3.29.2012
kitbashes
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Statistically, half the projects I do are going to be above average and the
other half, by definition, will be below average. This project falls
squarely in the latter category. It's the armored knight
Kuros, who first appeared in the amazingly
cool medieval-themed 8-bit NES game Wizards & Warriors. This
would have been a decent effort if I'd unveiled it about ten years ago, but
I guess they can't all be mind-bogglingly awesome.
3.12.2012
kitbashes
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Mattel having secured the licensing rights for Universal Studios merchandising
means that they were finally able to produce a Hot Wheels version
of K.I.T.T. of Knight Rider fame. I will, of course, be
gobbling up as many of these as I can get my hands on because there are a
lot of different versions of K.I.T.T. that I would love to create in
three-dimensional die-cast form. Here's my version of
K.A.R.R., the evil twin of K.I.T.T. who
sounds suspiciously like either Optimus Prime or Burgermeister Meisterburger,
depending on which episode he's in.
3.8.2012
Whilst I ruminate over what the future holds for the ZMFTS!, I hide in my
workshop and paint toys, and in the process remember that this used to be
a Transformers fan site.
kitbashes
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I always wanted to do a version of
Robot Heroes Galvatron
in the colors of the original 1986 Hasbro toy, just because I have a perverse
sense of humor and I love painting toys into the wrong colors. Sometimes
it's nice to get away from the wholesale toy redesigns that I tend to do
and just have fun with a quick, simple and straightforward repaint.
Finished this up in one night.
3.2.2012
So, it seems that after 12 years, FortuneCity has seen fit to cancel its
free web hosting service.
I have always maintained that this web site is a hobby, and I have never
been prepared to pour endless money into keeping it alive since it generates
zero revenue. (This is not entirely true, actually, since I have sold
several projects to people who found my work as a result of this site.
However, that's the exception, not the rule.) I've gone through
numerous free web space providers (AOL, GeoCities, Crosswinds, Xoom/NBCi,
Tripod, Webjump, and others I've probably forgotten) but FortuneCity has
always been a reliable and faithful standby. Until now, anyway.
This, then, is the first official ZMFTS fundraiser. It is now more
important than ever that my loyal visitors please consider purchasing a copy
of my ebook. At a 70% royalty rate, I earn $2.58 USD from every
sale. I'm going to have to do an assessment to determine how much storage
space and bandwidth the site actually requires (I strongly suspect I exceeded
my 1GB of free web storage a very long time ago and that due to some technical
glitch I've gotten a free ride for years), but it looks like the absolute
bare minimum I can get away with is a two-year subscription for $18.
That's seven copies of the ebook, folks. Surely there are seven
of you who have enjoyed the ZMFTS over the years and would like to contribute
to its continued prosperity?
Either that, or I'm going to have to go commercial and start working on projects
that are specifically meant to be sold on eBay. I would rather work
on projects for their own artistic and creative merit rather than basically
become a sell-out, but these are the times in which we live.
3.2.2012
kitbashes
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A while back, after I finished my kitbash of
Krang in his bubble walker,
I was going to also do a page featuring digital repaints of the six Krang
clones who were created in the seventh-season TMNT episode "Invasion of the
Krangazoids." At that time, I was in the middle of transitioning from
Adobe PhotoDeluxe to the admittedly superior Adobe Photoshop, so I wanted
to fully familiarize myself with the new program because I made the attempt
at digitally manipulating the pictures. (Also, the round bubble on
the toy was doing this ugly funhouse mirror distortion to the Krang faces,
and that bothered me but I didn't know how to fix it, so I scrapped the original
batch of photos so I could start fresh.)
Anyway, what I am saying is that the digital repaints are finally done and
that the page featuring my six beautiful Krang
clones is now online and available for viewing. (I guess it's not
a "real" project since they don't physically exist, but I did spend all afternoon
"painting" them, even if I was holding a mouse in my hand instead of a
paintbrush.)
2.24.2012
kitbashes
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A surprise project that I wasn't expecting to do this
week—Casey Jones, as seen in
the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series, ready to
deliver his own special brand of almost-legal justice.
2.18.2012
I think it's so cute how people collect toys but then they steadfastly refuse
to refer to them as toys. It's always "action figures" or "collectibles"
or something. Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the entire toy
collecting community who's comfortable actually calling them toys.
Well, anyway.
kitbashes
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This just in: I just finished up my versions of the entire Channel Six News
team. There were official TMNT action figures of all of them, of course,
but they had some serious problems, and for a long time I've wanted to do
more cartoon-accurate representations of them. These guys were in just
about every episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for six or seven years
so they're kind of a big deal. So, here's the station's editor-in-chief,
Burne Thompson; the amazing camera operator
Vernon Fenwick; and Channel Six's secretary,
Irma. (I also updated the
April O'Neil page with some new photos
and gave her a new accessory.)
