That's a whole lotta figs

Most folks have a rough time with numbers.  I can say I painted 226 figs this year but when you lay it all out, it's much more impressive.  

That's a whole lotta figs.

2020 Crafting challenge wrap-up

The end of the year marks many things, two of which are gluttony and year-end wrap ups.  This post is the latter.  Almost exactly a year ago I wrote this post talking about all of the things I made for my inaugural "a thing a week" challenge.  This post would be this year's write up.  

As crappy a 2020 has been overall, it was a good year for hobbying.  I think I did well on this challenge, finishing up officially in the middle of August and blowing past all of my original goals. Working from home 3/4 of the year helped with this in no small way.  Officially:

• 226/50 miniatures painted
• 8/5 miniatures pushing quality
• 3/1 serious attempts at non-metallic metals
• 6/5 "buildings" of reasonable size pushing detail and quality

2020 Kickoff
Week 1:  paint rack #1
Week 2:  Nolzur's Human Female Ranger (crossbow variant), high quality mini #1
Week 3:  Reaper Bones Highland Heroine, high quality mini #2
Week 4:  Cedarwood neighborhood map
Week 5:  3 sketches
Week 6:  Cedarwood Playset (take 2)
Week 7:  2 sketches
Week 8:  Ending a Campaign (article)
Week 9:  Concept art categorizer program
Week 10:  Counter & chip holder, sadly unused
Week 11:  Four deck Golden Sun liftship token
Week 12:  Single deck Knarr token
Week 13:  Single deck Skow token
Week 14:  Single deck War Cog token
Week 15:  Three deck Cutter token
Week 16:  Five Warlord Games Viking Bondi in green
Week 17:  article on Bannerlord
Week 18:  Five Viking Bondi in blue
Week 19:  Five Viking Bondi in red
Week 20:  Five Viking Bondi in brown
Week 21:  Drow Wizard, Orc Smasher, Artemis Entreri, Deepwood Sentinel, Shield Maiden
Week 22:  Skow and Warcog liftships in foam, "buildings" #1 and #2
Week 23:  Immeril, 2x mimics, chest, stump, Seething Knight, Royal Pikeman, 2x Amazon Blademistresses, 2x Nightblades, Leech Medic, Liege Knight
Week 24:  Single deck Knarr liftship in foam + magnetized masts and Skow #2, "buildings" #3, #4
Week 25:  Three deck cutter, four deck Golden Sun, "buildings" #5, #6
Week 26:  Gauth, Gwyddis, 3x Gernadier Fighting Men
Week 27:  Bases, Hellhound, Hajad, Kogo, Dijoro, high quality minis #3 and #4
Week 28:  Dragonman, Juliette, Deladrin, Wererat Stalker, Wererat Assassin
Week 29:  Kelainen, 2x Wraith Slayers, Wraith Lord & Bodyguard, 2x Wraith Duelists
Week 30:  Dungeon & Lasers scatter x15
Week 31:  paint rack #2, painting rod holder #1
Week 32:  2x Clerics with Staff and Warhammer, 2x Thieves with Shortsword and Sling
Week 33:  painting rod holder #2, oil paint bottles
Week 34:  Mal, Shadoweyes, 11-010b paladin, 42-081d Frankish Command Set, 12-050a Elf Warrior
Week 35:  4x Dark Dwarves, 2x Giant Maggots, Animunar Winterbeard, Wizard
Week 36:  Dracolisk, 3x Drow Duelists, , 4x Nolzur's Ballista
Week 37:  2x Wrath of Kings Whitemane Duelists
Week 38:  Magic items video, Adventures in Mini Painting #5 and  #6
Week 39:  4x Macedonian Phalangites, Greek Hoplite Command (warrior & dual flutist), Bril Le Anti footsoldier, 2x Tabaxi Rogues
Week 40:  8x Greek Hoplites
Week 41:  13x Stark Sworn Swords
Week 42:  12x Viking Bondi
Week 43:  2x Landsnecht Command Frames, 2x War of the Roses fully armored chaps, 2x Reaper Bones Caryatid Columns, 1x Reaper Bones Gravestone of Protection, printed stump
Week 44:  7x printed skeletons
Week 45:  3x Nolzur's spiders, Bones 4 vegetable cart, 4x Caesar's Legions Command Sprue, 2x Imperial Romans:  Plastic Scorpion crew
Week 46:  printed elfdwarf archer, 2x Reaper Bones Town Guard, Aina, Justina
Week 47:  9x printed skeletons
Week 48:  15x small printed spiders, 4x printed knights, Sir William the Peacekeeper, Dark Dwarf Striker
Week 49:  4 sets of 6x small scatter, 3x Reaper Bones Bandits, set of small scatter
Week 50:  12x broken columns, 4x color coded levers, 2x printed Cat Rogues, 3x printed Night Cult Soldiers, Marine from Chainmail
Week 51:  Osprey v2 in Lego
Week 52:  3x Grenadier Fantasy Personalities, Vatanis Maggotcrown Warlock, 6x Graveyard Finials, Iron Maiden, Skull Candelabra, Iron Golem, Mono and Duodrone, 5x armored goblins, 5x color coded knights, 2x Nolzur's xorns and an abyssal maw from Chainmail

