I designed them so that they have 45 degree angles at the ends to allow them to be place together in a variety of configurations (i.e. straight, 90 degree and 45 degree corners).  So far I've made 12 of these which, as you can see in the picture above, are currently in the process of being glued together.  These will then be painted up to look more like concrete when I'm finished.

I plan on making a lot more varients of these, lower walls, gates, etc... along with buildings made in the same way and the designs will be posted for free download once I'm done :)

I really like the style of urban themed bases that Micro Art Studio produce so influenced by theirs I've had a go at creating my own.  The picture below is the current work in progress shot of the bases I'm going to use for these models.  They're created simply using cut up pieces of plasticard and fine sand.

(Update: view the completed painted infinity bases)

After taking them apart and testing the power switch to be working fine, I tracked down the issue to it being blown capacitors on the power supply. Since replacing these at the grand total of £2.40 (plus the cost of an unscheduled trip to the Cinema via Maplin) I now have two working monitors.

In case someone else encounters the same issue (even if it's not with this exact model, I think several LG monitors have very similar if not the same power supply unit in them) the steps below detail what I did to repair them...

1) Remove the outer bezal

I found that starting at the bottom right hand corner was easiest. Just insert a flat headed screw driver in to the gap and gentally twist to pop the clips apart.  Do the same all the way around and the bezal comes off in one piece.

2) Remove the back cover

There are 4 small tabs that hold on the black plastic cover. These simply need to be popped away from the metal casing and then the back will slide off.

3) Open the metal chassis

4 screws hold the metal chassis together, 2 are located on each end.  Removing these will then allow you to take the LCD panel away from the backing plate where the power supply is situated. Once you have this opened there is a cable that links the two halves together, so you will need to carefully pull this connector out.

4) Remove the power supply

5 screws hold the power supply board in place and are circled in red above.  The 3 connectors marked in green will then need to be removed and the board is now free to be removed.  Be careful when dealing with this board as it takes in a 240V supply and even though it's unplugged can still hold a dangerous charge.

5) Replace the capacitors

You can see below a comparison between the 2 blown capacitors on the left and the replaced ones next to them.  The replacements are 10V 3300uF 105C electrolytic capacitors.  I brought them from maplin using the product code N95KF.

Once you have removed the failed capacitors and soldered on your replacements, you then just need to follow the steps in reverse and hopefully you'll now have a fully working monitor again.

Download high res image: Airbrushed Neytiri from Avatar (1969px by 1702px)

To do that I obviously need a half decent camera so at end of last year I joined the DSLR movie making bandwagon and brought myself the Canon 550D that you can see above, along with the Zoom H1 to cover the audio recording side of things.

I'll be posting up separate blog posts showing the Follow Focus Lens Gear Rings (available from Half Inch Rails) that I'm using and also my DIY Audio Shock Mount in more detail soon.

So I brought a set of 10 this week, COM ART colours - Transparent Kit E. The set comes with a decent selection of colours:

• Bright Red
• Orange
• Cadmium Yellow
• Emerald Green
• Kelly Green
• Ultramarine
• Royal Blue
• Violet
• Sienna Brown
• Black

I've not tried them out yet but these should greatly help with doing subtle shading effects, especially on the Avatar piece that I'm currently working on.

This is by far the most complex airbrush masking job I've done to date.  It took an hour for my plotter just to cut the masking film. Then came the tricky job of taking those masks, which I had to do in three separate A4 sections, removing the hundreds of little parts that were to be sprayed through and finally aligning them on the board ready for airbrushing.

Thanks to zaretti.com photography for taking the digital image.

This started out purely as a black and white sketch which I later coloured to produce what it looks like now. I had never used a graphics tablet before so this was just the result of me missing about, trying it out for the first time. Nonetheless I think it turned out to be at least a half decent attempt.