home for an island

Laura's birthday is today. We're going to see Quantum of Solace tonight and last night we went to Zon's for a delicious birthday dinner. Saturday is her party thing at the Pour House. Thus far she's enjoyed the dinner and the present I gave her and I anticipate her having a good weekend as well.

The weather has taken a rather intense drop in temperature. This morning I rode to work in 27 degree weather and had to spend time at work thawing out. My run yesterday wasn't as fast as I had hoped because my legs couldn't warm up. I know it was colder last year when Lisa and I would run in December and January but I'm just not used to it yet.

Last night I finished the Destroyer for my Khador army. I got some really good feedback on Librarium Online regarding battle damage, highlighting, and shading that I feel really helped me improve this model over the Juggernaut.

After some experiments with the blue to white gradient as a background I've decided to stop using it. It was creating a lot of glare on the models and washing out their colors to the point that they all looked like flat, neon messes. The pictures above were taken without and background at all and I think they really show what the model looks like so I may just stick with that.

For reference, this is what he looks like with the gradient.

This isn't a terrible picture but if you compare it to the ones above you can clearly see how washed out the model is; the highlights disappear and the colors are a lot brighter than they are in reality.

Oh, and if you haven't seen the puppies you need to take a look.