted for photoshoots.

Man, looking back I really miss watching cartoons from the '80s and '90s...they were awesome. X-Men (the Animated Series) had really great plots running even in a cartoon for kids, I really loved the animation and felt involved with the characters (eg. Phoenix's self-sacrifice to save the others, or the time-traveling escapades of Cable). Even for a cartoon for kids, it had intricate plot lines and mature themes running throughout the show.

A common view every Saturday morning...the X-Men title screen!

Well, thanks to the internet and Marvel (and broadband), we now have access to a wide-range of cartoon episodes from their website and even the entire X-Men animated series from the '90s! So if you'd like to relive old memories, do take a look and watch some good ol' comic tv series action!

Acid Storm, F-15 form

Hey Everyone!

Hope you all had a good week so far and looking forward to a weekend of rest! Just a disclaimer out there, I currently do not have my warhammer collection with me now, so most of the pics coming out will have a modern military/sci-fi theme. Once summer comes, I will have access to my WFB minis. But from what I heard...JQ has been playing quite a bit with a community of WFB players and has learned a crap load of tactica and collected many tales to share. Now that's something to look forward to!

Well, I'll be presenting Acid Storm once again, but in his F-15 form (which I think is one of the best looking planes).

Top-down view of Acid Storm (F-15)

Looking at the F-15 design now, it amazes me that the plane has already flown for almost 40 years (by 2012) since its maiden flight! In addition, the Eagle has 30 over years of active duty under its belt and it has been claimed that none have been shot down in air-to-air combat, but some Russian sources actually claimed that the MiG-23ML flown by Syria actually shot down 3 Israeli F-15s (wikipedia). Even then, 104:3 is still a pretty darned good ratio. Of course others are quick to point that they were deployed against comparatively poorly trained pilots...I am not sure what will happen if they met MiGs with pilots of equal calibre and similar weaponry.

The ubiquitous Decepticon icon...

Also...back then the F-15 was born at the height of the Cold War, as the US and USSR were tirelessly comparing their aircraft against each other in a constant arms race. And now it's a completely different story, war has become less "orthodox" with formal armies facing quasi-governmental militias and multiple fundamentalist groups. Even then, new fighters would still remain cutting edge (since it's so expensive to design, test, make one + train pilots). An obvious guess is that stealth will be a big thing for the fighters of the future (since the F117 and B-2 pretty much flew with impunity) and it seems that while US has operational stealth planes...Russia and China are in the process of designing theirs too. (fun fact: F-35B SVTOL design had some technical input from Yakolev, who designed the canceled Yak 141-Freestyle)

F-15 from the front.

Looking at the events in Libya, I really hope and pray that a constructive future can be found in the midst of the chaos and tyranny. Gaddafi's really bleeding the country more each day he holds onto power, and even if he left more chaos would ensue. Speaking of the conflict...a F-15E Strike Eagle actually crashed on the 3rd day of the strikes, due to mechanical failure and not enemy fire. I guess that's a sign of the F-15's age catching up...

The crashed F-15E Strike Eagle, both pilots were rescued to safety (the Australian).

If you're interested, the BBC compiled a list of weaponry that is being deployed by the coalition forces, which is kinda cool to see what specifically was used and admitted by the governments. As expected the US does have a hack of a lot of stuff there! You can check it out here.

Libyan rebels cheering along a beach on top of a T-54/55, early in the conflict (worldculturepictorial.com).

Villainy...

Hey Everyone

It's been great to be back with you all and basking in the glory of nerdom! Thanks for your continued support and it's been a joy for JQ & to be churning out articles you guys read.

Well, I am kinda big on the importance of good storylines, be it modern military or warhammer fantasy. It's definitely one thing I really long for, such as awesome storylines from Fallout or Baldur's Gate, or even the fluff in the army books of Warhammer.

An article on gamespot.com popped out recently talking about an essential core of storyline crafting: making great villains. Do take a look if you can...it makes some good points along the way and provides examples of well-constructed villains contrasted against stale ones worth forgetting. (side note: I don't agree on the author's summation on the Reapers from Mass Effect, at least in the first one they're really scary). The main point is that great villains help to intensify the story and ultimately present the hero with a real challenge...and add depth to the hero's character.

The Chaos Space Marines, my kind of "bad" guys.

The funny thing about warhammer and 40k is that you can play as the "bad" guys of that universe, Chaos, Orcs, Dark Elves etc. and one thing I love about playing the "bad" guy is that I can imagine some nice fluff to make genuine villains who had a cause against the "good" guys. We've got to be honest that the "good" guys have their own weaknesses and failings. The Empire is corrupt and the High Elves are vulnerable to insult (giving us the War of the Beard).




Who do you think has been an awesome/absolutely lousy villain? I'm just gonna open this topic up to everyone, feel free to share anything if you'd like.




