It's a new year, time for a new post

2010 was a fun year for my hobbies.  Recaps are trite, but here are the highlights:

• Started a 2nd army to languish in the hell of my backlog of unfinished projects.  Sitting next to my desk is an entire box of Deamons. Painting them has been a blast, thouhg.  Now to make sure they don't take a year and a half to be playably ready to go.
• Completely collected and then completely abandoned a Warhammer fantasy army. My poor dino-horde is why I continue to have mixed feelings about 8th edition despite knowing better.  The silver lining is that I broke even and didn't waste time with wood elves.
• Got my first and only hate mail from a man very confused about how the internet and logical arguments work.  Bonus points on this one for receiving one worthless rant and then receiving a spell-checked version with a polite explanation on why I was getting two copies.  Also, thinly veiled threats of physical violence.
• Started up the House of Paincakes with Dethtron.  It's killed my ability to write for this blog, but the whole thing been fun as hell and great for networking.  Its going strong and getting lots of love.
• Discovered the wonder that is the wet palette.  For your own sake, go get one. Now.
• Entered a BoLS painting challenge.  Got third place as far as I can tell; they never announced winners to my knowledge. 
• Got tons of fantastic books from GW and Forgeworld.  They're relly stepping up the quality of what they produce and it is fantastic.  Badab War II is on the way and I have a bit of a hobby boner.
• Sold a bunch of my old crap to pay for new crap.  The viability of hobby cannibalism is firmly established for me.  I also got better at letting go of my precious, precious work.

 I think 2011 is shaping up to  be better.  I have an army pretty close to done and if the job-gods are kind to me, I'll be in a better position to actually make some games happen and then fart around with new stuff.  Plus, the Eldar will actually be done and ready to play.

In The Trenches

Just some quick notes on what's going on at LaubInd HQ: The recent lack of quality posts, contest entries and the future glut of Cool Things.


Its been a busy past couple of weeks for me as far as painting goes. Actually, strike that. Pretend that I went back and made clever use of strike through text.

The last couple of weeks have been back-breakingly busy as far as painting goes.

On the 5th, the BoLS crew announced a hobby challenge that I wanted to enter. I was working on a Baal Predator anyway, so I thought that I would try and get my tank finished up a bit earlier than I had intended. I won't get into the details, but it ended up being a fairly epic tale of obsession, late nights and being chained to my work bench in general.

Thanks Unholy Krondor that my special lady friend is the patient and understanding type. In a round about way, there's thanks to be handed out to one of my cats who chose this time to get chronic hairballs. If it wasn't for the days off I took for Vomit Watch 2010 I'm not quite sure I would have made the deadline. As it is, I had my pics in a scant hour and a half before it was due.

Once BoLS posts the poll for the challenge this week, I'll post some pictures and go into the details of what I'm now going to call Project: Quick Rick.



Here's to hoping I didn't fuck up the submission and that my entry makes it past the editorial cut and into the contest proper.

This whole post is gonna be rambly, so bear with me.

Per request of the triple threat* that is Hoagy, I'm going to be doing some stage by stages of some Hive Guard models so you guys can get an idea of how my Trygon came to be. Particularly the use of my airbrush to get some interesting effects on the skin and speed up what would be an otherwise tedious job of highlighting. It'll be a much needed change from the break neck pace I've been ruining my sleep with. It'll also be something semi new here since I don't tend to do many step-by-steps.

But before alla that, I'm also taking a much needed break from work. Starting Tuesday I'm off for almost a week o take care of some much needed relaxation and vacationing. On the vacation docket are reading my copy of Imperial Armor (armour?) 8 when it arrives, playing the living shit our of Super Mario Galaxy 2... when it arrives, watching some TV and...

DUNH DUNH DUNNAH!

Visiting the US Army Ordnance Museum and some restaurants in the Aberdeen area. Pretty excited about this. Can't believe that I didn't have to talk the Special Lady Friend into it either.** So once I get back from this, keep your eyes open for my trip photos. Should be interesting.

-----[Foot Notes]-------------------
*In no particular order, these threats would be: singer, songwriter and laser beam eye haver.
**Compare your lives to mine and then kill yourself.

RETIRED: Project Planning - the Laubersheimer Industries Way (Stage 2)

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.

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).