[unofficial weekender] Finished is better than trying to be perfect.

[sundancer 43338xp 0]

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First time visitor to OTT? Then please introduce yourself in the New Member Thread and look around in the Project System. Then come back and read on…

https://www.beastsofwar.com/forums/topic/introduce-yourselves-new-member-thread/

https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/

Read all of this before you start as it will save you any trouble later.

First thing you must do is make your “pledge”. It can be anything gaming related, big or small, and you don’t even have to finish it. No, in here, happiness is the road. Have fun doing whatever it is, but it is not a race. Accompany your work with pictures or we might think you are do something sinister and just using us for cover.

You are also presented with a few questions. It is to get the conversation started. Try and keep your answers ‘conversational’, no text speak, and certainly no “basically”. This is how we all get to know each other better. While you are here feel free to tell us a story, show a picture, joke, tales of love or woe, or just add your own little bit. This is the whole point…in here it is just us.

If you have never taken part before we may bark and bite, but we also like a cuddle! It is all done in the best possible taste and it is character building. feel free to give as good as you get.

A few other things to note: NO RELIGION & NO POLITICS! Glasgow pub rules are in effect. If you need to make a better point then it is fine, but don’t take the piss. And always keep it civil. This includes no philosophy, no home computer culture wars.

Play plenty of music to go with your work. Loud and through proper speakers. Write us a playlist of things we might not have heard before.

Now, after all of that there is only one ‘real’ rule in here and it cannot be broken: NO DICKS! (Exceptions may be made for little fighting men with little plastic/resin/metal wieners)

And don’t forget the highlights of the weekend: The Weekender on Friday and XLBS on Sunday. And the little show that is The Hobby Hangout over at twitch.tv

If you fancy to see some nice WIP pictures go to the WAYPN thread https://www.beastsofwar.com/forums/topic/what-are-you-painting-now

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Question of the week:

• Trying to be perfect – how often did it stop you finishing a project?

And now back to the show.

[sundancer 43338xp 1]

Pledge: continue working on the base for the Cobblestone Minis not-LotR diorama.

Answers:

Never. Seriously and honestly it has never stopped me from finishing. It has stopped me multiple times from starting certain projects. Because I know I can’t achieve a level of quality for things I have in my head. Is that worse than never finishing anything? I don’t know.

Music:

[pagan8thParticipant 12560xp 2]

Pledge is to assemble some Arabian Nights miniatures and get my homebrew RPG ready to run the game.

I’m imperfect as a painter and I find it daunting to paint some things as I don’t want them to look crap, so sometimes I don’t start and I have abandoned projects here and hidden them from the public.

[danlee 22475xp 2]

I have no pledge this week. I’m travelling on holiday Good Friday and I’d rather not leave a project in the middle, so I’ll start something new when I return.

 

• Trying to be perfect – how often did it stop you finishing a project? – It hasn’t stopped me either. I’m a strong believer in getting something 80% done and not worrying about that last 20% that can bring it to perfection. Better to move on. You get far more done that way.

[zoidpinhead 12525xp 1]

Pledges:

1. Get to the end of the OTT Salute coverage (I’m currently at 16:45)
2. Base the Draugr and pick a paint scheme.
3. Finish painting the first unit for the Bornu-Kanembu (12 Archers)

Topic: Trying to be perfect – how often did it stop you finishing a project?

I have some perfectionist tendencies.  Quite often this has the opposite effect – rather than stopping me from finishing it can conversely often stop me from starting.  I often want the picture in my head to be matched by what I’ve got on the table in front of me.  It can therefore scupper an entire army project if I can’t get exactly the right miniature for any of the commanders or even one of the units.  I also have problems choosing a colour scheme for similar reasons with what the first miniatures coming out like not matching the mental pictures.

[limburger 21907xp 1]

Before trying to be perfect I’d have first to get started …

Although maybe that’s why I struggle to either start a project ?
For some reason I tend to run into roadblocks that kill my enthusiasm for a project. Like that one time I was going to build and paint a spacemarine army in a colour scheme of my choice. I think it could have worked, but I also suspect I’d have had something else distract me from completing it as well.

If CGL hadn’t made the kickstarter such an unorganised mess I probably would have started something this weekend, but now I only unpacked the salvage boxes that I got to see what’s in there. The mechs don’t look terrible and the big mech that made me want to back it in the first place looks sort of ok. I think it could have been much better looking as it looks like an upscaled version of the original that didn’t get the love the bigger scale deserved.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/battletech-rpg-collection-catalyst-game-labs-books

Did you know that you can change how much money goes to what when buying things on humble bundle ?
It’s a percentage for the product, a bit for HumbleBundle themselves and the majority for the charity linked to the bundle.

