Election 2016

I have not posted in a while. My painting setup I had in Spring was not working in the long term. It was blocking a closet and the room was slowly filling up with stuff. I have been shifting everything around and realized I do not have the space for everything I want to do so sort of stalled out. While this is a personal blog, it had become mostly focused on gaming and miniature painting which have both been rather scarce for me lately.

The rest of this post is mostly political. I do not know when I will be updating the blog again, but wanted to acknowledge it had been some time before I launched into my spiel. If you are here mostly for the painting or gaming then this might be where you want to stop reading.

Wednesday in Progress - 08 Jun 2016

I just realized I forgot this week's WIP, so here it is.

I did not paint last week. The final round for this year's Iron Painter is "Critters". I DNFed (Did Not Finish) last round so I am completely out of the competition. This includes the raffle. I decided to follow along this round, but I am not submitting anything to the contest.

I went through a few ideas. The prominent one was Donald Trump being piloted by one of the creatures from the Critters movies. It felt like a bit too much work for the time frame as it would require me to sculpt and paint everything. Another idea was to paint anthropomorphic models. I can do the archery scene from Robin Hood using just mice people if I wanted to, and there are other animal people in my collection as well. The idea I settled on was to replace Star Trek tribbles with critters.

Iron Painter Round 4 - Wednesday is Paused for 01 Jun 2016

I managed to do a little more work on the Monstrosity since my last blog post. It's not finished, but I am done with it for now.

Round four of Iron Painter has come and gone. The theme this round was "Armed and Dangerous". The submitted entries can be found here.

Iron Painter Round 3 Ends- Wednesday in Progress for 11 May 2016

Round 3 of Iron Painter is over. I scraped together what I had to submit an image Monday morning. I was still painting half an hour before I had to have the image submitted and spent next to no time going through pictures and making the collage for this round.

My partner for the round,Neveroddoreven, submitted a fantastic piece. He sculpted the entire model aside from the head. I really enjoy the model.

Submission Image

Captain's Personal Log - Stardate 13016.128

Our destination is Ironius Paintorus III in the Wyrd system. Preparations are underway to present the representatives with a scientific gift that will interface with their technology, but not be of their own making. The engineers ensure me that all of the components are available and assembled. My Science officer will be calibrating the prototype model while the ship's Counselor will be overseeing the final preparations. We must arrive and present the model no later than the morning of 13016.130, or all is for naught.

This is a personal entry. It is a little bit on the long side. It is a post that many should probably skip. There is a bit of me feeling sorry for myself in this post. This post may contain Too Much Information (TMI). Consider that a final warning that you will not get back the time it took to read the remainder. I feel it is important to share life's hiccups on occasion, and I have the time to do so right now.

Iron Painter Round 3 - Wednesday in Progress(?) for 04 May 2016

Last Wednesday I talked about starting the third round of this year's Iron Painter. Then I talked about restarting. This week I am going to talk about restarting yet again. Shipping took longer than I had hoped for the second project I started, so I am on a backup that I started yesterday. There really is not a lot to share at this point.

The model is a Monstrosity for the Cephalyx faction in Privateer Press' Game, Warmachine. I finished cleaning, pinning, magnetizing, and putty work on this model yesterday. I had already cleaned on the model to use for gaming previously, but I gave it another go because @#$%! Privateer Press' plastic models. To be fair, the monstrosities have been a joy to clean compared to other plastic models I have picked up from the company.

Iron Painter Round 3 - Wednesday in Regression for 27 Apr 2016

Wyrd announced the theme for round three of Iron Painter on Monday. The theme is "Wyrd Science". We have until this counter reaches zero to submit our entries. My partner for this round is Neveroddoreven. You can find their round one entry here, and their round two entry here.

Better Off (Un)Dead and Wednesday in Progress - 20 Apr 2016

This was the final submission image for my entry to the second round of this year's Iron Painter. The theme for round two was Better Off (Un)Dead. I ended up not adjusting the levels at all as I normally use levels to attempt to make models look closer in colour to their in person appearance, and that simply was not happening. The only editing on any of these pictures was cropping, resizing, and combining multiple images into one file.

The image to be judged.

Iron painter: Better Off (Un)Dead - Wednesday in Progress (Part II)

I finished up with the sculpting for the Better Off (Un)Dead submission for the second round of Iron Painter. I have also been slapping paint on the model. I am not happy with how things are going. I have four days before the deadline if I plan for at least one day of no painting. I kind of want to break the putty back out and do some alterations. I want to repaint the leather jacket and have not done anything with the rest of the leather. There are also minor details, some freehand, and global illumination yet to do.

