Hey there true believers, and welcome to my first first review installment: Reviews of Tomorrow! (echo implied)
When I stumble across a product that is just next level/amazing, I plan on dropping them a review here, so that they can get the exposure that they rightly deserve. The miniature marketplace is flooded with mediocre products, it can be hard to a innovator to make headway, with hobbyist already having resigned themselves to barely functional solutions. Such is the case with my first product up for review, Magic Water.
I want to preface this review with a couple of points. I love water effects in miniatures. Nearly every piece I’ve ever won an award for has featured water effects in some way shape or form. I spend much more time with basing than the average miniaturist, and it shows. As such, I’m not exaggerating when I saw that I’ve used dozens of products, to simulate still and running water both. Pools of blood, Caribbean turquoise waters, sewage, you name it. I’ve done it in miniature.
I can say unequivocally, that Magic Water is hands down the easiest to use of any product I’ve tried. I can run it up against Woodland Scenics, Pebeo, Amazing Clear Cast, Acrylic Water, Mod Podge, etc, etc, etc… and none of them come close.
Experienced miniaturists all have a nightmare story of a water effect that didn’t take and ruined a piece. I have several, myself. Shrinkage, cracking, bubbles, clouding, pulling away paint, never setting, sticking to the barriers. remaining tacky until the dawn of time, responding poorly to humidity.
I can honestly state that this is the first product I’ve found where none of those are a concern. You stir two odorless compounds into one another, pour into your mold, and come back in 24 hours. It is 100% idiot proof (helpful, in my case). That’s it. No wet sanding, no cure issues, no shrinkage. Mirror smooth, & crystal clear. Furthermore, it sets with a mild elasticity and no tackiness, so that it doesn’t take a fingerprint when you handle it afterwards.
I’ve poured it at a single pour depth of 3/4′s of an inch, around debris, then stuck more vegetation into the wet resin, and had it set perfectly in 24 hours.
I simply can’t recommend the product enough. I get a lot of questions about the water effects in my Gen Con winning Nurgle Diorama
I owe it all to Magic Water. Check out the depth of this single pour
Seriously, amazing stuff.
Furthermore, it’s all made in a one man operation, by a guy named Dave Williams, out of Michigan. You seriously can’t get anymore independent than he is, and he has a product that blows every competitor out of the water.
Do yourself a favor, and pick up a batch. I promise you that you’ll never go back to another product for your water features. If I had a five star system, this stuff would get six. If it was a one to ten scale, this stuff would turn it up to 12.
Go ahead and bin your Woodland Scenics, and get ready for the absolute future of scale modeling effects. When you do, tell him Will sent you, and won’t stop raving about the stuff.
My long overdue review of the absolutely amazing Magic Water. Seriously, do youself a favor and pick some up. It will change your diorama/basing life forever.
Oh look… MORE AWESOME SHIT NOBODY TOLD ME IN ART SCHOOL
Hey so no one fucking checked the source. The article doesn’t even link to the original source but to a facebook post where someone had reposted this from instagram.
Menswear isn’t really my area, but as far as I can tell, yup, this checks out. @miyuli has done a bunch of costume/dress reference sheets, an they’re all pretty good 😀
Please watch this video because I am so done with the “knights can’t properly move in armour” myth
This video makes me so very happy.
It pretty much perfectly encapsulates my experience of wearing armour, and shows a decent portrayal of a knights training in full armour was one focused upon mastery of all skills in harness.
“Creating one interesting character is hard enough — but when it comes to writing a whole novel or series of books, you have to create dozens of them. How can you keep your supporting cast from seeming like cookie-cutter people? There’s no easy answer, but a few tricks might help you create minor characters who don’t feel too minor.” [x]
Give them at lease one defining characteristic. “…lots of people have one or two habits that you notice the first time you meet them, that stand out in your mind even after you learn more about them.”
Give them an origin story. “…Your main character doesn’t necessarily need an origin story, because you’ve got the whole book to explain who he/she is and what he/she is about. But a supporting character? You get a paragraph or five, to explain the formative experience that made her become the person she is, and possibly how she got whatever skills or powers she possesses.”
Make sure they talk in a distinctive fashion. “…you still have to make sure your characters don’t all talk the same. Some of them talk in nothing but short sentences, others in nothing but long, rolling statements full of subordinate clauses and random digressions. Or you might have a character who always follows one long sentence with three short ones.“ ”…One dirty shortcut is to hear the voice of a particular actor or famous person in your head, as one character talks.“
Avoid making them paragons of virtue, or authorial stand-ins. ”…People who have no flaws are automatically boring, and thus forgettable.“ ”…Any character who has foibles, or bad habits, or destructive urges, will always stand out more than one who is pure and wonderful in all ways. And nobody will believe that you’ve chosen to identify yourself, as the author, with someone who’s so messed up. (Because of course, you are a perfect human being, with no flaws of your own.)“
Anchor them to a particular place. ”…A huge part of making a supporting character “pop” is placing her somewhere. Give her a haunt — some place she hangs out a lot. A tavern, a bar, an engine room, a barracks, a dog track, wherever. It works both ways — by anchoring a character in a particular location, you make both the character and the location feel more real.“
Introduce them twice — the first time in the background, the second in the foreground. ”…You mention a character in passing: “And Crazy Harriet was there too, chewing on her catweed like always.” And you say more about them. And then later, the next time we see that character, you give more information or detail, like where she scores her catweed from. The reader will barely remember that you mentioned the character the first time — but it’s in the back of the reader’s mind, and there’s a little “ping” of identification.“
Focus on what they mean to your protagonists ”…What does this minor character mean to your hero? What role does he fulfill? What does your hero want or need from Randolph the Grifter? If you know what your hero finds memorable about Randolph, then you’re a long ways towards finding what your readers will remember, too.“
Give them an arc — or the illusion of one. ”… You can create the appearance of an arc by establishing that a character feels a particular way — and then, a couple hundred pages later, you mention that now the character feels a different way.“ ”…A minor character who changes in some way is automatically more interesting than one who remains constant…“
The more minor the character, the more caricature-like they may have to be. ”…This one is debatable — you may be a deft enough author that you can create a hundred characters, all of whom are fully fleshed out, well-rounded human beings with full inner lives.“ ”…some writing styles simply can’t support or abide cartoony minor characters. But for your third ensign, who appears for a grand total of two pages, on page 147 and page 398, you may have to go for cartoony if you want him to live in the reader’s mind as anything other than a piece of scenery.“
Decide which supporting characters you’ll allow to be forgettable after all. ”…And this is probably inevitable. You only have so much energy, and your readers only have so much mental space. Plus, if 100 supporting characters are all vivid and colorful and people your readers want to go bowling with, then your story runs the risk of seeming overwritten and garish.Sometimes you need to resign yourself to the notion that some characters are going to be extras, or that they’re literally going to fulfill a plot function without having any personality to speak of. It’s a major sacrifice they’re making, subsuming their personality for the sake of the major players’ glory.“
Aliquid de Magis 