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State of the Crazy: February 4, 2022

Can you believe a month has already gone by in 2022? I surely cannot, the last month has been an absolute blur. Life has been so incredibly busy as my infant son has exploded in new skills and now can crawl around the house. It is time to go back to ultra baby proofing everything… I have also been completely taken over by behind the scenes stuff and assisted in pushing a new calibration tool for the 3d printing community called the Cones of Calibration. I have been working on the development of this tool over the last several months and I’m so excited as well as terrified that it is now public. The goal was to help new hobbyist have an easier time tuning and calibrating their printer to get started in an easier to understand wya.

It also appears that I completely lost track of time and didn’t post anything in the last two weeks. I’m sorry so lets catch up.

Painting

Over the last two weeks I have barely painted as I have been consumed by writing and 3D printed related projects. I have realized though that painting helps my mental health the most out of all aspects of my hobby and that I need to put a stronger emphasis on it.

I unfortunately have become burnt out on the Frost Giant for my 2022 Benchmark model. It has gotten pretty far and while I really want to add more detail, highlights, and fix mistakes I think I’m going to spend only one more evening on it and call it completed. I definitely think part of my 2022 goals for painting improvement should be stamina.

I also participated in my first ever paint night at a game store. It was an absolute blast, I made more friends and realized that I am definitely not a speed painter and working with surprise quality and colors does not suit well for me. Let me introduce you to my jack-o-boneclaw. I accidently turned all of his skin bright yellow using a wash that was too strong for my liking. This is only about an hour and a half of real painting and know I can do better but just need to find the time to go back and improve it. This is actually a paint night kit which I think is a great idea. I am currently working on a review of the kit and more of my experience.

3D Printing

While I have not necessarily printing much of substance in terrain, models or buildings I have been working on a crazy amount of testing for 3D printing. Mostly I’ve been focused on expanding my knowledge and comparing exposure time tests for resin printing. There are so many different tools you can use for 3D printing but knowing the when and how to use them is always in question. I’ve been working on a series of guides on how to read and use each one. However this is posing to be a massive undertaking and taking longer than anticpated.

Tableflip Foundry the 3d printing presupporting company that I work with released a new tool to help new users test their exposure times as a parameter to tune their printer before printing models for their tabletop gaming.

Cones of Calibration

This test which i’ll be discussing more at a future time is something that I started working on in September and am so excited to share with the community. Check out the YouTube video if you wish to learn more.

New Beginnings

Not that I need more projects I have always dreamt of making my own games workshop army for Age of Sigmar. I have never played a game nor do I have any local friends to play with. The price point has always been a deterrent and fear of “ruining” the model with my paint skills. Well that officially changed last week! My friendly local game store had a mega sale for the Greywater Fastness start collecting box and a second Bloodbowl team the Imperial Nobility. I now officially have two teams to try and play bloodbowl! I am super excited and am in love with the Cities of Sigmar faction of which my greywater dwarves fit into. This is perhaps going to be a year where I definitely stretch my wings into new and different games.

Conclusion

I think I am definitely going to have to come up with a rotation of themed posts around the different aspects of the hobby I work on. Sorry for getting distracted.

As always happy hobby,
Carrie aka crazmadsci

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Dried yellow paint from a brand new P3 paint pot
crazmadsci Uncategorized

State of the Crazy: January 21, 2022

Update Quicklinks: Assembly, Printing, Painting, Blog

Happy Friday! Another week is coming to a close and it is again the time to reflect on our victories from the previous week and update on the going ons of the hobby desk. This has been a week where I do not feel like much gets completed but know that i’m still working hard. This is where I am finding satisfaction in writing these weekly updates. Reminds me just how much I actually do in a week rather than just focus on what I want to complete in a week.

Highlight of the week for the site is an updated Work in Progress Page! I am going to do my best to keep it updated and you can always find my most recent State of the Crazy at the top!

Assembly

Snotlings

In the last week I have not been able to spend a lot of time on this project but it is slowly but surely coming together. I still have mold lines to scrape and bases to glue but hopefully priming in the next week.

I might have a Goblin Problem

Slowly but surely I have been poking at this challenge and sorting the models between needing repair and good enough for primer. I do not think i’m going to dive into this project immediately and am happy slowly sorting the pile.

Magnetization!

As a method of tackling my hobby storage problems I have decided to increase the amount of miniatures in my collection and their magnetization. Since most of my bases are solid I am having to use a pin vice to slowly drill out holes. The work is slow but i’m slowly getting there. I am already running out of magnets so might have to fix that.

Metal letter tray with cork lining to hold magnetized miniatures.
Ikea Kvissle letter tray holding magnetized miniatures

Printing

Printing is still a bit slow but have been supporting a miniature for a dear friend along with printing a collection of calibration parts for a getting stated in resin printing page series. This is definitely taking longer than anticipated but i’m making sure i’m doing it right.

