A thing a week 2021, week 13 (dungeon tiles!)

Now for something completely different.  My hobbying, the painting and building parts of it anyway, begin with making dungeon tiles circa 2016.  I knew I wanted to play with minis so I bought a bunch and I knew that I wanted a tactical game.  Problem:  aside from my handy vinyl hex maps with hexes that were too small, I didn't really have much terrain.  I certainly didn't have any building stand-ins so I either printed out hex maps on my black and white laser printer (since deceased) or drew on my vinyl maps with wet-erase markers.  That is, until I discovered dungeon tiles (cue dramatic music).  

I probably got the idea from either Wyloch or Black Magic Craft but somewhere in the heady days of 2016 I printed out some crappy maps on my black and white laser printer (now deceased) and pasted them upon multi-level cardboard disasters that roughly matched the shapes.  This would become more refined over the years culminating with these from April of 2019.  These are 4" x 4" x 0.25" chunks of XPS foam hit with a Green Stuff World texture roller (pavement).  With Wyloch's interlocking chipboard mechanism, they fit together acceptably though not reliably.  Once together, they're nice, but they're kind of a pain to work with.  

Well, these are the latest incarnation, iteration five or six or something--I dunno, I lost track.  They're the same 4" x 4" but half an inch thick and I milled them when burning through some of my stock last year.  They were always intended as double sided but by design they also match the height of the last iteration even if they won't lock with them.  I noodled a lot on the attachment mechanism.  I knew I wanted to use magnets but didn't want to have to deal with terrible polarity issues.  First up:  tacks.  They didn't work because of their curved tops.  So then I thought nails and walked away with a $10 box of ferrous roofing nails.  If there's one hint I can give any aspiring tabletop crafter, it's that you can save a lot of money by using stuff you can get at the hardware store.  Pro-tip:  if you're looking to use magnets, bring one with you when buying materials to test against whatever you hope it'll stick to.  

There are basically three nails on each of two sides and three 3x2 mm magnets on each of the other two sides.  They stick closer together which is nice and they're textured on both sides.  One side is Green Stuff World flagstone and the other side is textured with a ball point pen and wire brush as wooden planking.  They're primed with black craft paint + Mod Podge sealer and painted first with crappy craft paints and then with crappy washes I made several years ago adulterated with far more expensive inks and mediums to make them work correctly.  Turns out, you can learn a lot in a few years.  

I am super looking forward to using these sixteen magnetic, double-sided dungeon tiles in person whenever it is we can do that kind of thing again.  These will count as the first of my five "buildings" this year.  

2021 finished "building" counter: 1/5

A thing a week 2021, week 12 (Spiders!)

As threatened at some point last year, I printed out a bunch more spiders at a slightly larger size--sixteen of them, even. They came off the printer at slightly low quality and were painted similarly. I have no illusions that his was in any way high effort painting but they are indeed painted. For this go-around I improved (slightly) on the original set. They were primed and washed and then drybrushed as if by zenithal.  After that some details were slopped on in an off white before hitting them with a Badger Ghost Tint candy coat. The bases were finished very simply in black. They'll count 2:1 because it's my challenge and I'm comfortable with this ratio of almost no effort.  

When I started out this year and was setting goals, I had no expectation that I'd land at 100 in March. I'm still short on the high quality and OSL goals but I'm not super concerned with getting those in at this point. I'm going to do now what I did last year at roughly this time--switch gears to doing other stuff. That'll also give me space to get some effort on one or more more of the missing try-hards.Watch this space!

2021 finished mini counter:  100/100

A thing a week 2021, week 11 (filler!)

This year so far has been a big year for mini painting, following from a strong 2020. Because things are going so well, I'm pushing this week's normally scheduled programming to bring you this news flash:  it's minis. That's right.  Minis. This mini-mini theme is brought to you by "random stuff I have prepped on my painting table."  

This is a Bones 4 Lowland Owlbear which is distinct from its often mistaken cousin, the Highland Owlbear which is renown for its love of dry whiskeys. I prepped this guy sometime last summer because he looked cool and then I didn't get to painting him...until now. Well, honestly, it was a week and a half ago because these posts roll out later than the actual event. This was my favorite kind of painting:  slap some paint around and focus on a couple details. That's more James Wappel shaded basecoat action over top of a zenithal-anti-zenithal-sandwich-plus-some-actual-airbrush-basecoating. I painted him as a cross between a grizzly and a great horned owl and any particular resemblance to either creature is a coincidence since I didn't look up reference for either. Other than the funky smell from the chocolate brown craft paint wash I'm trying to use up, I think it's a good result for the not-even-an-hour that I spent on him. Probably the spikes on his back are too stark but meh.

These four penguins are from, you guessed it, Bones 4 and available for purchase as Penguin Attack Pack.  These are also not exceptionally difficult painting though the dire penguin (the one with spikey bits) did have a few more details. I'd hoped to paint them mostly with the airbrush but forgot that they're counter-shaded and had to work a little bit harder. They landed in a couple hours for all four and even though I could have pushed the contrast more, I'm not unhappy with them. Not sure why my camera felt the need to blurrify these shots. 

