Oh, I have such sights to show you...

Heh...so check this out. A couple weeks ago, I was chilling with Nekrodave formerly of CDX, TBDX, UMA, and other unholy places on teh internets. Among the many cool things we were watching on his new HD projector, we decided to throw on the latest direct-to-video Hellraiser (part 9; "Revelations"), which neither of us had seen yet. It was...meh.

The plot/concept was actually pretty solid...but the subpar acting and utterly uninspired directing really kinda ruined it. Oh, but the most notable flaw was that they got some new jamoke to play Pinhead. No Doug Bradley = FAIL. It's science.

But whatever. It was worth checking out...

The one thing I sorta recalled, however, was that I've always wanted a working Lament Configuration, the puzzle box Lamarchand constructed to open a pathway to Leviathan's realm (uh...Hell? whatever--I'm not Christian). Dave didn't seem interested 'cause he's not into collecting stuff from modern horror flicks...but I just knew *someone* had to've made a damn working Lament Configuration.

And someone did. Oh boy, they did. In the US and in Germany, in fact. But both at over $400...eh...just not the kind of investment I wanna make. Granted, both of those prop replicas are hand-made from stained wood and brass...so they're likely worth ever penny. But you know me! ;)

Yeah, it was pretty obvious where this was going! Just as a fun side-project, I'm making my own "poor-man's" working Lament Configuration. After a while, designing the same sort of thing (toy action figures) starts to grate on your nerves, so this was a nice distraction to help me stay sharp, focused, and creative.

I'm probably just going to have this thing slide apart in the "star formation", the final movement phase that actually summons the Cenobites. In the movies, the box makes other movements as well, but it'd be mostly impossible to make a single unit capable of doing them all as seemlessly as they appear in the movies.

So the past couple weeks have been spent solid-modeling all these crazy details on the faces of the cube. The images above are legit screenshots from Pro/E...fortunately, they have "metallic gold" and "stained elm" colors built in! Anyway, the minute details don't precisely match the original artwork--I wasn't about to drive myself nuts by replicating the images I downloaded of each face perfectly. At least each face will be different on my model (there are minor differences from one side of the box to the other, though they generally appear to be the same).

Later this week (hopefully), I'll carve up the model into the two working parts. We'll see how it goes. I'll be sure to post my results here!

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Anyway, here're some updates on the rest of the crazy stuff I'm working on. First off, the next big run of AshuraShine figures is in, bagged-n-tagged, and ready to ship! I just need to start bugging folks on LRG for money. ;)

There aren't enough yet to finish off the list, but this is gonna be a nice big bite taken out of it. And after that, we'll be doing smaller runs of glow, color-change, translucent, etc.! Very hot. But honestly, even more exciting is what MUSCLE Things and I have planned. First off, just check out his new site--it's a forum now mainly for us custom-MUSCLE heads! But besides that, there are a bunch of new (and ancient!) designs getting the MUSCLE treatment soon. Very damn cool...

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And here's the latest on our pal, Gin Gin. Well, the paint master is being finished up right now, if you can believe it. And just in time for a mold change! Haha! For real, there's a bunch of weird factors that have come together to make this mold change the right move at this point. First off, if you've been following our (me and B00) 3D printing exploits on TBDX, you know that we've been crazy-busy vetting a number of 3D print-on-demand services out there. Well, as insane as it sounds, it looks like Shapeways is still the overall right choice for production arms on Gin Gin (polished polyamide). It's mainly about price at this point. I'm just praying that they can keep their quality standards reasonably high...

Also, I got a new print of Gin Gin's body and head in a new Shapeways offering: "polished alumide". If you recall ages ago, I got an alumide print (it's basically just aluminum powder mixed in with the polyamide powder in the usual SLS process) of just Gin Gin's head. The surfaces were ultimately too rough to get a good vulcanized rubber mold from...but because of the high heat tolerance, the overall geometry looked gorgeous (no nicks, cuts, warpage, or any weird bubbly looking flaws of any sort). Anyway, my new prints in this new "polished" stuff look really nice and smooth, so I have high hopes they'll yield an ideal mold.

Anyway, the actual mold changes, themselves, are minor at best. But whatever. I just can't wait to see the paint master...!

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Lastly, one quick note about the "Throne of Chaos" Unicron stands. I've been getting sporadic e-mails here and there from folks all over the world asking for them (BBTS is sold out and it looks like they're not interested in stocking more). Well, unfortunately, I'm done with storing and shipping these damn things on my own!

There IS hope, however: I'm still in touch with my acrylic fabricator, and I'm sure he'd still be cool with doing smaller wholesale orders. So what I've been telling folks is to go to their favorite TF board online and start a thread about doing a wholesale group-buy. If someone can get a bunch folks together, one person can be in charge of collecting the money, receiving the stands, and shipping them out to everyone else. Obviously, I would forward the money to my fabricator and have him ship directly to whomever gets nominated (and I would personally ship that person the inserts).

It seems that group-buys are pretty common on the bigger/more popular message boards...but either way, I'm done with selling these things on my own. Of course, the alternative is that someone could just bootleg my bootleg stand! ;)

Til next time...I'm out!