My favourite niece is born~! XR has a sister~!! Welcome to the world Joanne :)

Economy turning bad loh... Though I haven't been hit yet (still spending on toys), I think it is time to save... Been hearing alot of depressing news, like corporate firms retrenching (yes, in the aki industry). Just now an Indian lady rang my door bell and asked if I can help her cause she just got retrenched and is selling some of her personal belongings. Turned her down cause I don't really need the items she was selling lah. Still, sigh...

Anywayz, to friends who are submitting on the 24th, hang in there!!!

1. Marvel_Select_Thor, 2. Metal_Gear_Solid, 3. Deadpool, 4. Captain_America_Red_Skull, 5. Kotobukiya_Batman, 6. X_Force, 7. Cyclops_Colossus_Sentinel, 8. Spidey_Rhino

Nope, this is not about to turn into an architecture blog. But... I really like this scheme. WAN is a website that I try to visit once in awhile for updates and trends around the world. What can I say, I'm a superficial freak who's so used to the boxes Sketchup churns out that once I'm shown some sexy curves, I'm sold. Don't really like the internal space though, maybe that's why it wasn't picked (probably also because the judges aren't superficial like me). Read more here.



Below, a "Raffles City" in Bahrain Bay (NE of Saudi Arabia) by Rafael Viñoly Architect... A waterfront development that has an uncanny resemblance to what Moshi Safdie's doing to Singapore's Marina Bay...

Only just realize that I'm part of the Singapore Toy Collections Online, and happy to be of course. Then again this isn't exactly a toy blog cuz I do complain a fair bit about life here... In any case, I'm a toy collector and will be posting pics here lah... Readers can just skip all the irrelevant ramblings and go for the pics :)

A recent purchase is AoA Sunfire. Read a short write-up, and some comments on the pics / figure / where to get him here, or see more digiramas that I (and my contacts) have made here (people should really look at the photos that some of my contacts have been taking... they're really good).

W/o further ado, the pics~!

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not really a fan of the art (the drawing style) of Marvel's Age of Apocalypse (AoA) series, but I do like the character designs alot. For the last pic the idea was really to evoke a setting in Japan (hence the Japanese castle), which is where Sunfire originates. Magneto's trying to persuade him to join the good fight against Apocalypse. In AoA, Magneto's actually a good guy (who discovered he could do Rogue... okay OOT), following Xavier's death...

Anyhowz, for my next digirama I am trying to create a war scene in the desert... Went to some free online stock photography sites to "shop" around for backgrounds and came across a few... While googling I came across a Hellboy 2 poster and thought Dang! It is really nice and dark and gloomy in the way that showcases an anti-hero really well... (The Architect is random but never admits to it, he always says there is certain logic to explain certain concepts and refers to certain precedents. I love denial, is bliss...).

So I kept some of my desert warfare ideas and began composing the background. Some dark skies (composed from 3 sky photos), some smoke in the back (from a pic of 911 incident), and sand from Iraq and Krabi (taken by yours truly) and after much trial and error, came up with the pic below. Been playing around with foreground focused, background blurred (Gaussian, if you must know) alot lately... Trying to play more with colour schemes now also.

Which toy I'm going to put there...? Well, you've got to wait and see. I enjoy doing these pics and always try to conceptualize certain backgrounds / scenes that will suit the toy (most of the time after buying them online on eBay but before they arrive at my house, to kill time perhaps...?). This figure is actually quite hard to come by and I do think I got 'im at quite a steal...