This is a pig, also from Bones 4. The cart, if you're wondering, was last seen in week 45 of 2020. This guy has sat on my workbench for many months partially painted. I wanted to practice my brush blends but that's way too much work. Instead, he's about 5 minutes of easy airbrushing and maybe 5 minutes of additional detail work for his trotters and eyes and such. I'm not going to pretend this is high art or anything, but it's painted and that's something.

2021 finished mini counter:  92/100

A Lounge of Lizards part 4 (2021 week 10)

This has been a good theme:  four whole weeks! In actuality, these were finished some weeks ago in the middle of February. It's been a really good traipse through my backlog and some figs that I really like even if they don't get a ton of screen time. Being able to use the airbrush a lot more was a real boon despite having to wrestle with the dang thing so much. Additionally, I'm trying to take better pictures. I mean, I bought this expensive camera, I may as well get to using it better.  

This first guy is a Snakeman Warrior from Reaper Bones. I don't remember why I didn't paint Mr. Snakeman in orange and with the last batch, but I'm sure I had a reason that wasn't "make my life harder," but there ya go. I like this fig and I spent a little extra time on him. Like the other figs in this theme, he was mostly painted with my cheapo airbrush. Most of these green folks have brush-painted bellies/details and drybrushed and washed and completed quite quickly. I spent not quite enough time on the shading of his metallics and not quite enough time highlighting and shading his excessive gear. So there's that. I think it's an OK result.   

Reaper bones show prominently on these un-hallowed pages and I've had these Nagendra prepped on my desk for quite a long time. These particular guys are Nagendra Swordsmen and mostly airbrushed with some basic effort to shade their metallics. I'm not 100% sold on the turquoise runes on their weapons but they work OK. Airbrushing sped this whole batch up quite a lot and even though they were a speed paint, I think the quality is higher than the effort I actually spent on them. 

Next up we have Nagendra Warriors who (quite obviously) follow the same scheme as the other folks in this batch. The texturing on the bow and haft of the polearm (a pudao, I think) looked good and I decided to paint them in the same bronze as the armor of the other folks. In retrospect, I don't think a bronze bow would actually work so it's, um, maaaaagic. Now that they're done, I'm fairly sure they'll get some screen time when we can play in person, whenever that happens.

This heavily armored guy is one half of Nagendra Leaders and I really should have spent more time on him.  His armor is a mix of Vallejo Metal Colors gold and copper with a candy coat of Badger Minitaire Golden Yellow like the hoplites from last year. This year I'm making a real effort to highlight/shade my metallics and this guy didn't really get enough of that. I like the yellowy-bronze but it's still really flat. The volumes aren't picked out correctly which was admittedly lazy. I don't  particularly like this figure which is part of why I didn't expend more effort. It's a soft sculpt and despite my best efforts, his swords are still awfully bendy...but he's done now. Overall the greenies here sans the last piece were done in roughly ten hours total which seems quick for me given the results.  

I don't think the leader holding the fireball makes any sense (lizards tend to have neither mammaries nor birth canals) but I did like advantage of the situation to hit up some OSL on her anyway.  For this application, I revisited James Wappel's techniques which start with a very rough initial application slapping paints on in roughly the right places and refining in further steps.  I like painting this way and I really like painting in OSL even though I'm terrible at it. Taking a closer look at the photos, I may have overdone it--probably the light is too stark. Despite this, I think the results are good for maybe a couple hours over a couple evenings.  

This is going to finish off A Lounge of Lizards 2021 and these folks were done in roughly five hours total which seems quick for the results I got.  Handy airbrush using?  Check.  Drybrushing highly textured figs for good effect?  Check.  Focusing on the right details and a gratuitous use of OSL?  Check.  I'ma call this one successful.

2021 finished mini counter:  86/100, 2/5 OSL, 1/5 high quality

A Lounge of Lizards, part 3 (2021 week 9)

This week we finish up the lizards theme strong with a bunch of figs plus a bonus.  

In keeping with our theme, this is an absolutely enormous croco-gator or something (actually a Dire Crocodile) who came in my Reaper Bones 4 pledge.  I actually used such a creature about a year ago in a sewer fight and had completely forgotten that I had this guy.  I don't recall what my standin was.  He was mostly painted with previously mentioned cheapo airbrush with a little bit of effort pulling out details but after last week's pseudo-try-hard effort, I just wanted to slap some paint around.  So that's what I did.  Most of the hard stuff on this guy was the airbrush but being a natural creature that generally blends into the environment, I didn't do a lot beyond its eyes and teeth.  I'd say it looks good for the roughly hour I spent on it.  

Also from my Reaper Bone 4 pledge came this Wyvern.  It'd been prepped on my priming/building desk for many months with a bunch of other large winged creatures which might make an appearance later this year.  It's painted in mostly the same color scheme as the Dire Croc with some dry brushing and washing in yellows and browns on the wing membranes to pop them out.  It wasn't super complicated painting but I think it looks good for the couple hours I put into it.  If I had it to do again, I think I would have toned down the wing membranes since the yellow is so eye-catching and detracts from his crazy-eyed head.

