Well, it’s been a while since I’ve properly sat down and talked about the hobby desk huh?
The fact of the matter is that I’ve been busy. Not even hobby project busy, just life busy. There is always stuff on the house to do, as well as work and life getting in the way. There is of course also another giant piece of work that’s really been taking up my time (and filling in the gaps in the posting).
Yeah, it’s Gunslinger.
Okay, I’ve talked about it a lot. Like I say, it’s taken up a lot of my time recently (and probably explains why I haven’t been writing the weekly Secret Notes I’ve promised the patrons). On the other hand, it’s a unique opportunity that I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else without either dropping tons of money to commission a sculptor (and it would be expensive to get someone as skilled/experienced as Anton) or try and learn it myself (which would take years of practical learning to get anywhere close and cut even further into my hobby time). These two options are just not practical, so I’m fortunate that someone decided it was worth letting me come on board to write a load of documents and send 2am suggestions/modifications to his sculpting.
At the moment Gunslinger is both incredibly full on in my mind and timewise. With it being early days, I’m spending a lot of time spinning up the planning side (what in the day job we call production) – what ranges are going to come out and when, how many figures a month we can do depending on the packs we’re releasing and checking the community to see the sort of things they are asking for. Plotting out what releases come out when feels a little bit of a game – we want the first year to really lay out the stall of what Gunslinger is going to provide, so picking the right themes to show off what we can do is vital. There is also an element of making sure what I’m planning is something we can hit – Flytrap isn’t just running Gunslinger, there are several other irons in the fire so making sure I’m not going to be putting the sculptor in a bind is a key one for me to think about. That doesn’t stop him from adding in extra little things when he feels like it! All this said though, I think we’ve managed to work out rough themes all the way through to December 2024, with a selection of theatres and gear to provide a wide selection.
The other side then comes into building the lore of Gunslinger. For us, the lore is somewhere we can work to help the figures stand out a little bit in the market and give them a bit of character, a bit of inspiration for how players could use them. It’s also something I enjoy doing – I’m not going to say it’s a bit of me making myself happy, but lore writing and coming up with interesting concepts is something I really enjoy. That said, the lore is never going to be so overwhelming it becomes the whole job – at the end of the day, Gunslinger figures are designed to be usable in both the present day and our setting, which acts as a nice grounding tool.
You probably won’t see it in the final products (because Anton is a stone-cold professional), but August’s releases (that came out earlier this week) have definitely been a learning experience for us, not helped by some real-world stuff that got in the way. For me, it’s the first month where I’ve been the one picking the layout of the packs and their gear before supplying the references and suggestions of poses to Anton, and as you’d expect there have been a few things to learn. I am very glad we’re both keen to keep the comms up and adjust what needs to be adjusted, so hopefully as the months go on this process gets better and better so we can avoid any little stumbling blocks along the way
You may also be shocked to hear that I’m really excited about the figures we’ve released so far. And not just for getting them on the board in 28mm – as you can see above, I’m experimenting with printing the figures at 54mm, just to show off and see all the details you can get. It’s also a chance to push my skillset forward, giving me time to paint larger models (as practise before I hit the Greater Demon waiting in my figure cases) as well as hopefully being some decorations I can leave on my desk at work without being too worried if they get damaged or go missing.
Now I just have to find some time to get the paint on them…
The second part worth talking about is the news or maybe just the blog as a whole. For a good month or so I was hammering out news posts every few days as stuff was revealed by the various companies, with Spectre and ESS giving me basically weekly updates to keep the views trickling in. I also got to speak my mind on a few things, one of which got more of a response than I expected.
There are now two problems that stop me from writing so much news. For one, having a foot in the pool with Gunslinger does cause some issues when it comes to taking a look at other people in the space. Within my own ethics, the moment I started having a hand in the game was the moment that I stopped being able to talk openly about issues I have with what are now my competitors – the figures Gunslinger makes need to speak for themselves (and I’m confident as we grow the range they will do that louder and louder).
The other is that news writing takes time. Each post requires gathering the basic information, reading it, understanding it and turning it into a blog post that is vaguely readable (along with grabbing all the graphics for it). I like to think I’m reasonable at this process having been doing some more for almost 10 years at this point but even I can end up spending way too long on each post which has a knock-on effect to the rest of the hobby world
But there is a flipside – I’m still keeping an eye on what’s going on (both for my own interests and as market research for what we’re doing with Gunslinger). As part of this, I think this is a space I can do that keeps the blog from being overwhelmed with news stories and still lets me get the word out. So, I’m moving to a once-a-week news post, probably on Saturdays, focusing on just delivering a consistent collection of the goings-on in the Ultramodern space.
Something else that has been taking away from my hobby time is the house.
No wait, come back!
It’s taken far too long for me to actually get stuff into my main display cabinet that sits in my lounge (along with another one just off to the left of the image). When I moved, these cases were filled with my unpainted figures to assist with the packing. This then meant I had to unpack and shuffle around their contents once I was setup, refilling my figure cases with things needing to be painted up and leaving the good stuff out on display.
One thing that’s come with sorting out these models is the realisation that I have way too many models. Lots of sets that I picked up back in that phase of needing to collect every release that companies released, without actually planning on how to use them. For this reason, I’m going to start clearing through my collection and selling off chunks of it, being quite aggressive with my cuts. This isn’t just for my Ultramoderns – I have a big box of space marines I’m never going to paint so they may as well get off the lead pile and into someone else’s hands.
Of course, the other advantage of clearing my figures up from the lounge is that I’ve got my dining table back. Ideal for running games on!
That’s it for now – I’ve got a project to finish off very quickly (alongside more gunslinger work) but I’m hoping to get paint on figures sometime soon, as well as getting into a better rhythm of using these figures in some form of tabletop game. Keep your eyes on the blog as I’m hoping to get some battles in soon.
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