Hellcat tank crew

 In between playing video games, guitar and working, I have been able to make some headway on the Hellcat diorama. My painting's not so great, really haven't painted in depth in a long time. I tried to get the drivers face a dusty look, came out looking like someone hit him in the face with powder.

 This was brutal. I kept having to reposition arms, break some stuff off to get everything to fit, position the crew just right... You can see in the fourth picture that I had to trim off the tip of the commanders shoe so he can fit and have the "correct" looking posture, otherwise, he looked like he was just floating in the cuppola. Not to mention finding a spot where that machine gun fits . And then trying to get the shell loader position correctly...drove me INSANE! Those aren't even his original arms/hands. I took pieces from other soldiers and glued them on him, I was bent on having him loading a shell in the breech. I hope it adds motion and character to the overall scene.

 I've started painting the tank and I'm pretty satisfied with it. The term "you are your worst critic" is really strong with me, I usually feel my work isn't good enough no matter what I do. But that will only drag you down in the end, you'll have something that looks great but you make it worse by adding a little more, then a little more, then a little more.

 Tank pictures coming soon.

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Da Moon! Da Moon!

I tried to take a picture of the moon when it was full but it came out too bright and blurry to be able to see any of the marks or craters. So naturally I took out my telescope and spent far too much time trying to line up the telescope with the moon and then the camera with the telescope. And then re-align everything every couple of minutes because, guess what? THE MOON FREAKING MOVES! I mean, come on, who would think it would be more frustration than fun, with minimal pay off?!

And this cool shot of a halo of light around the moon, doesn't happen often and it's very cool to see first hand.

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I've been obsessed with...

 I don't even particularly like the game but I still find myself playing it all the time...like ALL the time. It saps your night away.

 The game is a third person shooter but with a touch of RTS components, which is kinda cool if you know what you're doing. You can build buildings such as bunkers, starhawk pads, jeep garages, turrets, walls, etc. Each building costs in game currency, called "rift" that's a blue ball of energy that floats towards you. You gain this rift a couple ways: by being near a spawn point, by killing/destroying enemy buildings or vehicles or from rift barrels throughout the map.

 One problem is that there is an overall team build limit for structures, you can only have 32 buildings at once. So if some idiot decides to build 10 walls for no reason, you're down ten structures. There are a lot of wasted buildings in this game. For instance if you build a vehicle building, it comes with a vehicle. A lot of people don't realize that you can spawn new vehicles from that same building, but instead, they just build a brand new building. When you have a 32 building limit, there is no sense in building five garages at your home base.

 However, the game IS fun. It has a touch of...unreal and tribes almost. Jetpacks and a shotgun or rocket launcher is my favorite thing to run around with. Not to mention it can be a lot of fun flying a starhawk.

 Not sure if I'll buy it right away though, I have too many games I haven't even started yet.

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