Wednesday’s Wallpaper of the Week

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Today’s wallpaper is one of my favorites yet! The photographer who goes by the mysterious name of The Red Lady has captured the compelling blend of innocence and twisted circuitry that is the 3A Square. I can only imagine that she took to photographing this troubled toy as well as she might have to cooking delicious cajun food.. with ease, grace and an inherent know how derived from generations of family influence.

I must confess. I am probably a little biased. Today’s wallpaper is from my wife.

The WWR and WWRp squares have always been her favorite of 3A’s toys. She’s also a graphic designer and photographer herself. When this grand opportunity arrived for her to shoot some shots of the little bugger, she jumped at it.

OK, I asked her politely and she said she’d do it if I cleaned the kitchen.

Well the kitchen is clean and the photos are shot. We hope you enjoy!

click on your desired screen resolution to download!

Square Bomb by The Red Lady 1024x768

Square Bomb by The Red Lady 1280x800

Square Bomb by The Red Lady 1920x1200

Bonus iPhone wallpaper!

Square Bomb by The Red Lady iPhone

See ya next week!

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If you’d like to contribute to Wednesday’s Wallpaper of the Week and have your name go down in history as someone who’s image is a wallpaper on a website (which is also awesome) drop us a line at radtoyreview@gmail.com with your idea and/or image sample.

*REVIEW* Play Arts Kai Arkham Asylum Joker

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INTRO

Batman has been staring down at me from the mid shelf of my bookcase for a few days now. An unblinking crow, never wavering and ever diligent. I cannot escape his gaze. I try to pretend otherwise but I know what, or rather, WHO he’s looking for.. watching for.

It’s my fault really. I was the one who let him out of his cage. The cardboard and plastic semblance of Arkham Asylum. Only held together by a few pieces of scotch tape and a prayer. Yet enough for a time.

He arrived to me out of necessity more than luxury. I take some solace in the idea that Batman must know this. It’s said that to have good you must have evil. To see the darkness, you must know the light. To understand true joy you must experience personal tragedy.

To have Batman, you must have..

the Joker.

PACKAGING

Joker’s plastic prison was much the same as Batman’s, only a good deal thinner. I found it a tad ironic that Joker’s box probably killed at least one less tree than Batman’s. If you read our Batman review you have a good idea of what to expect this time around. All in all it’s about the same sequins-decked ballroom gown minus a few inches at the waist. You cut a thin piece of tape at the top tab and Joker slides out in a plastic tray sans fuss. Marvelous!

WHAT’S INCLUDED

As much as I would have enjoyed seeing it, Joker did NOT include a 3 foot long gun with a “BANG” flag hanging out of the end of it. From another era I suppose. Instead, Joker comes with a hand canon that’d possibly make Robocop jealous. He also comes with comically delightful wind-up chomping teeth that you can open and close.. though cannot wind-up. Like Batman, he too comes with an extra pair of hands to hold his gadgets and gift you with a wider array of pose options.

THE BREAKDOWN

Out of the pack, Joker looks absolutely fantastic! The pin stripe on his dapper attire is sculpted in, his evil/mischievous grin spot on and check out his shoes! His strapped shoes must have cost him a small fortune at the “clothes you can’t buy in this century” shop. They’re shiny too. I love ’em!

Joker’s visage is right in line with the villain whose eye you dotted in Arkham Asylum. As with Batman, Play Arts Kai obviously took care to accurately capture the game version of the character right down to the pointy chin. He looks great.

As much as I truly love how the Joker looks, I’d be wrong not to mention the incredibly apparent shoulder joints. Unlike Batman, whose cape does well to hide whatever shenanigans his shoulders are getting into, Joker’s shoulders are giant seams bordering on holes. With some modest finessing you can somewhat hide them, but in almost any pose you put him in they’ll be readily apparent. This will bother some more than others.

Let me repeat the stuff I said earlier about Joker looking great. There are so many great things here in the sculpt, the paint application, the little details like the dead flower pinned to his lapel and the gold chain hanging from his pocket. The purple suit he’s sporting even has tails. TAILS, MAN!

With so much praise feeding into this garden, what possible detractors could I rummage up ? Well, honestly?

Joker isn’t “fun”.