These guys are Nolzur's Grey Slaad and Death Slaad which I don't remember buying and yet they show up in my records nonetheless.  The more I paint these Nolzur's figs the more I'm disappointed with them.  I hate the mold lines which are awful and I'm not super sold on their "pre-primed" state which sometimes paint doesn't like to stick to.  I basically slapped paint on these guys in a pseudo-shaded basecoat kind of way channeling my inner Wappellious Spellbrush which is quite fun.  They're green and orange because I had those colors out on the palette and I don't particularly care what the models are supposed to be.  They were completed in around 4 hours total and I think they look OK for that investment.  

Next up we have three Runewars Flesh Rippers which I'm pretty sure I bought at steep discount with a bunch of other interesting figs.  I don't play Runewars and I have no idea if they're actually lizards but it's my theme and I'm going to count them as such.  These were a mess and I lost one of their arms which is why there are only three of them.  I don't know what kind of plastic they used but it's hard to get mold lines off of and on these guys they were brutal.  They were base-coated mostly with my cheapo airbrush with highlights and details as normal with a normal brush.  These weren't a hard paint but they came out OK to the tune of ~4 hours for the three of them.  They look a little flat now that I'm not in the throes of painting them and I might punch them up a bit at a later date.

Last up this week we have a Reaper Bones Chaos Toad Sorcerer.  It came with my Bones 4 pledge and since it's holding a fireball, I took this opportunity to have some fun with object source lighting.  And this one was actually fun!  It started out with slapping paint around the model and three hours later that was pretty much what I was still doing.  I don't know what it was with this one.  The details aren't good and there's a lot of crap that is just plain not right but I liked the lighting effect enough to stop painting.  I didn't even get back to cleaning up the mess on the smoke trail.  I like painting OSL and I'm excited to do more--stay tuned!

2021 serious OSL attempts:  1/5

2021 finished mini counter:  79/100

A Lounge of Lizards, part 2 (2021 week 8)

Following up last week's lizards we have these scary chaps many of which have seen play.  This week, too, we got some nice speed ups through zenithal + counter shade + base coating with the airbrush.  I might be closer to getting a spendy one than I thought!

These orangey chaps are Reaper Bones Lizardman Warrior, his name-twin Lizardman Warrior, and similarly-named Lizardman Spearman.  Orange isn't a color that I paint in very much and this was a good excuse to see how terrible it could be practice with it.  Red is also a color I've struggled with.  While painting these guys, something clicked.  Brent of Goobertown who I will one day print and paint, said something very similar when painting some Seraphon lizardoods which I find more than a little interesting.  Also, I note that during this work I a) mostly used a resuscitated red sable brush I like a lot, and b) mostly used Pro Acryl paints which I also like a lot and these two things made this process waaaaaay more enjoyable.  I'd forgotten how nice it is to use brushes without a hook and paints that don't suck.  The three of them were done in like 10 hours and while I spent a similar amount of time on them overall, I think the shield and club guy turned out the best and I'm comfortable counting him as my first high quality paint this year.  

These four are two packs of Reaper Bones Spikeshell Warriors.  They saw quite a lot of screen time a few campaigns ago as some particularly vile bads.  I went for a paint scheme like the alligator snappers that these figs seem to be based upon.  That meant dark and desaturated greens moving up to beige and generally making them look like the detritus found on the bottom of ponds.  That seemed like it would work but the beige ended up being a little too desaturated.  A bit of yellow fixed this and I'm not entirely certain why.  At any rate, the first guy took upwards of three hours experimenting with colors and whatnot with the other three completing in the next four.  I guess that's why test figs are so important.  In a better world I would have taken a little more care dealing with their awful mold lines and boy howdy am I looking forward to finishing all of my old Bones figs in like....2030.

• 2021 high quality counter:  1/5
• 2021 finished mini counter:  71/100

A Lounge of Lizards, part 1 (2021 week 7)

With two themes down and quite a lot of figs to go, we're opening this week's theme strong.  I have quite a lot of lizard figures that need paint--fewer now!  This is because a couple campaigns ago one of the antagonists were a cult of ne'er-do-wells corrupting eggs into terrible monsters.  I also occasionally buy cool looking figs on sale from wargames I don't play, so there's that.  

These three are snakes from the Wrath of Ashardalon board game.  I'd already magnetized these guys and hidden them away only to be found when putting away some newly painted figs.  These are not good molds and the sculpts are more than a little confusing and I didn't do anywhere near enough work dealing with their imperfections.  I took this opportunity to do more work with my cheapo airbrush to save time and this time it worked out.  I think these guys look good for the time I spent on them, less than 2 hours all told, despite picking out a bunch of details that I didn't need to.  

Next up we have a Crested Felldrake from the Chainmail Starter Set.  I'd had this guy prepped and ready to go for a while but hadn't found a good opportunity to paint him...until today!  I thought I might paint him in a fun color like magenta or something but when painting the snakes above, I figured that color scheme would be fine, too.  Turns out, I accidentally painted him the right color!  No real difficulty here and it's not a super big fig.  This feels like a good result for the hour I spent on it.

