#projectlog

[thespacebastards]

The story so far...

The Space Bastards is my 18mm scale Chaos Space Marine Chapter. This webpage is a log where I will share photographs and thoughts about the project.

A friend and I entered into the whole ‘weird scale 40k’ thing to ease us back into wargaming after both taking a long time out due to ill health and real life. It’s a game that we both know like the back of our hands, and we’d do it in 18mm scale for ease of modelling, transport and storage. The idea was that it’d be an ‘casual, casual easy thing’—with my force literally being ‘Billy Bob and the Space Bastards’ and theirs the ‘Poncy Space Elfs’—where we wouldn’t get all perfectionist and could just model and paint for the fun of it again, like back in the good old days.

I started posting about it on the Lead Adventure forum in 2024, although I honestly did not have much to show for my efforts posted there. When Imgur had it’s spat with the British government and nuked all of my image links, I looked for an alternative place to share my images and whatnot. I tried to start a blog via Google’s blogger, but something about what I was doing (I’ve no idea what!) was causing Google’s algorithm to repeatedly misidentify my blog as a bot account, and disable and delete it – so I’ve given up on that. Someone far more hip and happening than me suggested that I give Tumblr a try. It does seem that Tumblr has all the features I need – really just text and stable, free image hosting. Honestly, before this-morning I’d never been on Tumblr, initially tried to spell it with an ‘e’ (like a glass tumbler), and it was just a place where people ran fan clubs for dirty stories about Harry Potter.

Anyway, Space Bastards—My enthusiasm for the project picked up again in late 2025; or rather, my health got back to the point where I could actually start sitting down and modelling and painting again around then.

I’d actually been twiddling away with the project the whole time, just without much to physically show for it. What I had done is daydreamed about The Space Bastards an awful lot, and chatted on a weekly basis to my pal about them. I’d come up with a whole background story for them, and I’d spent more hours than I care to admit looking for just the right models to play them on the battlefield. Although I was not able to sit down and paint at all, I did learn enough about 3D modelling to be able to twiddle with some models. It has been quite the godsend to have something to idly fiddle about with in the back of my mind through what proved to be some pretty rocky months and years. I’m—'touch-wood’, and all that—at a point now where I’m hoping be able to do some actual modelling again. I’m still getting tired pretty easily, and having to take a lot of ‘rest days’, but even on those I’ve got the acuity to something, so I thought I’d try to write down some of my daydream background fluff on the very off chance anyone should care to read it, and I suppose, more than that, to have something concrete to show for this whole business.

So, that's where we're at.

[mono-idea]

Printable Project Plan Task List Project Strategy Project - Etsy

This Calendars & Planners item is sold by MONOidea. Ships from United States. Listed on Jul 8, 2022

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existential vine thoughts

In honor of the last full day of Vine, I want to talk more about what Vine has meant to me for the last four years, and further explain my fascination with this medium of creative expression. I have several friends with whom I would regularly create Vines when the application first emerged. On one level, making Vine videos was a hobby. It changed my perspective on things when I used it as a tool for documentation; I began to see humor and wonder in moments in terms of the potential that they might have to come to life with the ability to record. I often secretly grappled with the idea that creating a Vine perhaps could "pull me out of the moment," and sometimes felt self-conscious filming small vignettes at concerts or while hanging out with my friends. It has been interesting for me in recent weeks and months to look back at my old Vines, because the reality is that 6 seconds is plenty of time to transport someone's memory to a time and place. I realized looking back that most of the moments I have captured on Vine come from days and moments that I would never think about anymore if I didn't have the ability to see it replayed. I'm thinking about what Vine means then, in terms of memory. When I recorded Vines in the past, they were moments that I wanted to capture. Does that make these memories more important than all of my other ones because of the decision that I made to capture them, or are only they important to me now because I recorded them? Where is the value; in the creation of a video, or in its replay? Does the value of a Vine increase with the more effort that was put into its creation, or does it increase the more often it is replayed and repurposed? I have no idea how it feels to create Vines in order to cultivate a following; there are obviously many different ways to use Vine, and people have different desires when it comes to content curation. In recent years, I have used my Vine account to curate the works of others with the revine function. I now primarily use Vine more for comedic relief than a creative outlet or as a way to curate memories, as Snapchat and Instagram have evolved to fulfill creative and curatorial desires. I am fascinated with Vine as a comedic platform for many reasons, one being the vastly wide range of content available. There is so much content on Vine it's kind of overwhelming; one of the reasons why I can't use Vine too often is because it has a "black-hole" effect, as does much of the media that we use today that involves scrolling down a feed. Vine's black-hole-like tendencies to suck my attention in for long periods of time also stem from the unseen potential that every post has. Although I don't find every single post that I scroll past funny or stimulating, the possibility that the next one might have me in stitches keeps me attentive for hour-long periods of time where I am fully immersed in Vine's strange, virtual world full of tiny little realities and unrealities.

