miscellaneous: adepticon 2014: ...and so it begins

I was one of the fools that spent the evening of November 14th scrambling through the madness of Adepticon 2014 registration. I may not have gotten every class that I wanted, but my schedule is still full of games to play and techniques to learn. And plenty of time to hang with friends old and new. It's always the best part of the con!

Now that January's here and Adepticon is (in hobbyist terms) eminent, it's time to buckle down and figure out what models/projects I need to have finished by the end of March. The events that I need something for are as follows...

• Dreadball League in a Night
• BootaTown: Dreadnaught Arena
• Crystal Brush: Sci-Fi Squad?

For Dreadball League in a Night, I've decided to convert and paint up the Season 3 Teraton team I got with the Kickstarter. When the Kickstarter included a very familiar anthropomorphic rat I was stoked. When they added a race of lizards with shells, I knew what I had to do...

Ukomo Avalanchers | Coach

A couple weekends ago, I pulled one of the Teraton models out and started working on a proof of concept. This is what I came up with.

Ukomo Avalancher (left) Ninja Turtle? (right)

Not 100% what I pictured in my mind's eye, but close enough to keep trucking with the concept. This weekend I spent some time working on faces and made my first attempt at the shell.

The shell needs some work, but like the faces I think the proof of concept is enough to keep trucking forward. I've done preliminary logo work for them too, but I keep vacillating on the name. "Vintage Cartoon Ninja Teraton" and "Master Yoshi's Halfshell Heroes" are the current front-runners.

For BootaTown, I've recently re-kindled my long dormant Iron Warriors and will likely kill two birds with one stone by building and painting up an Iron Warrior Helbrute from the ForgeWorld kit I purchased a couple Adepticons ago.

For Crystal Brush I'm currently waiting on Badger to fix my compressor so that I can try some new things and test my mettle with a Necromunda Redemptionist squad. Before I even put brush to model, I know it's unlikely to win. I've seen what others can do. But I'm still gonna try to push myself with it and I look forward to getting one-on-one feedback from some of the most talented painters I've ever had the pleasure to meet.

miscellaneous: organizing the kanban way!

After listening to episode 82 of The Independent Characters and hearing Carl extoll the virtues of Kanban flow, the organization system piqued my interest.

However, when it comes to organization I'm a more tactile kinda guy. I enjoy the physical act of scratching items off a list. I don't get the same feeling when I delete an item off a grocery list on my iPhone. With that in mind, and several materials already on hand, I made this...

To solve the problem of sub-tasks, I've divided each column into stages, denoted by what color pin is holding the card. The column header also has pins as a key. For example, the Zombicide Runners, Walkers and Heroes are ready for the final stage of PREP, they're ready for priming. My sections are:

• PREP - Wash, Assemble, Prime
• 3-COLOR - Skin, Clothing, Weapons
• DETAIL - Highlight, Shadow, F/X
• BASE - Build, Paint, F/X
• RECORD - Photo, Edit, Blog
• COMPLETE - Admire, Beer!

Different games have different colored cards. Currently the purple cards are for SAGA, pink is Dreadball and blue is Infinity. The yellow cards are board games. I switch up the color of Sharpie to denote which cards are from different factions or board games - thus "Marauders" is written in green and "Robots" is written in black.

So far, it's working well. I only bothered to make cards for the stuff that's fresh in my mind and it's driven home just how many models I've got sitting around, doing nothing. None of my 40K, Flames of War, Privateer Press or Malifaux figures have cards yet! Hopefully, it'll be the motivation I need to stay on task and get some of these models ready to show off in the light of day.