2022 Crafting challenge wrap-up

It wouldn't be the end of the year without a crafting challenge wrap-up. As usual, the 100 fig mark was reached early in the year though the rest of the hits took longer to arrive. No 365 mark was in the cards but I did hit the magical 260 figure which is 5 figs per week. 

Week 1: Ral Partha Rangers with Longsword and Bow, Reaper Bar Maid, Angry Woman, Milk Maid, and Giant Weasel

Week 2: Artisan Guild Aline the Bold 3d print (high quality #1)

Week 3: Galaad Fisher Girl 02 3d prints (high quality #2)

Week 4: 3x Wrath of Ashardalon board game Cave Bears

Week 5: 6x Bones 5 spear kobolds

Week 6: 6x Bones 5 ranged kobolds

Week 7: 6x Bones 5 axe kobolds

Week 8: 6x Bones 5 shield kobolds

Week 9: Bones 5 Sir Rictus the Undying, 4x Barrow Rats, Reaper Bones Danar, Human Assassin, 2x Aechelon by The Dragon Trapper's Lodge

Week 10: 6x Bones 5 goblins

Week 11: 2x Bones 5 goblin woofwolf riders

Week 12: Reaper Bones Barden Dwarf Cleric, 2x 3d printed dwarf clerics, Reaper Broderick, Human Cleric, 3d printed Battlemage by Galaad (high quality #3)

Week 13: Reaper Aislinn Shadow Tracker (high quality #4)

Week 14: 3x Bones 5 treants, suit of armor, stone golem, stained glass golem

Week 15: Reaper Bones Chimera, 3x assorted dragon hatchlings

Week 16: Bones 5 Female Nagendra Warrior, Reaper Bones Wererat Berserker, Reaper Anubis Guard, 2x Drow Paladin 3d prints by Velrock

Week 17: Vae Victis Tabaxi Bandit 3d print, Reaper Bones Seelah, Iconic Paladin, Rathan Kranzhel, Bones 4 Elf Ranger Duelist Aletheia

Week 18: Asnofre Playset

Week 19: 3x Dark Mantle Assassin 3d prints by Crippled God Foundry

Week 20: 2x Tabaxi Dancer prints from Vae Victis (high quality #5, #6)

Week 21: 3x Cat Rogue 3d prints, Skivvara from Twin Goddess, 2x Cat Captains from Vae Victis, Avatar of Sekhmet from Reaper (high quality #7)

Week 22: 7x Viking Hirdmen

Week 23: 7x Viking Hirdmen

Week 24: 6x Viking Hirdmen

Week 25: 7x Viking Hirdmen

Week 26: 7x Viking Hirdmen

Week 27: 8x Viking Huscarls

Week 28: 4x Viking Hearthguards

Week 29: Warlord Saxon Leaders, Saxon Earls, 

Week 30: 7x Frostgrave Barbarians (high quality #8)

Week 31: 7x Frostgrave Barbarians (high quality #9)

Week 32: 6x Frostgrave Barbarians (high quality #10)

Week 33: Four Years of Painting article

Week 34: Dauntless deck plan

Week 35: Dauntless hero liftship prop

Week 36: Artisan Guild Goldmaw Lizard E, Dark Sword Otter Knight, Reaper Baily Silverbell, Tiger Skull RPG Hunter Oathenshard, Reaper Anval Thricedamned

Week 37: SHIP WIP

Week 38: SHIP WIP

Week 39: SHIP WIP

Week 40: HMS Dauntless

Week 41: 2x Bones 4 Dire Boars, vintage Grenadier Wereape and Wereboar, Bones 4 Bed Mockingbeast, Chainmail Starter Set Hyena, Nolzur's Bulette

Week 42: Reaper Nova Corp Riflemen and Soldiers

Week 43: Reaper Pulp Era Pilot and Sascha Dubois, Strahva, Lecter Hernandez, Jenny Silverleg, and Bonnie Gun from Titan Forge

Week 44: 6x Titan City Citizens "the gals"

Week 45: 6x Titan City Citizens "the dudes"

Week 46: Reaper Bones Bonnie, Titan Forge Ryan Ford, Tex, Dungeons & Lasers sci-fi props

Week 47: Titan Forge Jake Rockatacky, Camille Lipson, Anna Jones, July J, Jane Ferro

