36 - FtW Collaborative Post on Motivation

What motivates me to paint miniatures? Well, I think at this point - only 7 months into the hobby - motivation hasn't been a major issue. I'm still in the honeymoon period, I guess, because I try to get a little bit of painting and modeling in every night. In fact, I find it very therapeutic at the end of the day. Painting miniatures is almost like my version of zen meditation - I get totally wrapped up in the tiny details of a model, the careful brush strokes, the layering of paint, etc. Get some good grooves going in the background (currently on my playlist: Orgone, the Black Keys, and the Postal Service), and everything else just fades away into the background.

But I also have a track record of getting really involved in something (be it a television show, a band, a video game, etc.) for about a month, totally devouring every scrap of information about it, dedicating hours of every day to thinking about it, and then...poof...30 days later, I abandon it and move on to my next obsession. Now, if this ever happens with me and miniatures...well, then, that's almost $800 worth of models collected over 7 months down the drain. Not cool. So, while I may still be enthusiastic about the hobby right now, there's no time like the present to start planning for burn-out. Here's my top 5 tips for getting motivated and re-energized about the hobby:

1) Paint a variety of models. Don't just stick to one army or one genre or one game system or one company. If all you're doing is painting Imperial Guardsmen day after day, and all that's awaiting you on your painting table are more Guardsmen, then it's not hard to see why you'd be burned out after a couple of squads. Instead, spice things up by painting a High Elf hero character or even some Reaper or War Machine or Hasslefree miniatures every once in awhile.

2) Start a blog. This isn't because I'm an attention-whore. In actuality, I started this blog purely to chart my own progress in the hobby. Having people come and visit every once in awhile is just a bonus (and a great one, at that!). For me, at least, blogging is a big motivation to paint because I'm just naturally drawn to filling up a blank screen (or a blank piece of paper) with my thoughts. And since my blog is about miniatures, the best way to have anything to talk about is to actually paint up a model. I guess it's the English Lit. major in me.

3) Don't beat yourself up for putting a half-painted model down and picking up a new one. I'm that way with a lot of things - my apartment is filled with half-read books piled on the coffee table, on book shelves (naturally), on end tables, nightstands, etc. Every once in awhile, I'll pick one of them up and breeze through it in a day or two because my mood at the time was just in tune with the book's subject matter. It's the same with half-painted minis. I won't force myself to slog through a mini I'm rapidly losing enthusiasm for because that's the best way to turn this hobby into a job, in my opinion.

4) If you're not in the mood to paint, then assemble. If you're not in the mood to assemble, then convert, etc. etc. This hobby is multi-faceted enough to cater to a host of different interests and moods.

5) Read blogs or watch YouTube videos about the hobby. Sometimes all it takes to re-ignite that interest in the hobby is to read and watch someone else's enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is contagious, after all.

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20 - Imperial Guard Veterans Squad "The 50/ 50s" (7 out of 10 Completed)

As a new member of the From the Warp Bloggers Group, I'd like to make my first contribution to the group by adding to the Collaborative Post on the Imperial Guard. This post is more of a summary of all of my past posts on the construction and painting of my Veterans Squad, "The 50/ 50s" (so named because this jaded, cynical group of hardened veterans understand that life and death is merely a 50/ 50 flip of the coin, oftentimes, and skill ain't got nothing to do with it). To the left, you will see the finished 7 members of "The 50/ 50s." In the top row, from left to right, we have: Specialist Samori, the vox-caster operator and newest member of the squad; Sergeant Greyloch; Specialist Ruddard, the sniper; and Specialist Blacker. In the bottom row, from left to right, we have: Specialist Slagan, demolitions expert; Corporal Marsham; and Specialist Condan, meltagun operator. The squad is still missing its heavy flamer operator (next up as soon as I get my heavy flamer bit in the mail) and its Heavy Weapon Team (a lascannon, I think).

Now, I'm not really all that interested in min-maxing this squad. I mostly chose its composition based on what I wanted to paint or how I envisioned it in my mind. While I'm not counting out ever playing a table-top game of Warhammer 40k, at the moment, I really have no time to pursue that.

A close-up of Specialist Samori is to the right. His head comes from a Space Marine Scout, his vox-caster is Catachan, the banner streaming from the antenna of his vox-caster is a Dark Elf Warrior bit, the shotgun has been cut and converted from a Space Marine Scout, and his right arm is from the Command Squad sprue. His paintjob neither improves nor slips from my current level of painting. I did continue my attempts at grasping highlighting by adding some to the banner (to decent effect), but I think proper highlighting is still a few months away.

Some comments on how I put this squad together - Corporal Marsham (bottom row, middle) was the first Veteran I "converted" and painted. As you can see, he's pretty much a standard Guardsman but with a few bits glued on him here and there. Specialist Blacker (top row, far right) was the second, and his conversion was taken one step further than Marsham's - I cut off his left hand and glued on a hook from a Chaos Space Marine Rhino decorative bit. Also, his head comes from a Space Marine Scout. As I became more confident and more engrossed in the conversion aspects of this hobby, each subsequent Veteran underwent more and more elaborate conversions - Specialist Ruddard, the sniper, is wielding a converted sniper rifle; Specialist Condan operates a meltagun from the Space Marine Tactical Squad box and required a lot of cutting and filing in order to make it fit on his model; etc. What I came to realize is that converting models is incredibly good fun! It's heretical to say, but it's even more fun than painting them! I've gotten to the point where every remaining unit in my Imperial Guard list is going to be scrutinized for conversion possibilities. I'll be asking myself: "Hmm, do I really have to buy a Cadian Command Squad box? Or should I see if I can convert one from bits laying around?"

After completing my Veterans Squad, I will be building a diorama for them. I would like to incorporate magnets into the diorama, or at least design it in such a way that the miniatures can be removed from the diorama easily. I've seen tutorial on the web, but many of them seem to require a drill bit of some kind which I do not own (nor plan on getting in the near future). At this point, I think I'm looking at using plasticard or even sculpting putting to create depressions in the diorama to accomodate the base of a miniature.

Well, click here for more pics of my Veterans Squad, and feel free to visit my blog for more in-depth posts on each of the individual members of "The 50/ 50s."

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