I've spent much of the day working on scenics for Rusty Robots which will be featured in my post tomorrow but as I mentioned in yesterday's post, I thought I'd spend a bit of time exploring what inspires me to get so much stuff done over the Lockdown.
Initially I had found myself rather stuck with being on furlough and having a flat without a garden and only being able to go out for an hour a day was driving me a bit mental. Initially I decided to just paint the odds and ends I had lying around but soon found myself completing old projects such as my Deadloque stuff and Land Ironclads.
Envoy
As I worked on these random gubbins I rediscovered my enjoyment of sculpting and from this, my Rusty Robots have made a reappearance and with that I have really fallen back in love with a project that I'd abandoned about seven years ago and had thought utterly a lost cause.
Red Tribe Robots
Looking back, I can single out a few things that have inspired me back in the late 80's and all the way through to today.
Firstly, I watched the TV series, Robo Story, a 1985 cartoon series which involves a small girl and her dog getting accidentally shot into space and crash landing on a planet inhabited by robots.
It was an absolutely wonderful tv series and even though I only got to see a half dozen episodes of it, it has been really influential in the creation of The Scrapyard.
I must admit that I cannot remember much about the series but the visuals were really fantastic and I've discovered it is to be found on Youtube which will require me to watch it all!
Secondly, the spellbinding movie Labyrinth by Jim Henson has been possibly the biggest artistic influence on me over the years. The combination of Brian Froud's illustration and the Creature Workshop of Henson really were utterly captivating and although it's a fantasy setting, elements from the movie have made their way into my own work.
The rusty armour of the Goblins with their ramshackle appearance, not to mention steampowered goblin walker, still effects the imagery of The Scrapyard.
Even subconsciously it would appear as the Goblin City seems to look a lot like settlements around The Scrapyard! Just look at the structures in the background when compared to my scrap piles, the irregular, stonework or rusted and patched metal is influencing me without even realising it!
Moving on from the visuals and stories, gaming that has inspired me ranges through a lot of old and out of production stuff, be it 2nd edition 40k with it's bright and vibrant colours or Battletech with its giant stompy robots.
Speaking of Battletech, I recently found DEATH FROM ABOVE WARGAMING over on Youtube which has been quite entertaining to watch as they manage to condense a four hour game into about an hour and I've really been enjoying playing their battle reports!
Another sadly out of production and under appreciated game is Star Mogul. It came out in the mid to late 2000's and for a brief time was a great little community with a wargame that wasn't just about shooting up your opponent. Instead, you could win games by grabbing salvage on abandoned settlements on the frontier of settled space. Imagine a sci-fi version of Frostgrave and it kind of covers what I'm talking about.
It is with this sort of remembered pleasure in nostalgic gaming and movies that has really inspired me to give Rusty Robots a real revamp and lo and behold, I have relished every minute of it, be it sculpting new robots, making scenery, or coming up with suitably outlandish scrap for my robotic minions to beat each other up over.
Tinker
With this, I seem to have really fully engaged with what actually makes me happiest about my hobby, to create my own stuff and play games with it and immerse myself with a setting that I have created over the course of years here and there and finally amongst the Pandemic Lockdown I have found the opportunity to do something about it.
This has the added bonus that I am spending so much time obsessing with my creations and scribbling that I haven't worried about Covid and as it has thus far cost a grand total of about £20 all told for greenstuff and bases, it's rather affordable too which is very handy when one is on furlough!
I have no intention of casting these robots up to sell as I know from bitter experience that the pressure to create not for my own enjoyment but for business takes all pleasure out of the process and results in Rusty Robots getting shelved for another 5-6 years and random wanderings into other projects.
Interestingly, the process of re-engaging with this project has been to give me the impetus to sculpt a rival force for my World of Ashes mini project which has a visual style that I enjoy and isn't super detailed like so many of the more modern ranges and I think there's a real pleasure to be had in painting a quirky, hand sculpted figure when so many technically advanced, 3d computer generated miniatures leave me utterly cold (I'm looking at you Age of Sigmar!). When combined to a ruleset that is fun and equally quirky, I find myself enjoying a hobby that has so often in the past left me burned out and prone to selling off everything in dismay.
Blue Tribe Davy Jones and B-Bomb Wrangler
Instead I have found myself relishing my hobby. The Rusty Robots project seems to be building up real momentum and I'm preparing to start work on my Blue Tribe before starting on the Yellows and on top of that my terrain collection is starting to look closer and closer to what I visualise The Scrapyard looking like.
Hopefully with a bit of work, I'll have all my basic robots sculpted and painted for the six tribes over the course of the next few weeks and battle reports will start making an appearance here again as I bodge together rules for scenarios, campaigns and other shenanigans!
With all the awful news that daily assaults us with the lockdown and so on, I find myself reassured and comforted by my hobby and hope to keep going, be it Rusty Robots, World of Ashes or my own version of Battletech inspired gubbins and keeping sane with an enjoyable hobby that allows me to be creative.
I hope others find themselves inspired by their hobby too and in some small way that playing with toy soldiers helps folks stay sane.
All the best!
