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It's taken about a year from beginning to end but then again it is the largest kit I've ever done.


Linky:
http://fox-box.co.uk/product/fox-box-orc-pickup-truck/

There's 26 separate bits in the kit and I'm fairly proud of the lot. Hopefully other people will like it too!

Got plans for a vehicle using Craig's awesome engines? You'll need some wheels then 

http://fox-box.co.uk/product/fox-box-medium-war-rig-wheels-4/

http://fox-box.co.uk/product/fox-box-medium-worn-wheels-4/


Unless otherwise stated our wheels all use the standard 4mm diameter axle that seems to have become the de-facto standard.

It still amuses me that the complicated stuff I sculpt is so easy to cast but chunky regular shapes cause no end of problems.
This feels like the third attempt at these damned things but I think I've cracked it at last:


They're available as 2, 4, or 6 wheels (with the price per unit going as volume goes up, as one might expect):
http://fox-box.co.uk/product/fox-box-armoured-truck-wheels-2/
http://fox-box.co.uk/product/fox-box-armoured-truck-wheels-4/
http://fox-box.co.uk/product/fox-box-armoured-truck-wheels-6/

These are my latest attempt at Orc heads. They're not as swish as some of the excellent work done by other sculptors but it's nice to have some that can be used as the default heads for my own range.

Oh and they can be yours if you like. Much like the legs they're pretty cheap.


http://fox-box.co.uk/product/fox-box-basic-orc-heads/

So these have gone through several iterations dating back to, erm, you know, I'm not entirely sure how far. Let's say 2012, that sounds about right.

Since then we've had version 1.50 which came with redone musculature (as frankly the old sculpt wasn't all that great - yeah, you can blame me for that one). Since then I've made a fair few casts but that mould is now residing firmly in donesville. Wait, that makes it sound finished rather than defunct. Defunctsville just doesn't have the same ring to it though, does it?

Right, they look like this and come with a variety of means of administering blunt trauma:

http://fox-box.co.uk/product/fox-box-orc-riot-shields-3-2-0/

I have been told my voice is rather good. It's yours to use for projects if I can help in some way.
I do not have any real professional experience so at least for now we'll go with a rate of free.

If you would like me to record a sample feel free to reply or send me a private message with the script. I can also be emailed at my username @gmail.com

Recording of this message

Craig built them for his gorgeous Big Rig build (Full playlist here):

They're huge and beautiful. Just look at 'em!


Get them here:
http://fox-box.co.uk/product/fox-box-orc-engines-3

These aren't as fancy as ones made by other companies. Perhaps in time I'll be able to sculpt things as good as their work but in the meantime there's other things that improve a lot more quickly. These are designed to be simple and cheap. Useful if you've got models that are normally drivers or gunners and need something for them to be attached to when they leave their vehicles.

Yep, that's all the natter you're getting on these.

http://fox-box.co.uk/product/fox-box-basic-orc-legs-6/

For me personally there's three eras of casting in my personal history. The first was messing about with single-sided moulds with my father about fifteen years ago. The results were basically useless but it was fun doing something with my dad.

The second was when I first got back into wargaming around 2009 or so. I needed some shotguns for some greenskins and the old plastic ones were the wrong scale:


The mould makes no sense and the results were pretty worthless, frankly. Instead I got in touch with Ramshackle Games and they started casting them along with some other designs I put together. I received copies of both the basic shotguns and the finished versions that Curtis had detailed and added arms to.

These days casting is no problem whatsoever but I'm doing my best to improve my abilities with muscles so I had a go at sculpting arms of my own for the shotguns (working from my originals, so I had to add my own detailing). I'm relatively pleased with the results and figure they might be useful for other people too.


http://fox-box.co.uk/product/fox-box-orc-shotguns/

As a kid into wargaming I loved miniature barrels. They were great as scatter terrain, accessories, and as ways of making other bits of terrain look good. The problem was that they could only be had as a set with other things. There was always that scarcity. There's only so many tank traps a tabletop needs but barrels? Barrels are the best!

