Stouffville, Ontario Canada (647) 962-1997 gwstudios@rogers.com M-F 8:30am - 2:30pm & 8:00pm - 11:00pm

Author: greatwallstudios

Married, Graphic Designer, enjoy playing the electric guitar, model building, wood working and sculpting.

Building war gaming terrain.

greatwallstudios1 Comment on Building war gaming terrain.

If I had the money and ample storage space I would spend so much time building war gaming terrain, that it isn’t funny. There is just something about it that is very therapeutic, and satisfying. Turning blocks of foam, paper and paint into a vivid playable landscape is really a tonne of fun. I’d make waterfalls, river beds, canyons, open plains, castles and mountains, as well as dungeons. Hand built houses, and guard shacks, sheds and windmills, the types and styles of out building to create is nearly infinite. Oh the possibilities are endless. Alas, the flocking, static grass, miniature trees and supplies are neither free to a good home nor cheap. Those awesome tufts, and miniature flowers all come from Europe with a hearty shipping cost per item. A static grass applicator or any provenance will set you back nearly $200 bones after shipping and import fees. Plaster of paris, rock moulds, sculpt a mould, paper mache, glue, it all costs money to keep, and space to store it all. I do love it though. And therein lies the rub. I do love to build things, of all sorts, but our house is small, so where on earth do you keep it all? Plus all of the additional tools of the trade for scratch builds, and modifications to store bought materials. Paints enough to fill racks, boxes of moulds, and cartons of flocking. No wonder the Youtubers work out of warehouse spaces. Not to mention the fumes from cutting styrofoam with a hot knife. Phew! Stinky. Not good for you either. But still, isn’t building terrain awesome!

Keep in mind that I am no expert, I turn to Youtubers like Geek Gaming Scenics and Real Terrain Hobbies, or Squidmar Miniatures for all sorts of helpful insights. Those folks all get paid to build amazing terrain, dioramas and such. I have to imagine, that just like any hobby, once you start to get paid for it and have client demands it loses some luster and gains added layers of stress. Things I don’t want. I just want to build it. Loud music, imagination, and testing the boundaries of what I am capable of bringing to life. I hope my kids need to build dioramas for school someday, so that we can kick ass and go for broke!

I haven’t made anything new, terrain wise in more than a year, perhaps more. I moved into furniture to satisfy that bug. But here’s a gallery of some miniatures, pre built purchased sets that I painted, and my hand crafted terrain tiles, that are a uniform 2ft by 2ft square.

1. Painted minis. 2.painted market square. 3. Gallows & rock walls. 4. Spaceship terrain one. 5. Spaceship terrain two. 6. Mysterious cavern. 7. CMON ASOIAF Painted soldiers. 8. Hand built Taverns & shops. 9. Hand made dungeon. 10. 4 2ftx2ft terrain sections.

Now I do apologize if the following video I took makes anyone **motion sick. You’ve been warned.

Fly over of my terrain board.

As always thanks for looking. Ciao Bella!

Feels like a week gone by already, and it’s only Tuesday.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Feels like a week gone by already, and it’s only Tuesday.

Strike while the iron is hot, and work, work, work, work, work.

Not going to say much, as I’m on a pee break, with twenty plus 3D renders to do today, make final edits to one report, and work through the last chapter of a second report. If I can do all of that, then I need to prep a third report that is hot on my heels.

Chat later. Ciao Bella!

Though I don’t cut my breakfast on a mirror…

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Though I don’t cut my breakfast on a mirror…

Is an interesting musical turn of phrase. I caught it in some song I heard playing on the radio yesterday evening, when I was taking the kids to the fair tear down so that we could pick up our award winning entries. Oh – ah. Yes, we placed! In a number of categories. We have the whole spectrum of ribbons. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and even a 6th place ribbon. The kids even managed a purple participation ribbon in the Christmas decoration section, which is hilarious. Super proud of both kids for putting in the effort to finish their entries, and do it with enough care to place in several categories. Nicely done. My sculpture ended up in a catch all group with other random unspecified articles of artwork. For techniques not listed in the prize book. So fair enough. Hard to judge apples to tank engines if you catch my drift. But my work stands out, and is easy to find on the display table. Which is what I care about most, getting them seen by as many people as possible. My bookcase at home doesn’t get the kind of foot traffic the Markham Fair Home Craft section does.

We ate dome Tiny Tom’s mini donuts yesterday. Nearly forgot to! How can it be the fair if I don’t eat at least one dozen tiny cinnamon dusted donuts! Luckily my wife remembered and brought some home after her shift in the Photography booth. Yeah! Delicious as always. Again, speaking of food, I have to tell you that the SuperSmash Burgs DK burger was incredible. So very tasty. Especially compared to the McDonalds McChicken Deluxe I ate late last night at about 9pm or so. No comparison, the DK burger from SuperSmash Burgs blows it out of the water. Not even close. And yes, I understand I am comparing a chicken sandwich to a double cheeseburger, but come on. SuperSmash takes the win hands down. I need to find out if they are local or not. See if they have a brick & mortar store nearby. Or a traveling food truck that can be easily found. I’ll get back to you if I manage to discover anything useful.

