Time for another Masters of the Universe custom! This was my third attempt, and the paint job was a little cleaner than previous customs.
Born in the volcanic heat of Mount Dragon, he wields the flame of Justice to scour the world of evildoers. His fiery temperament is only matched by the incendiary power of his Pyre Axe. He is –
Inferno, the Sulfurous Sentinel.
I was pretty happy with the way the axe turned out — not too detailed, because I wanted this to blend in with the other customs, and with the regular MOTU line. But a few dots of yellow to serve as basic highlights.
For Inferno, I used the following parts:
* Head: Two-Bad
* Body and armor: Skeletor
* Arms: Tung Lashor
* Weapon: He-Man
Honestly, I’m not sure about the eyes. They’re pretty ragged along the edges, and I feel like they’re missing something. But I don’t know what. Pupils, I suppose.
I picked up this model kit on eBay, being a huge fan of Godzilla and all things kaiju. Having absolutely no idea what I was doing, I resolved to assemble and paint the model.
This post is advice from a novice for other novices. Unique, I know; typically, you want to get advice from people who know what the hell they’re doing. C’est la guerre.
Ingredients:
1. A sharp thing. I used an X-Acto knife. Cautiously. No injuries were sustained.
2. Model airplane glue. Generic, purchased at craft store with a coupon. Cheap.
3. Goggles and mask. No joke. Fumes from glue and paint are only fun for teenagers.
4. Dropcloth. Didn’t feel like getting paint all over the carpet. Two bucks.
5. Model supplies: Cheap paintbrushes, standard acrylic paints (seventy cents a bottle), a few plastic cups.
After that, I followed the directions in the box. Not too hard. Leg here, arm there, glue together.
Tough part was after assembling and gluing: I had to lop off little bits of plastic and sand them down. Can’t have those sticking out, it’s gauche. But too much lopping and sanding, and you lose the texture (in this case, Godzilla’s lumpy hide). So be careful with that part.
Above: Godzinnia, phase 1. She’s got a slender face, compared to the traditional Godzilla look, so I decided to make her a female and paint her like a zinnia. I don’t think that’s sexist. But maybe it is. Is it? Now I’m worried. Am I overanalyzing this? Maybe if I use a Georgia O’Keeffe painting as a reference… Is that pretentious?
Anyhow, when it comes to making Godzilla a female, I was definitely not inspired by that execrable American movie. False kaiju! Shame! Between that travesty, King Kong, and Cloverfield, the US has utterly sullied the giant-monster genre. Just thinking about it makes me want to put on a rubber suit and stomp through a three-foot-tall model city made out of carboard.
Godzinnia, phase 2. Started with black primer, added purple, lavender, metallic violet, red, hot pink, and orange. By this, I mean that I spraypainted the model black, then started in with other dark colors, like maroon and purple. For the most part, I just brushed them on haphazardly, sometimes painting on top of wet layers, so that the colors would blend a bit. Then came the dry-brushing of lighter colors.
Dry-brushing is something you can learn about on YouTube from people who ramble interminably about the process, dragging out a quick explanation into 20 minutes of chatter.
You take the thing that you’ve painted dark. In this case, Godzilla, but it could also be a plastic model of a building, or a spaceship, or whatever.
You dip the brush in light-colored paint. You wipe most of the paint off the brush, until you can barely see any paint when you drag the brush across paper. That’s when you’re ready to dry-brush.
You vigorously sweep the brush across the thing you’re painting. The goal is to scrub the object until the miniscule bits of paint on your brush are picked up by protrusions and ridges.
If you’re painting a castle, you paint it black, then get some grey paint on your brush, and you dry-brush the castle until that grey paint adheres to the bricks — but it won’t get into those cracks between the bricks, so you’ve got this nice depth. Another layer of white paint, and those bricks (and their still-dark cracks and crevices) are looking more realistic.