The only problem with buying barrels intended for things like scale models was the fact that they were precisely that - scale models. 28mm "Heroic" isn't a scale - it's an art style. Shorter legs, bigger heads, weapons, and hands. Then there's the fact that everyone is on a base a few millimetres thick. Our eyes don't care that the barrels would look ridiculously large if they were on the same base.

What I'm getting at is that Craig has put together these great barrels that fit nicely with Orcs as well as Orks.

They're now on the site:

http://fox-box.co.uk/product/fox-box-barrels-8/

[TODAY ONLY]

It's Leap Day so we've got something special for you!

TODAY ONLY you can bid on our Sororitas Arcanum starter force kit as part of a charity auction raising money for Post Pals. You've got until 10pm to get your bids in!
That's 2200 UTC, 2100 in most of mainland Europe, 2pm Pacific Standard Time, 4pm Central Standard Time, and 5pm Eastern Standard Time. Probably.
It's in just under seven hours anyway.

To bid you've got to go here on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1568415453448444/permalink/1571298626493460/

All money goes towards giving sick kids and their families a well deserved weekend away from hospital

Blurb about the kit:

The kit contains all the parts necessary to build 15 female warriors split into three squads. It also comes with two warrior priests and an exclusive PRE-RELEASE canoness model.
Perfect starter kit for anyone wanting to take up wargaming -- makes a great gift or a treat for yourself.

Supplied unassembled and unpainted.

Full list of contents:
3 x Sororitas Arcanum Squads
2 x Sororitas Arcanum Priests
1 x Sororitas Arcanum Canoness
1 x Human Sci-Fi Weapons Sprue
1 x Kneadatite modelling putty
1 x Super Glue

I thought this was rather interesting - I've never heard such a good explanation of what Assembly is and how 8-bit CPUs work:

When working on human miniatures the one thing that really slows down progress, mentally speaking, is the knowledge that to arm them I'm going to need to make some weapons from scratch. It's one of the reasons I have so few single character models like the Sororitas Arcanum priests - I get the general shape in place, realise I'm going to need a weapon for them, and then my motivation just evaporates. Seriously! I've got at least three on corks just waiting for further progress!


So to remedy that I've put together a sprue containing these things:


Today I've got the first cast of them:


With any luck I'll be able to do a casting run of them with some filler in order to get a darker colour that I can photograph, then it's off to the proverbial races.

Also this means I can finally get some heavy weapons into the hands of my faithful sisters, and some weapon choices for the canoness.

This one has been a fair while in the works. I originally started work on it in 2013 or so, I think:

As with many other projects it hit a roadblock that took a long time to get past. In this case the problem was that it has a rider.
The body and the arms weren't too difficult but the head presented no end of problems. I couldn't create anything I was satisfied with.

Time passed and many years later I found I now had the skill to sculpt Orc heads. Sure, they could be better, but it'll do to be going on with!

In the intervening years I setup my own casting operation and got to pouring silicone goo over my flimsy green master. The result was fairly pleasing:

Of course, being that it's me and it was 11 bleedin' degrees inside my flat:

It took a while to get it painted.
Still, I got there in the end:

It's not just a solid block either. Eight parts are in the kit so if you want different heads, torsos, weapons, or whatever then it should be fairly easy to swap them out. It's not a snap-fit kit though so the usual green stuff, super glue, and patience will probably be required if you want to make changes.

Anyway, it's here if you'd like it:
http://fox-box.co.uk/product/fox-box-orc-snow-stinger/

Now I don't know about you but back when I got into this hobby the main introductory kit was a fairly crap paint set with a few very basic models and several colours that were never used again.


Also by the way pricing has gone GW have pretty much cut out the pocket money crowd. It seems like they're finally thinking about new introductory routes though and this makes me breathe easy. As much as I dislike GW it's mostly because I've watched them become a company that succeeds despite itself. They've had enough momentum to keep on going through all the horrid decisions they've made but that kind of strategy isn't sustainable.


Maybe they're actually doing something right at long last? (From here.)



Wordy bits:


Thoughts?