Lastly we get four Legion of Everblight Shredders which are apparently lesser warbeasts but I'm only really typing in what's on the box since I don't play Hordes.  Are these actually lizards?  I have no idea.  In fact, I understand they're supposed to be painted a pale blue or lavender but I painted them turquoise because I could.  It's a mix of the teal Pro Acryl, Transparent Green and Vallejo Game Color Azul Ink both of which I really like over zenithal through the airbrush.  I highlit these with increasing levels of cool grey and white (through the airbrush again) before finishing off details.  Horns, claws, and teeth got a couple layers of washes and an edge highlight.  I didn't spend anywhere near enough time scraping mold lines on these guys, unfortunately.  Minus this, I think they look OK for ~3 hours of work.

2021 finished mini counter:  64/100

Nipponpalooza part 2 (2021 week 6)

This week we have the mounted soldiers which look unsurprisingly a lot like the foot soldiers.   Like I mentioned last week, horses do count toward the total since that's how I've got them recorded in my master list.  

These guys were a mess to assemble.  Because I bought them as bare sprues, I didn't have instructions and I fiddled with them for a long while before hitting up the intertoobs in frustration.  That was better but they were still awfully fiddly.  I didn't end up including most of the extra swords and other bejangles on these guys because again, this was supposed to be a speed paint.  

For this week I put extra time into the horses a) because I could, and b) because up to this point I'd never painted horses before.  I was helped by the fact that the riders were already painted as part of last week's festivities.  As part of my time-saving planning, I painted them all in the same pattern (Bay) with no other distinctions.  I haven't done the homework to know what's appropriate for this time period and breed and in general know very little about horses.  Someday I'll fix that, probably the next time I go out of my way to paint horses, but not today!

At this point I had horse flesh, barding, and other bejangles left to go and I got more paint on the bases for good measure.  The horses themselves were mostly painted with Daler Rowney Red Earth and Liquitex Raw Umber inks highlit with a light fleshtone, in this case, an ancient pot of Reaper paints.  I knew these were more transparent than the normal acrylics I'm used to and boy howdy were they ever.  Despite many (many) layers they only mostly cover and once I brought it all together at the end with a glaze, all of my careful highlighting evaporated.  Notably, these dry considerably darker than when they go on which was a surprise and they dry glossy which wasn't unexpected.  The barding which I only noticed I'd painted incorrectly when they were nearly complete was done with more normal acrylics with a wash throwing on some final highlights and metallics at the very end.

The bases, if you're curious, are potting bark glued to the round with texture paint and flocking to make it look less like what it actually was and they might sell better if I'd chosen less bark-like colors.  They were painted with some random palette sludge and mostly highlit with the same random fleshtone I had laying around.  This worked way better than I expected even after Vince told me that fleshtones were a good basing highlight color.  I assembled everything with the horses pinned before priming and I'm super unhappy about the leaping horse having a paper clip through its belly.  I've seen this fig on its two hind legs but the sculpt really doesn't look correct that way.  If I were bringing these guys to a higher quality level, I would have painted the riders, mounts, and bases separately and assembled them after the fact but this wasn't the goal.  

Overall, I think these guys are acceptable.  If you add a couple hours of fiddly assembling plus the six-ish hours I spent painting the mounts, we end up at 33 hours for the batch of 27 which feels reasonable given where they landed.  None of these guys are going to win any awards but that wasn't really the point.  I learned a lot about batch painting with my terrible airbrush and I'm certain I can speed this process up.  I may manufacture such an exercise later this year so watch this space!

This concludes Nipponpalooza 2021 and I'm confident in saying that I'm well ahead of both my goal and one fig per day so far this year.  I don't expect to maintain this pace but it's good (for once) to be ahead right out of the gates.

2021 finished mini counter:  56/100

Nipponpalooza part 1 (2021 week 5)

This week's theme is "paint all the feudal Japanese troops I have" which are basically Test of Honor sprues I bought a year and a half ago during what I assume was a Black Friday sale.  I have four sets of these totaling 27 figures split among mounted, ranged, and infantry and yes, horses count as a fig.  So for this exercise we're going to try to speed it up a lot by carefully picking the colors, carefully picking the details to focus on, and not very carefully using the airbrush to hopefully complete the batch in a couple weeks.  These will not be high quality paint jobs and will not include a bunch of detail work.  

These guys were a pain in the butt to build.  They have a lot of bejangles many of which I didn't mess with.  I also had a lot of trouble with their spears and I'm pretty sure the no dachi I equipped them with wasn't the bladed one I was supposed to use but I couldn't get them into their dang hands.  The blue guy with the blowgun even has two right arms which I didn't notice before I had him mostly painted.  I did get most of the mold lines, so points for that.

These are basically all of the normal troops in blue, red, green, and purple fifteen in total.  This was an exercise of pretending to use my airbrush productively for more than priming and shading but then still having to clean up most of that work with a brush.  I'm looking for an excuse a justification to buy a fancier airbrush but I don't think this was a good step in that direction.  On top of the typical prime + dark shadows from below + warm light from the top zenithal, these were also washed in Vallejo Dark Grey Wash and drybrushed badly to bring out more of the details.  The next step was to hit them with inks or Pro Acryl transparents as a thin-ish glaze to give them enough color to move forward with minimal details and brush work.  This almost worked.