Same principle with Godzinnia. Her hide is dark purple, but the lumps and bumps are dry-brushed metallic violet, red, hot pink, and orange. Gives some depth to her.
Above: Godzinnia in the tub.
I did a metallic-purple wash, followed by a glossy red wash, and then a pink wash.
A wash is when you put your model in a tub of some kind, and then pour a little watered-down paint over it.
Mix the paint with water — a small glob of paint in a small cup of water — then dip your brush in the paint and dab the brush to the places where you want the paint to stream in little colored rivulets. The watered-down paint’s going to stream right off your model into the tub, but a little bit will collect on the plastic of your model.
Repeat. Again and again. As the paint dries, the residual color will begin to show faintly. Again, this is to create depth, so that your model’s coloring isn’t flat. You don’t want to overdo it; it’s an accent, not a new coat of paint.
Picture a model tank, or halftrack; you’ve got it painted olive, but you want some rust. Actually paint that rust on there, and it’ll look unnatural. Mix the rust-colored paint with water, let it drip and dry, and there’s just enough of it to look accurate — an accumulation of residue in the crevices (I just can’t use that phrase often enough).
Acrylic sealer is something that I spray over my painted model when I’ve reached a good stopping point. It allows the existing coats to dry. Forms a nice shellac-type finish. Don’t inhale the fumes. For Cthulhu’s sake, wear a filtration mask. And a prophylactic of some kind.
Above: her spines were fun. Godzilla’s spines have changed color a few times over the years. I figured to offset her purple-violet-orange skin, I’d go with a mix of cream and yellow for her spines. Took several layers of dry-brushing to get it where I wanted it.
Wound up giving her yellow eyes with green irises and blotchy black pupils. The acrylic sealer makes her coat shine!
The city was originally light green, but I coated it with a base of glossy black, then started with detail work.
Dry-brushed the city dark grey, then light grey, then added brown and bronze highlights before another light grey brushing, followed by a layer of white. Tried to give it a demolished, ashy look. A city in ruins.
As you can see, the original green plastic is visible through this cracked wall. I need to get in there with a small brush and paint the interior of that building black.
Finished! Godzinnia stomps over the city.
This is Malcolm. He’s a Cairn Terrier who enjoys John Woo movies and the smell of bacon.
“I screwed the suppressor onto my pistol as the Nosferodent scaled the castle wall. Hell of a way to kick off the North Carolina State Fair.”
When the analysts of Hex Division pick up chatter about an imminent attack from the Al-Hazred terrorist network, the team’s ranking operative is deployed: Agent Nick Tepes, a synthetic vampire specializing in counterterrorism operations.
However, a psychic on the team has already seen the future: Tepes won’t be able to stop the terrorists, and he’ll be killed during the attack. Now he’s got just eight hours to prevent this prophecy from coming true — but the psychics of Hex Division are never wrong.
Hexcommunicated: coming soon to Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and iPad. Print edition to be sold via Amazon and Lulu. Cover illustration by David “ShiverArt” Russell.
I don’t have enough projects going on right now (HA!), so I’ve started work on Maul Jongg: Eighties Mah Jongg Parachute Pants Music Video Teenager Shopping Mall Martial Arts Neon Legwarmers Combat Game.
I’ve been playing Mah Jongg for years (I even did some copyediting for Jelte Rep’s The Great Mahjong Book). Always thought about doing a game with tiles. Now I’m doing it. Five-Crak!
Do you play Mah Jongg? Would you play an RPG using Mah Jongg tiles? What if it was inspired by the films of John Hughes?
Would you play via Google+ Hangout, or Skype?
I bring you… PHANTASMA! Another one of my Masters of the Universe customs.
After his murder at the hands of the nefarious Asesino, Prince Juan Delgado was brought back to life through the mechanical genius of Aquatico. A living skeleton in a robotic body, the Prince is now known as –
Phantasma, the skeletal champion.
