Ork Boyz

To those of you who are not familiar with Warhammer or Warhammer 40k, they are a series of tabletop strategy games where participants collect, assemble, and paint massive amounts of figurines which they then pit against each other at the whim of fist-fulls of six-sided dice. I got into it in high school, but it can be a severely expensive hobby and finding the right people to play with can sometimes be a challenge. One of my favorite aspects was that even though any model you put on the table had distinct rules for the unit it represented, you could have the model look like anything you wanted by putting together stock pieces in creative ways and adding bits of card, metal and clay. The process of deviating from what the standard packaged model is supposed to look like is called conversion, and some people take it to an extreme.

All that being said, I took some extra space-orks that I had and made this display of an ork metal band. "Waaaaagh" is what orks say. . . always. . . and constantly. Senior year of high-school I brought it to my local gaming store where it still resides in a glass case alongside some far worthier local artist conversions.

Their music probably sounds like this:

Each ork is about an inch tall. All of their equipment is made of bits of weapons and tank pieces, and the drummer has a line of enemy helmets like that ewok in ROTJ.

Micro-Pomp and Circumstance

Today's piece was inspired by Lisa Woods' "Insects at Home" diorama series, and commissioned by my UALR labmate Dr. Robin Verble as a gift for our advisor. Each ant represents a member of the Yanoviak insect ecology lab as we received our respective degrees from the University of Arkansas just over two months ago.

Ants were pinned straight out of ethanol to dry in their poses, though some legs had to be removed and reattached to achieve just the right stance. Mortarboards and diplomas are simply paper with embroidery thread. I actually wrote a short message on each diploma, but the whole thing's been sealed in a bell jar now. Species were chosen with regards to research focus or physical similarity.

The players (left to right) are as follows:
Petrus Moriera (MS) and Dr. Stephen Yanoviak (advisor) - Cephalotes atratus
Theodore Sumnicht (MS) - Eciton hamatum
Robin Verble (PhD) - Camponotus pennsylvanicus

The names link to auto-montage images of other specimens of each species from AntWeb so that you can better see the details of each one. As you may have realized, though I do pursue many artistic mediums, I am not much of a photographer. Luckily most 2D material is scanned, but pretty much everything else is taken with a phone-camera. I may remedy this someday, but for now the blurry basics will have to suffice.