The blue and purple were shadowed with Vallejo Game Air Mahogany, a really nice red brown, and the red and green ones were shadowed with a Daler Rowney Indigo Ink which is way more convenient than mixing Vallejo Game Ink black and blue that I've been doing previously.  This worked fine for everything but the red which was weak and turned those figures a really funky magenta.  I mostly fixed this with a brush mixing Pro Acryl Transparent Red and Transparent Yellow and some Vallejo Air Skin Tone which I use pretty much all the time now as a universal highlight color.  

Details were called out with brush work with special attention to the dark colors that weren't supposed to be the fig's primary color.  After that, most things were hit with a wash and in some cases, metallics and final highlights.  I considered breaking one of my rules since these guys have such small and inconvenient to reach eyes but ultimately I caved and painted them anyway.  They look better as a result but it added a couple hours to the total painting time.  The fifteen here were done as a batch with the guys from next week (six riders and six horses).  Including assembly, they ran at around 25 hours which seems reasonable given the not-spectacular results I got.  

2021 finished mini counter:  44/100

A thing a week 2021, week 4

No theme this week; the landsknechts took a lot out of me.  Thus, I'm taking the opportunity to catch up on some random stuff on my table.

These five are two Shades of the Drowned Nymph and three Ghosts of the Drowned Nymph from Bones 4.  Those following those links will note that a) the ones on sale seem to be made of a transparent blue plastic, and b) they're shot such that you can tell what's going on.  Mine are in translucent green plastic and looked like random lumps.  Luckily, we can fix that with paint!  I started with Pro Acryl transparent green thinned down with water.  That didn't stick despite a good scrubbing with dish cleaner and a toothbrush.  Then I tried adjuncts of Liquitex Matte Medium, Vallejo Glaze Medium, and Vallejo Thinner and eventually got something that stuck but was too thick.  More medium made this better but the gal was already painted so she's darker than the rest.  A drybrush with the same green wash plus white ink later got us here.  I think they work OK for about thirty minutes of work.

Next up we have Ankoa, Barbarian Hero also from Bones 4.  He's been partially painted up on my desk for a while but I was between steps on next week's project and wanted to do something other than that.  I've been really trying to push contrast in skin tones and this guy has a lot of good volumes to practice on so I focused mainly on that.  I think they work OK but the highs probably aren't high enough and the lows probably aren't low enough.  Everything else on him was a speed paint which shows.  I wasn't sure what to do with all the fur and leather though I did do quite a lot of shading on it.  I tried to vary the myriad browns between saturation and hues but I don't think any of that really comes through.  The fur got knocked down with a wash and really could have used another highlighting step to bring it all back up again.  Other than being done which is a win in my book, it was fun to revisit James Wappel's shaded basecoat again.  

2021 finished mini counter:  29/100

Landsknechts a'Plenty part 2 (2021 week 3)

Last week's offering was a half dozen Warlord Landsknecht missile troops.  This week we have the other six plus four extras!  As discussed last week, these guys were a mess but having mostly completed them before the week started helped get them to a better place this week.  

These six are much like the first six.  Since I had the time I tried to punch up the contrast a half step.  I also cleaned up a lot of the missing details from last week which helped some.  Looking through the pictures, the inks went a bit glossy on me which isn't super surprising.  These guys were never going to be great, I plain don't like them enough to really spend the time, but I'd like to think they look slightly better than last week.  Still not super happy with them, but they're the best color:  painted.

Now the fun stuff.  I think I bought these old Warhammer Fantasy figs at a hobby store's going out of business in like 2007 or something, and I regret not buying more then.  I was poor.  What do you want?  I also bought some Earthdawn miniatures at the same time which will show up in a few weeks during Elf Fest 2021(TM).  They're metal and heavy and have some interesting mold issues but they're full of character and unlike the missile troops, I wanted them to look fun.  

First up we have Empire Greatsword 3 and Empire Sword 1 which probably means more to you than it does to me if you played Warhammer Fantasy.  The greatsword guy got a lot of screen time as one of the player characters in a previous campaign.  The second guy's shield was lost and replaced with an extra of a similar style that I had laying around and re-painted and I can tell from the photos that I re-glued it on crooked.  I took extra time to shade the metal bits with Badger Ghost Tint Midnight Blue which is starting to be my go-to for this kind of thing. In this case I both used it raw and mixed it into a glaze with the Vallejo Metal Colors I was highlighting with.  While not spectacular, I think they work.

Next we have Empire Archers 6 and 7 and they followed the same general pattern as their blister-mates but with a few more details.  These guys also used Daler Rowney inks, the blues in Blue and Indigo and the red in Pro Acryl Burnt Red base, Red and Transparent Red highlights brought up with yellow and a light skin tone.  They have the typical blue/black ink undershade and ivory zeninthal even though the vast majority of it was painted over.  Their skin tones needed a little more contrast which is mostly around the lowtones and the beige on the skirt of the one really doesn't sell at all.  Overall I got them where I wanted to but I might do more if I ever encountered them again.  

