hey it's Sean from tested here with the uh 2020 favorite things i'm here with my pandemic hairdo
and my broken pandemic tooth i broke a tooth and have a fake one in so bear with me as i
have some trouble speaking but um yeah let's start out with some books this particular book
is from john landis you may be familiar with him as a director of animal house the blues brothers
american werewolf in london innocent blood uh he's a big horror fan and he's put together this
great compilation of monster movies across the years and genres uh it's kind of divided up into
different sections of like vampires werewolves anything from that to atomic monsters so like more
sci-fi monsters and kind of gives a little history of the creatures and their appearance in films
and then he goes into little blurbs for a lot of different movies so one of my favorite
things about this coffee table book is that it's great for browsing and discovering stuff like i
i have a fairly good horror collection and there is stuff that i found out of
here that i've never heard of before so it's a great little browser for
a lot of different monster movies and genres so it's a great one to check out it is still
available in a reasonably priced paperback the hardback's a little harder to find
next we'll go to some artwork uh this is my prized possession that i found this year this is from a
an amazing spanish artist maya pixelskaya she's not only an amazing artist but she has a great
love for retro video games particularly the lucas arts uh games such as the secret of
monkey island full throttle grim fandango and she took steve purcell's original artwork from
the secret of monkey island you will know steve from sam and max um and i believe uh he was a
artist at lucas arts for a really long time and i believe he has moved on to pixar
but this is based on steve's original work and the amazing thing about this is this is all hand
engraved and chemically etched on a copper plate it took her weeks if not months and
she then uh inks the plate and it is pressed into this really high quality paper and when
it gets a closer look you can actually see the impressions on the print it is absolutely gorgeous
unfortunately i think this is now sold out but she has a lot of other really cool retro game art that
you can find on her site which we'll link to and and she has a really really good behind the scenes
walkthrough of how this was done so it's worth going to the site just to look at the
item and then follow the links to her how-to because it is absolutely fascinating and the
amount of work that went into this is very very impressive so secret of monkey island
copper engraved print next we will move on to some toys we'll start with the diamond select
the black hole series the the black hole holds a special place in my heart because
i i remember seeing it many many times growing up saw it at the drive-in and it scared the crap
out of me particularly maximilian the evil robot um it has amazing production design
not the best film on the whole but the design of the uh the robots and particularly the ship
the cygnus is really really well done and it's worth checking out for that so diamond
select released a series of three of the main robots from the film maximilian the evil robot
has some pretty good articulation on it all the little arms and his killer blades come up there
are swap out pieces that you can do including some electrical bolts you can put in and for those
familiar with the movie there's a very disturbing scene where dr reinhardt the creator of maximilian
basically is combined with the robot once they go through the black hole and it even comes
with a swap out head that has his face behind the visor which is pretty fantastic he's got
some pretty good articulation on his little flaps he comes with his own display stand but
if you buy both the maximilian set and the bob and vincent set it comes with the pieces to build this
nice little backdrop which is uh which is pretty cool bob and vincent are also really well done
um the articulation on them is pretty good the little doors and flaps open uh the head rotates
it even has the sink down inside frighten mode and it has a variety of weapons you can also
pop out as well and exchange my only gripe about in particular bob and vincent is the stands are
absolutely terrible they barely hold them up they fall off a lot and they very obviously took a
generic figure stand that they have for other sets and just threw it in here so i do plan on printing
some upgraded maybe 3d printed stands and if i get around to that i'll post them on thingiverse
so you can set them up for your own so diamond select black hole toys very good very good choice
next toy this is this thing is absolutely amazing this is from three zero this is my first um three
zero purchase and and they are comparable like hot toys like that level of detail and um articulation
they're right up there with them and this is from uh the transformers transformers bumblebee movie
which i feel is the first movie to have actually got the look of the transformers right
like they read like the original animated and toy versions but with a lot more deep detail
this is one of the decepticons blitz wing the the the detail articulation and paint job on this
is just i was floored particularly uh i was really impressed with the weathering on this it has
some just really nice panel lining it has like this like like patina from like dirt and grime
and i i was just blown away with it um the articulation is great um it's nice and sturdy
it has a nice heft to it there is some metal in here it's mostly plastic but it doesn't matter