UV tools calibration test print
UV tools calibration test print

Painting Update

Last week I continued to spend a little bit of time painting my 2022 Benchmark model. I realize that a giant model might not be the best figure to paint twice in a year span but it was big enough to try to get some real airbrushing in. I really focused on hair and fur and this week focus on the leather and hopefully base. I don’t always get a lot of downtime for painting and juggle so much so the process is slower than i’d like.

Frost giant work in progress paint job
2022 Benchmark model Work in Progress

Hobby Maintanence

This week I spent some time to clean up my space, looking at my photo from last week I definitely needed it. As an area of focus I finally transferred some of my P3 paint into dropper bottles. Unfortunately some of the paint was dried out even as new paint bottle. I bought these a while ago from a game store knowing that P3 paint was slowly dying out and is one of my favorite brands. I also deep cleaned the airbrush using an isopropyl alcohol bath, it definitely needed it.

Newly transferred collection of P3 paint in dropper bottles
Newly transferred collection of P3 paint in dropper bottles
Dried yellow paint from a brand new P3 paint pot
Dried yellow paint from a brand new P3 paint pot
Airbrush cleaning in tub of isopropyl alcohol
Airbrush cleaning in tub of isopropyl alcohol

Blog

I appreciate all the words of encouragement after sharing “The Shattering Reality of my Miniature Collection.” It has meant a lot and made me feel better about the whole situation and given me a lot to think about. I have started a more robust spreadsheet documentation method for my collection with URLs linking to all the various write ups I have here on the website. I am also flirting with the idea to plot my hobby collection to more visually see it shifting from printed to completion. If you know anyone who has a graph of their pile of shame, opportunity or potential i’d love links for inspiration.

I have also been writing a lot for resin printing guides but due to the method of my creation of material it appears I’m going to be dropping a lot of this material at one time.

Conclusion

Not necessarily a ton to report on but it is still improvement towards finishing projects. What did you work on this week?

As always happy hobby,
Carrie aka crazmadsci

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View of my hobby space and desk as of the time of writing this article
crazmadsci 3D Printing

State of the Crazy: January 14, 2022

Update Quicklinks: Assembly, Printing, Painting, Blog

It is Friday again and that means. The State of the Crazy! This week has been absolutely a whirlwind and definitely one of those where you feel like you have accomplished so much and so little at the same time. Lets go through what all happened this week

View of my hobby space and desk as of the time of writing this article
The honest state of the crazy at the time of writing

Assembly

Snotlings Assembled!

Bloodbowl snotling models assembled
Completed & assembled snotlings

This has been incredibly therapeutic for me and I have slowly been chipping away on this project when I only have a few minutes or highly likely to get pulled away. I definitely think that having a small project to chip away at slowly is something that will be a requirement for my hobby space. Next up is to scrape mold lines and attach to bases. There are a few snotlings that will be pained in subassemblies since they will go on the pump wagon.

I might have a Goblin Problem

The box of goblins to be worked on in the future
The box of goblins to be worked on from Lost Adventures Vol 1

Is there any truth in the statement, “You can never have too many goblins?” Well I appear to have a significant number of goblins at least 67 which I have found in this box. Many of which are duplicates with failed prints or portions as I have printed this set of (22 goblins) in at least 3 different occasions over the 2021 year. I am slowly going to take this collection of goblins and test a few theories and aspects of the hobby.

  • How to use green stuff to sculpt (repairing the failed print pieces)
  • Temporarily gluing to bases for ease of painting
    • Do I prefer to paint without a base?
  • How many ways can I paint green skin?

This is definitely going to be a project I slowly chip away at once the snotlings are completed and moved into painting.

Printing

I actually think for once I did not print anything last week of note. So far I am following my hobby focus of painting and website for now and catching up on documentation and projects before printing out new things.

Painting Update

For the first time I have begun to paint a model with an airbrush. I have begun work on my 2022 Benchmark model and it is still in progress. I am going to take my time for this paint job and attempt to do the best I can. I definitely already know I have room for improvement in both technique and placement but we all have to start somewhere.

Frost Giant front airbrushed base coats
2022 Benchmark Airbrush basecoat front
Frost Giant back airbrushed base coats
2022 Benchmark Airbrush basecoat back

Blog

Last week I published my 2022 Benchmark Model writeup “How to Gauge Growth in Miniature Painting”. This has received quite alot of positive response from people in its relatability to their own hobby. I can’t wait to see peoples benchmark models in the future!

I have also been writing quite a bit on other things and not quite ready to publish but should be coming up! Much of this is to update out of date sections of the site and begin publishing my starting to 3D print section.

Conclusion

Not necessarily a ton to report on but it is still improvement towards finishing projects. What did you work on this week?

As always happy hobby,
Carrie aka crazmadsci

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