Or at least as fun as you’d like him to be. That might sound a little harsh, but I assure you that I’d like nothing more than to claim otherwise. I feel like I managed to pull off some pretty tight and dramatic poses with Joker but it was a downright chore to do so.

The first thing I do when writing and photographing a toy for review is stand the figure up in a neutral pose. Turns out, Joker does not easily come to terms with this idea. He’s a bit of a chore to get standing up on his own. While Bats has the advantage of his long pointy cape to give him an extra dash of “prop,” Joker is free ball’n. His feet are so slender, his legs sculpted into a natural bend that’s so extreme, that possibly even more so than Batman, gravity is his worst enemy.

Obviously, I eventually did get him standing.

The thing is, I don’t necessarily consider the difficultly in balancing him that massive an issue. I take it as a challenge like one might when balancing an egg filled spoon in one’s mouth and carrying it across a beer stained dorm room. Heck, some collectors only display their figures with stands, sometimes showcased in dramatic “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” sort of dioramas only possibly with one.

That being said, lack of balance is certainly not a perk either.

What gets me is a combination of issues. The real issue I found lies with his aforementioned tiny shoulder joints. Beyond being very obvious and sorta screwing up the otherwise killer aesthetic of the Joker, they don’t hold up to play very well either.

A conservative estimate of 7 out of 10 poses I attempted to put Joker into saw one or both of his arms popping out of joint. I’d just get him balanced, standing upright like a proper homo sapien should, only to fumble while fine-tuning his arms and they’d come right off. The only recourse was to pick him up, pop his arms back into the joint and start over again. Maybe Batman cheated. Maybe the added advantage of his cape giving him balance as well as hiding the unsightly shoulder joint, possibly even assisting in keeping the joint in place, has white washed my view of what this toy should be!

But I can’t erase the past. All I know is what I’ve experienced and what I’ve experienced was that I had a blast posing up and playing with Batman, shoulder rotation limitations and all. On the other hand, I felt like I was trying to balance two fragile finicky toothpicks while messing with the Joker.

sigh…

Despite this, with some work you can get Joker to hold some pretty impressive poses. The arcs of his sculpt really look great when they successfully hold ground. I even managed to get him to balance on one leg. If there is one thing Play Arts Kai did absolutely right with this toy, it’s infuse in it a dramatic sense of movement.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I wanted to love this toy. The Joker has been my favorite comic book villain since I was a wee boy. To this day, my ears perk up when I hear about a new Batman or Joker action figure coming around. Batman was my very first Play Arts Kai toy and I’m really happy to have him in my collection. Sure, he had a few things I’d like to see improved upon, but I had a lot of fun playing with him. With Joker I had a ton of expectations and a few body blows of reality once in hand.

Maybe my Joker is the exception and yours won’t have the same finicky shoulder joints that pop out every five seconds. I think he looks great, even with the very exposed shoulder joints that kind of jack up his silhouette. As a colleague of mine once said, “I’m not trying to pretend my toys aren’t toys.” What it really boils down to is the functionality and whether or not it detracts from the overall enjoyment of the toy to you.

All that being said, I still hold to the idea that you can’t have one without the other. What are you going to do, just buy Batman? Think about how lonely he’ll be. It’s natural to have both. If you have Bats, you darn well NEED Joker.

They’re the Yin and Yang/peanut butter and jelly/mashed potatoes and gravy of my collection. And no one eats mashed potatoes without gravy. Fact.

Pros:

  • Once again, a really nice sculpt
  • Truly great details abound!
  • I love the chompers accessory
  • The Jelly to Batman’s Peanut Butter… They look great together

Cons:

  • Dude is pretty tricky to balance
  • Shoulder joints will constantly pop out and are extremely apparent

 

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*MINI REVIEW* 3A Mini Dark Bertie Pack

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INTRO

This isn’t so much a review as a very brief pictorial assisted by some words. For those not in the know, these lil’ guys were available during 3A’s WWR Rothchild drop. Two choices were up at the time, a DIY 20 pack and the (at the time called “dirty deeds”) Dark 12 Pack. I went with the Dark pack because I’m a fan of the Dirty Deeds color way and thought it’d be cool to see it realized on a micro scale. They both cost the same and looking back I’m not 100% sure I made the right buying decision. After all you get 8 more mini bots in the DIY.. anyway, the “deed” is done, on to the rest of this mini review!

