Russellmania.com

Not BSG

03.13.2023

Despite my lamenting the weather not cooperating with painting, the opportunity presented itself to prime a batch of minis. I grabbed a hand full of Hasslefree Minis and commenced to priming. I then did something different, which was to not try and paint them all. I picked 2 to paint. Not Adama and Tigh from the Not Battlestar Galactica reboot.

Just an aside, but I still think of 2004's BSG as new/recent even though it aired almost 20 years ago. Since that reboot was over 20 years after the original (which I have very fond memories for) my sense of time for this show(s) is just all messed up. Anyway, back to painting.

While I have no BSG game to stick these 2 in, they are the perfect starship commanders for whatever space game comes along. This meant I didn't have to stick with the colors from the show! There was something new I wanted to try - the piping on the uniforms looked perfect to try and detail. As such, gold and silver piping accents became my thing to try.

Thanks to not trying to do too many things at once, along with working at a glacial pace since I was working on 2 minis over the course of a week, I could take my time and concentrate on those little details. Plus, I could clean up mistakes along the way! In the end, it was a good approach as I really like how things turned out.

Permalink gaming miniatures Hasslefree

Humidity Enforced Pre-Primed

02.25.2023

The weather has been humid. Humid doesn't play well with spray paint, and the only primer I have is spray primer. Lacking a low (for North Alabama) humidity day, I finally thought to see how honest "pre-primed/no priming necessary" minis were. Turns out, they work out well.

Now that I've reached the stage of proper prep before I start painting, washing minis before painting mainly to get rid of release agent from molds or random chemical from production 3D printing is now a standard step. I know it's obvious, but that really helps my paint stick to (pre)primer.

In my available pre-primed inventory I found a pack of Pathfinder Barmaidens and a Reaper Bones Sci-Fi Tess McFadden. For my personal improvement I tried to work on painting within the lines to try and make things more crisp. There was also a little more subtle skin shading going on, but if you didn't know to look for it I don't think it's noticeable. Even looking for it, it may not be noticeable.

While the popular thing to spill is Nuln Oil, I knocked over a pot of blue contrast paint. I think this is the 2nd pot-o-something I've knocked over, which just means I'm a seasoned painter, according to the internet.

Permalink gaming miniatures Pathfinder Deepcuts Reaper Bones

Pile of Shame vs Pile of Retirement

02.10.2023

Over the last week or two the subject of Gaming and associated meta-hobbies has come up in either conversations or posts I've come across online. Most of these subjects were along the lines of lamenting that there's more prep-work that game playing these days, which is also just part of the nature of the games we're drawn to. I went through this conversationally a few years ago which put me on the hobby-road I'm on now. I like to call it I'm OK With That Road, which is more like a 2 lane road you see heading toward the horizon in the distance.

With that, allow me to share my list of unpainted minis, ie the popular Pile of Shame.

In this list of what I track, I claim to have 3205 minis, of which 709 are painted / 2496 unpainted. That's a lot to paint. A lot of those are included in games I'll likely never play, like the original Zombicide and its butt load of expansions. As such, a few years ago I started a sub-category of Minis I'd Like To Paint, of which I currently have 609 of 1445 painted. With those impressive numbers out of the way, I now get to the root of my approach and acceptance of the popular Pile of Shame.

I don't care about game play or the games the minis are supposed to be for.

I've mentioned before my cyclical decade timeline of gaming interest as far as actual game play. I bought a butt load of games during the peak of that interest. Later on, I looked closer and admitted that I'd gotten games for the majority of popular game mechanics and must-have titles, but I wasn't that interested in playing any of them. Ok. Lesson learned and cut back on buying games enforced.

The thing I enjoy is the toys that come with the games, primarily because it gives me something to do with my hands that gets me away from the computer that I sit in front of a minimum of 8 hrs/day. Gluing, painting, cursing at, accruing supplies. That's my real hobby. Normally I would make plastic models or train layouts, but the diversity of game toys (minis, scenery, whatever you want to call it) is the appeal to me.