Yeah – so I did about 13.5 hrs of fair time on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The least of my immediate family. My youngest got 2 more hours on me. Our eldest got 5 extra hours on me, and my wife did about another 9 hours more. But she had Photography hours Sat/Sun, and Flower dept hours on Saturday evening too. But we got our fill. Sad it’s over, but glad it’s done for another year, you know? Yeah – you know.

I did a bunch of Domestic Duties Monday stuff yesterday, so I’m a little more laid back right now. Got a whole slew of projects out the door on Friday, so maybe, maybe? I’ll be a little more chill this week? Will need to prep for changing over the tires soon. That’s always a fun, finger tip numbing job. But I have my impact wrench, and torque wrench ready to go. Forgot about a jack, but we have those at the farm, so pretty much all set for the end of the month.

What else is new? I have my Hellboy armature ready to go, I’m just not convinced that I want to do that figure any more. I have eyes on some other character now. I have some air brush paint coming, so I’ll find out my old air brush and try to paint my new busts with it. I remember it gets really hot fairly quickly, which was why I stopped using it. Not yet convinced I’ll use one enough to warrant the expense of buying a better make/model. I like the idea of using an airbrush to paint my sculptures, and minis, and model kits. But I also would rather put that money towards wood working projects, tools and materials. At least for right now. Ask me again in January. Ciao Bella!

Day Four: The Last Day.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Day Four: The Last Day.

I’m going to need a vacation from the weekend. In total over the last three days I’ve spent more than thirteen (13) hours wandering the fair grounds, and riding the midway. It’s been really fun but my feet and hips beg to differ. My eldest and wife clocked in an additional five hours yesterday over top of what I did. How did they manage such a feat you ask? Well, by splitting into groups of course, so when I took a thoroughly exhausted youngest child home the rest kept on going. We left at four pm, and the rest sauntered home around nine thirty pm. I laid down on the couch and watched tv with the youngest for a while as she ate and calmed down. Then extended family came by and took her back to the fair two hours later.

I have to tell you that I ate a fantastic burger at the fair yesterday. A place called “SuperSmash Burgs“, and the double DK burger combo was my jam. It was absolutely fantastic. Five stars, do highly reccomend. Caramelized onions, deliciously cooked patties, a very zesty aioli sauce, and fresh lettuce & pickles. A thick slab of cheese, ooh wee it was great.

Tonight sometime after dark we will all flock back to the Markham Fair with our tags in order to pick up all of our entries. That is always a bit of a mess as a thousand people go wandering about trying to all do the same thing at once.

We were all pleasantly surprised that the TSSA strike only interfered with article drop off day on Tuesday, and didn’t affect the other official four days of the event. So all in all a great time was had by all. All eyes turn to next year!

But first we have Thanksgiving next weekend, and then Fall Break, and then the second biggest day of them all – Halloween!

The Party Doesn’t Stop Until We’ve Seen Tears, Blood Stains, and Vomit.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on The Party Doesn’t Stop Until We’ve Seen Tears, Blood Stains, and Vomit.

Welcome to the riveting weekend before Thanksgiving here in Canada, in this part of town we call that Fair Time! Fire works, rides, deep fried foods of questionable provenance, and all the friends & family you can shake a stick at. We saw the extremely loud and very entertaining Monster Trucks, we heard the truck pull, and have given the Midway a serious twice over, with about 8+ hours of hitting up the rides.

The food always smells so damn good. Reasonable pricing for a meal if you know where to look. I’m itching for some Tiny Tom’s donuts if I’m being honest. You know we work all Spring & Summer towards building a great fair experience for our kids and family, so when it finally gets here you really have to let go, be 8n the moment, and try to enjoy it all as much as possible. The weather the last two days has been exceptional given the time of year. So soak up some Rays, and have a great rest of your weekend!

I really love the fair at night. The lights, the glow and all of the hustle & bustle. Glad to have the Markham Fair back in action again. Ciao Bella!

Lots to Talk About, Nothing Much to Say.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Lots to Talk About, Nothing Much to Say.

That’s how this whole week feels. Busy busy busy with paid work (yeah!), and the Markham Fair is in town, and acting like it’s usual Time Vampire self. Managed to get some new sculpting done in the moments in between other things. That’s always fun. September comes to a close as of tonight, and I’m nearly run off my feet busy. Busting my chops to get some larger items done prior to the weekend. But it is starting to look more like a Monday at 9:00am delivery. No matter. Push on, stiff upper lip and all.

Added an older Human Warrior into the mix.
Ferris wheel.
Midway.
Uncle going for a spin.
Posing for a pretty picture.

I could have sworn I took more pictures once the lights all came on, but apparently not. Damn it. Three more days of sunshine fair time fun ahead of us. Catch you around town. Ciao Bella!

A hot bed of activity today.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on A hot bed of activity today.