A thing a week 2020, week 52

And we're home!  This is the penultimate post of 2020's crafting challenge but fear not, you'll be getting a wrap-up and a new challenge for 2021 which I goddamn hope is better than 2020 (the year, not the challenge, but dare to dream).  

These three are from Grenadier Fantasy Warriors Personalities, specifically 5611 Barbarian, 5612 Fighting Man, and 5613 Foot Knight which I couldn't find a link to. I'm pretty sure they came three to a blister when I bought them which might have been in the mid-90s or the mid-aughts--I've had a lot to drink since then. They came with three polearms only one of which was ever found so the non-knights got spare spears that I had in my bits box. For all three I tried to push the contrast a little more than normal but all three required different approaches. The skin tones on the barbarian followed the same scheme as the marine above. I did some "sculpting with paint" to make up for some of the mold's misgivings. Like I talkedtyped about last week, a lot of the highlighting was done with a Vallejo Model Air light skintone at Vince's recommendation.  The foot knight was lazy-painted with an airbrush with a bunch of manual shadows and highlighting with metallics and Badger Ghost Tints respectively. All three weighed in at around four hours total though it's hard to put a real number on it since I've been bouncing around the pile of stuff on my workbench.  Oh, and if it looks like the spears don't actually fit in their hands, it's because they've been superglued many, many times over the years and I was too lazy to scape it all out.

I have very mixed feelings about this Vatanis, Maggotcrown Warlock from Reaper Bones. I purchased this figure to represent a player character and did not do anywhere near enough homework before I did so. That was late march when it still looked like we might play in person at some point. Mold lines on this particular figure are awful and they run over all of the difficult details, details of which there are way too many of most of which I don't like. He feels busy for busy's sake and I don't approve. He sat on my workbench for months until I finally got fed up enough to finish painting him and not particularly well, I might add. I should have worked the blends more. I should have been more careful with the washes and shading. I should have done a lot of stuff but I didn't and he's done and I'm not going to be sad about it. I wouldn't hazard to guess how long I spent painting this guy but it was way too long for where he ended up.  

Finishing out my Bones 4 pile of random collections of samey things are these six Graveyard Finial:  Skulls.  Given the problems I had with the last few of these sets, namely that paint didn't want to stick to them, I super washed these before brush priming and still had a lot of trouble with these.  Maybe because they're small they were hard to toothbrush but I scrubbed at them real good.  They were mostly drybrushed and washed like most of my bone things but I really didn't spend a lot of time on them--I just wanted them done.  