2.8.2012
kitbashes
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So, as I alluded to last month: There's an episode from season three
of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles called "Green With Jealousy" in which
the Turtles are dressed up in sailor suits, one of their many disguises that
makes them look less like naked reptiles and more like reptiles wearing people
clothing. Anyway, Playmates Toys produced an action figure years ago
called Midshipman Mike, but I always thought it would be cool to buy four
of them and turn them all into a quartet of sailor Turtles. Well, I
finally got around to doing it. This is the second time I've taken
four identical TMNT toys and transformed them into each of the four Ninja
Turtles, and let me just say that it really is an enormous amount of work,
doing four projects simultaneously like this. Anyway, without further
ado, I present to you Sailor
Donatello, Sailor Leonardo,
Sailor Michaelangelo, and
Sailor Raphael.
I've got quite a few exciting projects planned for this year (I refuse to
give anything away, which means I will not be telling you about the Ray Fillet
toy that I just got off eBay), but be forewarned that I've got a new baby
coming in June, after which I strongly expect things to grind to a halt (again)
for quite a while. It's just the nature of the beast. (No, I
didn't just call my unborn baby a beast. I haven't even gotten to know
her yet!)
In other news, I'll be submitting my comic strip to the syndicates again
after I finish weeding out the weaker ones and replacing them with better
ones. Why am I telling you all of this? Because now that I've
immortalized my intentions on the Internet, I have to do it or else you
will all know me to be a liar. (Which I am, of course, but I just don't
want anyone knowing it.)
By the way: e-book, people.
It ain't gonna buy itself.
1.11.2012
kitbashes
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This year marks the 25th anniversary of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles cartoon, so to comemmorate that, I'm unveiling perhaps my most
ambitious TMNT project to date—it's a
cartoon version of Rocksteady, the
mutated military rhino, as seen in the 1980's animated series. I had
to completely rebuild the original toy, which includes an entirely new head
sculpt and some mondo righteous accessories. (Did I get the vernacular
right?) Going forward, I have plans to cover every major character
from the show. I have ideas for a generic Rock Soldier, the Channel
Six News crew, and lots more. I don't want to state definitively here
what will be unveiled next, since my creative side hates to be locked down
on specific projects ahead of time. It squelches my need to frolic
and run free. (I will just say, though, that I finally got four Midshipman
Mike action figures off eBay and that I've been taking screen captures from
"Green With Jealousy." Make of that what you will.)
By the way, I think it's astounding that when I do a Google image search
for a phrase like "Turtles kitbash" or "TMNT kitbash," the first page of
search results is completely filled by images from my web site. It's
actually rather embarrassing.
Somehow I seem to have completely dominated the field without really
trying. What happened to all the competition? I know there are
other people doing projects like this. (Maybe all the pictures are
just on your cell phones or Nintendo DSi or something instead of the Internet?)
12.6.2011
e-book
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What have I been up to lately? Well, for several years now, I've been
doing illustrations for my wife, one every Christmas, of this character called
The Butterfly Princess, who sort of symbolically represents her after a fashion.
Each drawing has been somehow related to the last, and over time I've
developed a small back story about the characters. She's even mentioned
that I could probably write a full-fledged story, given the amount of
material I've developed. Well, this year I decided to surprise her
and I actually wrote the story in the form of an e-book. I'm going
to totally sneak it onto her Kindle on Christmas Eve. (Shh, don't tell
her! I'm blabbing this all over the Internet, but it's still a
secret!)
Anyway, as many of you know, the ZMFTS has been up and running since 1998,
and during that time I've never made money from the site, never sold advertising
space, and never really asked for much except for comments if people liked
what they saw. Well, now I'm asking you to please take a look at my
e-book, entitled A Butterfly's
Tale, and buy an electronic copy if it strikes your fancy. It's
about 95,000 words in length and you can preview a fair-sized chunk of it
for free. I've set the purchase price modestly low (less than $4.00
USD) in the hopes of encouraging prospective buyers.
If you've enjoyed my previous writing (my fan fiction or my participation
on the fan forum alt.toys.transformers) and would like to help support my
creative endeavours, I would kindly ask you to consider buying my book.
(It really is in your best interest, since the more money I made doing
what I love, the less time I have to spend at Walmart and the more I can
putter around on the computer and add more stuff to my web site. See,
it's a win-win situation!)
As an extra added bonus, I will entertain every reasonable request as to
what happens in the sequel, which I expect will be finished by December 2012.
So, if you'd like to see your ideas appear in a published story,
read the first book and
then send me your suggestions!
As always, thanks for visiting—and for those of you who choose to buy
the book, I appreciate your patronage. (But not your patronizing.
That's something else entirely.)
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