Lots of balls in the air today. Started a major project, and had some emergency calls for rush work today. Running the gamut of packaging, textiles, POS, and various other things. Brain is fried a wee bit. Going to eat, rest my wrist and then go back for another hour before I gotta pick up my kids. Not much of a story to tell today. Fixes, edits, changes and priority projects abound! Ciao Bella!

Busy, busy little bee.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Busy, busy little bee.

When it rains it pours as of late. Which is fine by me. When you can go nine, ten or eleven weeks in between paid projects during the lull period from December through February, you learn to appreciate busy weeks, because that means invoices are going out, and payments are coming in. Wee!

As a side note, I just saw the other day, a distillery that I did work for designing a brand new proprietary glass bottle for their whole range, has finally gone to market, and the glass bottle look amazing. They went another way with the label designs, but the glass bottle with the waterfall element on the shoulders looks phenomenal. We tried versions with ripples on the neck, bubbles on the thick base, and all sorts of neat things. Embossed text along the bottom thick base, and more things than I can remember now that we’re about 2 years out from the thick of it. I know we had many conversations about the limitations of the moulds, and how you can & can not get hot glass out of them with specific items we’d hoped to achieve, but I am super impressed with the final product.

NFCD proprietary bottle early designs.

Now they ended up going a little more square across the top of the shoulders, but I think the gist of the design still rings true. I had been really excited to see this come to market under my watch, but sometimes you’ve got to let things go after setting the course early on. I’m still proud.

Stomach Bug Round Douce.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Stomach Bug Round Douce.

Literally & figuratively. The stomach bug strikes again in our household. This time in a pincer maneuver from “both ends”, as it were. But not on the same person at once. It has gotten into the youngest’s intestine, and the oldest’s tummy. For a perfect storm of foul particles in the air. I fully suspect that the wife and I shall succumb during the fair, because of course we will get sick during the one big event we work towards all year long. Oh well. It happens to the best of us. Washing & disinfecting as many surfaces as we can, windows open, air circulating, and lots of hand washing. We can only do so much, so fingers crossed it comes and goes quickly.

Yeah – so that has been my day so far. I’m due to go deliver the fair entries to their respective departments this morning. So that will be a massive hassle & a giant pain in my ass. Still working on finishing up items, plating them, and tagging all of the entries for display. It has been a steady stream of this for the last week solid. Technically some items were started in August. So, we’re fully invested in actually getting stuff to the fair this year. There is no turning back now!

In other news today is the last Tuesday in September. My how this month flew by. It went in an absolute flash, a blur. Didn’t really get a whole lot done around the house, as I was working a fair bit more this September, compared to years previous. Plus I did so much last year when I had my very first taste of childless freedom, that I only needed to do minor touch ups, and cleaning versus the total tear down and rebuild from last year. I should totally trim out the basement bathroom, as that’s one of the last few DIY jobs I can tackle. I can’t or won’t do much with the water softener or the water heater (a pressurized vessel, a.k.a a bomb) I’ll have to leave those, and the fridge to people that know what they’re doing. No point making the issues worse. So this is how my Tuesday has started. Let’s see how this day plays out shall we? Ciao Bella.

Was’sup Monday? It’s ya Boi Marko here with another installment of : Domestic Duties Monday, Ba-Ba-BAAA!

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Was’sup Monday? It’s ya Boi Marko here with another installment of : Domestic Duties Monday, Ba-Ba-BAAA!

Here we are just past 9:00am and we’ve got the kids dropped off, clothed, fed, watered & teeth brushed with lunches packed. The first load of laundry in the wash, the dishwasher emptied, and the main floor vacuumed. Followed by a general light tidy up, as fair entries dominate the space, and nothing can get thrown away yet until all tags, and art works are present & accounted for. I think our vacuum now has craft herpes with the amount of glitter I got off the floors near work surfaces. That shits going to be with us through Christmas, if every other previous year is any indication. Ha!

Even managed to get some banking done too, so we’re off on a roll this morning. If it stays dry long enough I think I’ll mow the lawn today too. Expecting a week of rain. Naturally, it being fair time, I should not be surprised by frosts, flurries, or the heavens opening up and dumping buckets of icy rain on us for the four days of the fair. Then afterwards we’ll have a heat wave or two, and I’ll attack the fallen leaves with gusto. Speaking of which, I did two full mulched bags already, so I’m only about ten more from finishing for the season. Just need all of those leaves to come down first. Then it’ll be a matter of tearing down the patio furniture & outdoor kids toys, and making sure the pressure washer hose is disconnected and emptied so it won’t burst, or rupture the gun/nozzles. Same goes for the front garden hose, trigger needs to come off, and the hose dried before storage. And the valve inside the house shut off, and the spigot emptied. All the solar lights can get packed away aswell.

Maybe this year I can get some of the bikes in the shed too, now that we’ve gotten the gazebo out of storage and shipped off to the cottage. A man can dream can’t he? Well the work emails have begun, so I best get going. Ciao Bella!