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Tuesday, December 18, 2018

CUSTOM GIN GARAMADU TOY BY DSNG! MARVEL LEGENDS SCALE!

This custom is tied to one of the Original Characters from the dynamic mature ebooks of the DSNG Sci Fi Series, available on Amazon. Gin Gamaradu is a Paragon being [a retired God of War], and he has diverse abilities that are tied to his ancient race.

The base toy was Marvel Legends Bishop and the lower legs came from Thor [and they were heavily sculpted and enhanced]. I sculpted his boots, body armor and gauntlets and shoulder pads. Plus his laser cannon came from a Gundam model kit, while his cape came from Thor and his sword came from Ares [and it was enhanced and sculpted]. His two handguns were custom made, and one is held, while the other is holstered. his shield came from Captain America and it was heavily resculpted as well, while a magnet is used to hold it in place on his left arm. The pteruge [battle-skirt] in the front came from a white cloth. it was painted and sculpt was added. His hair was sculpted as well, super-saiyan style.
In the DSNG lore, Gin's sword can transform into a golden gauntlet, but I just had to leave out that feature for the toy ;) As a Paragon, Gin is an ancient being, and his eyes can glow bright white; so they were painted that way.

He was hand-painted with Tamiya paints. Enjoy and share!

   

   
  
   
  
   

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

APPARENTLY NO EXECUTIVE AT YAHOO UNDERSTOOD / RESEARCHED THE PURPOSE & USE OF TUMBLR, BEFORE SPENDING 1 BILLION DOLLARS ON IT!

So I've closed down my Tumblr art account.... and life goes on pleasantly. Plus I've got a ton of other stuff posted in this blog and on other accounts, and a lot of work to do for my next DSNG Chronicles ebook....

Yesterday I found an article from 2017, which talked about the Absolute Clusterfuck that took place at Yahoo, when their female CEO boldly bought Tumblr in 2013 for roughly 1.1 Billion dollars...
She even playfully said something in the press conference like: "Don't worry, we won't screw this up..."

BTW: I'm not going to mention her name, you can find out that stuff for yourself later. I'm using this blog to make an analytical point, and not to toss rocks at someone who may have actually done her best, in a position of authority...

Anyway, less than 2 years after the billion-dollar purchase, the Tumblr purchase was being considered as a complete tax write-off  & a failed investment.

The article that I read by Yuyu Chen shows a corporate perspective of what happened with the big purchase, while showing the thoughts of those top executives in Yahoo, versus the thoughts of those that worked in Tumblr.
Basically, none of the executives in Yahoo [in their late-40s and 50s] knew what the Tumblr users [from ages 15 to 35] were really all about.

In retrospect, the CEO of Yahoo really should have had a lengthy discussion with the founders of Tumblr, to see if they could generate a fully detailed year-long plan that showcased how they could monetize and generate Ad-revenue from their Website, after it was bought over.
Plus the Yahoo execs should have had their own corporately created detailed year-long plan about how Tumblr could be monetized, while showing that plan to the Tumblr folks, and getting feedback on the possible implementation strategy and the limitations in advance, before the buyout was done. Such plans should have been presented as guidelines of progress, which would be checked every 2 months, for the entire first year.

Instead, shortly after the big purchase was made [and there was little or no research by Yahoo on how to actually generate money from over 350 million young Tumblr users, mostly the millennials], then the lady CEO of Yahoo merely made a decree that she wanted to see at least 100 million dollars in Ad revenue sales-per-year coming from Tumblr, after a starting window of 2 years.

.....Holy Bogus Bullshit Batman.....

No one knew how the hell she came up with that huge projected profit figure... not even her. She had no plan for it, no strategy, and no advise for how the Tumblr site owners should do it. And neither did the Tumblr site admins have any idea of how to do it... after all, Tumblr had been around for roughly 9 years previously [it was founded in 2007], and it wasn't generating money. I believe a marketing firm was brought in to assist the Tumblr admins, and that didn't help at all.

Basically, she wanted to pull a big fat rabbit out of a big hat... but the hat didn't even exist. She would have known that, if the extensive research & investigations had been humbly done, perhaps for 4 to 6 months in advance of the purchase.

Eventually, the teenagers on Tumblr started seeing weird out-of-place Ads for "Retirement Benefits" in their user feeds.... and such Ads were promptly ignored.

