Greetings all…
It’s been a long time since my last post, a long time indeed, nearly two years in fact. I’ll get to the good stuff (new projects) in a little bit, but I feel it appropriate to talk about my absence first.
I never really used to cover personal stuff here but I feel its appropriate this time. By all means feel free to skip the next section.
Hiatus
The reason I’ve been away for so long is my ongoing struggle with mental illness, specifically depression. I’ve suffered with depression most of my adult life, since 1999. A couple of years ago I reached a point where I knew I couldn’t just carry on the way I had been and that I needed to seek professional help. My doctor set me up with medication, something I’ve always been very resistent to but it was just time for more extreme measures. I also got a placement in a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) Group. This did prove to be a great tool, and really helped with some of my social anxiety issues which go hand in hand with depression. It’s definitely one of those things that you get out what you put in, which can make things annoying when you are generally apathetic about everything.
While medication has helped me to cope, it has done so by apparently numbing ALL my feelings. It’s like it stopped me from worrying about things but also stopped me from caring too. After two years on these tablets without any real progress I’m slowly coming off them… and feeling worse for it but I still think it’s the right move.
As of right now, I can’t say I’m much better than when I started out (although my social anxiety much reduced). At the moment I need to feel productive more than anything else so I’m just trying to push on, regardless of how I feel. I know a lot of people reading this will have personal experience with depression, and believe me I can truly sympathise. I’m open to talking to anyone who wants to talk about depression, I can’t offer any sage advice, but if anyone feels the need, by all means get in touch.
On to the projects…
So going back a couple of years, I was working on developing my own miniature range and a game system to accompany it, which in hindsight was obviously too tall an order for me at the time. I had this whole plan for a game of robotic skirmish warfare… imagine Transformers style of robots (minus the transforming) that are all characters with personalities rather than piloted mechs; hailing from multiple factions and fighting across dense ruins of a machine world. I got quite far with the background and several revisions of the rules, along with some work on a prototype multi-part figure. After a while I decided that I had to accept that I couldn’t do justice to this project right now. It is my dream project for sure, maybe I’ll get to return to it in future.
Instead, I decided to focus on the keeping things simple. Taking the production of miniatures one step at a time, I’m focusing on simply making the best miniatures I possibly can and building on that. So now I’m working on one off characters that will fit other game systems or work as great display pieces. Right now I’m working on some fantasy pieces. I’ll post previews when they are worth showing off.
In the meantime, I’ve got several Games Workshop related projects on the go that I’ve been working on the last few months that I’ll be posting here. A lot of them are still in progress and they all deserve their own posts. A lot of these projects will be going up for sale too.
These projects include Eldar Pirates, Clan Eshin Regiment of Renown, Inquisitor Henchmen, Wild Griffon, True Scale Noise Marines and a Truescale Swarmlord!
I’m also (in a limited capacity) opening up to do some commission work, mostly just projects I want to try my hand at, I’ll make a post about it when the time is right. For all the truescale Space Marine fans, there will be more work on that front too.