This stylish candelabra would be at home in any wizard's arcanum.  It's from the Dungeons and Lasers kickstarter and sat on my desk for most of the year.  With it is a Wizkids Deep Cuts Iron Maiden which was a gift from a pal a while ago.  This was fun because a) it isn't a thing I'd normally buy, and b) it gave me a real fun opportunity to weather and rust some stuff which isn't a thing I often do.  The candelabra is from Dungeon & Lasers kickstarter and took up space on my workbench for most of the year picking up paint when something appropriate was unused on my palette.  It's basically Vallejo Metal Color Gold covered with Badger Minitaire ghost tint.  

That brings us to Wizkids Deep Cuts Cage and Chains.  These are also things gifted to me that I normally wouldn't buy and super took advantage of lazy airbrush painting followed by fun weathering.  The base is detachable and was lazy painted in brown with a wash.  After weathering I did a slight drybrush in a lighter silver color to pop out some of the edges that might get hit more often.  I had a lot of fun with these--turns out that weathering stuff is really fun!  I suspect we'll see more of that next year.  

These three are the last gifts in this batch from the same pal.  When I had the airbrush out and metallics in the cup, they got paint too.  This is a Nolzur's Iron Golem and basically follows the same pattern as the Iron Maiden above.  The two gold fellows are Nolzur's Monodrone and Duodrone.  They're anti-zenithaled with purple which didn't go on cleanly but it doesn't show super well on the gold dudes and was mostly covered up with additional shadow work on the golem.  Beyond picking out details like cracks and eyes and whatnot, there wasn't much going on with these guys.  I was surprised to learn that I didn't have a golem before this guy because it's a monster I use quite a lot.  I'm not sure if I'll use the Monodrone and Duodrone in play but they're fun enough models that I'll be looking for a reason to do so.  All told the three of these were done in around four hours.  

These five are armored goblins, part of a pack of 6 with one featured at the end of last year unbeknownst to me.  More specifically, they are Armored Goblin Leader complete with Giuliani dentition, Armored Goblin Spearmen, and Armored Goblin Sworsdmen.  These didn't get painted at that point because they were in parts!  I'm not used to gluing Reaper Bones together and they proved more fiddly than I expected.  I painted them up as hobgoblins because it's a monster I use a lot and it felt more proper that hobs would actually find, keep, and use real armor more than normal goblins.  These were airbrushed in metallics with a purple anti-zenithal.  More shading on the armor and other details were done with brushes notably with Badger Ghost Tints Purple and Engine Oil, the latter of which I'm starting to like a lot more than Nuln Oil.  All told we're talking maybe six hours for the five of them including assembly.

Much like the hobs above, these five are from Bones 4 and required assembly.  They were also fiddly and airbrushed with a base coat of metallics and an anti-zenithal of purple.  The teal knight next to the black knight doesn't read super well but all of the other ones landed pretty much where I wanted them to.  I put extra time on their highlighting and shadows especially on their armor which mostly doesn't show in the photos.  These guys were a lot more fiddly than the hobs but I had some time to spend and knocked them out in about six hours total.  I think they work even if they're super big.

These rocky looking dudes are D&D xorns.  Two of them are Nolzur's and like most of the line look nowhere near as nice in person as they do in the renders, and one of them is from the Chainmail Box set and for some reason called an Abyssal Maw.  I might not have painted these guys yet except that a) they were prepped and ready to go on my workbench, b) they don't require a ton of effort, and c) I was close to breaking 225 and I'm all about over-delivering.  They were anti-zenithaled and the abyssal maw was zenithaled since he was primed all over.  The first coats were mostly a brown coat provided by Pro Acryl Transparent brown + some random palette sludge green and whatever I had laying around to give them more visual interest.  Some drybrushing, a wash, some details on their teeth and eyes and a candycoat on the eyes got them here.  This is fairly lazy painting and they took maybe a couple hours with another one thrown in as prep for the abyssal maw which had to be assembled.

That's going to do it for A Thing a Week 2020, folks.  Tune in soon for the wrap-up and A Thing a Week 2021!

Final 2020 finished mini counter:  226/50

A thing a week 2020, week 51

One more to go after today for 2020 which honestly can't be done soon enough.  In breaking with recent tradition, we're not talking minis today.  I'd feel weird holding a completed miniature done this year but counting toward next year so since I've got time off right now and I'm doing a lot of painting, we'll blow out 2020 with a flurry of hobbying...and some setup so that 2021 can start stronk.

