Big Bird

I mean, what else would you call a big yellow C-130 Hercules? This is one of my more unusual photo edits, in that there aren't any 1/6th items in it at all.

I started wondering, how does the Adventure Team deploy all those vehicles and fuzzy-headed guys all over the world? Obviously they'd have a transport aircraft of some sort, but what would it look like? This is my attempt to answer those quesitons.

No idea where I got the base shots. I'm not even sure if it's a real plane or a model. I was relatively new at doing sophisticated photo editing when I did this, and I could doubtless do better now. The green shadows and the too-dark tail don't look quite right. (Must be flying through the shadow of a cloud. Yeah, that's the ticket.) Still, fairly cool.

But then you start to wonder, what's in the plane? I had to look around quite a bit to find this base shot of vehicles being air-dropped, and then I used an existing shot of my custom MLV (Mobile Logistics Vehicle). I think it's a little undersized, but as I recall, I had to do it this way to make the perspective work.



Finally, my favorite of this bunch of photo edited shots. It really looks like I took my custom LMUTT mini-truck and plopped it down on the ground behind a Chinook helicopter. It's difficult to tell where the grass in the base shot stops, and the grass in my front yard starts. Stretched out, this makes a pretty cool desktop.

Hmm, I suppose I could have tried to make the Chinook yellow, but that's taking "flying banana" way too literally.

So, now you know more than you wanted to about AT air-deployment. "The Adventure Team is needed..."

...well, somewhere far away.

Hang in there

It's about midnight here, and time to post another picture. Here's one more from the archives, a favorite photo edit.

The figure in the foreground is an Adventure Team dinosaur hunter I kitbashed a while back named Scotty Travis.

The location here is actually a roadside along Highway 101 just north of Newport, Oregon. The "cliff" here actually isn't rock, it's just packed, sandy, soil, cut away by road workers. The distant cliff behind the helicopter is actually only a few feet from the figure, but it gives a pretty good illusion of distance. The 21st Century Toys rescue helicopter was actually shot in my office, and added to the scene later using Paint Shop Pro.

By the way, with any of the pictures here, the small shot in the message is only a thumbnail. Just click on the picture to see it full-sized.

Welcome to my angry One-Sixth world

Greetings and welcome. This blog is my response to the generally shoddy state of the one-sixth hobby. As I look around, 12" GI Joe is history except for the GI Joe Collector's Club, and even they are having a hard time selling the 40th Anniversary sets. Beyond that, there are a few 21st Century Toys vehicles with figures showing up here and there, some cool but sometimes hard-to-find offerings from M&C Power Team, some licensed figures from Sideshow and others, K-9 Corps (and some bottom-tier military stuff) from Lanard, and that's about it. It seems grim.

Yet what is especially disappointing is the poor morale among 1/6th collectors. Everywhere I look, I see people selling collections. Posts on the various forums and the Sandbox are down. People sit around and bash Hasbro (with and without reason) and generally act like it's the end of the world.

Well now, let's look at the up side of all this. I think in many ways, there's never been a better time to be in this hobby! There's a ton of 1/6th product out there, new and used, often at fire-sale prices! And now that we aren't all spending out time chasing the latest and greatest product, we actually have time to look at some of the stuff we've been buying for years. We have time to play with stuff, kitbash, and customize. And yeah, now you can put a lot of work into a custom without the fear that Hasbro or some other manufacturer is going to come along tomorrow and put your custom work to shame.

And what's really nice is, with the big-boys moving aside, we're starting to see customizing reappearing like in the old days. It's just great seeing things like hand-made vehicles, metal weapons, and detailed leather holsters, that these talented folks are putting out.

So what are we doing here? Well, I love photos. I love sharing photos of my stuff, and I love seeing photos of other people's collections. Unfortunately, the on-line Joe community, once focused on Usenet's "Sandbox" (alt.toys.gi-joe) is now scattered all over multiple forums, many of them on Yahoo. Yahoo no longer makes it easy to share photos in large quantities, and sharing photos over Usenet (only some servers allow posting and viewing of attachments on alt.toys.gi-joe, and alt.pictures.toys.gi-joe isn't carried on many servers, and has become clogged with porno- spam of late).

So, this is a place were I'm going to share my considerable archive of 1/6th photos taken over the last several years, and of course, any new stuff I have time take. My goal (and we'll see how it goes) is to post at least one new picture every day (unless I'm away from my office). My hope is that you'll be able to come back here an any given day with the assurance of seeing something new, and possibly interesting.

Are you a Sandboxer, and having trouble posting photos so people can see them? E-mail them to me at j-steven-york@sff.net, and (within bounds of taste, I'd like to keep things PG here) I'll be glad to post them here as well.

So what's with today's picture? Well, this is a graphic I created early this year in response to the cancellation of the 12" GI Joe line. I suggested we have an "Angry Joe Day" on Feb. 1 and post pictures showing how angry Joe was about being given the 12" boot. Well, I still think it's a good idea, so I'm hosting "Angry Joe Day 2006." Send me your best Angry Joe photos (or a link) and I'll post them here. I will pick my favorites (no voting, though you are welcome to argue for your favorites by posting favorable comments). There will be prizes, to be determined. There may be some more rules, when I think of them, but your photos should include at least one 12" GI Joe in some form.

Anyway, welcome to One-Sixth. Check back tomorrow for new photos!