This concludes Landsknecht a'Plenty 2021 a full week early (thought I'd do the last four next week).  Next week we may or may not have the start of a new theme so stay tuned!

2021 finished mini counter:  23/100

Landsknechts a'Plenty part 1 (A thing a week 2021, week 2)

This year we're doing something a little different.  I generally paint faster in batches and I have a lot of stuff that could be themed if I'd put any real thought into it.  So big chunks of this year will be themed around something hopefully fun with a snappy title and spanning at least two weeks, sadly starting somewhat inauspiciously today.

This week we've got Landsknecht missile troops from Warlord's Pike & Shotte, a game that I notably don't play but own a lot of figures from.  For those not familiar, Landsknechts were career mercenaries in the 16th century known for their flamboyant attire.  I bought a pair of sprues on sale which produced twelve figures, six featured here.  These guys sat fully assembled and zenithaled on my workbench for months last year.  Because of their historical accuracy, these guys are excessively fiddly which makes everything hard.  

The short:  I do not like these figs.  I didn't paint them in assemblies which made them even harder to paint.  Furthermore, despite having spent many hours scraping mold lines, I for sure didn't get them all most notably on their bollock daggers which I painted incorrectly.  

I wanted to sell the flamboyance of the historical figures so I painted them in multiple saturated colors.  In fact, this was a terrible idea.  The more colors you use on a fig the longer they tend to take and the less wins you get out of batch painting.  On top of that, it's difficult to ensure proper highlighting across blocked colors on the same volume ostensibly made of the same material.  

Knowing all of this, they were intended to be done with a speedy "simple glazes over a strong zenithal" operation to make them a quick job.  I don't know where that all went wrong, but I ended up layering these guys like crazy and doing a lot of experimentation with Daler Rowney inks.  I am not happy with their inconsistent highlights and chalky basecoats.  I didn't even get all their colors on--the off white parts of their armor was supposed to be green.  The metallics are also super flat because I just wanted to be done.  

I did not look forward to painting these guys which is why they sat on my desk like a Sword of Damocles for so many months.  They look OK in groups on the tabletop but they do not hold up well under scrutiny despite the ~40 hours I've put into them so far across the batch of 12+4 I've had kicking around.  This kind of investment should yield a much higher quality paint job.  If I played an army where these guys played a prominent part, I could see bringing these figs up to a higher quality but that's not the situation.  Tune in next week to see if I can resolve some of this week's issues.

2021 finished mini counter:  13/100

A thing a week 2021, week 1

New year, new week, new figs, so lets get to work.  

As 2020 wound down I had some time off and started catching up on my "wouldn't it be nice" tasks.  One of these was refilling my pre-thinned oil paints and helped by the fact that I bought two new tubes to fill a couple holes in my current lineup.  So today's offerings are painted in oils (finally) and done mostly as a speed paint even though they weren't super speedy.  In these shots they're shiny because they haven't cured yet which is also why they're still on painting handles.  They were painted over several days in a batch to the tune of around twelve hours total.  When they are cured, I'll probably hit them with a clear coat.

These four folks are from Reaper Bones 4 and are in Townsfolk 1, 2, and 3.  The others from those sets should be on the way soon.  The beggar and farmer are from 1 and are done mostly in earth tones.  I think they came out OK but are ultimately not that interesting.  The courtesan is from 2 and despite spending extra time on her face and details, I don't think she turned out super well.  Oils, I'm learning, require a lot more care when it comes to putting down additional colors even if you intend on a blending step.  The Ben Franklin lookalike is from 3 and I'm not 100% sure what he's supposed to be.  A cartographer maybe?  Overall, I think these are fine if not interesting.  

Last year we saw Anuminar Winterbeard back in Week 35 painted in oils.  These three folks are from the same group from Bones 4.  In green we've got Oman Ruul, Wizard complete with pale yellow crystal ball.  While I think he turned out OK, I probably should have spent more time on the crystal ball which doesn't super sell.  In magenta we have Zenfis Zadar, Wizard.  His robe is slightly more red than his cloak which lost its warmer color in all of my blending.  This guy has been on Reaper's landing page for a while so when I ended up with almost the right colors on my palette, I figured what the heck.  This is a great figure and I spent quite a while working on the details I got.  I might get another copy (in metal if available) for future fun.  Arakus Landarzad, Wizard rounds out the bunch in Gandalf blue.  I would have painted him in desaturated tones except that I had some awesome blue available.  I think these guys read OK on the table and I really liked the opportunity to use really saturated colors.

Before I do more in oils at this scale, I think I need to figure some stuff out.  I love the blending but I'm struggling with finding the right thinness and keeping the right amount of paint on the figs.  I've also had to spend quite a lot of time fixing the brushes I use for oils which I've not taken great care of.  This has led me to quite a lot less detail work on these seven than I'd normally attempt.  Also, given their long "not safe to handle" time, I'm going to need more painting handles.

