Originally published on Oct 31, 2009
Continuing with the description of my wacky project planning process...
Stage 2: Some Planets Align
Things started out with some passive brainstorming - a bunch of ideas exist and they're all under consideration. Stage 1 is pretty passive and nebulous. Not too much conscious/directed thought being put into a single specific project at this point.
Stage 2 is where a a particular idea starts to become better defined. Importantly, nothing concrete has been laid down yet! I'm still basically free-wheeling at this point.
Usually, an idea starts to take form around a particular gaming or artistic need (technically a desire, since it isn't food, water, shelter and clothing). This is can be a need for an army to play whatever game I happen to be into at the moment. A project can also form around purely artistic goals as well. Most times, the project starts forming around both of those things. Though a gaming need is usually the senior partner.
At this point there is a casual thought running through my head: "Hey, I need an army for Warhammer Fantasy!" or "Man, painting Forgeworld models seems fun!"
Once that happens, all of those random ideas I mentioned in stage 1 start attaching themselves to the need. Army lists start being paid more attention too and I a few painting ideas start taking root. This is really the main bullet point of stage 2.
There's one other factor that can also play a role in this stage - a financial windfall. Gaming and painting aren't cheap hobbies. Often times a some money left over from your tax return or a gift giving holiday of some sort can also get me thinking about a new project.
Its much easier to get the ball rolling when Uncle Sam hands you a couple hundred bux or when you're brother in Missouri gives you a Stegadon for Christmas.
Next up the project details start getting defined.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Retired: Project Planning - the Laubersheimer Industries Way (Stage 1)
Originally published: Oct 29, 2009
Project Future Boys is still bangin' along nicely. I feel like end of December to end of January is a safe date range to predict for completion. Not too far past my super optimistic first thoughts and still turbo speed compared to any thing else I've worked on in a long while.
I swear I'll take pictures at some point and share my progress. Really. Scout's honor.
But the nub of my gist isn't lame excuses.
The Eldar will actually be completed in the foreseeable future and X-mas approaches- which means my mind is wandering over new projects more than usual.
Today I want to share my thoughts (or start doing so) on how I go about picking and planning a new project. Everyone has there own way of doing things and I think a peek into someone else's thoughts is always a little fun for me. Since a new project idea has firmly taken root in my brain, I can write about what's going through my head as it happens.
As you can probably guess from the title, this will be a multi-part series.
Stage 1: Passive Brainstorming
At this point in what can be loosely defined as a process, I'm not consciously looking for a project. Most of the projects I actually start, spend some amount of time in jumbled in a cloud of thoughts about stuff I'd like to do. And let me tell you, there's a lot of stuff in that cloud.
At any given time, I have a number of nascent and aged ideas running around my head all vying for attention.
[Stream of conscious moment]: Fuck you, above sentence! That is just the worst thing I've written in a long while. I can just imagine my readers imagining me writing that sentence with a snifter of brandy in one hand and a thesaurus in the other while lounging in my library surrounded by large oaken furniture and an old globe. When did I get to be such a pretentious fuck?
OK... I'm primarily an information reader. Its one of the reasons I have so many rulebooks for so many games on my shelves... in my library... on large shelves... I also tend to spend a lot of time on the internet devouring the knowledge of others - gaming related or not. I like to check facts, re-read stuff and so on as part of that. Ever paused an episode of MST3K to look up an obscure reference to an author and end up searching a library catalog for some books only to find that you've wasted 45 minutes between point A and B reading literary criticism and wikipedia pages? I have. That's just a taste of the ridiculous amounts of reading I do and the strange information needs my brain creates.
As I spend a ton of time thinking about painting and gaming, I also do a lot of reading on the subjects. Hand in hand with this is a general habit of trawling the internet for inspiration. I look for new tutorials, pictures of other people's work, beefy army lists, tactics discussions and so on. Due to these compulsions, I've always got a ton of ideas floating around in my head - many of them only feasible once I've won the lottery.
[Note to self]: you have to actually buy lotto tickets to win the lottery.
So, I've got all these ideas stored up. Some are almost fully formed projects. Others are just one-off ideas for a single model. All that's needed is some kind of alignment of the planets to get one of those ideas out of my head and into production (and develop it further if need be).
Project Future Boys is still bangin' along nicely. I feel like end of December to end of January is a safe date range to predict for completion. Not too far past my super optimistic first thoughts and still turbo speed compared to any thing else I've worked on in a long while.
I swear I'll take pictures at some point and share my progress. Really. Scout's honor.
But the nub of my gist isn't lame excuses.
The Eldar will actually be completed in the foreseeable future and X-mas approaches- which means my mind is wandering over new projects more than usual.
Today I want to share my thoughts (or start doing so) on how I go about picking and planning a new project. Everyone has there own way of doing things and I think a peek into someone else's thoughts is always a little fun for me. Since a new project idea has firmly taken root in my brain, I can write about what's going through my head as it happens.
As you can probably guess from the title, this will be a multi-part series.
Stage 1: Passive Brainstorming
At this point in what can be loosely defined as a process, I'm not consciously looking for a project. Most of the projects I actually start, spend some amount of time in jumbled in a cloud of thoughts about stuff I'd like to do. And let me tell you, there's a lot of stuff in that cloud.
At any given time, I have a number of nascent and aged ideas running around my head all vying for attention.
[Stream of conscious moment]: Fuck you, above sentence! That is just the worst thing I've written in a long while. I can just imagine my readers imagining me writing that sentence with a snifter of brandy in one hand and a thesaurus in the other while lounging in my library surrounded by large oaken furniture and an old globe. When did I get to be such a pretentious fuck?
OK... I'm primarily an information reader. Its one of the reasons I have so many rulebooks for so many games on my shelves... in my library... on large shelves... I also tend to spend a lot of time on the internet devouring the knowledge of others - gaming related or not. I like to check facts, re-read stuff and so on as part of that. Ever paused an episode of MST3K to look up an obscure reference to an author and end up searching a library catalog for some books only to find that you've wasted 45 minutes between point A and B reading literary criticism and wikipedia pages? I have. That's just a taste of the ridiculous amounts of reading I do and the strange information needs my brain creates.
As I spend a ton of time thinking about painting and gaming, I also do a lot of reading on the subjects. Hand in hand with this is a general habit of trawling the internet for inspiration. I look for new tutorials, pictures of other people's work, beefy army lists, tactics discussions and so on. Due to these compulsions, I've always got a ton of ideas floating around in my head - many of them only feasible once I've won the lottery.
[Note to self]: you have to actually buy lotto tickets to win the lottery.
So, I've got all these ideas stored up. Some are almost fully formed projects. Others are just one-off ideas for a single model. All that's needed is some kind of alignment of the planets to get one of those ideas out of my head and into production (and develop it further if need be).
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