PACKAGING

These 12 little dudes showed up in a nondescript, slightly beaten box. Unlike most 3A stuff, there wasn’t anything in the way of logo to tip me off to the contents short of the word “Singapore”. Tearing that open revealed a super simple card/bag. As you can see, the card has a cute Bertie sketch and a toss of logos on it, while the bag is uh.. clear.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

What’s included? Twelve tiny blackish Berties. Big surprise huh?

THE BREAKDOWN

You pretty much get what you see. These guys are cute mini-me versions of their big Bertie bro’s. No articulation at all and made of a light plastic (which didn’t help when trying to take photos of them outdoors in the wind). The main reason I bought these guys over the DIY is because I thought they’d be spot on versions of Dirty Deeds, with the logos, graphics, etc.. but instead they are logo free, coated in what is essentially a base layer of paint with some sponged on “weathering” splotches. I’d much preferred more accurate and purposed  paints on them. Before anyone says “But they’re so TINY!”.. go check out the some  of the painted miniatures of Warhammer and their lot.. THOSE are tiny. Still, the paint gets the job done and what’s there looks good.

It is a bit of a marvel that 3A was able to whittle the classic Bertie form down to this scale. My mind begins to wander how cool seeing all our favorite 3A figs at this scale and sliding them across a cardboard battlefield, a’ la board game would be.

It’d been awesome if they had flexed their engineering muscles a tad more and gave us some articulation but for what they are, they’re still pretty cool accessories to your other figures. They’re like toys for our toys!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Yay! Mini Berties. They’re cool.

Depending what you’re looking for you might think the better dollar value lay at the feet of the DIY pack as it is the clear champion of the Number Games (TM). Also the paint app on the Dark pack isn’t anything that one of you DIYers with a few minutes time couldn’t quickly knock out. I really enjoyed taking some shots of these little buggers, particularly with their big brother Bertie. It’s cool to see so much personality coming off a completely non-articulated spec of plastic. I think the most exciting thing for me about them is that they get my hopes up for a WWR strategy or board game.

Pros:

  • cute mini Berties!
  • Great bot design and personality
  • Fun toys for your toys
  • Fun to customize

Cons:

  • Ya might feel like the “Dark” pack is kinda a rip compared to the DIY pack.
  • Nothing “Dirty Deeds” about the pack other than the dirty part.

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THE WORKSHOP – Weathering by Paul Benson

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In this humble web dude’s opinion, if there is one thing regular “The Workshop” contributor Paul Benson is amazing at.. it’s creating realistic weathering on just about anything.  In today’s workshop Paul’s going to walk you down the beach of learning and show you step by step how he achieves such believable results.

Enjoy!

– Knives

Weathering 
As we know weathering tends to be a geographical term referring to and I quote “Any of the chemical or mechanical processes by which rocks exposed to the weather undergo changes in character and break down”.  In the modelling world (not the one involving catwalks!) weathering is a whole variety of techniques used to simulate dirt, fading, spills, paint wear and tear, rusting, etc.

In this article I wanted to show how a 1/6 scale “heavily used” item might be weathered using various paint and weathering pigment techniques. A simple shovel seemed to fit the bill just right!  While the techniques I use here work well for me, they are not the only way to achieve good results.  Sometimes it can simply depend upon the paints and weathering powders you have at your disposal and how they work together. Try different things out and see what works for you!
It important to have a starting point. A good idea is to look at real world 1:1 scale objects to see how actual weathering affects them e.g. equipment, machinery, tools, fencing etc.  You need to have some idea of how dirt and mud end up on objects, what dirt and oil stains look like, how rusting might occur and leave it marks etc. I have found the workshop articles in military modelling magazines very informative. Tank and armoured vehicle modellers seem to be the masters at weathering so your sure to pick a thing or two up from them if you look at their work.

