A danger of kobolds, week 1 (2022, week 5)

This week we're starting a theme albeit a small one (pun intended) but first, a small history lesson. Way back in November of 2019 I painted a danger of kobolds and boy are those pictures shoddy. Therein I typed these things about the 11 from Bones 4: "If I had it to do again (and I might) I'd possibly spend more time to get a better result." Well, the time has come.

These six are Bones 5 kobolds and most of them were present in the Bones 4 danger, too. And yes, for those wondering, "danger of kobolds" is the official term. Allegedly. This batch has a couple new guys and those figs are at least as fun as the original ones. Bonus: the new molds are really clean. Sadly, this stands in contrast with the older sculpts whose molds aren't nearly as nice and I didn't put enough time into fixing their mold lines. The typical prep was applied with a base coat and zenithal of light turquoise. That was an ancient pot of Reaper paint that clogged terribly in my airbrush. After that we got a homemade contrast paint (yes, you can make those) and highlight by hand with a mix of Daler Rowney inks. 

I put more time into these guys than I probably would have otherwise because I remembered how I felt when I wrote the quote above: disappointed. While these aren't as high as I can crank them, I don't think most of them will take a much higher quality paint job without a lot more prep. These guys start a four week batch that are running cover for some bigger projects.

2022 finished mini counter: 18/100

A thing a week 2022, week 4

So last week we had two spendy kinds of figs so naturally this week we have three at the other end of the spectrum. Hey, they aren't all winners, ok? 

I had an encounter involving a flame bear, one of the mostly solitary burning bears roaming the wastes outside the city my Saturday campaign is running in. I was pretty sure I had no bears and didn't particularly want to fire up the 3d printer to print one out so the day before I was set to run the encounter I double checked my D&D board games. Lo and behold, there were three cave bears in the Wrath of Ashardalon. Luckily, I know my way around a speed paint.

I super speedy primed and prepped them with the intent to wash and drybrush. Probably the highlights on the grizzly-cave-bear could have gone higher, similarly with the polar-cave-bear. The flame-cave-bear sells better in person than in pictures but probably needed more dark red and black on his back.

2022 finished mini counter: 12/100

A thing a week 2022 (week 3)

This week we have a tale of contrast. In particular, I have mirrored 3d prints of Fishergirl 02 from Galaad Miniatures which I did mostly in the same color schemes but with a couple varying techniques. 

Basic prep goes in exactly the way you'd normally expect: prime, umbral from below with Payne's Grey and zenithaled from above with white, in this particular case a Daler-Rowney white ink plus Vallejo Game Air Dead White, and no those aren't affiliate links. Most of both figs were based with Pro Acryl Transparents (also not an affiliate link) which is starting to be my go-to for such maneuvers. Also, I don't have the transparent white but I'm super going to get some. 

The pants are basically the same as Aline's boots from last week since I liked how those turned out. There may be hope for the Black Cat Challenge(TM) yet. I also mixed up the fleshtones this time around. I'm doing a tanned flesh + Magenta base like Kujo rather than my midtone red-brown and am highlighting with a pinkier light fleshtone rather than the sunnier, yellower Vallejo one I've been using and I've gotta say, I kind of like it. Their shirts aren't particularly interesting either but you can probably tell, but that's where the similarities end.

The magenta gal is done more or less the way I'd normally paint. The green gal is the special one and will count as a high quality fig. The brown leather boots and hat are scuffed and scratched and worn in multiple stages with glazes between a la Vince. Supposedly if you're careful with your hashes, scratches, and dots, you can get away without having proper blends. Can confirm. While time consuming, this seems to me to be a way more fun way to up the quality in a way that isn't completely mind-numbing. Note that a proper flowing paint and sharp brush are required for this neither of which I used which results to some of the patchiness. Note that this requires quite a lot of brush control since you're getting just barely on the fig with your nicely flowing paint.

The other hopefully obvious thing is that the green gal's metals are in NMM while the magenta one is using more traditional Vallejo Metal Colors. I am not good with NMM though I'm on my way to getting better. The sword kind of sells but the buckles and hook on her hat do not. Their prints are sadly not pristine and it shows up prominently on the bottom of the sword so only the upward facing NMM looks even remotely reasonable. I also would have liked slightly bigger volumes to work with since the edges of the blade and the handle are miniscule. Overall, I think the blade is functional and outside the cylindrical parts of the hilt, none of the brass really sells.

So which is better? One was certainly easier with the green gal taking probably 50% more time but not coincidentally, I learned way more. Is the difference in quality worth it? That's much harder to say. Overall we're somewhere like 20 hours total for the two and I didn't bring either as high as I think I'm capable of, though I did spend a lot of time on their faces and I'm particularly fond of the magenta gal's beauty spot which was a happy accident. Last year these both might have counted a high quality but I'm only counting the green gal as such. The attempt at NMM, feeble as it is, puts her over the top.

