The State of the Spare room after a 6 month hiatus.

As I sit surrounded by Navara, KR cases and a selection of random re-purposed delivery boxes of partially packed miniatures, the stack of untouched Space Wolves GW plastic in its cellophane, 2 army boxes, and the stack of Necron models (again still in shrink wrap) all getting ready to go into the moving boxes blocking the end of the desk.

As well as other less relevant things to this audience also now filled the shelves (apparently rank and file of miniatures isn’t the correct décor for house viewings!) the ghost of my 2015 triathlon fitness in the form of an age group winners trophy, my recent half-marathon medal (a solid, I think, 2:00:23 effort missed my goal by that 23 seconds), and a few decorative plants.

All of this change whilst surviving on broken sleep with a 6 month old, 3 year old and work that isn’t massively respecting my work-life balance. That is to say my ‘stress-relief hobby’ was becoming a source of unfinished / time consuming guilt.

Glancing at the tracking sheet somewhere in amongst the boxes / drawers / wardrobe of the spare room there are 492 models, of which 311 are built, 243 claim to be primed and only a 133 are fully finished with paint and basing (if I was being really mean only 4 are clear coated…). I would like to say that’s the whole story but that hasn’t been updated in some time, around combat patrol issue 34, with issue 71 to 74 having just arrived in its relentless monthly pattern, so these sit unaccounted for and unread as well as a few bits of the printers and some Christmas wins.

The Christmas wins are a much more positive note, I was lucky enough to receive not one but two Ragnar Blackmane’s for Christmas. Maximum points to both my partner and Mum on going to a Warhammer store and getting one! I have since, thanks to the lovely guys at the Bristol Cribb’s store, swapped one for a Arjac Rockfist and I can’t wait to get that hammer throw pose built!

So I ever so slowly roll around to the point of this post, in a stress filled and time / energy / will power deficit world how can I find time to actually make progress!

Borrowing from the Business World

Something that has crept more and more into daily life at work is the ‘agile’ way of thinking and working. Now its implementation is patchy and in some places poorly selective but at its core it should be applicable to many things, so why not a hobby backlog?

Enter a mini whiteboard (also hopelessly out of date), magnetic sticky notes and some frankly abysmal primary school writing skills (this photo very nearly didn’t make it through the mental ‘I can’t show that’ barrier).

Ok, so the headline text might be a bit clickbaity (not sure for who given my single digit view count on posts) because it does not conform to the Kanban column headings in any way. But i think the principle remains the same, the core idea to limit WIP (work in progress) by only allowing 5/6 items vertically in each column and create a way to quickly visualize the state of the work flow. Limiting to 5/6 per column stops me from starting 20 things at once and finishing none—something I’ve done far too often.

My iteration takes items from nothing but liquid resin or a spool of plastic in the ‘Print’ through to something either printed in sub assemblies or on sprue for purchased miniatures, they both need some degree of ‘build’ which also includes pre-prime basing and any other modification.

Everything gets an ‘undercoat’ regardless of material type or origin. This is something I know I failed to do when much younger painting air fix kits and some early Warhammer (sadly all since sold during house moves / none hobby times) and looking back I now understand why I had such a hard time getting the paint to adhere / cover smoothly.

Finally ‘Paint’ if the board was slightly wider I might have a “base layers” and “details” columns split out, and now I think about it something “Basing” should probably exist somewhere between build and undercoat as well.

What this is designed to do, bring back Hobby as a Therapy and de-stress not a chore that needs checking Excel and figuring out status blowing a 30 minute session before it’s even begun.

The key for me is to create a selection of quick wins for time poor moments when 30 mins can be squeezed in between nursery runs, work lunches, kids baths and some semblance of a sensible bed time.

The rest of the Rats infantry is a prime candidate with 10 primed and some basic colour already blocked out and another 20 that are based and just need a dry day and a rattle can to be ready to progress.

I would also like to stack up some larger paint projects or something that might be more flow state work. On the rare day / evening when a few clear hours open up to be able to really sink my teeth into something detailed and push my limits.

A Final Unrelated Thought

Hobby time is scarce these days, so when my 3-year-old had the paints out the other day, I brought out the push-fit GW store ‘gift’ Space Marine we’d clipped off the sprue together last year. It still has all the flashing points and mould lines—I’m not letting him loose with a craft knife anytime soon!

Using some cheap, mainly water, kids acrylic paints, and a large table cover to contain the chaos. His fine motor skills for writing/painting are still basic, so several colours ended up mixed into a glorious mostly-blue all-over coat. Some paint inevitably migrated to the painting handle, the table, and anything else in reach.

This will be staying as-is should he ever become a famous artist of any kind, I want this to pull out and show him where he started!

Small steps forward, even if they’re toddler-sized.