To start this project off, I got three plastic 1/6 scale shovels courtesy of E__y.

pic x Paul Benson

The article will deal with how I painted three shovels, each with a different base colour to show weathering.
In other Workshop articles I have described the paints and materials I use.  Generally I put on a base coat first with Humbrol acrylic aerosol paint, then I use Citadel acrylic paints (obtained from Games Workshop or hobby stores) and MIG weathering pigments.  MIG weathering pigments come in a range of colours for soil/mud/dirt staining and for rust/oil stains.  A substitute can easily be made by using artist pastels as they work in the same way.  Take a suitably coloured pastel and rub it back and forth on fairly fine sandpaper or a nail file.  They can be stored individually and used as such or combined.The first thing to tackle with the shovels was to remove the cast lines with sandpaper and a file.  The shovels were then washed in warm water with a bit of detergent, this was to remove any factory grease marks.  Then I sprayed one was sprayed with Humbrol Desert Yellow, the next Dark Green and the third with Tank Grey.

pic x Paul Benson

The shovels were then left overnight for the paint to dry.  To add a little wear to where paint may have thinned, each shovel was dry brushed with as near a colour to the base coat as possible mixed with a little white.  So for the desert camo shovel this meant using GW Desert Yellow mixed with Skull White. It’s subtle, but effective.

pic x Paul Benson

Next to chip the base paint back to the undercoat. A darkish grey was made up with GW Chaos Black and Skull White, this was then dabbed onto the shovel where paint chips would occur using small pieces of cut sponge. I have found that by dabbing on a piece of paper first several times, removes paint until just enough is left to leave clear dots and specks on the piece you are working on.  Small scratches were painted in with a fine paint brush.  Shovel 3 was going to be the most rusted of the three, so small rust marks were applied with a sponge using GW Dark Flesh.

pic x Paul Benson

Now general rust and rust staining were applied.  I used MIG weathering pigments New and Old Rust.  Weathering pigments can be applied in several different ways.  They can be mixed with water or a binding agent and washed over a piece or they can be applied dry.  For these shovels it would be more appropriate to apply them dry.  Using a stiff brush or a cotton bud (never thought that I would end up using these, but I happened to try one of my wife’s supply and found them very useful) I used the two pigments individually or blended to rub across the shovels.  To put on a thicker layer the pigments can be dabbed on with a sufficient amount of water to make a paste and then rubbed in.  A stiff brush, kitchen paper or a finger, dry or damp, can be used to blend the pigment across flat surfaces and will tend to leave pigment in depressions.

pic x Paul Benson

pic x Paul Benson

The next step was to pick out areas worn through to bare metal.  For all three shovels GW Boltgun Metal was dry brushed onto areas where wear had occurred because of knocks and general erosion to the blade caused by digging.

pic x Paul Benson

pic x Paul Benson

Time to add the dirt.
For desert camo shovel I used MIG Gulf War sand.  I mixed this pigment with a little white acrylic to act as a binding agent.  This was painted onto the end of the spade blade and then gradually wiped away with kitchen paper and my finger until I got the effect I wanted.  With the green shovel I just used MIG Dried Mud mixed with a lot of water. This was then painted onto the blade end of the shovel and then allowed to dry.  The same technique was used on the reverse.  For the grey shovel I just added more rust with MIG Old and New Rust!
At this point because of handling the bare metal effect had dulled and so therefore I re-applied GW Boltgun Metal were needed.  As a final addition I dry brushed GW Mithril Silver to the bottom edge of the shovel blade and to where a boot had been placed during digging to represent metal that had been polished by wear.

pic x Paul Benson

pic x Paul Benson

There were several stops and starts on this project where I had done a little too much or too little weathering.   Occasionally too much paint or pigment had been applied. To fix this, vigorous rubbing with kitchen paper is usually sufficient to tone down the paint effect.  Unfortunately this can also polish the base coat and give it a shiny effect.  I usually correct this by spraying the piece with Humbrol acrylic aerosol Matt Varnish.
Sometimes errors need to happen and it gives you a chance to assess what you are doing and ask yourself “Does this look realistic?”, “Does this shovel look like it has been used a lot in a natural way? “Does this shovel look like it has been left out in all weathers?” etc.
We hope you enjoyed the latest Workshop. Thanks to Paul for once again putting this together for us. We hope it helps take  your weathering skills to another level!
 We’d love to hear from you and check out what kind of customs you’re working on! Send us a shot of your latest custom work with a brief description to radtoyreview@gmail.com. 

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Until next time!