The Elder Thoughts

Usually any art book contains concept art and character & enemy designs, but probably due to Naughty Dog's nature (the company responsible for the videogame), in The Art of Last Of Us there is an incredible amount of beautiful scenery, iterations of not only the main characters but also non-player characters and monsters, examples of different lighting tests on scenes...

I loved the videogame, and the book doesn't disappoints, showing sketches, different steps and iterations (including discarded ones), colouring... Special mention to the faces: You clearly feel how much effort was put on trying to find "the perfect match" for each character face, different expression tests, or details like hair color. And the same applies to enemies: Lots of iterations on the type, clothing and weaponry.

A nice collector's item indeed.

Posted on 2019-08-20

After moving some old miniatures, I've decided to move most of my remaining painted miniatures to my family's country-house. I mostly only keep painted from now on my Deathwing Terminators (+2 full squads) and some Genestealers including the big patriarch on the throne. I'll decide what to do when I finish painting other minis when I'm able to finish painting anything.

So, I've moved some really old miniatures, like the Rogue Trader Dark Angel Space Marines:

And an old Land Raider:

But also some newer miniatures, like this plastic Dreadnought:

Or the Ork Stompa I had already photos of:

And non-Warhammer miniatures, like this (already pre-painted) Metal Gear Gray Fox ninja:

This small Aliens APC (also pre-painted):

Or this old Aliens Queen:

As usual, you can see a few more photos and all the archives at the Warhammer 40k gallery and the Assorted gallery.

Posted on 2019-07-30

I haven't forgotten the blog, but some relevant things have happened in real life that make harder to write content for here:

• Our role-playing group is mostly dissolved. Part of if no longer lives in Spain, and of those who live, it became so hard to be able to meet that even playing some boardgames became almost impossible.
• I am spending some days most weeks out of home, so I have way less available time to paint miniatures.
• I am in general dedicating less time to play videogames, so I try to rotate between genres, but RPGs usually require lots of commitment.
• I am reading, quite a lot more in fact, but I had a long stack of pending articles to read before being able to spend more time with books, and again, I have to leverage between books that could be reviewed here and from other areas (mainly technical, but not limited only to those).

That said, I have played quite a lot of Diablo III on my Nintendo Switch (I've got 5 level 70 characters, around 400 paragon levels, and one of the characters is already doing the set armour special quests). I also finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (awesome game, I'll replay it sometime in the future), and I am onto some Final Fantasy: I am playing FF-X HD on PC (finished it on PS2 on its day, but as I loved it wanted to play it again), I have installed and started playing FF VII on my laptop (but oh boy, the random battles do get annoying at first), and I tried really hard to finish FF XII HD... but despite nice graphics and the awesome gambit AI system (basically you can spend more time fine-tuning the combat behaviour of the characters than actually battling) the story is so dull and the voice acting so rough that I gave up. I have the savegame for the future but it felt so boring I am not sure when I'll continue. Not having the gaming PC with me all the time also doesn't helps, although enables me to divide by platforms. I am for example finally going through my PS3 exclusives.

About miniature painting I would love to spend more time, but in the short term I only foresee moving more old miniatures to my mother's countryside house after taking some photos.

About reading, I have started another Horus Heresy book and the 2nd volume of The Dark Tower so is a matter of time only.

And in general, my life is quite busy right now so no boardgaming or role-playing, we'll see if later this year that changes.

Posted on 2019-07-09

The Flight of the Eisenstein picks up just after the Isstvan III traitor forces attack and massacre of loyal Space Marines, continuing the adventures of Death Guard captain Nathaniel Garro, who witnessed the rebellion, stole a ship and is trying to escape the Isstvan system to warn the emperor about Horus and some primarchs betrayal.

Without spoiling much, we'll read not only about battles between loyal and traitors, between space marine and demons, but also interal fights inside the survivor minds trying to digest the fact that most of what they stood for has been corrupted, that they will face their own brothers (and worse) in battle.

Continuing exactly where the third book left, was an enjoyable and nice paced read, with some tense moments and sometimes grotesque descriptions of some chaos taints.

Posted on 2019-02-16

To make some room and fit all my miniatures in less shelves, I took the (hard) decision of a) selling a few miniatures and b) moving some old painted ones to my mother's house. These last months (years?), mostly due to friends either moving out of the country or just all of us having a very busy life, I've stopped playing and keeping boardgames (with a few special exceptions), so it was reasonable to also "get rid" (in a safe way) of some miniatures. I decided to take some photos first and uploaded here to my galleries section.

The galleries that have been updated are Epic 40,000, Warhammer 40,000 (newest one as there are multiple galleries) and Assorted/Miscellaneous.

And this are some samples of the photos I've added to it. As you will see, nothing incredible and most if not all painted when I was young, but still so full of memories I wanted to keep some photos of them always available.

All my Epic 40,000 painted miniatures. I had already only kept at most 2 units of each from my Eldar army and from the Space Marines and Orks armies. Now I'll only keep the titans and gargants I have pending painting.

Miscellaneous fantasy heroes and monsters. Some from HeroQuest and Advanced HeroQuest, others from various sources.

And then, some Warhammer 40,000 stuff, mainly some old Rogue Trader era tanks from my Dark Angels Space Marine army:

But also other minis like an old metal Tyranid:

Scenery...

And an old Leman Russ fully-armed

Posted on 2018-12-30