Week 48: Ghar Bomber, Ghar Assault, 2x 0-hr starships, Grenadier Street Gang Car and Corporate Sports Car

Week 49: Dungeons and Lasers misc props, 2x 3d printed aurumvorax, Reaper Bones Burrowing Horror, Reaper Bones Cretus, Minotaur

Week 50: Rage Drake from Wrath of Ashardalon, Reaper Bones Dragon Tortoise, Bones 5 Owlbear, 2x Reaper Bones Griffon, 

Week 51: Reaper Bones Kristianna, Cassiata, Hyrekia, Andriessa, Alastriel, Sarah the Seeress, Lysette

Week 52: 5x Bones 5 Hobgoblins, Fighters Guild Dude, RAFM Bard (male), Bril Le Ante, Vae Victis Orc Blacksmith, 10x Skellingtons from Runeforge

A thing a week 2022, week 52

We're going to round out 2022 with a bang and on Christmas Day no less. There's a lot of stuff to go through as we clear out the bow wave I've been pushing since the fall as per usual.

These five dudes are Bones 5 Hobgoblins. They were a speed paint done over a few days from the typical scheme. Prime->Zenithal->basecoats->highlights with the notable inclusion of an oil wash. Every time I use an oil wash I'm surprised at a) how messy they are, and b) how goshdarned good figs look after it. I may do a lot more of these in the not-so-distant future. Ultimately, these guys probably warranted a better paint job than I did since they're such good sculpts. They weighed in at around an hour and change per fig. While I'm not entirely satisfied with them, I'm fairly happy with the result.

I think this is Fighter Guild Male E from Artisan's Guild and found somewhere in this collection. As this guy is mostly armor and because I've wanted to use my airbrush more, he's unsurprisingly mostly airbrushed. The zenithal is basically a metallic and I only vaguely recall not using my favorite Vallejo Metal Colors for what I assume is a good reason. His cloak is a lot less smooth than I'd like but he was completed in around 3 hours over a couple of evenings because I was lazy. This fig will hold a better quality paint job so possibly he'll show up again in the future, possibly with a different weapon.

Next up we have Bril Le Ante, the mounted version. I should have pinned this guy since the Bril part was so freakin' hard to paint as opposed to the horse part. He's a vintage metal fig and the mounted version showed up here way back in week 39 of 2020 which feels like another world. He was also painted over a couple days and for the same reason. There's something distinctly different about vintage hand-sculpted figures, their smaller stature notwithstanding. I like this guy and if I was ever going to repaint a fig, this guy would be high on that list.

These next two are an exercise in persistence. He is RAFM Bard (Male) and she is RAFM Elf Ranger (Female). A couple years ago I spent a big chunk of time identifying what I thought was all of my vintage figures. Having painted these two firmly glued to their bases, I couldn't find any evidence of this and in the initial writing of this post, I decided to take one last look and guessed at the manufacturer. I lucked out and within a couple minutes had the above links. The paint jobs themselves are nothing special. He stuck around on my painting desk for most of the year picking up whatever extra paint I had in the right colors if I finished a thing up early. She was done as a speed paint over a couple days of doing other things. The story is good and the figs are painted.

This is a 3d printed Orc Blacksmith from Vae Victis. It's a mostly good sculpt full of character like a lot of their figs. There are some really annoying negative spaces, though, like between her feet and the stump, and between her left arm and her body. I also wish that some of the details were a little sharper, particularly, the straps and belts, pouches, and other tools. Possible that my printer did a bad there and you can see that the end of her hammer is missing due to a failed support--this printer does that a lot. This was otherwise a fairly enjoyable speed paint in a couple hours. This fig can probably support a better paint job so probably I'll flip her around and do a lefty version sometime in the future.

We end the year with a batch of ten skellingtons from Runeforge Skeletal Army campaign. I am a sucker for a good deal and this campaign was definitely that. I don't use a ton of undead in my campaigns usually but when I do, I need a lot of them and the samples shown in the campaign looked really good. I printed these ten out this summer in an attempt to bring my cost per fig down some (yes, I track this stuff) and they'd been bumping around since then half prepped. Well, this was the week to finish them. They're a speed paint (obviously) to the tune of about six hours for all ten. I started with a fairly run of the mill slap chop like the cool kids are doing these days but hit up additional details and washes and rust and crap after that. For reasons I don't understand every fig from my first bottle of resin is extremely brittle but everything I've printed after that have been much more durable. Overall, they aren't winning any awards but hopefully they'll terrorize my player characters sometime soon.

