Massive Update
I Know it’s Been a While
The text between the breaks was intended to be posted in April. I didn’t quite get it ready to post…. Hence why it.. didn’t… post…. Yeah, anyway, read on for explanations and such
Apr 14 - Written By Andrew Denike
It’s kind of funny how my attention span works sometimes. I’ll be super excited about working on things and applying to jobs and everything, and then my mood shifts for some reason or another and I drop everything. And then, of course, I come back for whatever reason, and I want to do all of the things, even if those things weren’t what I was working on previously.
So uh… Hey. Here I am.
Things at work have been stressful, and there’s a more than possible regime change coming, and I should have been working on this all along… Doesn’t matter. I came back to work on stuff and work on stuff I have. So, lets talk about them shall we?
The Cyberpunk Environment
Since the last time I posted I guess I have done a few things, but some of them I want to keep secret for the reveal? I may post a picture here to the side by time this post goes up [[[insert things here maybe]]]
Archaia’s Crew Quarters
A while back I found a concept art by Khairizal Rahmat on Artstation. He has a ton of different concept art that I really enjoy, but this piece (shown right) was one that spoke to me most. As you can see (below) I have a lot of the blocking done and am adding details in some spots, while in other spots the blocking isn’t entirely (or at all) done. It’s been a sporadic work in progress, but I’ve been fairly focused on it.
So it turns out I have ADHD. I saw a video on YouTube by Jaiden Animations (Literally entitled I found out I have ADHD) that made me go “huh…” and have a conversation with my therapist and doctor and got me some much needed medication. After fine tuning and figuring out my life a little bit - a process which is still ongoing forever and ever - and fighting off a depression that seems never ending I’m starting to try to get back into the swing of things.
I have made no progress on either of those mentioned projects, but I did start a new 3d project on a whim (what a vicious cycle that never finishes a thing…) that I’ll talk about below, as well as working on a commission (which inspired me to paint again as well as post again), that I will also talk about below.
Tiny Toy Trains
You remember those little wooden trains from when we were kids? The ones with little magnets that you would push around on a little wooden track with like… puzzle connectors? Like the one on the right. Just… right there? >>>
I was browsing Reddit and I found someone who was asking about how you would go about modeling those. I thought about it and I was like, “well lets find out” and I started modeling some of the pieces. It’s a good exercise for me. I’m getting more practice with little weird pieces and I think I’m going to enjoy this project when I get back to it.
Funnily it just so happened to be the first day on my Adderall and it was so intensely strange to be focused on a task and not distracted by a million little things that were happening (either of my own design or not). I had Netflix on for background noise, but I wasn’t watching it, I was just entirely focused on working. Instead of taking maybe five to seven hours on a normal day (or more) I found that the piece to the left (one of the harder pieces in my opinion) only took me like… 3 hours? And I think I went about part of it in a weird way I’ll fix later.
It is by no means perfect. I probably could retopologize (notice I don’t have the wire frames on in the picture here….), but it was a start and it was eye opening. I’ve not worked on the project long since June but it gave me an excitement for working in 3d again. I’m definitely going back to it.
A Commission!
So story-time, kinda. Ryan, a buddy that I’ve been playing Warhammer with messaged me on Discord asking how much I would charge to paint his Stormcast Eternals Spearhead. I didn’t know off the bat, but I did some math and got back to him with a price, which we agreed upon and we came up with a color scheme that he would be happy with. Blue cloaks, Black armor pieces, metals galore, white details, and a blue-green fire effect that was interesting to come up with.
I uh…. I feel weird talking about my process I guess? Warhammer has two standards of painted: Battle Ready or Table Ready, which is where the model is painted in at least three colors with a wash and basing; and Parade Ready, which is where the model is painted, highlighted, and based. Basically just a little bit more work, getting them to a higher level of doneness for people who would be looking at the model within like a foot. Ryan was only looking for his army to be Table Ready, so it was a little easier. The Dark Blue from ProAcryl was a great color to work with, and honestly I might start switching away from Citadel paints because dropper bottles are really nice. Or just switch all my paint pots over to dropper bottles, but that sounds like a project in itself.
In total the commission took just shy of 20 hours and Ryan was super impressed with how everything turned out and said he’d probably hit me up for more in the future.
All my work in progress photos are posted below. Stay tuned after those for a short something.
A bit of the palette I used, from the Brushrage app. I highly recommend it.
WIP of the Lord Vigilant on Gryphstalker
Marble basing was a new technique for me
WIP of the shield on the back of the Knight-Questor
The Knight-Questor himself
WIP of the Lord Terminos. The little white stripe is where Ryan was like “dude, how are you this good?”
So I Had A Realization
I’m not a fantasy wargamer and I’ve only played one game of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar in 2019 - though I do have my own recently-ish purchased Spearhead army that I haven’t finished building (and that I bought for an idea for my d&d campaign) - so it’s funny that my big push to me painting my Warhammer 40k armies (yes, that is plural, no, I am not proud) was to paint something else. I think that’s going to give me a weird thing where I start saying to myself “ah yes, I’m going to start buying non-sci-fi armies to make sure I don’t get burnt out on my sci-fi armies.”
But maybe I could just also paint some of the other stuff that I have. Little bits of scatter terrain and d&d minis to… not necessarily tide me over but to break the monotony? You would think that switching between my different 40k factions would be enough but, we’ll figure things out down the road.
Okay, this novel is long enough, I’ll post again in the future. Maybe in about a month? That might be a more sustainable timeline. But… we’ll see.