Iron painter: Better Off (Un)Dead - Wednesday in Progress

I managed to secure a spot in the gold bracket going into the second round of this year's Iron Painter. The theme this round is "Better Off (Un)Dead." The bits and pieces people have shown of their work so far for this round has been impressive. A lot of people are fired up. Judging from the Wyrd forums, I expect the entries for this round to be more involved than the first.

Pretty in Pink and Wednesday in Progress - 30 Mar 2016

Here is my submission for the first round of this year's Iron Painter. The theme for round one was Pretty in Pink. I had a lot of fun with this entry. It was weird working to a deadline. I was uncertain I would be able to accomplish this task.

My submission image.

Iron Painter Standouts for Round One - Pretty in Pink

I plan on sharing some pictures of my entry for round one of this year's Iron Painter event. Before I do that, I wanted to share some of the entries that stood out to me. I was originally looking at sharing thirty some odd entries, but decided that was too many.

Iron Painter: Pretty in Pink - Wednesday in Progress Part II

I continued the putty work on the troll from last week. I have started to paint on the music box. There is now a secondary base started so the troll may be used separately from the music box. I hope this extra base will let me place the troll in precise positions in the box so the mirror will line up properly in pictures instead of having the troll always snap to be lined up with the magnet in the box.

Iron Painter: Pretty in Pink - Wednesday in Progress

Round one's theme was announced Monday. It is 'Pretty in Pink'. I was out a decent chunk today, and all of yesterday, but I am happy with the progress so far. No painting as of yet, but I have been playing with the putty. I also bought some stuff.

The rough idea is a Troll finds itself in a giant children's jewelry box where he discovers the beauty within himself.

Wild West Exodus: Unfinished Business Components Preview

I have not as of yet had an opportunity to play Wild West Exodus. I have been reading over the rules in preparation of getting some games in. I may not have a chance to play for a few months however as Iron Painter starts tomorrow. Iron Painter will take precedence over everything but doctor visits, but I am going to try to get at least one Warmachine game each week as I can pick almost any day of the week and have a decent chance of finding someone local to play with. This post is me sharing my initial impressions for the contents of Wild West Exodus before I get too busy to do so.

Warning: this post is on the long side and is mostly me whining about many insignificant details.

Wild West Exodus - Unfinished Business Packaging

I had a kickstarter deliver early today. I did not have a lot of time to go through it all except to make certain the contents were all there. I probably will not have time to check out the game properly until after Iron Painter is finished for the year. The rules along with printable cards for allof the models are available for free if anyone is interested in the game.

I went with the Golden Army. It's a mix of Conquistadors and Mexicans. Out of the four factions available for this kickstarter, they were the models I felt I could use in other games if this game did not work out for me. I probably would have gone with Warrior Nation instead if it were available however. The model quality appears nice at first glance, but I have not worked with them yet. I try not to appraise a model until after I have at least assembled and cleaned it as that tends to be when I am either won over or ready to quit the hobby.

Scratch One Off

I'm taking the week to work on works in progress with a focus on pieces I am most likely to play with. I actually did something that was on my KanBan board.

 I also got a start on two more models for the same army.

Code Monkey

I am going to try to keep this short.

There is one model I have been working with on and off for most of a year. This model was unusual in the fact that I was not painting it for myself. I delivered it the day before writing this post. This thing has been sitting here on my desk the whole year in a place I would have to work around it in an attempt to ensure I did not neglect it.

Iron Painter: The Gathering

I signed up for Iron Painter 2016today.

Introduction to Iron Painter 2016

Wyrd is hosting their Iron Painter competition again this year. Here is a link for anyone interested injoining in or following along this year. The application deadline is March 4th. The creativity behind the pieces is amazing, but it is the ability of the participants to make it through all of the rounds that is truly inspiring.

The Cycle Rolls Over

I do not make New Year's resolutions. I have considered them, but the way I figure, if there is something I was not going to do then I was unlikely to do it merely because the date changed.

I tend not to perform a focused reflection on the past year either. I am constantly looking back at my life. It's just not normally in a compartmentalized way such as placing events in boxes marked by years. In fact, I rarely put the past away at all. I simply leave it open like a festering wound to watch it turn green over time as I focus on it and seldom address the past in a meaningful way other than to permit it to depress me and attribute to my inaction in the future. Maybe this is something I should try.