2021 finished mini counter:  7/100

2021 Crafting challenge

Last year's "A thing a week" went super well so this year let's do it again!  Just like last year, I want to make a thing a week and I'll use similar rules:

• The thing must be posted here (Sundays again, probably) and it has to be done unless it's part of a big thing like SHIPtember or NaNoWriMo which I still haven't done yet.
• Valid things:
• Gaming terrain, prop, scatter (etc.)
• A painted mini
• 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

In addition to these, I have the additional goals:

• One Hundred painted miniatures again (my pile of potential isn't going to paint itself, yo)
• Five miniatures pushing quality at the high end of what I can do (NMM strictly optional)
• Five miniatures with OSL (not optional)
• Five significant buildings/terrain/liftships/whatevers
• Improve in prep, specifically dealing with mold lines
• Paint some stuff in oils even if filling the bottles is such a dang pain
• Use the airbrush to do more work so that I can justify buying a new one this year

The list was shorter last year and felt big even if I was able to burn way past it.  Like last year, I expect to be unusually busy this year but if 2020 taught me anything, it's that I can't really predict these things.

2020 in Review

I don't think anyone could have predicted what 2020 turned out to be with any accuracy.  For readers who might not have first hand experience (I mean, I don't know when you're reading this), we had covid-19 pandemic which super sucked and I ended up working about 3/4 of the year from home like most of the folks who could do such a thing.  The bright side of this was that my commute was drastically reduced and I spent a lot more time hobbying, so there's that.  I think that's kind of how life is--you can't really predict the major beats and a lot of it is as much up to luck as anything else.  That's one of my big takeaways for thislast year.  

Gaming

Last last year (2019) wasn't great for gaming and 2020 wasn't either.  That isn't to say I didn't play anything, but it wasn't a focus of the year by any means.  The bulk of my unencumbered spare time hasn't been spent in video games for a while now so this shouldn't be surprising.  Younger me would have been terrified by this.  

Battletech ***** (2018)

I re-visted Hare-Brained Schemes' Battletech again this year and again it did not disappoint.  I bought all of the remaining expansions and re-played everything though not as modded as last time around.  I still enjoyed all of it even though it's my third time through the main storyline.  Battletech is one of the few things I have any nostalgia for and this particular game still delivers.  Given that at least some of my Battletech:  Clan Invasion kickstarter has arrived this year, we're well overdue for seeing some battlemech action in these un-hallowed pixels.

Mount and Blade II:  Bannerlord **** (2020)

I have burned a lot of words on my love of the Mount and Blade series.  I modded the crap out of the original.  I put about 400 hours into its successor, Warband.  So when Bannerlord was finally released this year, I was all in.  I ended up modding it for myself because they very cleverly switched from their own hand-rolled modding language to C# which has way more tools available.  I think I wouldn't have enjoyed it quite so much if I hadn't modded it but as the game is under active development, I suspect I'll take another look at some point in the future.  I wrote up my thoughts at the time here.  

Shadowrun Returns *** (2013)

I don't remember when I bought this game and I'm far too lazy to go look it up but much like Battletech, Shadowrun is a thing I have some nostalgia for.  Apparently most of my nostalgia is for FASA properties.  This isn't a great game, but it is a good one.  The first campaign is called Dead Man's Switch and the writing did a lot of the heavy lifting in it.  It captured the Shadowrun-ness with a handful of fairly fun characters (Kluwe, I'm lookin' at you, bro) and reminded me of all the things I loved in the 90s when I last played the tabletop RPG.  It also reminded me of all the things I hated about that system, so it's kind of like the original Mass Effect:  good writing, questionable gameplay.

Shadowrun Dragonfall **** (2014)

The next one off the HBS press was Dragonfall which really upped the writing acumen.  Demon-worshiping mage turned street sam'?  Punk rock front-elf shaman?  Elf Bear shaman wielding assault rifles?  Yes.  Yes, I want that, and all of it.  The characters are good in this one, real good, and there's even a fantastic pair of callbacks to my beloved Earthdawn for which I suspect I will always remember this game fondly.  There's a good twist, one I didn't predict though possibly because I played most of my ~30 hours with it very drunk.  There don't seem to be any "good" endings but Shadowrun wasn't ever really about good or bad so that's true to form.  This is the kind of writing I want to see in games:  punchy, irreverent, and thoughtful.  Next up:  Shadowun:  Hong Kong which I'm told is the best of the three.  Can't wait.

RPGs 

ThisLast year I ran two campaigns for most of the year.  The Saturday fantasy-every-other-week-supposedly-in-person game was done completely online and started in a brand-new sandbox world.  It's going well and it feels like it's just getting started even after 22 episodes.  The Sunday sci-fi-every-week-always-online game ran for most of the year before I killed it in early November.  It was past it's sell-by date most likely but we cleared a Star Trek:  The Next Generation in run time which is its own accomplishment.  I started a new fantasy game in its place in the same world as the Saturday game at roughly the same timeline but far, far away.  It's a concept game and is going well at the moment but it's way too early to know for sure.  