This one was a little tricky, because when you tap the battle armor in the middle of his chest, the spring inside flips a cylinder, and now the armor is “damaged” (and you then manually wind it back up to smooth-and-undamaged with your thumb). But i wanted his armor to be smooth and blank. Experimented with glue, but no dice — those springs are pretty strong, even 25+ years later.
I used the following components:
* Head and torso: Battle Armor Skeletor
* Arms and legs: Man-E-Faces
* Weapon: Clawful’s mace
Dry-brushing the face was interesting. My first effort, and I didn’t really know what the hell I was doing — I just knew that the flat white coat of paint didn’t have a lot of depth to it, so I brushed some pale blue on to give it a bit of shadow. The effect wasn’t too bad, I suppose.
The tiny dots of gold on his armor were a bit of work, as I don’t have steady hands. Got a bit of the Dr. Strange tremor going on. No brain surgery for me, by Dread Dormammu.
You know what I kind of miss? Skeletor’s voice. He was one snide son of a bitch, but I liked him. Same with Starscream. You put the two of them in a room together, I bet they’d get along like a house on fire.
Customized Masters of the Universe figures.
Over the years, there have been various Masters of the Universe knockoffs. Some of them even licensed existing molds, which they used to create an entirely new line of figures with histories, names, and bios. For example, here’s a repainted Beast Man, dubbed Pantano, released under the Fuerza-T aegis:
Feeling somewhat inspired, I decided to create my own (fictional) line of knock-offs.
The process required the dismemberment of various existing figures, and the parts were then reassembled, glued, and repainted.
I bring you… LOS CONQUISTADORES DEL COSMOS!
I started with the following parts:
* Body: Merman
* Weapons: Sword and shield from Castle Grayskull
* Armor: Zodac
The first of his kind to walk dry land, he is the most powerful of the Sea People. He has invented several devices, including the BioHarness that allows him to breathe our air. Here to do battle with an ancient evil, he is –
Aquatico, the Amphibious Warrior.
Body: Merman
Weapons: Sword and shield from Castle Grayskull
Armor: Zodac
I used standard craft acrylics for the paint. After some experimentation, I decided that disassembling the figure (removing arms and legs) would make it easier to paint. Naturally, that cut down on mobility — the legs are locked in place with hot glue. The arms are still movable, though. So this is going to be a display toy, and not something that my son will be playing with anytime soon.
Every few weeks, I get an email from someone who wants to know how to find work as a video game writer. I figure it’s easier to have a single blog post I can point them towards, so here it is!
Warning: loooooong post ahead.
I got my start in the industry in 2000, right after I graduated from Longwood University with a BA in English Lit. The job was an hourly testing gig at EA Virginia, in Charlottesville. When I heard about the job, I was working as a magazine editor. The ad in the paper said something about testing games for money, and my heart screamed hell yes. So I went for it.
A lot of game developers get started in the testing lab. It’s a lot of work (you can easily put in 50-100 hours a week), and the pay isn’t great. But you can meet a lot of people, get your name in some credits, learn about the way that games are developed, and eventually move up. Some people go from tester to lead tester to associate producer to producer. Or tester to 2D artist to 3D artist. There’s no clear career path at most companies (in my experience). If you’ve got skills, professionalism, and ambition, you can go very far in the game business once you’ve got a foot in the door.
As for me, I found game testing to be a dream job. Learned a lot about the industry. I didn’t have any illusions going in. I knew that I wouldn’t be playing video games all day. That’s not what testers do — they test games. Which is different. Anyhow, I loved it.
You see, I’d always planned on making a living as a writer. Just didn’t know how it was going to work, exactly. I’ve written (and published, and been paid for) comic books, magazine articles, newspaper articles, nonfiction books, short fiction, and poetry. But while I was working at EA, it dawned on me that I could also write video games.
I volunteered like crazy. Anytime there was an editing task, or a writing task, I volunteered. They were only too happy to give me the assignments. I wrote user manuals for games, articles for publication on the EA web site, questions for puzzle games, core documentation for the QA (Quality Assurance) lab, the employee handbook, the training manual, testplans, and the company-wide editorial style guide.