This is a rebuild of a ship I built way back in 2020 which is a design from the comic I drew in the mid 90s.  It's interesting to think about all the stuff that's changed since then.  I'd only built three SHIPs, been to one show, and won one trophy (currently fourteen, ten, and eight respectively).  I've moved three times and changed jobs five times which is more of a reflection on the volatility of the games biz more than anything.  I've re-kindled my love of tabletop RPGs, built four-ish full systems (some variations) and finished three multi-year campaigns.  All of my mini painting this century is between these two points as is all of my BBQing and coffee roasting.  Seems like a lot when I writetype it out like that.

The original build was awfully fiddly and really didn't want to stay together at all.  I think I brought it to BrickFair VA 2011.  For the next four-ish years I've thought I should rebuild it.  In fact, when I moved to my current home in the Pacific Northwest and got my Lego area sorted sometime in 2015, I did try to rebuild it.  Badly.  I put maybe twenty hours into it trying to get the angles right and experimenting with getting the right proportions.  I may have gone through three iterations of different construction methods before chucking the thing with most of my dark blue collection in a bin and hiding it under a table.

Another five years would go by before I revisited the project.  This year has been demonstrably crap and my work from home desk is my Lego desk.  SHIPtember probably wasn't happening this year but it really couldn't without a real space to build.  My second table in this room is smaller and has been a dumping ground for Lego related stuff for years now.  Among other things, I made a concerted effort to clean it and low and behold, the Osprey prototype turned up.  I'd really like to build another SHIP, a really big and complicated one, so right around Virtual BrickCon this year, I got back to it.

Another twenty-ish hours in small chunks over a month or so solved most of the biggest problems I had.  It sits at an angle to reduce the weight on the wings which sags noticeably if the ship is horizontal.  Also, it looks like it's taking off which is cool.  I'm glad to have this guy complete, not just because it frees up quite a lot of brick in a color I quite like.  It's more that it isn't hanging over my head anymore which counts for something.

A thing a week 2020, week 50

This week...minis.  No one should be surprised at this point, I suppose, but first:  some housekeeping.

I forget when these columns were painted but the date on the source photos is from early May.  I'd also forgotten that I'd taken the pictures so imagine my surprise to find out that I indeed had these to show for this year.  These are assorted Tiny Terrain columns which I'm pretty sure are resin casts of a filament print.  These were washed and drybrushed as much of my stonework and I feel comfortable counting these as three toward my 2020 numbers.

These four color-coded levers are from the Dungeon and Lasers kickstarter from last year. I quite like these and expect to use them in my in-person games quite a lot when that's a thing we can do again. Not much to say here; they're pretty straightforward and spent most of the year sittng on my workbench picking up random bits of paint when it was available. Best guess for total paint time is a couple hours for all four which seems really slow.

These two are 3D printed cat rogues.  Well, at least, I hope that's obvious.  As has been established previously, there are a lot of cat people in my games and this guy's STL was free which is right up my alley (no pun intended).  These guys had several challenges that mostly went OK.  His fur is black which is already rough, but his coat was also supposed to be black with a yellow shirt.  I wanted to differentiate these two as warm and cold greys but I think I over did it.  He reads as a blue cat wearing a purple cloak.  The yellow is played by yellow ochre.  Everything was pre-washed with Pro Acryl transparents and finished off with other Pro Acryl paints.  I've been spending a lot of time painting with terrible paints so this was a special treat.  In all, we're talking around five hours for both of them which I'm not unhappy with.  I'm pretty sure I'll print these guys again so next time around I think I'll try to desaturate the dark colors a little more--they're a bit stark.  

