The undefeated Space Comrades get some reinforcements in the form of the brave youths of the Space Komsomol! Yes, I started slaving through my Starship Troopers boxes. Apart from the fact that the figures were a royal pain to assemble, I'm pretty happy with the results. The unified color scheme ties the figures together pretty well.

And there are even some heavier reinforcements on the way. The remnants of Starship Troopers boxes can still be found on eBay and various online shops specializing in old stocks. Figuring in shipping, I can still get it for almost the price I would have paid if I'd bought it new...

You will notice that there is nothing about resolutions in the title. This is because the Komsomol were not a resolutions item. Resolutions February will something related, but different.

As I really have more of these troopers than I care to paint, I did a small experiment with some of them. Assembling them in a slightly different (and easier) way and varying the color scheme radically, I made a small group of unarmed flight crew. I think this experiment was a success, I will make more of these, next time experimenting with head swaps to create unhelmeted ones for indoor use.

And finally, thing you were really waiting for: Yes, there will be a new video for these guys. Even though I ran into some trouble with the previous one. Youtube's content ID system matched the soundtrack on my video to something else and issued me an automatic notice. The jury is still out on that, let's see what happens...

The thing is, when I started creating the video all I really knew was that I wanted some sort of military chorus/march music. I rifled through Kevin McCloud's stuff, which pretty much everybody seems to using these days, but couldn't find a suitable tune. Then I cast my net wide looking for other royalty-free music finally finding a collection of old Russian music. I researched Russian copyright law and carefully selected a track (from 1920!) I sincerely believed to be out of copyright by now.

Still I get slammed with a notice. Maybe the track I selected was mislabeled and from a recording still under copyright, maybe the content ID would have matched even if I had sung it myself. I honestly don't know.

I take copyrights more seriously than most people I know. I can honestly say I haven't knowingly made or purchased an illegal copy in the past 20 years. And it's not because I don't watch movies or listen to music -- I have hundreds of DVDs and CDs in my collection and I bought every single one of them instead of waring them off the net like many people would have done. I will lend any one of them to a friend but I won't make them a copy. My children genuinely can't understand my attitude.

And here I am, in the same penalty box with the people who just blatantly copy anything in their path.

Are we creating a world where everyone is a criminal?

maxxon