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a few who were made famous by Vine

The creator of a Vine serves as both the director and producer so to speak of this extremely short-form movie, and in some cases, he or she serves as the star as well. For example, here we have Zachary Piona. I've been following him on Vine since 2014, when he first went viral.

Piona's Vine technique is relatively simple in theory; he has a conversation with himself, shooting and cutting the shots in such a way that indicates that he is playing two different characters. To add to the absurd hilarity of a single man pretending to be two different people talking to each other, many of his most popular videos were shot while he is in the driver's seat of a moving car.

The notion of talking to one's self and playing two different characters at once as a comedic act certainly didn't originate on Vine, but this type of comedy has certainly been brought to new levels by the ability to record. These people are coming at us live from their bedrooms, living rooms, and cars, delivering delightfully weird dialogue with surprisingly spot on characters. Plus, each bit is six seconds long at most, so the audience can interpret each Vine free of any specific context other than their own familiarity with the user. Other Vine stars that have had success using this technique regularly are Jay Versace and Evan Breen (LA Turtle).

However, some of my favorite Vine stars are the ones who didn't ask for the fame that they have attained. Nick Mastodon is a Viner who mainly posts videos of his nephew Gavin, whose image and demeanor has become so well-known on social media that he has become a meme. These are some of Gavin's shining moments that were captured and posted by his uncle on Vine: Gavin first stole hearts when he lied to protect a lizard.

Obviously, he's a pretty cute kid, and seems like an above-averagely sweet child. So where does Gavin differ from cute, sweet kids all over the country whose parents film them and post it on the YouTube? The truth is, he isn't any different. However, his exposure is. Vine has given rise to many unintentional child comedians whose images are preserved as memes. Children as subjects of Vines is a particularly foolproof way to make shortform comedy, perhaps because a) kids say hilarious, weird things and b) kids are cute in doses, right? You don't want to watch an entire 1 minute video of a kid; you wanna see the only cute thing that they did in that entire minute for 5 seconds on repeat. There is also an inherent spontaneity and carefreeness to the videos that Gavin's uncle films that really have the power to transport the viewer into a child's mindset. I think it's really interesting to compare the self-induced exposure that the likes of Zachary Piona, Jay Versace, and Evan Breen have cultivated with their scripted acts, and the even more powerful following that Gavin's uncle has garnered by filming the unscripted, uninhibited actions of a child. My other favorite little kid Vine:

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Elsaesser, Thomas, and Adam Barker. "Cinema as Window and Frame." Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative. London: BFI Pub., 1990. 15-35. Print.