It was a blast. I kept my eyes open and learned as much as I could about the job. When the company started to lay people off, I moved to North Carolina. It took a while to find a new job, but I eventually landed a gig as a writer/designer on the Tom Clancy games. I worked on several titles, including Ghost Recon 2 and Rainbow Six: Lockdown.
Then I went freelance, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. As a freelance game writer, I’ve worked on three games in the SOCOM series, a new title called MAG, and a few other games. This is pretty much where I intend to stay. The schedule can be crazy, especially if you’re working on more than one game and the deadlines overlap, but I get to work on a lot of really interesting projects.
I believe that they key to finding work in this business is networking. Get out there, make connections. Read books about how it’s done (for example, I recommend Never Eat Alone). Learn how to network, how to talk to people you don’t know. Go to conferences and industry events. Meet people. Be professional. Shake hands.
Pick a career and chase it down. Don’t flip around. If you want to design games, learn how it’s done. Read everything you can. Talk to designers. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. People love to talk about their jobs. Be polite, be diplomatic, know when to shake hands and say thanks and ask for a business card (in other words, don’t be the person at the party who can’t just take the hint and move on to the next conversation). Make a good impression, have a good web portfolio (if applicable), and respond in a professional manner when you get an email.
Be aware of what’s going on. Read Kotaku and Edge and Gamasutra. Read the IGDA web site. Get man-on-the-street intel from Gamestop employees. If you don’t have the budget for a whole bunch of new games, join a program like the one at Blockbuster and rent a couple games a week. Even if you only put in a few hours with each game, you’ll be in good shape.
Go to conferences like GDC or Austin or Montreal. If that’s too far, rest assured there’s something closer. Here in the Triangle region of North Carolina, we’ve got the TGC (ten minutes from my house) and the CGC (an hour away, give or take).
*deep breath*
Getting a foot in the door: the best way to start off is with in-house gigs, because work for freelancers is scarce, and if you have nothing under your belt, no one’s going to hire you. I spent three years working as an in-house writer-designer on the Tom Clancy games at Ubisoft, and before that I worked at EA for a couple years. Two major publishers, several major projects, five years of experience. Even then, it was rough finding freelance work during the first year. Not a lot of work out there, really.
A freelancer really needs shipped-title experience. The developer needs someone in who can hit the ground running, wielding proven strategies and best-practices from other studios — especially if you’re working off-site. Sure, some developers hire Hollywood types, or novelists. But a lot of studios have caught on to the idea that bringing a veteran game writer in is your safest bet. Scriptwriters don’t always understand that variegated barks are critical — by which I mean, when the player is trying to figure something out, and another (non-player) character is yelling orders, you want to make sure that these barks (orders, or encouraging words, or updates) are variegated. You can’t have “Move forward!” play again and again, as it grates on the player’s nerves. Stuff like that, novelists and comic book writers don’t always understand — and it’s possible that the development team will forget about these story-based details until it’s too late, since they’re going to be focused on big-picture issues like game engine, testing, certification, whatever.
I’m hardly a power user. Most of my work is done with spreadsheets and Word docs. Email and chat programs (Skype, AIM). Not much else to it, for a game writer. Sure, some studios want game writers who can also do code or what-have-you. To me, that’s like trying to find a Hollywood scriptwriter who’s also comfortable handling dance choreography. All my clients want the same thing from me: spreadsheets and Word docs. That’s it.
Best bet for interaction with the team: a sole point of contact. If you’re exchanging emails with several people, you are in for a “fun” project. A sole point of contact makes it easier for you, as a contract writer, to identify expectations and deliver on them. Higher quality of work ensues — and the project is more fun. Sure, you may interact with other team members, but you’ve got a single ‘boss’ that you interact with on a regular basis. That’s the best-case scenario.