I usually don’t mess with it and accept the defaults, but for CGL I had to make an exception and give everything to Humble Bundle … Evil ? Nah, I think Humble Bundle deserved a bit extra this time.

 

[grantinvanman 2470xp 1]

Pledge:

• finish Victrix work

• start an army for myself! But which one…

 

Trying to be perfect – how often did it stop you finishing a project?

Too often. I have a really hard time not painting to the best I can, and it bogs me down sometimes. I have a book called “The Underachiever’s Manifesto”, and it says “good enough is good enough” – I have a hard time with that philosophy but I try…

[zoidpinhead 12525xp 1]

Progress:

Thats the commanders, elites and skirmisher units virtually done, a couple of missing weapons to sort out tomorrow.  As you can see I’m not done with the Salute mega video yet 🙂

@limburger I’m sorry you seem so underwhelmed by the CGL Kickstarter’s arrival.  Hopefully they will look a bit better once you get them on the painting table.

@grantinvanman I haven’t heard of ‘The Underachiever’s Manifesto’ but I recognise the sentiment.  I used to teach professional project management and the phrase we used was “Just enough is good enough” i.e. you are so much better off having done most of something and then stopped, rather than continued to work way past the point where your efforts are making a significant enough difference.  It is yet another example of the Pareto Principle (80:20); in this case the first 80% of the job will only take 20% of the time/effort/money, it is doing the final fifth of the job where you get caught for the other 80% 😀

[grantinvanman 2470xp 1]

@zoidpinhead – yes, that’s the concept! The book is written by a medical doctor, whose father was disappointed in him that he only became a family MD, not a specialist. Imagine that pressure. So the philosophy of “giving 110%” comes down to the extra 10% taking from another part of your life; but if you give as you say 80 or 90%, then you free up yourself to do other things with more meaning. It’s a humorous book, with a serious message. I love it.

 

[limburger 21907xp 2]

@zoidpinhead it’s not the stuff as such. I’ve opened up all of the ‘salvage boxes’ and the minis themselves look good enough.

It’s CGL’s attitude that has killed of any enthusiasm I had, which makes it hard to get going with the project itself.

Of course it doesn’t help that I didn’t get the starter sets that I had wanted, but even with them I doubt I would have had much good will left.

OTOH … there’s plenty of projects I can/want to do.
Over on the OTT Discord Jamescutts posted a link to the new WW 2 Germans that Victrix are making :
German Infantry & Heavy Weapons

And a box of that fell into my shopping basket as it were.

Of course it helped that :

1. they had posted images comparing their Germans to Warlord Games (a great match)
2. great value (slightly cheaper than an equivalent box from Warlord Games
3. it includes medium mortar and machinegun … (which the Warlord box doesn’t have)

So yeah … that’s another project that’s “incoming” in the near future, because ‘why not’ ? 😀

That’s what I meant by the distractions that generally tend to stop me from finishing (or even starting) projects in my existing pile of opportunity.

Heck, I had planned on organising my hobby room and getting it ready for actual use … but it’s sunday now and it hasn’t happened yet.

@grantinvanman and yet at school the students excelled at doing ‘just enough’ to get a passing grade. (which annoyed me as I myself could get good grades with little extra effort)
It’s one thing to not go for perfection, but IMHO you should at least go for 80% instead of 50,0999% …

[pagan8thParticipant 12560xp 3]

That’s a nice set of minis. Luckily for me I’m doing Afrika Korps and they don’t fit with my army. Presumably they will expand their range of 28mm WW2 in time and they have very little at present.

[wolfie65Participant 1250xp 3]

There certainly does come a point when enough is enough, you’ve fiddled around on a mini for weeks – or even longer – and after another good, hard look you decide that this is the best you can do and it’s off to be sealed.

[limburger 21907xp 2]

It is kind of weird that they did their British in Siocast, but these appear to be plastic.
Maybe the Siocast was a test ?

I must admit that I thought Victrix was one of the ancient companies within our hobby, but they’ve only been around for 20 odd years. Still a lot for most, but I figured they were the same age as Airfix …
I guess that’s the ‘ix’ in their name 😀

[sundancer 43338xp 2]

It’s the way Victrix is selling their stuff: bags. Who does that? XD

It’s Sunday. No XLBS. But I have coffee. And a slight headache. Tomorrow is back to work. But that’s (hopefully) unrelated.

Enjoy your weekend!

[grantinvanman 2470xp 1]

@sundancer Victrix used to sell in boxes, and they even had metal minis when they started, in, wait for it … I said wait for it!

Blister packs.

When they sold off their metals, they went to the bagged system, with a pegboard hole on the topper.

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