How does film as “frame” relate to formalist and constructivist film theory? For many years, there was a fundamental distinction within film theory between formalism and constructivism, and realism and mimeticism. Formalism and constructivism refers to film-making that relies on the “alteration and manipulation of filmic perception, distinct from everyday perception by means such as montage, framing, or the absence of color and language” (16). In other words, filmmakers who engage with cinema as frame tend to distort reality for artistic purposes rather than creating a piece of work that functions as a “window” into reality. How does film as “window” relate to realist and phenomenological theory? On the other hand, film as “window” theories prevail among those who believe that the essence of filmmaking lies in “its ability to record and reproduce reality and its phenomena, including aspects which are invisible to the naked human eye” (16). In films that emphasize realism and mimeticism, the medium (filmmaking) is hidden, as opposed to the frame which “exhibits the medium in material specificity” (16). What is the distinction between “open” and “closed” forms of cinema? The term ‘closed’ in terms of cinema refers to films “in which the universe depicted in the film (its diegesis) closes in on itself, in the sense that it contains only elements which are necessary because internally motivated” (17). These films are set in a world that has been “carefully constructed...in which everything seems to have its predetermined place following the dictates of some invisible but omnipresent hand or elaborate master plan” (17-18). While watching these films, the viewer must suspend their own perception of reality in order to understand what is going on. By contrast, ‘open’ films “offer a segment, a snapshot, or a fragment from a constantly flowing and evolving reality” (18). The closed form is oriented inwardly, whereas the open form turns outward. “The difference may be the difference between finding a world and creating one” (18). What is the value of montage in film-making? Sergei Eisenstein was a director and film theorist who is mainly associated with the development of the concept of montage. He projected the theory that “[w]hat the camera lens must capture is the complex totality of the world, which cannot be caught in the long takes of, say, the Lumiere films, but only as a collision of shots extrapolated from this totality” (26). The role of the director lies in the task of selecting shots that they wish to include, and sequencing them. Eisenstein’s montage theory also includes the idea that a change in the shots’ sequence also changes the meaning within the individual shots.

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So.

This is my first post on my senior thesis Tumblr page. Here, I'll be compiling observations, external research, and case studies all in one location so that I can keep track of the work I'm doing, and so that my fellow classmates can follow along with my thought process as I work on my creative production. Not going to lie--I'm pretty nervous. I've spent a great deal of time thinking about this project, and now it is finally time to execute, which has never been my strongest suit. Hopefully, by creating this project log, I will be able to hold myself accountable for keeping up with my work. I have been creating Tumblr pages since I was in high school, which I think speaks to a lot of elements to my work ethic and the way that I process information. Even pre-dating my Tumblr days, I was always obsessed with the idea of compilation. When I was a child, I used to make scrapbooks and photo albums to preserve things that I thought were important, such as photos, drawings, and even small objects that I still have to this day. I have kept every single letter, birthday card, holiday greeting, little kid drawing, prize ribbon, that I have ever acquired since I was a baby (there are several shoeboxes full of these paper relics in my closet at my parents' house). As a teenager, I began using tumblr which satisfied the curatorial desires that have defined my sense of self-expression since I was a kid. I compiled images, audio files, gifs, videos, and text posts onto Tumblr pages, endlessly inspired by the diverse and seemingly infinite content that I had to peruse, and by my own ability to curate content to my taste to create online collections that I was proud of, simply by pressing 'reblog.' Another thing that fascinated me about Tumblr was the strange sense of community that I always felt while I was using this site. Similar to Twitter and Instagram, Tumblr is organized around a constantly updating follower-based feed. The inherent parasocial aspects of tumblr contributed heavily to specific social codes that tumblr users tended to follow, and many joke formats (many of which rely on self-deprecation and personal over-sharing) that are now widespread across the Internet orignated from Tumblr culture. I have also been a user of Vine since it was launched by Twitter in 2013. In its early days, before Vine had acquired the cultural image that it holds today, the application was seen as a strange medium that no one really knew what to do with; six second looping videos seemed like a redundant medium of expression that would never transition into a mainstream platform. In the videos that I myself made, the confusion is clear. I didn't really know what I was doing! Sometimes, I created videos using quick cuts of sound and imagery that somewhat distort reality. Other videos that I recorded on the app captured comical or memorable moments that appear in the video exactly as they had in real life; 6 seconds of reality, frozen in time, then looped on repeat. Just for kicks, I wanted to post some of my own Vines that I made in the app's weird, early days. I just downloaded my Vine archive from vine.co, and I've been reminiscing a ton. They're killing the app on the 17th. Two more days.

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