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Monday, August 31, 2026

Let's Chat:Play Along Toys Sauron Before the Black Gate

Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy has been playing a lot lately and I started watching it again yesterday. I couldn't last through all three movies though before falling asleep LOL. Oh well. Here's a nice chat of Play Along Toys Soldiers and Scenes series, Fires of Mount Doom selection.

Ed




The prompt was simply to place Sauron in front of the black gate of Mordor.

Space Art: Rocky Jones XV-2 Orbit Jet - Pt 1

This photo was among the first batch of pictures I took after finishing the Moonscape diorama board. The XV-2 Orbit Jet has been posted here on the blog before but the rocket ship was easy to access out in The Cave and I thought this diorama base would do it justice, as nearly every episode of the TV show took place right here in our solar system. I have the set of DVD's and watched every episode and, quite frankly, the settings almost all looked like the moon. I'll post this photo today and a few more over the next days because, ummm, I have almost nothing else to post - no new series and certainly no big series.

Ed

I really like how this photo turned out but the odd thing is, although the photo clearly shows a light from the right, all the lights in the room were turned off!
Unlike some of my other Orbit Jet photos, this one was not a collage built up in Photoshop, but rather a 3D model on a 3D diorama base with only shadows, contrast, and other small adjustments made.

Sunday, August 30, 2026

Let's Chat: Play Along Toys Gothmog on Warg

To the best of my knowledge, the free version of Chat GPT doesn't allow you use and edit multiple images in a single chat. so if I want to portray a bunch of my figures in one image (like the multiple Dark Riders on horseback that I have), I'm gonna have to take them out of the tote bins, set them up and photograph them as a group shot, then load that one photo into Chat GPT and generate the image I want. At the moment I'm not prepared to go through all of that sooo, I'll be content to take whatever I already have and work with that.

This Gothmog on Warg figure is from Play Along Toys AOME Warriors and Battle Beasts series. Play Along did such an awesome job on these and their line of LOTR figures and scenes really was impressive but it was finite and left us collector's wanting for more. Now, I'm just anxious and curious to see what my 20+ year old photos look like with a bit of rendering using the latest in photo editing software.

Ed




Space Art: Moon Recon

It didn't take me long to start generating cool photos using my newly finished Moonscape diorama base. Using the Day-Fran 'SPACE GLIDER' as the focal point, this image was assembled in Photoshop and the words 'SPACE GLIDER' were dithered out from the toy because it's not actually gliding here is it? Compositions using more than one image aren't possible in the free version of Chat GPT - that I'm aware of - so I'll still be doing a bit of Photoshopping.

Ed



 

Forces of Valor (FOV) / Unimax Deep Dive: Pt 107 (FINAL) Set (2008) #93305 German 716th Infantry Division - Carded Pt 6 Pose 5

Okay, I believe I'm gonna call this series finished. I may still pick up a set or two here and there, but it won't be urgent - probably just a spur of the moment kind of thing. Hope you've enjoyed the past several months worth of Forces of Valor / Unimax figure sets. I did say in one of my posts that I would be covering FOV vehicles next. As it turns out, I only have one vehicle set of photos ready to post! I need to get out in The Cave and take more pics, but it's still uncomfortable out in there as the #@$%&$ friggin' heat won't let up!

Ed

FOV German Infantry - Pose 5