This year I did a lot more improvisation than usual, and I typically improvise a lot.  Most of my two campaigns were improvised, the fantasy one almost completely.  I think this is the best way to run these kinds of games but it is not for the faint of heart.  I never really got my thoughts together for youtube but I hope to some day.  The down side is that Roll20 is not improvisation friendly.  In fact, I haven't found a VTT that is.  It's easy in person to slap down tiles, some scatter, and some figs for an improvised encounter but online requires a lot more precision which takes a 5-10 minute operation and turns it into a 30-60 minute operation.  And yes, I have tiles in Roll20 but setting stuff up there isn't especially convenient.

Painting

ThisLast year I really wanted to level up my painting and I knew going into my 2020 crafting challenge that I didn't actually know how far I could push quality.  I'd meant to do this last year in 2019 but never did.  Over 2020 I did this intentionally eight times and learned a lot in the process.  In order with calendar time, these landed thuslywise:

• Nolzur's Human Female Ranger (flatbow), January 9th, 25 hours
• Highland Heroine, January 19th, 30-35 hours
• Kogo, Male Kitsune, July 4th, < 5 hours
• Dijoro, Female Kitsune, July 4th, < 5 hours
• Juliette, Female Sorceress, July 7th, < 5 hours
• Whitemane Duelists (2), September 7th, ~50 hours
• Aina, Female Valkyrie, November 16th, ~9 hours

Overall these eight figures (and their pals) account for a serious chunk of the total time I spent hobbying this year and some good stuff came with them.  Contrast is now something I push as a reflex more than a hassle even if I'm still not good at it.  Thinking through color theory and composition is easier.  NMM no longer seems like impossible magic, though, I don't think it'll ever be easy.  I don't view basing as an arcane inanity any longer.  I have significantly improved my brush control, learned a lot more about brushes and their care, and have shifted from buying a millionty shades of each color to mixing my own.  Given all of that, I can say with some confidence, that I've succeeded in my goal.

The biggest takeaway from this effort is that quality comes at a price.  It's obvious when you saytype it but it's true across all kinds of things.  There seems to be a point in any high-effort project where it seems like nothing's going right and that there's way too much work left to go to get where you want.  This occurs regularly around 20 or 30 hours (for the efforts that reach that size, anyway) and I note that when I was actively engineering I recall that 3-4 days is when I hit this on coding projects, too.  In my art I've only ever pulled out all the stops twice: the Hayabusa which remains my favorite SHIP, and the Normandy SR2 which has won multiple awards and not just for its size.  I've yet to do this with a miniature--maybe nextthis year.

The other major takeaway is that speed comes with experience which is something Uncle Atom told me...somewhere in his backlog, but now I have first hand evidence of it.  My studies of James Wappel's painting techniques has helped tremendously.  His is one of the top Patreons I contribute to and worth every penny.  Last yearIn 2019 I didn't think I could ever paint a "real" fig (whatever that means) in fewer than eight hours.  Now I'm regularly finishing figs at tabletop quality within three--faster if I'm batch painting.  Ironically, pushing quality helped speed quite a lot too.  It became more clear which things made bigger bangs in quality so focusing on those things really sped stuff up.  I also made a real effort to use my airbrush more which I really need more reps with.  

Deliberate practice helped me more than I ever thought it could in a year.  I am in no way a good painter and I might not ever be, but I'm getting closer to where I want to be and thislast year presented a better than average opportunity.  Without the bulk of figs (226 and 4.5x my original goal) I seriously doubt I would have made as much progress.  This represents somewhere in the ballpark of 400-600 hours at best estimate and gives me hope that some day I'll get through my pile of shamepotential, or at least the parts I care about, before my time is up.

Two and a half-ish years ago I embarked on my mini painting journey more as a thing that I thought I should do more than a thing that I particularly cared about.  I painted because I felt like I had to more than because I wanted to.  I've heard this referred to as "hate painting" and I think I'm past that now.  For sure I don't enjoy everything about the hobby but this year somewhere the switch flipped which is pretty cool.  Being cooped up in the house by myself for nine months with no end in sight did not hurt in this respect.

Crafting

This year also marked a return to foam crafting, specifically XPS.  I did a lot of this in 2019 thanks to Shoe's 30 for 30 challenge and my then-recent purchasing of my trusty Proxxon hot wire foam cutter.  This time up, we focused on airlift ships for use in my in-person-every-other-Saturday fantasy campaign which we still haven't used.  When I built them, I didn't expect we'd end the year in lockdown. 

These ships really stretched what I thought I could do with XPS.  They're the kind of thing I'd always envisioned building with balsa wood when I was small dreaming about tall ships.  I tried lots of stuff which was captured here, here, and here.  Magnetizing the Cutter and Golden Sun was an improvised experiment that really demands more experimentation.  It solves a problem with my multi-story buildings like this one whose construction was terribly complicated by having to friction-fit the floors together.  The details on the ships are still lacking but I feel like I'm capable enough now as a crafter and painter to punch these up another level with a little effort.  I suspect that when I build my next building (whenever that might be), I'll have learned enough this time around to try something fairly different and hopefully better!

Fin

So that was my 2020 in a nutshell.  Like most years it was some good, some bad, but overall it was a thing.  It'd be easy to chalk 2020 up as an all-bad nightmare but I don't think it had to be.  I suspect if we look real close, we can find all kinds of stuff that were good--not just my hobbying.

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