Introducing Vestigial Twin: The Modern Synthesist Podcast

Hi Everybody!

It's Brother Pink here, and I'm certain that everyone was as thrilled as I was when Mr. Pink started kicking his flesh-crafting into high gear!

I was so thrilled that I started to hound Mr. Pink about recording a podcast with me. By hounding, it was more like this:

Brother Pink: Let's do a podcast!
Mr. Pink: Do I have to do anything?
Brother Pink: No, I'll do everything.
Mr. Pink: SURE!

I decided to call it 'The Vestigial Twin' as it suits the twisted nature of flesh crafting as well as our relationship. If you're wondering what a vestigial twin is, all is explained in the podcast.

Mr. Pink and I are brothers and one of the things that is most similar is our voices. Listening to a podcast with two guys with the exact same voice wouldn't work. I got really pumped about doing some voice acting, so the host of the first episode is Kraekorr, the haemonculus. I really tried to rein-in the theatrics. Also, Mr. Pink addresses this character exactly as if it were his brother.

If you really enjoy this character, I left a couple of extra bits with Kraekorr at the very end, which you are in no way encouraged to listen to.

This first episode we just talk about Sculpting; the action figures that first inspired us, how we first started sculpting, various materials we have attempted to sculpt with, and projects and people that really inspired us.

There were a few hiccups: Mr. Pink is a tad too quiet (he now has the 2nd best mic on wirecutter.com), and I have a slight case of the sniffles. The call drops soon after I talk about helium filled terrain ideas and Mr. Pink may or may not encourage listeners to plunge their hands into buckets of plaster (which will cause serious harm).

The Opening song is 'Drop' by a Japanese band called Thee Machine Gun Elephant, and I have absolutely no permission to use it. The song at the end is 'Parasite' by a great band called Gammage. They are such a great band, they actually gave me permission to use their song!

We really hope you enjoy our podcast. Bare with us, it is the first episode. There will be immeasurable improvements for the next one.

Here it is, The Vestigial Twin:
The Vestigial Twin, Episode 1, Sculpting

Deepthought: Accommodator (or, On the Life of a Friend)

This is a hobby editorial. I went to school to become and try to make my living as a writer. Though I love the hobby, and I'd like nothing better than to sculpt all day, posting amazing things on here for all to ogle, there are times when the urge to write strikes, and I try to use these interludes to delve deeper into important parts of the hobby. I hope you find the following article interesting, and I promise to get back to posting cool models soon!

When I started writing this, it was titled "On the Death of a Friend," but then I realized that, were I in your shoes, that is not the type of title that would inspire me to read an article. Thus, I changed it, and I like it better already.

This is an anniversary of sorts, i guess, though it's hardly a thing to memorialize. This is the 3-year anniversary of the death of a good friend of mine, who went by the name Ross Nickle under the sun and the stars, but who was known as Accommodator in the digital world of posts and threads. Ross was most active on the Tyranid forum Warpshadow, and for the years when he was as our administrator, that board ran like a well-oiled machine. You may have run into him on other boards as well: particularly those that had anything to do with Titans and Titan Legions.

Like the passing of Brimstone (for those of you who can still remember Brimstone), Ross' death was an odd thing. It happened once in Real Life, happening to families and friends and co-workers. But then it happened again Online, weeks later, when the news was released to the communities. And in those communities, that news spread further than it ever could in Real Life, for over these information superhighways we touch more lives than we know.

If you knew Ross online (as Accommodator), you may not have known him as well as I had the fortune to in Life. As an attempt at remedying any disparity, I am finally getting around to this: something I've been meaning to write for some time. In it I hope to capture the Ross that I knew, and I hope to further fill out the Ross that you might have known. I'm not sure why it came to me now, but here it is.

The Infestation of Casavant Prime

To build up some content on the site, I'm going to be posting a few of my past projects that were kind of like milestones in my development as a sculptor. I'll call them "Old Strains," and you can feel free to check them out if you're curious.



With my budding work on Tyranid Scenery from scratch coming along, I was asked by some friends in Toronto to breathe some Tyranid life into their table build for Games Day Toronto 2008. These guys had been bringing original tables to Games Day for a couple of years, and the previous year their extensive trenchwork table had been beaten out by a PC speaker and a smoke machine. This year they were determined to bring the pain to their long-time table nemeses.

The meat and bones of the table were actually constructed by the original build team and took the form of a cityscape with a canal running down the center, and me, Accommodator, and our creative ilk were given free reign to add some flare to the cityscape by transforming it into one that was in the beginning stages of a full-blown Tyranid infestation. I jumped at the opportunity to have a focus for my until-now-largely-aimless Tyranid scenery building.

Dominatrix from a Hierodule

To build up some content on the site, I'm going to be posting a few of my past projects that were kind of like milestones in my development as a sculptor. I'll call them "Old Strains," and you can feel free to check them out if you're curious.

Though I created this beast, a large portion of the credit for it goes to two other folks. First, Hydra, for if he hadn't had the spore sacs initially to take a saw to an already-beautiful Forgeworld model, there never would have been the idea to create a Dominatrix from a Hierodule. I'm glad he was rewarded for his inspiration at the Canadian Golden Demons back in 2007. Next, credit needs to be paid to Ross Nickle, a dear friend of mine and paragon of moderating might over on Warpshadow under his handle Accommodator.

When I expressed my interest in taking my own stab at a Dominatrix from a Forge World Heirodule back in 2006, Ross told me to do it. When I told him I hadn't the stones to pay $200+ CDN for a pretty model like that if I was only going to tear it appart, he bought me the model and said I could build it for him on commission.