2011 Review, 2012 Preview

Happy New Year :-)

First post of 2012 (and 50th blog post), so time to reflect on what worked - and what didn't - in 2011, and look forward to 2012.

2011

I didn't actually paint that many figures, as I seemed to spend most of the year painting to display level, rather than gaming level. I also made the mistake of painting disparate figures in the same batch, which resulted in painting figures in a batch serially, rather than in parallel, which definitely slowed down my output. I had planned to alternate between 28mm and 54mm, but never actually got any 54mm painted.

Looking back at my Resolutions for 2011 post:

Painting. Hopefully I achieved most of these, and I'd like to think that I'm a better painter now than I was at the start of the year. Blending and gradients didn't really feature much, so more work remains on them.

Modelling. Very little achieved on this front, figure wise. The largest conversions were basing related and I hope that my basing is better than it was at the start of the year; it's definitely something I want to build on in 2012. As for figure conversions, I found that as I was painting individual figures that I really liked, I didn't feel much need to modify them.

Sculpting. Other than an arm on one of the Dad's Army Civilians and the patching on Malagor the Dark Omen (my Finecast saga I'll be posting about next week), I don't think I picked up the putty last year. The sculpting bug did briefly return, but I didn't pursue it. It's back on the list for this year, fingers crossed.

Summary

A lot of painting, with not a great deal to show for it - hopefully quality versus quantity :-)

There's a lot of self indulgent text in this post, so here's a couple of random pictures for making it this far

Citadel Dwarf Big Game Hunter

He's finished, I just need to make his base.

2012

Painting

The big drain on my painting time this year will be the Open University. I'm in the middle of a Science degree, and have signed up for the next course - Astronomy (I took a year out in 2011, but I want to get back to it, as otherwise it'll just lie there half complete).

I'm not sure how much spare time I'll have for painting (and blogging), but from past experience,  the Open Uni reduces painting time to about 1/4 of normal. Taking four times longer to finish figures requires a different approach, and detailed display painting will not be top of my agenda. I find that trying to maintain enthusiasm over a long time frame is easier if I can see progress being made on the figures. I've had problems in the past where I've been painting something I haven't been enjoying, and it's ended up languishing on the table for months, a situation that finally resulted in me finding excuses not to paint at all. My approach, therefore, will be:

Gaming quality painting. I'm not a big fan of the Army Painter dip, but washes will feature more prominently in my approach. I found details on how to make your own washes at Awesome Paint Job, so I'm going to try and make some. Fewer colours on figures, washes to shade, and a quick highlight to finish should speed things up, hopefully without compromising quality too much.

Paint units. I ended up painting individuals in 2011, so I'm going to try and concentrate on units in 2012. Painting a unit at a time should reduce the number of colours required, speeding up the overall process. I have lots of Mantic Undead to paint, as well as loads of zombies. When I do paint a batch of individuals (zombie/demon hunters, pirates, SF figures etc), I'll keep the number down to about six.

Modelling

Time will be a huge factor here, and I suspect even trying to make time to convert, let alone scratchbuild, will prove difficult.

I have been considering using something like plastic Cadians as a base, then sculpting/converting them to zombie/demon hunters (similar to my Grey Knights, but less military in appearance). I'd also like to add some horsemen and heavy weapons to my Grey Knights, so there are plenty of options, just not enough time :-(

Gaming

I managed two games in 2011, so double my 2010 count :-) Again, time will be the problem, but I do want to try Chaos in Carpathia (whose rules I have read) and Tomorrow's War (whose rules I'm trying to read just now). I also have some Zombie rules to read, so if I can find the time, some games should be possible - even just once every couple of months would be a huge improvement over 2011.

Summary

2012 is going to be difficult time-wise, but I think that if I remember not to do too much at a time, and avoid distractions, I should be able to keep my painting and other hobby aspects ticking over at a low, but acceptable, level.

Final random picture of a Dwarf and an Orc (taken a few years ago with an old camera). Why the Orc is brown, rather than green, will be discussed in a 2012 post at some point...