Flaking Chrome

After cleaning my G44 airbrush using my ultrasonic cleaner, I noticed some of the chrome around the cup joint is flaking off. Searching about it on the web, it seems that the windex I'm using to break down the acrylic paint is also breaking down the chrome. I understand windex on automotive chrome if plated on acrylic, but plating on metal?


Luckily, this is just cosmetic as there's no chrome on the inside of the airbrush and it still functions perfectly. It's a cheap airbrush anyway and I'm not too concerned since I really do abuse it. However, I will try other cleaners when cleaning my Eclipse as a precaution. I'm not sure if there is a good solvent that can break down acrylic, that won't affect the chrome. The Medea airbrush cleaner that came with the Eclipse does nothing on dried acrylic, it's like expensive soapy water.

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Fear and Hope

Found this posted yesterday over at dailymotion. Looks like a new trailer of Soul Calibur IV with "Fear" and "Hope" gameplay footage at the end:

Soul Calibur IV - Avril trailer

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Tenori-On

Another hobby of mine is music and here's an interesting new product from Yamaha Japan that will be available soon in the US: Tenori-On.


Being billed as a composition and performance device, it is a 256 voice synthesizer with a 16x16 array of LED buttons used to compose and alter a live performance. A variety of layers and modes change the LED functions, from composing notes like a piano scroll to painting musical textures by sweeping a finger across the buttons. The inventor, Toshio Iwai, also developed the music game Electroplankton for the Nintendo DS.

US west coast debut event in San Francisco on the 18th of April. Want? I do!

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New Haruhi Photos

Since I had Haruhi out for the Yuki photos, I took the opportunity to reshoot the photo set for Haruhi to fix the lighting problem. The original set was shot with 2 different types of light (wreaks havoc with digital cameras) and caused a color gradient across every photo. The new set uses my current (fixed) lighting and has more pictures as well (18 in the set). Take a look in the Haruhi figure post for the full set.


I really like the "contact sheet" sample image I did with Yuki, so I'll be adding them to the other galleries over the next few days. The other galleries will be getting new photos as well, as I found the missing card I was shooting with while testing my lighting arrangement.

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The gallery refresh is complete. All of the gallery posts have been updated with samples, more album pictures and more closeups.

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[figure] Yuki Nagato

I finished building Yuki this weekend and finally took pictures tonight. This is the BUBBA sculpt of Yuki with guitar from Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, Live A Live episode. If you're interested in how to build this kit, you can follow my work in progress here.

I had to set up my light box again as I had stashed it away for company. I even managed to get a few shots of Haruhi and Yuki together. From those photos, I think there is definite improvement in my techniques and it went a lot faster too! And yes, Yuki is sitting on a CD!

Medium: airbrushed acrylics on resin. Scale: 1/7 @ 15.5cm. 17 photos in this set.

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