These three are 3D printed night cult soldiers I also got for free.  I think they go to a wargame that I don't play but they were a) fun looking, and, b) free so I picked them up, printed, and painted them.  I didn't need them to be all the same color so they aren't, though I'm a little disappointed in the level of details on them.  That said, I think they turned out pretty well given the time spent and I could see printing a few more to represent cultists or something.  They were a speed paint done in around three hours for the lot of them, blasting past my extended-extended 2020 goal.  One notable experiment with these guys is that they're highlighted with a blend of the base color and a light skintone as recommended by Vince.  This works amazingly well even on the ochre color and I'm really starting to prefer this to highlighting with warm off whites.

Right around the turn of the century, Wizards of the Coast reached back into their backlog for a thing to capitalize on. Chainmail is arguably one of the foundational works for all of tabletop roleplaying. It was a set of miniature wargame rules from a time when miniatures were a) primitive, b) limited, and c) made of lead. This buff lad is the marine from the starter set. He's painted not particularly well but then again, I don't particularly like this figure. Best way to get yourself killed in a real fight? Don't wear sufficient armor. At any rate, this guy's been sitting on my workbench for a while and I need to clean up some space for the beginning of next year's festivities. I experimented quite a lot with his skin tones which worked out OK even if my color choices were poor. All told, he was around 3 hours from start to finish.

2020 finished mini counter:  202/50

A thing a week 2020, week 49

Welp, on the week I was working on this, somewhere in the middle of November, I was trying to get the point that I could clean off one (really, both) of my hobby tables.  As part of this exercise I tried to work through the veritable army sitting primed and shaded on my workbench.  I've also been really busy so I'm bummed about having finished most of my lazy painting figs already.

These six...whatevers these are Reaper claims to be Graveyard Finials: Mystic and came through Reaper Bones 4.  I think they look like lumpy globes but I figured they were magic so I painted them thusly.  This was mostly a speed paint through the months as I had the right color paints around.  I wouldn't hazard a guess to the painting time if I'm honest but for some reason paint beaded up off of them even after priming twice.  I'll probably use them as puzzle pieces if we ever get to play in person again.  Bones 4 counts the six of them as one fig so they'll count one toward my total.

These six are clearly gargoyles and also came from Reaper Bones 4 but I can't find a link to them.  In actuality they were painted forever ago but I need to stop pushing quite so much of a bow wave since we're running out of year.  These are the epitome of lazy painting:  basically primed + wash + drybrush and *blam* stone, or at least something that passes for it.  I toyed with the idea of tinting them but ended up not and they also only count as one toward my goal.  Curse you Bones 4 mini counting incongruities!  Painting time for these is probably counted in minutes.  

These six, similarly, are Graveyard Finials:  Orbs and similarly six linkless flamey pots. These guys also had the seriously distressing feature of paint not sticking to them even after serious priming.  I have no idea why but it was super annoying.

I did the same color coding as the finials above for the same reason:  painting them all the same color seemed lame and also as stated above, I have need of color-coded tchotchkes for various puzzles and markers I use in my games.  

Next up we have scatter from Dungeons and Lasers kickstarter from last year. Stairs and other scatter showed up in week 30 and these were painted, photographed, and forgotten about right around then. The two statues were painted just like the gargoyles and the barrels were drybrushed then glazed.

The sword and the stone (minus the metallics which came after) and the dragon skull were washed and drybrushed like the statues.  The hardest part was the coffin, especially since the lid fits on it and I couldn't super easily drybrush the skellington within.  There's no good accounting for these but four toward the goal seems appropriate.  

These three are Reaper Bones Brigands from...yeah, you guessed it:  Bones 4.  These are also very cartoony figures but I like these a lot more.  I paid quite a lot of attention to detail and really wanted to push the contrast on these guys.  The green, an ancient Reaper pot, was highlit with a Vallejo Air Beige which did some real work lightening the dark green.  I'm not great at layering but this one was awfully fun as the highlights built up.  Next, I took the browns and tans of the rest of the fig to a relatively high contrast. I think this worked OK.  The faces were actually done first as I'd done a "facing" pass on many of the figs on the work bench.  All told these three less-than-savory creatures were done in around six hours total.

2020 finished mini counter:  193/200