Ahhhh, March in New England...the weather is truly inspirational...inspires you to throw your back out shoveling! But, we still showed up to talk about our latest projects and upcoming IPMS shows. Robert Butler recently discovered a brand new IPMS club in Peabody, and hopefully we can hook up with them and terrify them! Sorry, I still get a kick out of the expression on military and car modeler's faces when they see our stuff!

On the subject of IPMS...March 25 is the Wings and Wheel's show in Chicopee, MA, and then in April the ECFA has a display and demo tables at the South Shore IPMS show. Neal DeConte, Robert Butler and Ol' Uncle Bob headed to Braintree a few weeks back to do a demo for the guys at the South Shore club, and what a great group of guys. They really seemed to get into the whole process of figure painting, trying out some of the techniques we use and applying them to some of the Military figures they have. I think we'll have a few more get-togethers with this club and have a good time doing it. Now, the Meeting's model highlight's...

Traci Briery finished the Vlad Tepes bust, a historical piece based on the paintings and wood carvings of the "Impaler." The piece looked great and then Traci showed us the finished Mike Hill Spiderman, with ol' Spidey smashing into a brick wall, the base made up of Balsa Foam and other materials to give the piece a grungy, back alley look.

Ovi Raffa painted the Cellar Cast "Leather Jacket" kit. This is a Boris Vallejo-inspired piece sculpted by Steve West, and Ovi did a killer job on both the Female and her "pet."

Robert Butler brought in a sculpt of "Challenger" or the Panther Man, sculpted by Jun Huang of Canada. Robert has plans of making some serious changes for the piece; keep us posted, Rob.

John Dagdidgian had his prototype of a Fantastic Voyage scene, made of insulating foam and other bits to portray the ship crashing into someone's innards! John also had the Nautilus from Sassy's Satellite, saying it needs some serious work, but, John will get to it. Rounding out John's display was The Outer Limit's Nightmare, The Zanti Misfit, also known as the Big Eyed Ant. The kit comes from Dimensional Design.

Jay and Keith stopped by to say hello. I think the next time we see these two, they'll have kits to show off.  Keith said all is well with Devin, after heart surgery; he is right on schedule. Great to hear and Keith has taught Devin to paint his crib in Faux Marble, and last we heard, all Devin's toys had a noticeable "rock" look to them...

John Delamere's done did it agin' ( grammatical gem, huh?). Fewture has released two pre-paint figures of Dawn, and John, being John, wasn't satisfied with the look of these figures in their pre-paint state,so.... Taking them apart and stripping them (John said this took the better part of a day because of the many layers of paint), John put the paint to them himself and the result was two beautiful pieces worth 10 times the pre-paint statues. The Battle Goddess Dawn and the Anniversary edition Dawn are definitely worth having just for the sculpting alone. John also had a Ghost In The Shell model kit, the "Fuchi Koma," which I think is Japanese for Artificial Heart.  You explain it, John...

One of our mainstays, Neal DeConte was unable to attend; he got an offer to do some film work, and the next time we see him he'll give us the low down on what he did and what his Oscar Winning speech will be.

Uncle Bob had two of Gothic Haus Design's kits:  The Exorcist and the Plague of the Zombies, sculpted by William Paquet. The Zombie piece is going to be modified a bit, and I'll have it at the next meeting. We hope to see you next time at Harrison's Comics in Salem on April 1st (no foolin')!