Sooo... Here we are, a year on in. Time to explain..
About this time last year, there I was, sitting at home with a shoulder injury, twiddling my thumbs, getting more and more bored by the day!
By chance, I googled 'modelmaking'. A hobby I last indulged in twenty years ago. Holy s***! What happened! The last time I looked, folks were still doing conversions of Tamiya figures and the odd white metal or resin Verlinden kit! Where did all these fantastic creations come from? Resin accessories, PE, scenics, microballoons  (WTF), anything the heart desires. Things had spiralled way beyond my comprehension. Way out of my league!
Nevertheless, I thought 'OK, I'll give it a go for old times sake'. 
A  couple of resin figures duly bought and painted. Oh dear! Painting by numbers, then washing with OD and drybrushing with white just doesn't cut it these days. What to do? Give up or learn? Being a determined old git, I devoured every article, photo and book on the subject I could find! I soon found that I wasn't satisfied with the standard figures and started to convert them instead. Eventually, after a LOT of practice, it started to come together. 
This is the first that I was satisfied with. A conversion of a Tamiya MG Gunner, 1:35, one of the 'premium ones' they released a few years ago.

It's getting there.
The next was this one. A conversion of another Tamiya 'premium' figure, the 'Winter Grenadier'.

OK, so now wer'e cooking!
Both of these were pretty simple conversions. Just a change of head and a bit of puttywork. At this point, I thought it was time to up the ante, so to speak.
I started to think about backstories to the figures. The last two, I enjoyed doing but, let's face it, they are just a couple of squaddies standing around in a field.... On the next one, I wanted to convey a story. 

The resculpting on this one was a lot more involved. The head selection was critical too. It had to convey the horror the guy was feeling on looking at what was probably his own future. The look on his face says it all.. Bloodied and smoke-streaked, he sees whats left of his comrade's helmet and swears: 'Not me as well, not for Grofaz!'
Well, it paid off! This one took third place in the HistoricusForma figure contest! How the hell did that happen! At this time, I'd only been back into it for about seven months!
So, after my head had shrunk to a size that would fit through the door... I started this one:

'The Hunter'. My best achievement so far!
This one was extensively reworked. I posted it on Armorama and got pretty favourable comments on it. Then life got more interesting...
Mario (Maki), one of the editors on HistoricusForma sent me a message asking if I would like to do a full feature on the build of this figure! Who, me? I thought he'd sent the message to the wrong person! Nope, definitely me. I nearly s*** myself. I didn't feel that I was experienced enough for that. Anyway, it worked out great, Mario did a fantastic job and the finished result can be found here: http://hfmodeling.kitmaker.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=4290

All I can say, it's been one hell of a year!
What's next? Well, I'm running a build log on HF at the moment. If your'e interested, it's here: http://hfmodeling.kitmaker.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=SquawkBox&file=index&req=viewtopic&topic_id=189211&page=1
I thought after all I had taken from the other guys on the forums, it was about time I gave something back. I've still got a few more things in the pipeline, and I'm getting better, so stay tuned!
Gary.