Playing with camera Macro and Fish Eye lenses

Got my wife some inexpensive lenses for her Iphone... a fish eye an macro lens...

New acquisition, slightly larger scale...7lbs 5 oz and 19.5 inches long...

I had a new arrival come in today, a little bigger than my normal scale! My wife gave birth to our first child, Lily, today!  She was 7lbs 5oz and 19.5 inches long...
Both mom and baby are happy and healthy, and we are looking forward to taking her home!
And besides, I'm gonna need a helper at some point. I think I can start her out drybrushing ;)

Patrol cars, now with Lights!

Following a suggestion on TMP, I picked up some self-adhesive sequins for the lights...

Very happy with how it turned out!

The LAW - Patrol Cars from Khurasan Miniatures - Lone Star

Finished the smaller cars from KM... and my wife got me some decals for father's day!

My wife took this pic:

Sci-Fi Taxi Cabs - From Khurasan Miniatures

Got these the other day, and I found my airbrush!

Based with a GW foundation paint and a mix of airbrush medium.

I really like these, these are the larger of the two... not sure what I'm going to paint the smaller ones as.

Let me know what you think!

5150: NB Grunt Cards

Just some cards I made for my 5150: NB game.

Let me know what you think! I plan on adding a whole bunch... that way I can just pull a card when my stars encounter PEFs...

Cyberpunk Random - A Great Resource

I found this today:

http://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/random/#cyberpunk_job

Can generate names, jobs, starship names, all types of things!

I found it very useful, thought it might be useful...

Building Interiors

Here are some pics of my building interiors with some of my 15mm minis.

Review of Shuffler (2.10.3) by Papermakeit!

Review of Shuffler (2.10.3) by Papermakeit

http://www.papermakeit.com/index.php

Available as a free download (with a watermark for the free version) the $15.90 USD program is a tool to create your own paper terrain.  I’ve seen some examples that people had made of barricades that fold in half to be “3D” but I used it as a sci-fi floor-plan layout builder.

This is a flash program, it comes with both a .swf file and an executable file.  There is no install, you just run the file.  I bough the plugin so I can use my own images as well, but I haven't used it yet.  The plugin isn't the most straightforward thing to understand, but it's not complicated either.

You can see that the files unzipped are a little haphazard.  I could make folders myself, but it would be nice if there was an install program to make things a little neater.  But again, it works right away without any problems.

  

The program itself is a drag-and-drop affair.  You chose one of the types of images from up top (Out Door, Train System, FX, Extras, Access Points, and Floors, along with user images) and then the images you can select change on the right side.  The floors are shown here, with the walls being the outside squares. 

Here I am using the 4-way arrow button to give me a little more control, you can drag and shrink or grow stuff. I've put a "darkness" layer over the flooring so I can add lighting. 

Here I've added some lighting on the left, some blood splatters and two dead scientists.  If you use the up and down arrow on some images it will switch between variations.  This is useful for floors too, where used in conjunction with rotation keeps things from looking stale. 

Overall, I really like the program.  I've already made interiors for some of my buildings.  I save it as PNG (15mm) then print it with another program.  I then mount it on corkboard. It works and looks great. 

Besides the installation issues I have there are a couple of other things:

1) When saving as a SMP (the file so you can go back and edit it) or a PNG it does not add the file extension, you have to add that yourself.

2) There is no undo button.  Not a really big deal, but would be nice!

3) I have trouble with "levels" sometimes.  Levels are analogous to layers in Photoshop. "H" brings the image higher in level, "B" brings it lower. Unfortunately I sometimes can't make a door image higher than a wall image, and other things like that. Not quite sure why but it can be a little annoying. 

4) There are still some bugs here and there, sometimes I have to close everything and re-open it. Or just put images over images already there.

In conclusion I really like this program.  There are a couple of quirks, but in general its a great value for what you get and I enjoy making my buildings! I would recommend getting the free version and playing around with it. Make sure you read the guide!

2-story apartment building

1st and 2nd story...

(I'll be doing a review on Shuffler from Papermakeit soon)...

Building Interior - Made with Shuffler from Papermakeit

I put this together last night:

I'm going to be making a bunch of them for action that takes place inside of my buildings.

Next I'll be making an apartment building.  I'll just make one floor and re-use it.

This is for my Embassy game, but it could easily be a small research lab.

5150: New Beginnings as Shadowrun - Solo play - First Job

Well, I've been going through my 5150:NB.  Got a character made and started to roll up the first job.  I'll be playing solo.

I'm using the Shadowrun universe.

First, my character:

Name: Jovan Cross
Race: Human
Gender: Male
REP: 5

Class: Merc
Motivation: Profit

Attributes:
Steely Eyes
Resilient

Skills:
Fit 5
People 3
Savvy: 4
Sci: 0

Profession: Merc
Field of Expertise: Small Unit Tactics

Armored Jacket

Wpns: Assault Rifle, BA SMG, BA Pistol, Flash Bang

Cyberware:
Targeting Computer
Lock On (Smartlink)
CPU 7
-Lightning Reflexes
-Data Storage


Jobs that came up through my Fixer:

Medium Size Corporate Executive for a Break/Entering for a specific Item
Me: 1 Success  Him: 2 Successes

Not Hired, but can interview again

Embassy for Security
Me: 3 Successes Them: 2 Successes

Hired - Job Accepted

Local Government for Security
Me: 2 Successes Them: 1 Successes

Offered - Job Not Accepted

--

Embassy Job:

Who: Tir Tairngire Diplomat
Where: Downtown Seattle at the Tir Tairngire Embassy
What: Security
Pay: 6 Items
Threat: Assassins (Mercenaries)

When: 0300 hours
Law Level: 5

Weather: Inclement all encounter, LOS reduced to 6"

--

Very excited about this job, going to run it in a couple of days...

Another day, Another team of Shadowruners... now more meta-humanity!

Slowly refining my picture taking, I'm pretty happy with these results:

The figure on the right with the pink hair (decker) and the two in black (street samurais) are all from Rebel Minis post-apocalyptic survivors.  I've had them for a while and re-discovered them... The dwarf is a post-apoc raider from Khurasan Miniatures.  The Dwarf was painted by Flick.

Some better views of the troll (a 15mm.co.uk mini with horns added w/ green stuff) and the mage (walking dead survivor from Khurasan miniatures).

A dead scientist in the background, from Khurasan miniatures (I love these guys, and I have a dead Lone star guy from them too)