Death to the Dryskins No More...

... or at least for a while. I contacted Iannick a few days ago to let him know I'm withdrawing from the Old World Army Challenge and promised more info for a blog post.

At the start of this month, I painted forty models in seven days.

None of them were Slann.


For those who don't know, Quindia Studios is my trade name for everything I do in the hobby, including professional work as an artist and author. These days that is mostly as a member of the League of Augsburg - a group... well... TWO of us really that publishing material for the period of 1660-1760. Beneath the Lily Banners, Donnybrook, Warfare Miniatures, flag sheets, uniform guides... it's a lot.

My partner and I had our state of the union chat at the end of the year to chart out our path for 2018, and one of the new projects includes primary author work for me on Donnybrook Dark. A few of you know about Donnybrook. Said supplement takes elements introduced in that game as used as a tactic to frighten superstitious peasants and turns it into reality. Trolls, werewolves, wraiths... still set in our time period.

Now I'm quite excited about this as I've wanted to do it for some time and it's kind of taken on a life of it's own beyond the simple 12-page PDF I had planned. At first I was just going to say "here's rules to add zombies, have at it!" but it's grown to a small setting and a map, a set of keywords balanced against the point system to design your own creatures (I shudder at trying to make sure this works), several new factions, fantasy terrain elements, maybe a spellbook... cripes!

Besides painting a ton of models to illustrate the book, I have to build new terrain because in my infinite wisdom I designed my default setting to be Eastern European (an area for which I have little in the way of appropriate buildings and the like) and my initial collection on snow bases (for which I have ZERO terrain). None of that includes all of the artwork and other things I need to do to contribute to our OTHER projects this year.

Even given all of that, I probably still could paint a measly 200 points of Slann. I just don't think I want to. I've been shuffling them around the desk to make room for my other stuff, pilfering paint jars from my carefully collected drawer of Slann colors (I have so many paints I keep my current project of pots separated so I don't need to hunt for them), and then a couple of days ago I moved them to THE SHELF. Never a good sign that a project will get attention any time soon and I don't think a mulligan would do anything except prolong this for a month.

I'm just not into it right now and that is a sure way for me to paint nothing if I don't move to what interest me. Last week I felt like I HAD to get started so I painted three Slann models in an afternoon. It was painful. The thought of painting another fifteen just made my hair hurt. I use to paint commissions and I stopped doing that because of the same thing. I would end up with a pile of Napoleonics I HAD to paint (to send off to someone else's table no less) when I really wanted to work on Rogue Trader stuff or WW2 or whatever and it just took me forever even though I could have had the things out in half the time.

Anyway, that's a long enough ramble. The challenge afforded me a good jump on a project I've wanted to do for a long time, so thanks for that. Good luck to everyone! I'll check in to see these awesome armies grow and hopefully I'll get back to the Slann later this year (though there's no telling what the hell I'll be into by summer) on my own blog.

Let the shaming commence, though I warn you I'm pretty much without shame so...