So I watched this year's "Doctor Who" Christmas special this morning. It wasn't fantastic, but I did find it to be rather enjoyable. It was probably the best holiday special that the current series has yet produced, though I suppose that's not saying much since the first was essentially an introduction to the 10th Doctor and the second was utterly ruined by that horribly annoying Racnoss thing. Still, I think that Russell T. Davies should stick to writing Christmas holiday episodes and nothing else -- the Doctor-as-Christ parallels are tolerable in them (see the above image), but any and everywhere else they're just bloody irritating.

I was saddened by the absence of Daleks in the Series 4 teaser.

I have begun fooling around with the light tent -- here is the result of my first round of experimentation. After having gone to such lengths to increase the exposure of the previous photos -- both using the camera's exposure setting and the white balance adjustment as well as the Xpose! plugin once I got the images onto the machine -- it's kind of weird to not need to do any of that with this contraption. I actually had to turn the camera's exposure setting down to produce this image. (I suspect that has a bit to do with Bizarro's skin tone and its apparently reflective nature -- Ravager and Slade appear pretty much the same in the shots with different settings -- but still.) And I would prefer a white background rather than the grey or blue choices that came with the tent, but that has to be ordered separately. This'll work fine until I get around to doing that, though.

As far as the figures pictured go, I've had Ravager for quite a while, but I broke her out again to pose with her dad, who I received last week thanks to De's tip about the sale over at Sci-Fi Genre. And this Bizarro is the same one I mentioned not being totally into before (or at least liking less than I like Batzarro), but this time I had a coupon that made him a bit more attractive.

Anyway, all for now -- hope y'all had a happy holiday!

So here are those additional Lego Dalek pictures I promised! I've left the digital exposure down on these photos so that the Special Weapons Dalek doesn't blend completely into the background, but you can see here that -- at 3.5" versus 5" and 4.5", respectively -- the Lego Daleks are quite a bit smaller than my official Character Options figures and paper Daleks. (They're about the same size as the shuttlecock Daleks, but for some reason it didn't occur to me to include them in this photo at the time of its taking.) I figured they'd be about this size given the sizes of the Lego pieces I used to make them and whatnot, but it's still kind of odd (yet neat!) to see a 3D render that's been blown up on my laptop screen reduced to a tiny tangible 3D object formed from a bag of 150+ even tinier pieces. 🙂

And here they are closing in on the 9th Doctor! Despite the smaller scale (and I really can't think of any way to rectify that without messing up the proportions), I'm rather happy with how the Lego Daleks turned out. They were fairly sturdy to begin with, but I've made some further improvements to the designs using extra Lego pieces I had around (namely internal adjustments to the primarily hollow structure of the original base that fill in spaces) to increase their stability even more. The most unstable part of the Lego Daleks, however, was the Special Weapons Dalek's cannon, which was kind of wobbly at first and was prone to falling off if I tilted the figure forward too much. I've since tightened it up by painting the interiors of the endpieces with clear nail polish, so now it's perfect. Feels kind of like cheating, but it's not like I glued or cut pieces or anything. 😉

In other news, one of the Christmas presents I have already received is a 16" x 16" x 16" lighting studio, so the digital exposure adjustment trickery should soon be a thing of the past! Look forward to seeing tests with that in the near future. Also, for those of you that are interested in checking it out, I posted that Madballs review and comparison article last week on SC. For old folks that actually remember the original 1986 Madballs, it's at least worth a look for some of the comparison photos. 🙂

Anyway, that is all for now. Hope y'all are having a happy holiday season! As Tiny Tim might say, "God bless you -- every one." Except I'm not Tiny Tim and don't really go in for "God bless" statements, so feel free to modify that statement accordingly -- while more or less retaining the general sentiment -- and pretend I said it. 😉

I'm really too exhausted to say a whole lot about them right now, but the Lego Daleks have crossed over from concept to reality! I'll write more later, but suffice it to say that they're pretty cool. Hard to believe that I went to the trouble of designing these things from scratch, but assembling them seemed way easier on the digital front. Fiddling with 150+ tiny pieces to put together each of these bad boys gave me a monster headache, to say nothing of what happened when I accidentally dropped one and it exploded into a mess of scattered bricks.

