Guys, here we go again! It’s with great fanfare that I return to a potentially great hobby year.
My hobby has been largely dormant for the last two years. At least there was no finished and presentable output because I simply didn’t get anything done due to a lack of time, other priorities and, to be honest, sometimes a lack of motivation. But the hobby was always there anyway. I checked hobby news every day, exchanged ideas with others, made plans, invested quite a bit of money in future projects and so on. It’s just that (almost) nothing got done. As I mentioned a year ago in the last ‘Shooting closure 2023’, things have been tinkered with from time to time and maybe even primed. Almost everything else had to wait. Until now.
The personal situation has eased and sorted itself out, so that in future I will have a bit of hobby time available again more or less regularly. I’m also very motivated and really keen to get going. In previous years, I have always used the annual report (‘end of shooting’) for a review. However, this should be largely uninteresting and I see the turn of the year as a bit of a turning point, because after a long dry spell, things are now getting going again.
Before we get to the actual hobby, I would like to share a few thoughts about the blog. You know how it is when projects fall asleep, they rarely get back on track and announced breaks are all too often the gentle introduction to the exit. This is by no means the case here, but I am taking a less ambitious approach than originally planned and will be lowering my standards. The blog has been around for almost 6 years now, 2 of which have been on the back burner. When I started the blog, I came back from 10 years of giving up my hobby completely. My enthusiasm for pop culture miniatures and this project here led me to paint miniatures from a wide variety of films, stage them appropriately, photograph them, add blog articles and post them. At the same time as relearning how to paint and relearning new techniques, trying out and professionalising my non-existent photography skills and buying and using various tools. What I had completely underestimated was the crafting and painting of matching terrain parts. In the end, this made many miniatures much more time-consuming than simply painting them. The learning curve was steep but sometimes frustrating, the results were often only okay and I had to live up to my own overly high expectations. I now have a basic stock of terrain and can realise most of the settings to some extent, but I still want to do a little better. I don’t stress myself anymore.
I had also designed the blog to be much more sophisticated than my experience and the time available had allowed. I didn’t know anything about WordPress and it’s not enough to simply start a blog. The topics of analysis, SEO, security, data protection, backups and so on are real time wasters and need to be considered with a level of care that does them justice – because if you don’t do SEO properly, you might as well give it a miss. If you only do data protection half-heartedly, you simply haven’t dealt with it properly. On top of that, I also tried to take part in partnership programmes (affiliate). That also takes work and of course it only works if you have a certain and constant number of visitors, which in turn increases the pressure. You think about how to optimise every single blog post and start writing differently than you would if you were completely unbiased. I no longer do that either.
I have terminated all partnership programmes and removed links. The blog has been and will continue to be purged. I don’t want to and can’t earn any money with the blog and, especially after the last two years of largely giving up my hobby, I just want to use it as a diary. A minimum will be analysed out of pure interest, everything else will be abolished. Initially there will be text-only articles and social media posts and otherwise I will concentrate purely on the miniatures.
Let’s get to that now: As I said, with virtually zero progress at the painting table, many potential projects have been added and existing ones have grown at the same time. There’s more than enough to do, but I’m looking forward to it. Last year, I started a lot and didn’t actually finish anything. All of this will now be finalised soon, which should go relatively quickly due to various preparatory work. I’m also just going with the flow and not taking on too much. I’m currently doing a lot of work on English history in the early Middle Ages. Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans. This is undoubtedly reflected in Saga armies: for Vikings, I already have the extensive Victrix set and some Vikings characters from Stronghold terrain here, while the Normans have just been added. So I can delve deeper into two topics that interest me and have two armies that can be played against each other. I might add Anglo-Saxons at some point, but that might take a while due to their relatively similar appearance – I need variety when painting.
Let’s get to that now: As I said, with virtually zero progress at the painting table, many potential projects have been added and existing ones have grown at the same time. There’s more than enough to do, but I’m looking forward to it. Last year, I started a lot and didn’t actually finish anything. All of this will now be finalised soon, which should go relatively quickly due to various preparatory work. I’m also just going with the flow and not taking on too much. I’m currently doing a lot of work on English history in the early Middle Ages. Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans. This is undoubtedly reflected in Saga armies: for Vikings, I already have the extensive Victrix set and some Vikings characters from Stronghold terrain here, while the Normans have just been added. So I can delve deeper into two topics that interest me and have two armies that can be played against each other. I might add Anglo-Saxons at some point, but that might take a while due to their relatively similar appearance – I need variety when painting.
Apart from that, I’m busy with everything that’s still to come from the past few years: Star Wars, dinosaurs/pulpy explorers, Batman etc. Let’s go!
Have a good start to the year!