If you’re just starting out, and you don’t want to join a company full-time, you can still swing the freelance stuff, but it requires massive amounts of networking,
hustling for that big break. You’ll want to hit places like GDC and MIGS, hand out business cards, talk to people. I wrote a book about game writing, and a bunch of articles on the subject, right around the time I went freelance. That helped a lot, as it put most of my ideas on paper — a series of documents outlining my approach. But yeah, a lot of my gigs are a result of going out, meeting people, knocking back a couple beers, talking about games that we love, exchanging business cards, blah blah blah.
If you’ve got any creative writing published, you’ll want to assemble a portfolio, as most companies are going to want to see writing samples. If your fiction is unpublished, that’s cool too. It’s just a way for the prospective employer to gauge your style.
You’ll want to do some game writing, too. Put together some spec writing and write dialogue for a fictional game. If you don’t know how to format your writing, try checking out these articles I wrote:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2464/organizing_and_formatting_game_.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2724/screenplay_documenting_voice_.php
If you got any questions, post ‘em here. I shoot from the hip.
- Rafael
Artwork by Will Towles
1. CHARACTER CLASSES
Here are the ten classes you can choose from. Each has ten spells to choose from (I’ve included one example for each). The classes:
Alchemist (progressive metal)
Concept: mad scientists of experimental sorcery
Focus: freedom and rebellion
Spell: To cause the spirits to perform with facility and promptitude all necessary chemical labours and operations, as regardeth metals especially.
Bard (power metal)
Concept: sword-wielding paragons
Focus: adventure and glory
Spell: Rainbow Bridged
Biomech (industrial metal)
Concept: murderous cybernetic assassins
Focus: machines and evil
Spell: Rubidium-Plated Ballistic Shear-Cycle
Glam (hair metal)
Concept: hard-partying heroes in mascara
Focus: rebellion and adventure
Spell: Snort Lines
Gorehound (death metal)
Concept: blood-soaked nihilistic psychos
Focus: suffering and artistry
Spell: Locust Plague
Kvltist (black metal)
Concept: violent Satanists on a mission
Focus: evil and despair
Spell: Thagirion
Norseman (viking metal)
Concept: war-hungry pagan berserkers
Focus: glory and battle
Spell: Shield of Odin
Doomsayer (doom metal)
Concept: ominous clerics of agony
Focus: despair and suffering
Spell: Vision of Atrocity
Rattlehead (thrash metal)
Concept: rapid-fire high-tech soldiers
Focus: battle and machines
Spell: Surveillance Detachment
Witch (symphonic metal)
Concept: mysterious and dramatic manipulators
Focus: artistry and freedom
Spell: Stir up Hailstorms and Tempests, and Cause Lightning to Blast both Men and Beasts
2. METAL GODS
Each character worships one of the Metal Gods. These Gods grant various powers to their worshipers (I’ve included one example for each):
Jack “Leather Lord” Stonewall
instrument: vocals
power: Air Raid Siren
Frëya “Churchburner” Nórdsdóttir
instrument: guitar
power: Facemelt
Dusty “Beermeister” Cheetah
instrument: bass
power: Slap Lick
Katelynn “Automator” Osmium
instrument: drums
power: Blastbeat
3. NEMESES
Your character has chosen one major enemy, an organization built to establish and maintain control over the sheeple. Against this enemy, your metalhead is extremely powerful.
MSM Stenography: 24-hour news channel
OPPO Research: Political consultants
MOXON Global: Technology developers
DEIFIED Security: Private military contractors
ROTOR Energy: Fossil fuel promulgators
TENET International: Religious lobbyists
SEXES Equalized: Chauvinist activists
I'm a freelance video game writer (SOCOM 4, Edgeworld, MAG, Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation), and the writer/designer of various role-playing games (The Books of Pandemonium, Maul Jongg, Necrotroph).
My urban fantasy novel, Hexcommunicated, will be released in early 2012. For more information: www.rafaelchandler.com or Google+.