2022 finished mini counter: 260/100

A thing a week 2022, week 51

This is a special one for reasons that we'll get into at the end. All of these figs are from Reaper Bones and suffer from the typical Reaper Bones issues: soft details, messy mold lines, and bent weapons. These aren't the last of my normal Reaper Bones figs (there are maybe a couple dozen left that are unpainted) but probably I won't be buying more. Note: the Bones 4, 5, 6, Black, and Bones USA lines are all much better with noticeable quality improvements across those lines. 

First up we have Kristianna and Cassiata. Neither of these particular figures are helped by their Bones-ness but I did what I could with the details I could make out. These two are pseudo-speed paints to the tune of about five hours for both and looking at these shots, their metallics really could use more work. I keep using Ghost Tints over Vallejo Metal Colors and I either need to spend more time on doing so or do something else. The candy coats look nice when they're consistent but it's super easy to not let them dry completely and to tear up the previous layer. Mixing isn't anywhere near as saturated when applied and I'm not sure I have the patience to do Golden High Flow mixes with the Metal Colors (mine are unintentionally glossy). They still look good on the table and there might be a future where I get metals or Bones Black versions of these gals to paint at a later date. 

Next up are Hyrekia, Dragonthrall Mage and Andriessa, Female Wizard. Andriessa got a ton of screen time in a previous campaign but I didn't paint her based on the character description. There's some patchiness on her cloak I'm not enamored with though the blending on her dress was adequate. Probably more work was warranted on her hair but that's true on most of my figs. Hyrekia was kind of a mess to paint. The gemstones went OK but her shirt is quite notably just highlights plus the zenithal. I spent a lot of time on Andriessa doing blends that didn't really work out. Overall, they're fine.

These two are Alastriel and Sarah the Seeress. I like both of these two figs, too, and might also buy better molds in better material at a later date. I did quite a lot of sculpting with paint on both figs. Alastriel, for instance, did not come with razor sharp abs but she does look good with them. I put extra work into the hair for both figs rather than the more typical phoning it in I usually do. I'm going to have to get over that at some point, but not today!  Probably Alastriel's...ankle dress...thing...could have been in a better color. Some details on Sarah's robe could have been sharper, too. Lots of time spent blending on both figs to the tune of about eight hours for both. I think I have a dupe of Sarah so probably we'll see her here again sometime in the future.

Last up we have Lysette, Female Elf and I love this fig. The sculpt does a lot of the work and while I like the color scheme I chose, I don't think it super works. The orange of her hair is correct but unbalanced; there needs to be some other kind of orange somewhere in there. The rest of the details could certainly be sharper but I went out of my way to clean a lot of the normal junk up. She looks good at tabletop distance and OK in hand. Overall, I'm happy to count Lysette as a high quality paint job done in around six hours and will almost certainly try to find another in a different material.

And there we are, seven lovelies now painted. I'm pretty happy with these but I'm also happy that these complete the set of figures I bought in 2016. I made two orders that year, one in late May and one in late July to be used in my then-new RPGs. I remember thinking "I'm never going to paint all of those," and in fact, it'd be almost two years until I completed painting any of those, though at the time I'd forgotten all the mechs I painted with enamel last millennium. Turns out, I was wrong! What's the next category to fall? Stay tuned!

2022 finished mini counter: 240/100, 11/10 high quality

A thing a week 2022, week 50

This week we continue our non-theme of "stuff that's been on my desk for too long" though if we're really honest, that's most of the figs I haven't painted. For reasons I can't explain, I regularly end up with a backlog of prepped and zenithaled figs dozens if not hundreds deep.

First up we have a rage drake from Wrath of Ashardalon boardgame. This is a good sculpt let down by a lousy mold like a lot of the D&D boardgame figs and I wasn't able to un-warp his awful base. This is high drama, low effort speed paint with a very deliberate color shift from below to above which I really like. He was mostly painted with the airbrush first the yellow tones and magenta basecoat before hitting him with a transparent yellow from above to shift his back toward orange. I intended his scales to be glossy provided by Golden High Flow Acrylics which I really like out of the airbrush. The rest of the details were done with a brush afterward. The base is basically the airbrush overspray tinted with several layers of Seraphim Sepia. This worked far better than I thought it would and makes it look like he's radiating red. 

