I'm bored at work without anything to do, so what's a blog for right?

ART KARMA
Kuma is high on what he calls "art karma".  In the span of a month, he went from having no art supplies (he was planning on saving up for a $2000 Wacom Cintiq) to magically landing a free high-end airbrush & air compressor from his neighbor, a large set of high-end markers from some estate thing, and a brand new airbrush by going to the local chicago company that produced his old airbrush.  They sold him a $250 airbrush at-cost (~$30).  Also, his airbrush allows him to plug in his markers for use as a paint source.

GARAGE KITS
This man is going resin kit crazy with his new airbrush.  He's doing a Kushana (Nausicaa) for himself, a Kiyone (Tenchi Muyo Mihoshi Special OAV) for McSmash, and a Nakoruru (Samurai Shodown) for me.  While he brush-painted kits, gundams, capsule & PVC toys in the past, this time I'm forcing him to document the whole process for the sake of this blog.  His paint style is somewhat unusual in that he likes to emphasize gritty, worn textures-- he learned several paintbrush techniques in order to achieve those surfaces.  It'll be interesting to see what he does with Kushana in particular.

HOIHOI-SAN
is a single-volume comic series, a PS2 game and a very short anime OAV.  In the near future, insects are immune to pesticides, resulting in the need for household bug-killing robots.  A popular robot model series called "Hoihoi-san" is taking Japan by storm.  It's a cute, doll-like combat robot with swappable costumes, weapons and accessories.

The comic chronicles the Hoihoi-san phenomenon through the eyes of a hopeless fan, a retailer, the fandom itself during a fan convention as well as the inner turmoil of the company that designs and produces the household appliance.

WHY AM I WRITING about such an inane-sounding series?  It's a distinctly Japanese comic that lightly parodies their culture of rabid consumerism.  The comic often highlights how the fanboy protagonist blows his wages on the latest Hoihoi-san doo-dad, as well as pays for costly repairs and replacements as he damages and otherwise bricks the firmware of his toy.

The comic also parodies consumerism from an industry perspective as Hoihoi-san execs pitch concepts for accessories as well as deal with their competitor's "Combat-san"-- in one scene, the fanboy buys a Combat-san dreaming of a bug-killing tag team, only to later discover that his Hoihoi-san disposed of it overnight.

The comic also follows the characters as they attend a Hoihoi-san convention, where they buy and sell unofficial home-made accessories and costumes.  Anyway it's a cute comic series... the anime is basically a fan suppliment for it, which animates a few of the scenes in the comic.  The PS2 game has you playing from the perspective of the Hoihoi fanboy, blowing your wages on the latest weapons and frivilous costumes (too bad she can't fight in that kimono I saved up for).

The whole mini-franchise is a simultaneous parody and celebration of Japanese consumerist culture.  The original comic has been published in the US, and there's a new spinoff being published in Japan.  I might get it commissioned for an unofficial translation at some point... dunno yet.

3D PRINTING & HOIHOI-SAN
This is all tentative, since I only end up doing a fraction of the stuff I plan to do.  Shapeways is a highly accessible 3D printing service, where you send them a 3D model (i.e. polygons), specify a size and the materials to use, and they send you back your printed, prototype product.  While Shapeways is new, 3D printing services have been around for a while for use in prototyping.  I often wonder if any garage kit (resin kit etc.) hobbyist creators in Japan make use of that technology.

Something I want to do eventually is model up a pair of Hoihoi-san kits-- one static statue, and another movable figure along the lines of Figma, Revoltech etc. toys with all the accessories and whatnot.  Kuma's down with painting it, and if we get ambitious, we can mold & sell a whole bunch of them (maybe even fly to a Japanese convention to do so?)... anyway  I'm not going to get started on that for a while though, since I have a backlog of other projects to finish.

WHEN GAMING FEELS LIKE A SPORT
I've been playing a lot of Soulcalibur 4 and Wipeout HD lately.  These two are purely brainless action games.  I've been macroing training on them so hard though, I'm getting to the point where the things that hold me back from (say) making a gold medal lap in Wipeout are purely psychological.  I get too hyped up during the critical home stretch and I fly right off the track or stack up critical errors.

Not that I have much of a point to make here.  It just amuses me that I feel like some kind of olympic athelete playing them, where only my nerves are holding me back from something I should otherwise be able to do well.  It's like damn, I need to read about pressure management techniques in order to get any better at them... Wipeout in particular.