A thing a week 2023, week 5

This week we have similarly medium drama, low effort paint jobs but with slightly more effort. These first three are (hopefully obviously) air, water, and fire elementals. They're cast in fairly rigid translucent plastic which I did almost no work on. The paint is mostly washes and drybrushing and being unhappy about all of the mold lines that I missed. Not much to see here, really. 

Painted at a different time is the magma elemental from the same line. Technically he's supposed to be an earth elemental to go with the others above but I thought he'd look better as a magma elemental and I wanted the practice. This looked a lot like skipping the zenithal, painting the lower recesses yellow then going orange->super dark red->black in increasingly thin drybrush layers until I got something close to what I wanted. After that I glazed with various late colors until I arrived here. In retrospect, I probably should have airbrushed in yellow to save a step and then done more with a better drybrush. I think it sells, at least slightly, so that works. 

2023 finished mini counter: 43/104

A thing a week 2023, week 4

This week we have what might be considered a filler. Nay, I say, these are still figures, they still needed paint, and I still painted them. It's not about the effort as much as being to tally things to the done column. 

Blacklist Fantasy Series 1 has been plagued with issues for a while now and I don't particularly want to think about it anymore so suffice to say, I've received my pledge (finally) and am starting to paint these figs. These are medium drama, low effort paint jobs and basically how I handle transparent figures where I want to utilize that transparency. 

First up we have mist snakes and oozes and they're individual sides of the equation. The snakes are just drybrushed and the oozes are just washed. The blue spirits and banshees are both and this time around I did them in reverse order first drybrushing then washing. Previously I've done these in the reverse order and given these results, I should go back to doing them that way.

2023 finished mini counter: 39/104

A thing a week 2023, week 3

This week we have "stuff sitting on my painting table" in preparation for a bunch of other work. 

First up we have Stranger from Titan Forge. It's a simple figure which I like and the sculpt conveys an air of old school mystery. I'd intended to paint him mostly with the airbrush and did put some blue on his cloak along those lines but only succeeded in making a mess. The blue on his cloak is thus very patchy and somewhat shiny due to multiple coats of an indigo ink and sketchy coats of anti-shine. And for reasons I don't fully understand, the prime was really thick and obscured some of the details. All told, he's done in a couple hours but I think the fig will support a much better paint job than I'm showing here. 

This is Adowyn Iconic Hunter from Reaper Bones who came in my Bones 4 order what seems like forever ago. She's sat partially painted on my table for a couple years now. The molding on her face is really soft and as a result I had to work extra hard to get a decent face on her. Other details were pretty hard to pick out, too, and I kind of wanted to be lore adjacent for this paint job. I got the last part but truth be told this was a fairly torturous piece of work. I don't like overly-detailed figs and she's got a lot of details. I also wouldn't hazard a guess as to how long it took since it spanned so much calendar time. Probably 6ish hours over those couple years. Also, I'm glad she's (finally) painted.

This a 3d print of a great sculpt from one of my favorite sculptors: Half-Orc Wizard from Vae Victis. This is not a good paint job. His skin tones are flat and I didn't do enough to light his volumes well. And if you're asking "did I put words in his book", the answer is no. I do like this color scheme, though, and as mentioned earlier, I really like this sculpt so probably he's getting printed/painted again at some point in the future. He's done in maybe three hours all told.

Next up we have Aileen, Celtic Wizard from Twin Goddess. There's lots to like about this sculpt like her expressive face and fun pose. There's also a lot to not like such as the very small connection point between her wrist which broke off way too often and the negative spaces on her shoulder and back. I also made a mess when de-supporting the print so she's got a bunch of scars a couple of which are tragically on her face. I love the hair, though, and being Celtic, I naturally had to make her a ginger. Because she's not a super complex sculpt I spent a lot of time on her face and hair which I think paid off. She, too may be printed again sometime in the unforsee-able future. 

This is Shael Han Za'ken from Wrath of Kings bereft of his kitty partner who will show up some day. His getup is pretty fancy, maybe too fancy, and he had awful mold lines and a really bad mold of his face. I did what I could with those and more or less speed painted him in a few hours. I started to like the sculpt more when I was done so it's probably good that I have a second waiting in my pile of potential. 