This big guy is a Reaper Bones Dragon Tortoise which I own most of two of. The first one was purchased for a campaign I ran in 2016 but found too late that he had arrived with two left legs. Reaper was kind enough to send me a whole kit as a replacement for free, not that I need more reasons to like them. Earlier this year I decided the time was right and after basing and priming I set him aside for the better part of six months. Airbrushing seemed like the right approach which is most of his basecoating. I did some highlights on these in acrylics including most of his details and hit him with an oil wash. If he looks at all glossy in the photo, it's because he hasn't completely cured yet. Oils upside: works like magic. Oils downside: sometimes takes forever to cure. Overall, I really like how he came out and he'll count as this year's second large figure.

D&D is filled with weird monsters and the owlbear is no exception. This entry is from Bones 5 kickstarter and I think he's probably the best sculpt of the bunch. He's also gigantic. The fur basecoat was a green wash that I was mixing that didn't end up particularly green and I can only guess why. The rest of the fig including the base is more or less phoned in but a) he's painted, and b) it didn't take very long. I might do more work on his wings at a later date if I can be bothered but more than likely I won't. 

These last two are of a couple Reaper Bones Griffon sculpts. I bought the dark one for a previous campaign that I expected to play in person in 2020 but 2020 had other ideas. He'd been sitting on my desk taking up a lot of space for quite a while now. The other guy came with the Bones 5 kickstarter. The tawny fur was done mostly with the airbrush and my shots don't really sell all the volumetric shading I did. 

The wings are mostly done with Vallejo Dark Grey Wash. The dark guy could go a shade darker but I didn't want to chance losing the texture any more than I already had and I didn't want to mess around with another drybrush. The other guy probably could have some better feather detailing. As much as I like painting wings, I didn't spend a lot of time on these guys, sadly. But they're painted and I suspect they'll get some game time sometime soon. 

2022 finished mini counter: 232/100, 2/2 large

A thing a week 2022, week 49

Sci-fi was fun but let's head back to fantasyland, shall we? We'll kick it off with this random assortment of props. The stockade, chest, and pair of lantern poles are from one of the Dungeons and Lasers but I am far too lazy to look up which one. The suit of armor and target are from Bones 4 kickstarter. I'd intended to differentiate the two lantern poles as day and night but then got lazy around the OSL. The chest metallics are painted with an ancient and terrible pot of Reaper metallic brass. The tuft on the target does a lot of work to call attention away from a lousy paint job. 

Next up we have a pair of 3d printed aurumvorax..er..aurumvoraces? These are a weird D&D monster whose name translates roughly as "gold glutton" and the model is by Yasashii Kyojin Studio. I didn't follow the D&D directions beyond the golden pelt which makes the figures look glossier than they actually are. These were a speed paint mostly played by airbrushing basecoats, contrast paint on the mane, and a rough drybrushing with that same ancient and lousy metallic brass both done within an hour or so. I might print these again and do some fur patterns as practice in the future.

Next we have a Reaper Bones Burrowing Horror. I bought this guy as a companion for the various bulettes and other elementals I have in my collection for a previous campaign. Obviously, he didn't make it for that and sat primed on my painting desk for what seems like a stupidly long time taking up more space than I liked. Well, he's painted now and I hit the high points I was looking for. Namely, I wanted fairly subtle tints of grey which I think work pretty well. A lot of the work on his armor is drybrushing but what really sold it was the very laborious picking out of scales, teeth, and claws. Overall, I think it's a good result for a couple hours of work.

This last guy is a Reaper Bones Cretus, Minotaur (notably not metal) and was not a speed paint though it probably doesn't seem that way. I've been painting this guy on and off for a year or so. The important part was selling his crazy musculature and his many metallics. I got half of that ultimately and painted and re-painted his fleshtones probably three times till I got here played by some lousy basecoating followed by airbrush highlights to restore the lighting, and hitting him with an oil wash with last week's Ghar dudes since I had one handy and didn't want to mess with this guy anymore. The metallics are crap but I wanted him done and he is now. 

2022 finished mini counter: 228/100