Linky
Ork Meks, much like many human mechanics, are not known for telling the absolute truth. Did they just make up that part to put something extra on the bill? I doubt even other mekboys are sure.


The wordy bits are from me, Craig Dolan, Dawn Patrick-Brown, and a few others from the Gorkamorka community.

The code for this isn't particularly difficult but it does several things I've not done before. It pulls files from Google Sheets where there's this document. Three separate TSV files come from there although as they're each a single column they're literally a text file with an entry on each line and nothing more.


From there some PHP converts them to javascript arrays (and JSON) and the JavaScript works with them from there (brought in via PHP includes).


The general idea was to pull in the data as JSON because that's what one is apparently supposed to do. I couldn't find anything that didn't massively overcomplicate things though so I didn't bother. That said there is JSON for each of the three components should anyone want to have a play with them:

   
• Word A JSON
• Word B JSON
• Phrase JSON

The script should refresh the cache up to once an hour and I think Google Sheets is on a ten minute rotation so additions to the sheet won't show up in the code immediately but eventually will. Dat'z da plan, anyway.

Some of you may have guessed that I spend a lot of my time on my arse with the rest of me busy doing complicated things with models. While I'm doing that I like to listen to audiobooks.

I'm coming to the end of the currently available audiobooks for the series I've been listening to recently - Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books - and I'm curious to hear some recommendations if you have them.

In the meantime I'm going to talk about books and series I've listened to and what I made of them. I may do this in replies to my own topic just so as to actually get the accursed thing posted.

I'll start of with the series I've just mentioned - Thursday Next.
Currently the series consists of the following titles:

• The Eyre Affair
• Lost in a Good Book
• The Well of Lost Plots
• Something Rotten
• First Among Sequels
• One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
• The Woman Who Died a Lot

It's set in a world that bears both strong similarities to our own and some rather odd differences too. It's not steampunk but there are Zeppelins (but no jet liners), croquet seems to have the popularity of football/soccer, and classic literature is bizarrely popular.

The first book, The Eyre Affair, is, frankly, rather miserable for much of it. I'm not sure why but compared to the others it felt bleak and depressing despite its whimsy. The later books seem to avoid this which I was frankly glad of. I enjoyed Fatherland but it didn't exactly leave me cheerful after a hard day's work and the atmosphere of The Eyre Affair some how had a lot in common with it.

After that we find ourselves on a wild and imaginative journey through the world of books (practically a whole other dimension with all sorts of odd quirks and amusing technologies). That's what I've been enjoying lately.

There's a whole army of Mrs. Danvers clones:


Certain places contain The Mispeling Vyrus and gas masks with dictionary filters must be worn to go near it...
Hopefully you get the idea. It's rather fun.

Perhaps this is the right place?

I would have thought I'd have liked the first three films in this series more but frankly they're only okay. I can't say I enjoyed the first one all that much but it might be worth revisiting. This latest one though. Wow.

I'd been looking forward to it but at best I thought it'd be a fun action film. Instead I found myself paying to see it in the cinema twice and then watching it repeatedly at home. I'm still utterly flabbergasted that such a film can exist in 2015.

Not since Waterworld have I seen a film commit so fully to attempting to realise a post apocalyptic world. Most people don't particularly like Waterworld, I know, but the sets and vehicles in that film were extremely impressive and the reason for its enormous budget (at least as far as I understand things).

The thing that might have been advertised but didn't reach me until after watching was the fact that the vast majority of the effects were practical. There was plenty of compositing to put it all together, certainly, and some things were indeed primarily computer generated, but it wasn't The Hobbit:


Instead it was this sort of thing.

For me the star of the film is the world it takes place in. My interest in the two protagonists is fairly minimal. Instead the amount we learn about the world and the society that exists through being shown and the occasional brief snippet of dialogue is remarkable. I've become so used to films hammering me over the head with exposition (which these days immediately brings this to mind) so to find a film that had a great deal of world building there to anyone interested in looking for it was remarkably refreshing.

[ONWARDS!]

This tutorial is aiming to deal with copyright law with a focus on the UK. Lots of this stuff will be relevant in most countries but when in doubt consult a local source. it will also cover licenses in the realm of distributing things non-commercially.

