Watch This Space II

A horrible long while since the original one of these but it's not as if I haven't had anything else to go on about :)

Some may have noticed that I revamped the blog a while ago and I'm in the process of steadily adding further quality items to the blog roll.

Today I'm going to highlight two commission painters blogs both a little different to each other.

Den of Imagination is run by Brovatar who seems particularly for readers to "feed your imagination". He certainly inspires you to do so with a monstrous turnover of projects both commissioned and for E-Bay.

Plenty of 40K mini armies make their way across has paint station, often featuring recent releases, often with a strong theme and a matching display base.

Recent personal favourites were the snowy Night Lords and the rusty Necrons with plenty of source lighting effects. Something I'm suddenly quite keen on trying out myself :)

There's some nice tutorials to look through including basing with coconut shell no less. Lots of visual content with chatter being particularly business like I enjoy seeing his projects and commissions work through some very nice ideas.

Viking Pirate Painting feels a touch more relaxed and personal as you get a lot more general chat with longer more descriptive tutorials and advice, colour wheels / saturation. Stuff I was aware of but now have a better appreciation of. Nice to see some personal projects too.

Forgeworld kits seems to be a bit of a speciality with two Warhounds recently completed and a really good tutorial giving advice on how to fix and correct a lot of their kits.

Latest project is some REALLY nice Emperors Children armour.

At the end of the day both blogs are designed to attract customers and sales. Nothing wrong with that, some years ago I used to do quite a bit of low end commission painting to help pay the bills and know just how much WORK is involved. Not a service that everyone can afford but when you think about material costs and then a decent hourly rate for a highly skilled profession then you get where you get to.

Anyway plenty of eye candy and inspiration all for free :)

Competitive blogging??

I actually had a fairly decent weekend hobby-wise repairing and spray basecoating up all of the Orcs and Goblins prior to drybrushing the be-Jesus out of them but that's not massively exciting so you get this instead.

So what is this post? Labeled as "Musings" is it just a filler post designed to pad my hit-count?

Despite being at this for best part of two years now I've only recently succumbed to "stat-fever" and I know that I'm far from being the only sufferer.


I love to wander this hobby's blog-o-sphere as it provides plenty of ideas, inspiration and motivation. Over time my reading list of followed blogs has steadily increased. I've noticed a number of blogs have large followings (I have seven and I treasure each of you) and boast massive hit counts and page views (I have 4500 total page views, last month's 685 was a new record) and some blogs have been voted for various awards (well done them).

Not that this was ever an issue for me but these blogs seem to be no different to my own other than their stat....why? Not in a bad way, just out of interest.

Being a regular reader of  Tabletop Gaming News I recently joined it's blog network and unsurprisingly my stats increased greatly and I naturally felt rather chuffed at the apparent compliment. But soon I was checking my stats on a more than daily basis and in the push for another record month scouring my brain for potential post ideas.

Stimulating creativity? Maybe. Massaging ego? More than likely.

I've never blogged on a daily basis. It's a lot of effort and I'm sure that I don't have enough relevant, interesting stuff to say. Some guys do and it'll mean that they're constantly visible in other people's sidebars and blog lists which strikes as self-perpetuating.
This briefly seemed like "the next logical step" until I stepped in and hard a word with myself.

To be a little harsh many daily posters regularly have to resort to filler (filler is for cracks!) that I'll quickly glance at and then move on as I always prefer to have a thought or two provoked. I'd prefer to do the same myself if at all possible.


Each to thier own though as taste is an individual thing.

Sometime ago I just looked at my stats occasionally and wondered why the interest from Iran or South Korea. All of my most popular posts were from back when I was making up my converted Chaos Dwarf Blood-Bowl team with a lot of interest from those BB crazy Dutch dudes.

As on the table-top I've always wanted to be competitive enough to provide all involved with a worthwhile experience. The occasional win always helps but I'd never want that to become my sole motivation!.

Anyway, I've vented without ranting too much so I shall thank you for your time! Playing Naps with Rich tonight before a Star Wars RPG session tomorrow evening so grab your place early Friday 'cos that post will be a doozy!

Happy blogging :)

Economies of Scale

On Wednesday I started packing for the impending move to my new abode and as always was amazed by the amount of STUFF that i've accumulated since last time.

I've pretty much packed up the shed and as a part of that process spent some time trawling through various boxes of plastic and tin-pewter.

I've even managed to dispose of an awful lot of Empire and Orc and Goblin sprues that have been with me longer than many of my socks.

It struck me that i'm predominantly a 25mm boy but thats mainly because, like many of us, i'm a child of Games Workshop, and have been programmed as such. FoW was a serious flirtation with 15mm, since sold on, and i've got bits of 10 and 15mm floating about but always found 6mm too small to paint.
HOWEVER,.. i've slowly been experiencing 15mm skirmish,.. and I like it! I've been following the Gruntz 15mm Sci-Fi blog, walked past it several times at Warfare and intend to actually play a game at Salute.

Browsing around the Khurusan, Critical Mass and Ground Zero web-stores has been on the increase. Jon has even gone as far as making some purchases.

I've built up a good resource of figures and scenery for the Star Wars roleplaying in 25mm BUT if I was starting that up today i'd be more than likely to do it in 15mm. The quality is good as are the comparative prices, the ranges ever expanding, and it would make the best of time, space and funds available. The worst you've got to deal with is adjusting ground-scale!

I'm sure that you could do the same with almost any genre, theatre etc.

BUT 25mm just looks so good when done well! Flip over to Geektactica, all the links are in the sidebar, and take a look as personally I find the stuff that these guys do truly inspiring.

I'm genuinely torn! Happy gaming :)