and overall like very very very very happy with blitz wing it does not transform which may upset
some people um i had some quandaries about it at first as well but i i realized that other
deluxe transformers version figures that i have i never transformed them i appreciate the
engineering but they sit in robot mode because that's what they look the coolest as so i just
kind of leave them like that the other thing i was really impressed with the three uh the three zeros
guys is the stand that it comes with is really well done it has really ingenious uh adjustments
for both height angle etc and they and they really stay and they're easy to change the positioning of
the only particular gripe i had on this particular model is the peg does not engage
as firmly as i would like on him it doesn't stay on the stand as securely as i would like so that
gets a little hairy when you're trying to do like a flying pose or whatever the other gripe i had
was it does come with light up eyes which are are okay they're not that bright and they did not come
with the batteries so for the price of this i felt like i should have come with the batteries
but the light up eyes are not that great anyway so i'm not going to install them but
this is the 3-0 blitzwing deluxe dlx transformer definitely worth checking out the whole series is
and then we will wrap up with some tools of course you have to have a little bit of everything
so we talk a lot about sanding untested we do a lot of sanding on tested so i thought i would show
you some of my cutting and sanding tools that i've been picking up over the last year or so
adam is a big fan of emery board's nail files this is my favorite thing it's a four-way so it has
four different grits on the same board it's also washable and i go through these like by the
dozens they're great they last a long time they're cheap and they're my go-to for most of my sanding
for more intricate stuff i picked up these standing detailers or sanding sticks they
come in a variety of colors and a variety of grits and i have p touch all of these so that
they're all labeled with what grit they are so i have a dedicated one for each grit and the nice
thing is they have these little fine tips you can really get into cracks and crevices has a nice big
flat area it has a radius on the back and the sticks are spring-loaded so that you can take the
the belts on and off and what i like about these in particular is if you're standing with this
little tip it tends to wear pretty quickly and you're going to get a bald spot so you literally
just rotate the belt to a nice clean spot and you just keep going and for the most part i found that
the belts have lasted a long time i have not swapped them out very often and while these may
be a little pricey for a a plastic stick uh the versatility that they give me in the sanding and
that having a dedicated grit for each one i use these all the time they're like my go-to after i'm
done with the emery board and finally we'll talk about one of the most common hobby tools out there
the hobby knife i've been an exacto user for many many years that's usually what i picked up and
bought i would buy the generic number 11 blades usually but this year i upgraded to an olfa which
is a japanese company i've been hearing about these guys for a long time and the quality of
their blades so i was like i will i will spend the extra money and give these a try and this
is now my go-to hobby knife it has a really nice weight to it it has a fiberglass reinforced handle
a nice grip option there is one that's also just bare brass it has this little kickstand to keep
it from rolling off the table which is fantastic but what i particularly love about this is the
blade mechanism is really ingenious because it actually has a little spring inside the jaws
that kick it open whenever you loosen it um i can't tell you how many times when i've
had a blade stuck in there and i'm banging it on a table to try to get it loose the the grip part and
this little spring-loaded mechanism really makes a difference when you're like trying to put in and
out blaze highly recommended uh it will take regular number 11 blades just like anything
but the alpha blades i have to say are a cut above they are sharper i find that they last a little
bit longer so if i'm doing like really really important things that i need to get a really
good cut on i will switch to the olfa blade on on my regular day-to-day basis i still just do the
generic number elevens but uh olfa and just a little alpha history is a little trivia they've
been around for a long time since the 50s and they are the creator of the break off blades so
you get those little generic box covers that have the score in them where you can break
it off for a new piece they invented that and they also invented the rotary cutter so they're
they're kind of like a big deal in the cutting industry and apparently olfa comes from um
two different japanese words put together for to break a blade so that's a little olfa trivia
for you and the last thing from olfa that i would recommend picking up are their little saw blades
they have various size and shapes most of them are kind of traditional japanese pool blades
these things are absolutely amazing i've been using them more and more on different projects
for really fine cutting doing like fiberglass masks and stuff like that i've been using it for
trimming in delicate areas and highly recommended to pick up a pack of these saw blades as well
so that's it for sean's 20 20 favorite things a little bit of everything some art some toys some
tools we'll provide links for everything so please check them out and let us know
what you like and what you're using and we'll see you next year