They do rock, though -- I'm looking forward to ordering more. 🙂

You have no idea how thrilled I was to come across the new MADBALLS at Toys 'R' Us on Sunday! In many cases I think the original designs were actually better (expect an in-depth review and comparison to the old balls to appear on Scary-Crayon in the next week or so; I've already taken all of the photos for it), but I'm still glad that the Madballs are making a comeback. I'm not sure how well they'll do this holiday season and in 2008+ -- part of the reason the Madballs worked back then was that they were in keeping with the general trend of gross-out properties in the mid-80s; today they lack that context -- but I'm hoping for the best. I loves me some Madballs.

What the title says: it's time for another photo post!

We had our first snowfall of the season last week, so I stood on the porch and took a few pictures to capture the occasion. Most of the photos came out a bit blurry due to the motion of the falling snow, but this shot of the neighborhood turned out pretty well.

And here is a picture of the bush adjacent to the walkway that leads to the porch. It has snow on it as well! Unfortunately, thanks to slightly warmer temperatures and several days of rain, the snow is all gone by now. It's a bit sad -- I really do like how pretty everything looks covered in snow -- but I'm glad that I didn't give into the temptation to use that wonderfully powdery snow to construct a snow Dalek. When one takes the time to make snow creatures, one generally wants them to stick around for at least a full week.

I've had Chastity for quite a while -- I ordered her online back when I was still in New Haven -- but I didn't actually take her out of her packaging until a couple of weeks ago. I also wasn't aware that Ross carries toys until a couple of weeks ago, and my discovery of this information and subsequent findings compelled me to get General Mono in a 2-pack with a Donatello figure. I'd originally passed over the 2-pack when it was more widely available last holiday season and earlier this year, but that was before I'd played the TMNT movie game. Mono and the rest of the stone generals were almost wholly devoid of characterization in the actual film, but Mono put up a memorable enough showing in the game for me to want to grab him upon seeing him this time around. Besides, at $10, the 2-pack was about $6 cheaper than its original price.

Anyway, Chastity and Mono's relationship began as one of convenience -- she's got really weird legs that make it difficult for her to stand, whereas Mono's a heavy guy with a pretty solid footprint -- but the more I looked at them posed together, the more I liked them as a legitimate couple. I'll probably carry their relationship over into any Scary-Crayon toy comics in which they appear! I also find something highly amusing about a woman named Chastity dating a guy named Mono... who's always hard as stone.

Wonder Women! I already had the one on the left, but the one on the right (and the stand on which they're both positioned) is new. I usually don't double up on my DC/Marvel comic character figures (Batman being the primary exception) without a functional reason -- for example, even though I have a Justice League Unlimited Hawkgirl, I'll probably end up getting a version from one of the DC Direct lines because they're larger and have better articulation -- but the Super Friends Wonder Woman was just too gorgeous to pass up. I really, really like these figures that take after their animation counterparts rather than sporting a more realistic look, and the additional articulation points on the SF WW made her even more of a must-buy for me. The brighter colors and curvier proportions didn't hurt either!

I got Batzarro the same day and place that I got the Wonder Woman above -- I'd actually planned to get a regular Bizarro figure, but then I saw this guy next to him and had to revise my purchasing plan. An insane, eyeless Batman with a toothy demonic grin? Awesome! I'd still like to get a Bizarro someday, but I'll wait for one from another DC Direct line. The one from the Batman-Superman line is indeed cool -- probably my second favorite Bizarro figure next to the old Superman Series 1 Bizarro (I like my Bizarro figures smilin'!) -- but something about the blue highlights in his hair doesn't work for me.

And here's Fast Action Battler Brawl! He's pretty cool, despite being part of a line that is ostensibly designed for much younger kids than the standard deluxe figures. In fact, he's larger and sports more visual contrast than the deluxe Brawl, which makes him a more attractive addition to my perpetually swelling Decepticon ranks.

And finally, here is a cute pic of Bacardi on the pillow outside my door. He has this plush lobster that he's fond of fetching, but when nobody is around to throw it -- or when he's not in the mood to run about -- he sometimes curls up with it and licks it. He really likes that lobster. 🙂

All for now, then. Hope y'all are having a happy holiday season!