Importantly this tutorial deals with copyright. It does not deal with trade marks, trademarks, patents, registered designs, or anything else IP-related. If you're needing some knowledge about names of products, brand names, and related things like that you're in the wrong place. Those things are trade marks and aren't directly related to copyright.

ONWARDS!



Part 1: Copyright

Let's see whether I can find a good starting point. Copyright is a form of protection. Whoever owns the copyright on something controls certain rights.

I guess we'll look at the "something" of that first. The most important principle here is that what is being protected is the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. If you paint a picture of a unicorn you own that version of it. If I decide to also paint a picture of a unicorn I can - but it has to be my interpretation of the idea.

Ideas themselves cannot be copyrighted.

So, you've painted your unicorn. How do you copyright it?
Well, you sort of already have. There's no registration procedure. You finished the painting and it's now copyrighted. You own the rights to it. You don't need to put a © symbol next to it, although you can if you want.

Copyright is supposed to protect it though, isn't it? From what?

Let's take a look at the 1988 Copyrights, Designs, and Patents Act:

The owner of the copyright in a work has, in accordance with the following provisions of this Chapter, the exclusive right to do the following acts in the United Kingdom—

• to copy the work
• to issue copies of the work to the public
• to rent or lend the work to the public
• to perform, show or play the work in public
• to communicate the work to the public
• to make an adaptation of the work or do any of the above in relation to an adaptation

As the copyright owner you can do those things and if anyone else does them you have a case against them. That's what copyright infringement is - doing one of those things without the express permission of the rights holder. You've probably committed copyright infringement any number of times without even knowing it. The law is pretty broad as it stands.

Copyrighted works aren't protected forever though - eventually they enter the Public Domain and can be used by anyone for whatever purpose they choose. The caveat here is that for most works the point at which that happens is 70 years after the creator's death. I don't know who settled on that number but it seems a little excessive to me.

With any luck you've now got the general gist of what copyright is and how it applies to you.

At this point I'd like to provide a little example of a situation that I'll be referring back to in the second part of this guide:

Let's say I've written a book. I've decided to make it an eBook and distribute it on my website. As a bit of a promo I decide to give out free copies for a week. After that I start selling it and take away the free option. Eventually sales slow and as a friendly gesture I start giving it away for free to the handful of people still interested. Fast forward a few years and I decide to write a sequel to my first book. Shortly before release I start selling the first book again.

I'm well within my rights to do all of those things because I am the rights holder (assuming I didn't sell the rights to someone else). If someone decided to share copies of my book with other people they would be committing copyright infringement. The fact that I was giving it away is irrelevant because it was mine to give away. Just because something didn't require payment doesn't mean others can consider it public property.

Worse than that though there are increasingly wide spread automatic tools for detecting this sort of thing. This matters because I might not care that others were sharing my free book. The tools that detect these things don't care about my thoughts as the rights holder! As a result readers could well get into trouble even though I didn't feel they were doing anything wrong!

Part 2: Licensing

Licensing is fairly important to how intellectual property things work. You've probably agreed to some sort of IP license at some point. Most software has one. What you're agreeing to when you accept their terms is essentially a set of conditions within which you can use their work. When you buy a game you aren't buying the rights to it, just a license to have access to it.

The reason this matters to you as a rights holder is that it's the way in which you put your work out there. Unless you stipulate a license all work defaults to the status of "all rights reserved". If I put an eBook online with no additional info others may do things with it (e.g. post big chunks on their blog, make an audiobook of it, etc..). I'd be well within my rights to chase them down as without further information they should have assumed that it was not clear to use.

If I'd stated that it was available under some licensing terms then they could look at the license and then make a decision to use it based on those terms.

There's lots of different licenses out there though and some of them are downright confusing. When it comes to distributing content commercially I suggest you do further research into licenses and see whether you need one. This guide is more about how to release things for free whilst controlling how they're used.

Part 3: Creative Commons

Creative Commons have put together a set of licenses that are rather handy. They've sorted out the legal side so all we have to do is pick the things that matter to us and stipulate that our work is under that license.