2022 finished mini counter: 9/100, 2/10 high quality

A thing a week 2022 (week 2)

The nice thing about the end of the year is overeating. A close second is having the time to do a bunch of hobbying. This is Aline the Bold from Artistan Guild and like Elena from last week, I shouldn't like this fig either but I can't help myself. Any fighter gal rockin' a biker attitude is good in my book even if it's unfortunate that her armor doesn't cover her vitals. Also: two swords, and yes I'm aware that the sword that's out isn't touching the ground. She didn't glue properly, OK?

Some of the basecoat was done with the airbrush and ended up being pretty messy. I'm not good with my airbrush but I am getting better and we should see more of that kind of thing later this year. Going into this paint job I had three goals. First, crank out a high quality piece. Second, do a better job with her face which sucked because part of it is obscured. Third, I knew her boots would be black and I really wanted them to not suck.

I don't think the majority of the blends are particularly good despite spending a lot of time on them. I also ended my paint job a few hours early. I was near the end of my session and getting really tired with the corresponding increase in mistakes. Then I dumped part of my brush cleaner all over my wet palette. I figured the universe was trying to tell me something. It's not subtle sometimes. The end result is that there are a bunch of details I didn't clean up like the patchyness of her shirt and some of the crap around the goddamn spikes on her armor. I also didn't do much shading/highlighting on the metallics. I could have filled the 3d printing ridges if I really wanted to, but I didn't.

Overall, I'm happy with this work but know that there's at least a few productive hours I could have put in to make her better. All told we're over fifteen hours or so over several days and these shots should be better than the average garbage here. For anyone taking photographs with anything more complicated than their phone: camera's are stupidly hard to use if you're not trained in this stuff (I'm not) so take the time to figure out how to make them go.

2022 finished mini counter: 7/100, high quality 1/10

A thing a week 2022 (week 1)

New year, new challenge so here we go. Also, I've typed a lot about it, but I really am trying to take better pictures believe it or not. This week's offerings aren't particularly good but next week's should be better.

These two are more of my vintage throwback D&D figures, specifically Ral Partha 11-004 Rangers With Longsword and Bow. If you're picking up a Robin Hood and Maid Marian vibe there, I suspect that's not on accident, though the late 80s markings on their base mean that they predate Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves from 1991. They're 25mm and it's worth noting that eyes and other small details are usually pretty awful on such small figs. One nice thing about these, especially being metal, is that a lot of the details are popped way out which made it a lot easier. They were done in maybe 10 hours total and I think they came out pretty well.

These three are from Bones 4 and have been prepped on my desk for at least a  year. They are Townsfolk 1 bar maid, Townsfolk 2 angry woman, and Townsfolk 3 milk maid. Other than finishing these gals, I had two goals: practice fleshtones especially faces, and practice highlighting light colored linens. I'll let you decide how good a job I did but as practice, I'm not unhappy with the results. Probably my blends could be better, as usual, and there are details that aren't as crisp as I'd like, as usual, but there were some learnings involved in the twelve or so hours I spent on them. The biggest one was reinforcing the idea that I shouldn't be in a hurry. It's obvious when you saytype it out but it's definitely true and I'm hoping that this will propel me to higher levels of quality this year. Also, I really wish the milk maid's face wasn't quite so blurry since I spent a lot of time on her.

This guy (I'm assuming it's a guy, anyway) is a Reaper Bones Giant Weasel from Bones 5. He is not a complicated paint job but complicated is not a requirement! He's a series of washes and drybrushing and then some picking out of details. In my research, I learned that a) weasels have really beady black eyes which I have faithfully reproduced here, and b) weasels are freakin' adorable. Seriously. Do an image search. 

2022 finished mini counter: 6/100

2022 Crafting challenge

It's weird to think that I've been doing this for three years. So much so that I can barely imagine not doing it again this year. Tho, after so many giant batches, I can see it from here. For the last two years I've pushed volume in building, painting, writing, etc. so this year I'd like to slow down and focus more on quality. Unlike the previous challenges, I'm lifting the "must be done" qualifier since I expect that some of these efforts to be time intensive and to span multiple weeks. In particular, I have at least one gargantuan project with a strict deadline that I'd really like to finish.