Last up we have a Tabaxi Assassin from Printed Obsession. If it's not already obvious, I have a weakness for kitty girls and I super duper love this fig's dynamism. The plethora of super tiny details, negative space, and bajillion straps on the other hand, I'm less fond of. As an early print before I'd cranked up the res some, she's got some pretty bad visible layers over a lot of very fine details so overall I wasn't super happy. And yes, I did intentionally not paint her buckles in metallics. You don't want metal glinting over light sources as an assassin, do you? She's been on my painting table for quite a while and even though there's a lot of room for improvement, it'll have to wait till next print. 

2023 finished mini counter: 19/104

A thing a week 2023, week 2

This week we have a continuation of the lizardpeople theme, this time sculpts from One Page Rules. These are particularly Saurian Warriors, Saurian Gecko Priest and Saurian Veteran. There's good and bad with these figs. They're awfully busy which fits the aesthetic I guess, and they're modular but in a mess of pieces. My printer struggled to not deform them as they printed which left some seriously awful gaps that I didn't handle super well. If I print these again in the future I'll spend more time filling gaps and whatnot. 

They were mostly painted with the airbrush but I didn't quite get to where I wanted to go. I intended to do a color shift from magenta to scarlet but the various washes and drybrushes I did obscured all of that. My takeaways here is "less is more" and "use fewer washes" both of which I kind of already knew. I also had aspirations to shade their metallics more but I clearly did almost none of that as per usual. Ultimately I think they're striking and to the casual observer they're fine (I checked). They were done in around ten hours for the seven of them which is pretty quick all things considered.

In addition to being out of focus (as per usual) these shots don't really capture the good stuff and make them look awfully flat. In person they're a lot less so and the "rock" bases in particular look much nicer. In retrospect looking at these shots, I really should have done more with their metallics like I wanted to. Next time, maybe. 

2023 finished mini counter: 13/104

A thing a week 2023, week 1

This year starts on a Sunday so you get three posts in one day. It also means that I've had to double-time it to get something not embarrassing in the front row of this year's wrap up post. The good news is that because it's the holidays I've had more than the usual amount of time to work on stuff.

First up we have a 3d print of Kitsune Ranger from Galaad. He's notably painted like an Australian Shepherd since he's a replacement player character for my in-person game. I have a couple gripes with what is otherwise a pretty good sculpt. The bracers' and anklets' negative space is IMO a little too pronounced which made them hard to paint. I also don't super like fur tufts like he's got since it makes picking out the larger volumes harder. All that said, he was a fun paint and despite the fact that the sculpt did most of the work, I'm calling him the first of the year's high quality jobs.

Next up we have a pair of nice figs, namely City Guard Elite Captain from Crippled God Foundry that I printed very badly. I like that this sculpt a) has a nice open pose, b) has reasonable armor, and c) has an expressive face. The last of those is why I painted these at all which I might not have otherwise. They're small, I think 28mm though I haven't measured, which made their eyes especially painful, but hey, that's good practice (always paint eyes). Someday I'll figure out how to work my printer to have fewer of these kinds of print failures. At that point I may revisit this sculpt.

This gal is Curiphaias Dragonborn Sorcerer from the D&D is a Woman campaign and sadly I can't provide a direct link. She's also really small, probably the same 28mm and came supported not terribly well so this print has more weird scarring and missed connection points than normal. She was a reasonable paint without too terribly many tiny details and completed in around three hours with the airbrush doing the bulk of the scaletone work. I'm happy with this rendition but not satisfied. Possibly she'll show up again sometime in the future.

This is Dragonguard Lady E from Artisan Guild and I super like this sculpt. Like Curiphaias, the bulk of the scalework was done with the airbrush though looking at the final shots here, I really should have done the metallics instead. I had some very lofty aspirations to do a bunch of shading on her armor that I clearly didn't do and I completely sidestepped any OSL for this round despite her obviously flaming sword. Even with the airbrush work, she represents something like six hours of effort done in about a day with a lot of attention to detail so I'm comfortable counting her as high quality #2 for the year despite the fact that the sculpt did most of the work. As a modular figure, you can expect future prints with said missing OSL sometime in the future.

