It’s been a long time. Let’s catch up.

It has been a long time since I’ve posted in this blog, with a small exception last month. More than three full years, to put a number on it. Lots of things can partly explain it: selling a house, moving, a pandemic, a sick partner (thankfully on the mend), mostly stopping commission work, etc. The list goes on. It was taking time that I didn’t want to put in it. But writing that quick post about the Bushido crew last month reminded me that I do enjoy the writing. Also, I’ve realized that now that I don’t post all the projects on my FB page, it’s harder to track down pictures.

So, I’ve decided to give it another go this year. I don’t think I’ll often publish big posts, but it will be a hobby diary, with quick picture galleries and updates. Even if I end up being the only one to go through it occasionally, it will already have a good use.

Continue reading “It’s been a long time. Let’s catch up.”

Yokozuna’s Revenge

Our group got into Bushido just at the start of the pandemic. It limited our playing capabilities, but offered us time to get our models painted, at least. I painted my whole first faction, the Open Rebellion box, before even having a game, which is kind of new for me. Since then, I got in a new sub-faction, the butos of the Silvermoon Trading Syndicate, a kind of yakuza-like crime group. I got those painted in the last few weeks, and I’m quite pleased with them, especially with the challenge of the tattoo work.

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Craft-off – Carol’s cabbage farm

My Ruined forest temple last month ended up winning the judges’ votes 3 to 2, and moved forward to this month’s round.  It was really close based on the judges’ commentaries, and could have gone both ways. That’s always nice in a friendly competition. It was also great to have the opportunity to read judges’ notes!

For October, my imposed theme was “farm“. I struggled with that theme more than the previous months. One personal goal I gave myself was to make terrain that I could use in games, and nothing was really coming to mind early on. Eventually, after painting Laios, I went through my shelf of games again, and a bright light popped up. I would build a rabbit-run cabbage farm for Burrows and Badgers! That would be a good incentive to finally work on those minis.

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Laios

I was recently contacted to paint a large scale model from Delicious in Dungeon (also known as Dungeon Meshi), a manga I hadn’t heard about at that point. The model is a large resin garage kit, at an unspecified scale, of the main character Laios. The kit is from the Charagumin line by Volks.

This was my first time working on such a big  piece, at least scale-wise. It was fun to work with metallic paints, as natural light and reflection work better with a large piece like that than our usual 28-32mm gaming miniatures. It was also a good practice for my airbrush skills.

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Craft-off – Ruined forest temple

Earlier this year, I decided to join a terrain building challenge, the Rogue Sculpts Craft-Off Competition. The gist of it is, each month, all participants are paired up, and each pair is given a random theme. At the end of the month, a panel of judges reviews the work from each pair, and the winner gets to advance to the next round. Rince and repeat, until there is only one, Highlander style.

This month, the theme I got was “Ruined temple”. I did a sketch of a forest temple for Endless: Fantasy Tactics a while ago, and it was the perfect time to work on that project. Unfortunately, I could only start late in the month, so I had to reduce the scale of my piece. I ended up doing an 8 by 8 squares board, the quarter of a full EFT board. When I get more time, I can build the other parts, especially as the rest of it is easier and simpler.

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December Monthly Update and 2018 Year End Review

December has come and gone, and with it, 2018. The month itself was slower than others for the hobby, but I used that time to clean up my workshop, and it will let me start 2019 in full swing. It was a pretty good year for the hobby, positive in general, with many new cool projects and discoveries. Let’s dive in!

Progress

  This month Yearly total
Models painted: 3 54
Models sculpted: 0 10
Terrain built: 0 2
Terrain painted: 2 4
Games played: 6 56

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Monthly Update – November 2018

November was full of late night work, meetings and appointments, which should have given a pretty poor hobby tally, but strangely, it was my most productive painting month of the year. The rest of the hobby was slow or inexistant, but just the amount of painting done baffles even myself.

Progress

This month Yearly total
Models painted: 17 51
Models sculpted: 0 10
Terrain built: 0 2
Terrain painted: 0 2
Games played: 4 50

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Showcase – 28mm warplanes

Last year, I painted historical tanks for 3D Wargaming, a local 3d designer, to help promote his new line. This year, he launched a new Kickstarter project, but this time for warplanes, and I had once again the chance to paint some of his demo models.

I said planes, but it is really more of a mixe of different models that fly. Three planes, a giant rocket and a flying bomb. They have more rounded surfaces, which made them a bit harder to paint then the tanks, as the 3d layers are showing a bit more than on the flat panels of the threaded vehicles. I missed the heavy weathering that tanks required, compared to comparatively to the cleaner vehicles that planes are. Hopefully, I will have other wheeled/threaded vehicles to work on in the near future. Continue reading “Showcase – 28mm warplanes”

Showcase – Inktober 2018

I took part for the first time this year in the Inktober challenge. The rules are pretty simple: each day of October, make a ink drawing and share it on social media with their hashtag. For people who want them, they also provide daily prompt, to spark your creativity, or to add some restriction to your choices, depending on how you see it.

I have always been doing small doodles and drawings, but nothing serious. Recently, I realized that I a lot better with a more comprehensive concept art for sculpting, so upping my drawing game has been a personal challenge, to no great result, as I often lack motivation or ideas. Inktober was a great way to give myself a boost in productivity, as adding a deadline always helps me. I tried to stick to the suggested prompts, as it was often a good guide, but it didn’t always work out with my self-added theme of stuffed animal (what I sculpt the most often), so I veered off an handful of time.

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Montlhy Update – October 2018

This month was not really productive, with real life taking its toll. However, I did try something new and participated in Inktober for the first time. You can expect a new post about that soon. The rest of the hobby that I do track was a lot less numerous, as you can see below.

Progress

This month Yearly total
Models painted: 3 34
Models sculpted: 1 10
Terrain built: 0 2
Terrain painted: 0 2
Games played: 4 46

Continue reading “Montlhy Update – October 2018”