The insightful article with more details by journalist Yuyu Chen is over here: https://digiday.com/marketing/tumblr-is-neglected-by-marketers/
Check it out when you've got like 3 minutes to spare....
Anyway, I'll keep you posted on the aftermath at Tumblr.




CUSTOM STAR WARS BLACK SERIES SNOWTROOPER BY DSNG [MARVEL LEGENDS SCALE]

A commission for someone cool.
This custom toy was based on the plain 6-inch scale Star Wars Snowtrooper, shown in the second row below. The base toy was completely white, and I had to take away the head and replace it with an Ironman head, before I started sculpting and painting the various parts.
The customized arm cannon on the left gauntlet is held via a magnet, as is the sniper rifle on the central backpack [which came with the toy, plain white]. Plus I added two axes from Marvel Legends Angela, and created the holsters for them on the sides of the backpack.
The shin-guards and boots were fully sculpted, along with their rugged white soles, the knee-pads, the skirt details, the mask, the chest armor, the shoulder-pads and gauntlets. He was spray-painted silver, before I added the greens and whites. The last pic is a "Fortnite skanky leg" dance move, which I hope Epic Games doesn't steal... LOL! Enjoy and share!

     
   

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

FAREWELL TO MY TUMBLR ACCOUNT AND EXACTLY WHY....

This is a long rant, and I rarely do this. So just bare with me and hear what I've got to say. And if you want to comment at the end, do so on the DSNG Facebook Page, over HERE.

Guess I'll be leaving Tumblr today... it's been an extra art-dump site that I really don't use much. The "child porn controversy" a few months ago led to the Tumblr site owners and Yahoo management [who bought them out, back in 2013] to decide for a radical change: Remove all NSFW art / adult content / sexy furry art completely out of the site, via a Sweeper Bot Program that assess each piece of art on the site [more than 5 billion posts of art ] and randomly flags any pic as adult content [based on certain inaccurate code guidelines].

And once flagged, the pic will disappear from your feed, until you can successfully verify its clean nature. So random website visitors won't see that questionable art, since it will be censored, and maybe it will get deleted later by the site, I dunno...

But the Sweeper Bot / Computer Algorithm / System Sweeper program of Tumblr was never tested on a small scale to see and fix the bugs, before the site owners decided that they would roll it out, and fully implement it on the 17th of December 2018 [less than 3 weeks after the announcement]. The sweeper bot is already active and thousands of bloggers & fans have complained online. And amidst their site-wide outcry, a mass migration has started to occur, to other sites.


And I'm just not going to sit around and wait to see how this pans out. So I'll be deleted my tumblr... plus honestly, it's something that I considered doing earlier in the year, because despite the 529 posts that I've done and the fan base there of like 576 people, I rarely interact with most of them... But most fans there just look at my art, love it, download it as their new wallpaper on their phone / tablet, and then scroll on. That can't be helped, as people do whatever they want with the free art. And those fans who want paid art with specific designs are the ones that request the Commissions and they pay for it via Paypal.

Anyway, there's something else that I noticed. The lady CEO at the top of Yahoo, who gave the green-light for the purchase of Tumblr back in 2013, did so without fully knowing what the site was all about, or its true use & its delicate fan base.

Tumblr is a very "unique and delicate" site, like the Vines website was also very delicate, before it was shut down. And there are ways to make money from such sites, but only if you understand the mentalities of the main bloggers and their fans.
Because I've been one of them for a long time, I understand them.

[You may need to Click on the word link that says "Read More", below on the lower right, to see the rest of this article!]

Thursday, December 6, 2018

CUSTOM BOMBSTRIKE TOY FROM G.I.JOE [ MARVEL LEGENDS SCALE ] BY DSNG!

Here's another new custom G.I.Joe gal: Bombstrike! This blond bombshell was ready 2 weeks ago, but I was just too busy to take the pics.
The base body was Marvel Legends Scream, with a lot of sculpt to transform her upper and lower body. The arms and head came from Mocking bird, with a new hair sculpt.
Her guns came from ebay and were customized. Her boots, vest, straps and costume were sculpted. Belt came from Casting Cave webstore. The scarf around her neck was from a piece of cloth which was painted. She was hand painted with Tamiya paints, plus she has four guns, held with a few magnets. I also added my custom Lady Jaye in some pics [Jaye's full gallery is in this site]. Enjoy and Share!