My excuse is that I can always use what I paint for a game. Who needs 3205 minis just for that?

So I buy minis that look fun to paint. I buy them and usually add them to the pile/list instead of painting the latest thing I though looked fun. Before writing this, I just bought some more because Miniature Market is running a 10% off sale for the weekend. 1 of the minis I bought has been on my wish list for over a year, and was there in case I needed some padding to get to free shipping. To get the free shipping on the 10 minis that look cool that I'll paint someday because they were 10% off, I bought an extra mini. That mini cost more than what actual shipping would have cost without it, but that's logic best to ignore.

Everyone has their own rules for what's fun and why you may do things a certain way. Just don't let someone else's definition of what you should or shouldn't do - especially something you do for fun - steer you away from having said fun.

Now I really should get back to painting something....

Permalink boardgames gaming miniatures rambling random

3 Yolk of Oxen

01.21.2023

I'm pretty sure I don't keep it a secret that I suck at painting animals. Horses, a tiger, a deer I thought was a pig. They turn out ok, but it's only by sheer luck.

At some point I picked up a pack of oxen. Sure, these look simple enough to practice animal painting on. I then did my natural thing and tossed the pack with lots of other D&D unpainted minis and forgot about it. I forgot about it so well that at 2 more times I had the same idea again while I was out shopping.

I'm still in my non-spray-paint friendly outdoor cycle, mainly due to wind, so the parking garage I started during Christmas is still on hold. I should just accept that's going to stay on hold until April or so. As it is, I decided my impulse paint project would be those oxen I had forgotten about. I want to say "I picked them so as to better my skills" but honestly for the things that I [will] "want" to paint, I just wasn't in the mood. Thus, oxen it is!

The oxen were a pain. In retrospect, I think the indoor humidity was higher than normal as I had really bad brush stroke lines when painting. That meant another coat to try and cover those brush stroke lines. And while I'm at it, what's the difference between painting what should be an ox with how I think a cow looks?

After a couple of days the brush strokes were covered up enough. I went a little crazy with different colors on manes just to make them look different. Oxen don't have blonde manes. Very, very light brown. With sun bleached highlights.

Now I have oxen. No idea what to do with them, but they now live in the collection. Next up for priming while waiting for April is a batch of Hasslefree minis that have been sitting on a shelf for 3 or 4 years.

Permalink gaming miniatures hobbies

New Years Walking Dead

01.03.2023

After wrapping up Zombicide Invader I had goals of not painting alien zombies. At least for a little while. The main thing I wanted to work on over my work-imposed holiday break was a parking garage from TTCombat, which would five people visiting the mall a place to park. It's a 3-story parking garage, so I decided to prepare and plan how and when to paint parts instead of gluing it all together and hoping for a scheme that would work. You never think about what color(s) a parking garage might be until you seriously consider painting something realistic.

After a little investigation through Google Images and visiting the parking garages of Grand Theft Auto 5, I had a plan. The key here would be putting some parts together (like stairwells) and paint, then add more parts and paint as needed. It was a good plan. I think it would work. I don't know yet, because the weather hasn't cooperated.

As I spray paint in the garage, with the door open, I need the weather to cooperate. Normally in North Alabama that means keeping an eye on the humidity. For Christmas this year, the weather decided to spend some time in the single digits, and I'm too much of a baby to go out in the open garage when it's that cold. This was followed by a jump to 70° and rain/thunderstorms. I knew "winter" was going to cut down on my outdoor/garage activities, but I really expected a window of a couple of days to work on this.

Instead I went to the last batch of minis I primed a while back. Random Walking Dead minis. These were all duplicates I've gotten over the years, and to be honest I don't remember what any of them are other than Sniper Andrea, Governor, and Governor's Zombie Daughter. I did a fair job painting these, but nothing exceptional. Nothing horrible either!