Nerdy Beginnings

Hey Everyone

Hope you all like the new layout, and JQ and I would be doing our best to keep this blog running with a variety of posts in the future. In short, we have expanded the varieties of posts to share much more about our model and toy collecting hobbies, from the old blogs that touched upon warharmmer fantasy and modern military.

Kind of similar to JQ, my hobby started out with my dad introducing my older brother and I to modeling, by simply putting together Tamiya 1/35 model kits together. The thing is, the Tamiya kits came in a color that matched the general color scheme of the vehicles, and we were just content on putting decals on, and of course: playing with it pretty roughly (my dad said it took a heck a lot of time). My first few kits I remember were the Centurion tank, Schrimmwagen amphibious jeep, Sdkfz 251 Grief (with Rommel), the Merkava II tank, and the Stuka Zu Fuss half-track rocket launcher.

Also, my dad ran a color separation company (which makes sure colors of magazines, books etc. will turn out realistic when they are printed) and had the slicer to cut film/prints in straight lines...and we actually used that to cut the box covers of the models we had made.

The 1/35 Schrimmwagen, which looked like a frog to me when I was a kid. (clubhyper.com)

The 1/35 Stuka Zu Fuss, a very unconventional looking vehicle. (www.modelsforsale.com)

Fortunately enough, my dad did bring out his old paints and let my brother and I paint some models. I remember the 2 models we did paint were Dragon's 1/35 BRDM 3 (in mock urban scheme) and Tamiya's 1/48 Brewster Buffalo (done in a garish paint scheme that was called 'Sunkist'). However, those models got thrown away as we moved from house to house, and I didn't keep them around to be able to take pictures of them to show you guys :(

As my dad worked in his company, he was able to get free samples of the American modeling magazine: Fine-Scale Modeler (FSM), which had articles on just modeling, such as airbrushing, mail-in order forms, guides on making special effects (like zimmerit and battle damage). It really made me dream of doing the same thing as the guys were doing, and always thought of getting an airbrush and paints together to make a really good kit (I haven't found the time yet...).

Fine scale modeler magazine logo, from finescale.com.

Also, I grew up on reading Tamiya's (1995) and Hasegawa's high quality model catalogues, and constantly kept re-reading them and pour my interest into various tanks and planes I thought would be ideal to me (mostly Soviet and German vehicles), and dreamt of making them one day. I prefered German and Soviet vehicles as I found it too easy to like the "good guys" of the world, where you can find multiple publications that have all the details about them...but for the "bad guys" of the world, one has to spend more effort in finding out more about these more 'exotic' vehicles, which naturally seemed more interesting to me.

In addition, the dioramas of the 1/35 WWII vehicles inside the Tamiya catalogue was one of my favorite pages, as they really looked great, and added on to my dream of seriously making a diorama one day...

I must have read this a lot of times as a kid, I remember the cover falling off from wear) (tamiyabase.com)

Then came the year 2000, and Bioware and Black Isle made computer games of Forgotten Realms AD&D games (Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate), which piqued my interest in fantasy, and it was in Secondary School when I first met JQ (1999) and we actually played a game of Icewind Dale over dial-up once)...man I still remember that game session.

The Icewind Dale game, I must have played this quite a lot...and got pretty familiar with the AD&D 3rd Edition rules.

Well, JQ eventually approached me and asked if I would like to join with him to play warhammer, and gave me a brief description of the races at the gate of his house, ranging from High Elves to Chaos, and asked me which side I would pick. I picked the Empire because I liked humans for some reason, and also for what they stood for: human struggle against foes of supernatural strength...and because JQ already picked Bretonnians :P

So I started out with painting my Empire knights, with a color scheme that had some input from JQ himself, and I guess they turned out pretty all right for a beginner:

My Imperial Knight regiment, dark armor contrast against light barding.

And I guess from there I started out with warhammer the game itself, playing multiple campaigns with friends, painting a few more figures (painting didn't come naturally to me, JQ would always complain haha)...and also branching out into collecting other figures too (McFarlanes, Star Wars action figures, gundam) as I was able to earn more pocket money and spend on toys that I liked (like the old micromachines too).

That pretty much sums up how my interest in modeling started...and I guess the next few posts will really show the stuff we have collected so far. For the photos we have taken so far...it kind of started with JQ doing the blogs and the pictures himself, and then he asked me to come down to help out, with me holding up the sky backgrounds for him. Slowly we improved on or techniques as we took pictures of warhammer and modern military models, and for some time, figured out that it'll be great if we could eventually branch out of the old mold and share about our interests in other areas such as Japan-fan and Sci-Fi.

Once again, thanks for coming down to our blog and for your warm support for all this time. It is our sincere wish that this integration will serve you well, and produce a larger variety of posts as we share our common love for hobbying.