Valid things:

• A WIP representing not less than two hours of effort. That fits in a typical evening so no excuses. 
• NaNoWriMo, SHIPtember, high quality paint jobs are good candidates
• Note: two hour requirement is waived for finished pieces
• Gaming terrain, prop, scatter (etc.)
• One or more painted minis
• An illustration or sketch in digital or traditional media which I still don't do nearly enough of
• An article or other piece of writing of, I dunno, 1000 words or more
• A Lego build
• A video
• A tool for hobbying or something
• Other?  Much of what I do defies easy categorization

Goals:

• One Hundred painted miniatures of at least tabletop quality
• Ten high quality pieces preferably featuring OSL, NMM, or both
• Two busts or larger figs
• One complex structure, preferably a building

The last two years have been dominated by COVID-19 and I've had a lot more time to devote to these efforts. I have to think that this won't continue long into 2022 but I thought that last year, too. Check back in 364 days to see how I did!

2021 in Review

ThisLast year didn't go the way that I might have planned which is becoming a trend, it seems. I didn't expect to be working from home for another year among other things, and certainly didn't expect to paint quite so many minis. I still don't miss my terrible commute and am not looking forward to going back to the office. Anyway.

Gaming

Not much going on in video gaming this year though I have run two simultaneous RPGs for most of the year. Most of my campaigns of late have been going at around the 9-10 month range which is still a good long time so probably another two will end nextthis year. I've been revamping my sci-fi game so maybe we'll get back to that sometime soon. Also in RPGs, my in-person game has been fully painted for the first time and I totally see why people insist on playing fully painted now.

Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries ***** (2019)

I've saidtyped at least a few times here that Battletech is one of the few things that I have nostalgia for. Now that I'm thinking about it, a strange number of the things I have nostalgia for came from FASA who were big in the 90s. That probably isn't a coincidence. Anyway, I've played many of these over the years and this installment does not disappoint. For all the hours I put into it, ~120 hours sez Steam, blowing up mechs and walking through buildings never got old. I've now played through various campaigns most of three times and still fire it up occasionally whenever I need stompy mech on mech action. Will we see painted Battletech minis in 2022? Watch and see.

Dwarf Fortress ***** (2006)

I playrun Dwarf Fortress every few years to see what's changed and I'm pretty sure I've talked about that here before. I still hesitate to call it a game but it's still endlessly amusing and at the end of thislast year, I fired it up again to see what's changed. Answer: not as much as I'd expected but that didn't make it any less enjoyable. Probably I'll keep up this tradition as long as I'm able and if I haven't said this before: there are things that happen in Dwarf Fortress that will never be done in any other game.

Gardening

I'm bad about picking up new hobbies on a semi-regular basis. This year I picked up gardening for reasons I still don't entirely understand. It's been hard but interesting and sadly I didn't think to take any pictures. I learned two very important things: 1) dirt is expensive, 2) you don't have to plant every tomato seed in the pouch. I had more than 30 tomato plants many of which ended up at around 12 feet. I gave a pile of them away and the heat killed more than a few of them and I still had more than 30 plants. When they were in full swing I was easily getting two bowls of cherry tomatoes every day. I love tomatoes probably more than the next person, but that's a lot even for me. Luckily, nextthis year I'll be prepared with more varied recipes and possibly other growable incredients.

Painting

This year I broke another major milestone. I painted more than 370 figs which means on average I completed more than one per day. They certainly weren't all winners but either way that's a pretty serious accomplishment, especially since I don't play army games. I'm pretty sure this is a top N% kind of accomplishment, especially for a non-pro and non-commission painter, but don't really have a feel for what's normal in this space.

Pretty sure I noted it somewhere in one of those batches' writeups but I do find utility in doing them even if I might not particularly enjoy them. Previously I got pretty significant speed gains. This time around I'm only seeing minor speed gains, possibly because I've already exhausted the easy stuff, but I am seeing quality gains. I didn't snap pictures, but the Frostgrave Soldiers in week 51 are a significant upgrade from the first ten when you sit them side by side. That's a delta of, I dunno, 800 or so figs in about three years.

I'm also seeing a pretty significant increase in quality over the year. I've suspected this having completed so many figures, but it's pretty clear when you line them up. I've regarded Kyeh (the mage gal throwing the wave) as one of my top pieces but in the high quality lineup, she's clearly lackluster. Similarly, while I still think the chaos toad holding a fireball is good, it is nowhere near the two Artisan Guild prints in the front row with him. In both cases there are hundreds of figs between the two points with all the learnings that come with them.

The second milestone is perhaps less significant but not the less in stature. In the waning days in 2021, I finished a pot of miniature paint. I didn't think to take a picture of it so you'll just have to take my word for it, but it was one of my vintage pots of Reaper paints, Linen. I've used this color to do a lot of highlighting and a lot of drybrushing. In fact, the majority of the drybrushing I've done across a large swath of my painted figs was done with this pot so it's not all that surprising that it was the first to go. And, yes, I harvested the metal skull agitator.

Fin

So that was 2021 in a nutshell. I'd say on the whole it was better than 2020 but that's not a particularly high bar to clear, now is it? Will 2022 be better still? Gosh, I hope so. Let's find out!