What would be better than one flaming sword? How about two! Rounding out this group is, you guessed it, Dragonguard Lady F from Artisans Guild and no, she didn't actually come with two flaming swords. Astute viewers will note that the flames are going in different directions because through the magic of digital printing, I mirrored the right hand flaming sword so she could be extra rad. Or hype. Whatever the kids are saying these days. Clearly I also omitted any real OSL but I did work extra hard on her orangy cloak thingy. I really like this color scheme and I think we'll see a lot more of the blues and oranges this year since apparently last year was greens and purples. She'll count as high quality #3 done in about the same six hours as Lady E. 

2023 finished mini counter: 6/104, 3/10 high quality

2023 crafting challenge

This is now the fourth year I've done this kind of challenge. I don't know what that means but I'm cranking through crafting projects faster than I would have ever thought possible. Like last year I'd like to do more high quality work but probably that won't stop my penchant for batch paints. Also like last year, "must be done" qualifier is waived for any effort requiring >20 hours or so. 

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 so
• A Lego build
• A video
• A tool for hobbying or something
• Other?  Much of what I do defies easy categorization

Goals:

• One Hundred Four painted miniatures of at least tabletop quality (that's 2 per week)
• Ten high quality pieces involving at least one of OSL, NMM, or unusual attention to detail
• Two busts or larger figs
• One complex structure or other construction

2022 in Review

After a markedly lousy start, this decade is finally starting to look up! 2022 was still full of its own challenges, personal and otherwise, but it's easy to be optimistic given where we've been recently. What will 2023 entail? Dunno but I'm ready to find out!

Gaming

I didn't do a ton of video gaming most of the year until Dwarf Fortress released on Steam, though Super Auto Pets gets special mention even if I didn't spend a lot of time with it. I have mixed feelings about the Steam version of DF. On the one hand, some things are markedly improved for using the mouse and Toady has fixed a handful of really tedious and weird interfaces. On the other hand, the new mouse interface is just as obtuse and clunky as the old keyboard one and he moved around a bunch of the hotkeys without replacing some of them. Result? I spent way too long trying to figure out how to dig stairs down and to make track stops work...and make farm plots...and make beds. Also ran: losing the ability to queue things through hotkeys and having to use the mouse. Bad. Eventually the mod makers will catch up and I can go back to being able to, I dunno, do things effectively in a game I've spent untold hundreds of hours with already.

This year I finished two full-length RPG campaigns and ran a very amusing 3-shot sci-fi miniseries. For those of you who follow my escapades on facebook, I mention it pretty often: it's a gift to finish any campaign but in the last six-ish years I've had the luxury of finishing seven full length runs and two mini-series with two in progress right now. That's already got to be in the tiniest minority of all GMs. Better yet? We have cross-referenced jokes, cameos, and, er, references, even across genres. I don't ever recall hearing anyone ever doing that and certainly not regularly.

Gardening

My gardening efforts didn't go spectacularly this year. I transplanted tomatoes and peppers out too early this year and most of them died to a late cold spell. The late start and other weird weather kept yields fairly low. I had such grand plans for all the tomatoes I didn't get. Possibly this had something to do with soil quality, too, but I did amend heavily with compost this spring. I'll probably do more amending thisnext year so hopefully that'll help resolve. 

Painting

In addition to blowing past my painting goals for a third year in a row, I hit a the four digit mark of lifetime painted figs--a pretty cool milestone. Next thousand will be a few years out still. I also finished painting every figure I bought in 2016. I have my records in major groups either by year or by major kickstarter and a couple other random things like 3d prints. Couldn't tell you what the next group I might complete but for a few of those years I probably over-bought. I also completed 260 figs which is five per week--a far cry from the 380 or so I did in 2021 but IMO it's still pretty good. Note: there are a few missing from this shot (I gave them away at the end of campaigns) and the rows at the end are slightly out of order. I didn't think you'd mind.

I also put a lot of effort into raising the quality bar thislast year. While I don't think that the upper end of my range has moved much since 2021, I do think the average has moved quite a lot. NextThis year I want to do a bunch of side-by-sides of much older high quality paint jobs and really crank it up. I'm helped by the fact that I already have multiples or can print multiples of many of my favorites.

Fin

Ending these posts is always weird since it's recapping a year's worth of stuff. So I guess I'll saytype that I have high hopes for 2023 and I guess we'll just have to see how it all works out.