Here's their license picker page. The licenses they show there aren't the only ones available though so some digging may be required if you want to use an older version. The Wikipedia page has some useful information on the subject.

Choose a license, mark the work in some way, done!

The end result is that if someone wants to share the file with their friends they can and are legally allowed to do so. You also have the option of allowing them to make derivative works using your material, or remix it in some way.

The only thing to remember with these licenses is that they are irrevocable. Once you've released a work under a license you cannot undo it. You can make it available under other licenses and you're not obligated to continue distributing the CC version. The reason this matters is that if I receive a file marked "Creative Commons attribution" and the author's name I should be safe to assume that the license still applies.  If the license could be revoked then this wouldn't work and we'd be spending all our time trying to find out what the rights holders feel like this fortnight!



With any luck this guide was helpful. Feel free to post questions but bear in mind that I'm not a lawyer. I've just been doing my research and bothering the IPO in my spare time.

Disclaimer: I'm still fairly new to this sort of thing and I've only just managed to solder something that wasn't a complete pig's ear. With that in mind let's dive in to what I've been working on in my spare time.

Many years ago I got my grubby meathooks on a book Games Workshop used to publish "How to Make Wargames Terrain". Not the flashy 2004 version mind you - the 1996 version. In all honesty I found it fairly worthless and uninspiring, especially in a time before the kind of tutorials we have access online today. There were a few nuggets of wisdom in there though such as the existence of this tool:

(From the original book)

Now I don't know about you but I'm not good at spending medium amounts of cash on myself. I'll save up for something expensive and buy it, I'll buy the odd small treat for up to about £7.50 but anything above that just feels a bit too much for just me. Well hot wire cutters fire into that price range (plus the cost of 4.5V batteries if one goes for the cheaper battery operated ones).

These days I'm older and I've got a lot of odds and sods lying around. One of these things is an ancient computer power supply. We're talking 140W.

It's on its own though so there's no way to turn it on. The kettle lead is plugged in but without a case button wired into it there's no on switch. Well that is at least easy to fix:


The black leads are all ground. There's only one green wire and grounding it immediately turns on the PSU. Sorted!

Right, then what's next? Well we've got lots of connectors that have both red and yellow wires. The red ones are 5V rails while the yellows are 12V. Oh and before we go on these are DC. The PSU's job is to convert AC input to DC output. 12V DC is, for the most part, safe. Probably unwise to handle it with wet hands, admittedly, but under normal conditions skin resistance prevents 12V being enough of a gradient to be dangerous.

The next component is NiChrome wire. A few metres can be had on eBay for bugger all. I bought the smallest amount I could - a metre of 0.5mm stuff - for £1.50 including postage. Man, making stuff was so much more expensive before eBay.

Ideally the wire for the hot wire cutter needs to be kept under tension. It's fairly stiff stuff but as we all remember from physics classes: metal that heats up expands. Hmm.

So I needed a device that could:

• Keep the wire under tension even as it expands
• Have plenty of safe handholds
• Not melt when if exposed to a little stray heat
• Take up as little space as possible

Lots of people make these using PVC pipe but I haven't got any that's the right size so that idea fell at the first hurdle. Wood would work though, assuming it was reasonably tough. I took a look in a nearby shed and found an extremely dead deckchair. The canvas had rotted off and it was riddle with woodworm and rot. Luckily some parts of it were still dry and reasonably tough.

A bit of sawing, drilling, and wiring later and I had a pterodactyl!


The rubber band keeps the wire under tension and the rest of the design allows it to be collapsed when not in use. In theory I could also mount a longer wire if I felt like it. Attaching one wire to a 12V rail and the other to a ground rail provided me with something that happily chews through even thick insulation foam:


It actually runs a little hotter than I'd like and so I'm considering testing it on the 5V rail to see whether that makes any difference when cutting simple polystyrene. Its current heat level is fine for thicker foam but it goes through white expanded polystyrene like it's not even there - not so good if one doesn't have a steady hand. A switch between the two might be a good addition if that works.