If I can think of a good "bad" guy...my vote would be Arcturus Mengsk of Starcraft, cunning bastard who made you do all the dirty work (with quite some charm and charisma) and in the end take it all in his Terran Dominion. I remember being really enraged and yet amazed at how Blizzard pulled it off...made me swear that I'll kill him some day. Unfortunately I haven't played SC2 yet so I don't know what happens to him there.

Arcturus Mengsk, Grand and Esteemed Bastard of the Terran Dominion. Maybe an asshole, but he's sure a smart guy.

A lousy bad guy? I'd say General Greivious from the Star Wars prequels. He may look cool, have sweet lightsaber moves, and have a fearsome reputation...but in the movies he is unfortunately depicted as a coward and not much of a tactician (his droids kinda suck big time). Heck, I don't even get to see why the CIS (bad guy side) had a case against the Republic...we're just told they are "greedy" and not shown much else.

General Greivious, all lights and action but no substance.

The Ticonderoga Class VLS from GHQ

Good day to everyone and We are finally back online.

Many Thanks to Josh for posting a few before I could get mine up. Its been pretty much LIFE overwhelming me lots. While I don't see LIFE backing down.. and I would probably be consumed by work and other stuff, Toyconstruct will GO ON entertaining you readers.

For starters, I am sorry for the slow start-up. I do not have my own camera now (due to some misfortune of getting pickpocketed in Paris), And it has been difficult to get one with the strain on my finances. As such, I would be using my friend's camera to do my next batch of pics to show you all.

In addition, I am trying to organize the format of all my pictures. With the current models, miniatures and toys available for feature, I have completed pretty much just naval stuff for my modern military models. As for Warhammer, I need to step up in terms of constructing new models.

But don't worry, Josh and I will be giving it our all.

For now I shall proceed in showing you the next batch of ships from GHQ that I have completed.

Behold, The Ticonderoga VLS Cruiser. While I believe that I have mentioned before about the stats on this ship (Modern Military Blog), the Ticonderoga VLS Cruiser has been the mainstay in the Modern Naval Fleet of USA for two decades or more. It is also the first Cruiser Class to revert back to Petrol Fuel from the Nuclear "CGN" times.

Recently though, there have been plans to replaced these Ticonderoga VLS Cruisers with the Arleigh Burke Flight III serving as the new Flagship Cruisers of the US Navy.

The new Arleigh Burke Flight III that is slated to be built to replace the Ticonderoga Cruisers was pretty much a secondary plan due to the fact that rising cost from the CG(X) programme and the Zumwalt-class Destroyers.

Here we see the fleet of Ticonderoga Cruisers and Arleigh Burke Flight I Destroyers cruising in the sea. You got to admire the detail that is painstakingly put into the sculpt and mold of these ships by GHQ.

With these ship all lined up beautifully, I have only a missing Aircraft Carrier to form my Carrier Battle Group.

But don't worry. That will be coming soon ;)

Other than that, I should be removing my chatbox soon as there are many weird spams on it. So conversations and comments shall be put on each separate post soon. More to come my dear readers, and thanks for being patient on the long wait.

Cheers!

Back Online...More than Meets the Eye

Hey Everyone

First off, thank you very very very much for your kind patience and it's about time to get the posts up and running again! It was hard to get it back up, one point to take note if you're taking shots of toys: WATCH OUT FOR DUST!!! They ruined some of my shots and I had to retake some of 'em...scotch tape works well at removing dust, provided it is done gently on toys/figures/minis.

So I did take some shots recently, and will be posting roughly once a week. JQ is going through a massive transition in life with getting into the career side of life pretty soon. He may be making moo-lah, but he sure would have less time for painting!

So for the first post, we're gonna have Hasbro's version of the F-15 Eagle Decepticons (as made infamous by Starscream), the character Acid Storm. Truth be told, I always wanted one of those F-15 bots really bad as they looked really sexy. Both as transformers and as F-15 fighter planes...the closest I got was actually getting a broken version, but I finally got one from Wal-Mart! Call me a geek.

Close-up shot of Acid Storm's face.

Acid Storm is from the 1st Generation Series, a member of the "Rainmakers" group of flying Decepticons, I think he's supposed to be able to spread acid rain clouds all over the sky...sounds like "subtle" environmentalism here.

Rumble in the Concrete Jungle...

According to the Transformers wiki, Acid Storm is known for this intelligence and charisma, but prefers to stay out of the limelight. If you ask me, I really prefer the designs from the original Transformers series compared to the new ones in the Michael Bay movies, they look much more iconic to me...such as the F-15 Starscream vs. F-22 Starscream. Of course, I can't deny some of the new transformers look cool, like Optimus Prime and Barricade (in my opinion)...

Taking aim with huge-ass missiles.

One thing about this 1st-Generation design...it was kinda hard to pose this Acid Storm for the shots you see, the arms have limited articulation probably due to the blocky-ness of the arm design. Just looking back at how we grew up with these old-school transformers and seeing the new ones today makes me feel kinda old, and happy to have grown up with them.

Transformers FTW!!!