2013 and what we'll be seeing here on my lil blog ^_^

So,  2012 was a rather sparse year in terms of getting much blogging done.   My health probs haven't gotten much better, so I still tend to focus on actually painting and converting stuff more than setting up the lighting and all required to get decent pics.

For those of you that have been following me here,  or for the recent subscribers that may have actually read back to the earliest posts I made in this blog,  I've had to make many adjustments and adaptations to how I paint and to a lesser extent how I do any of the modeling stuff.   Its taken a bit over 3 years,  but Im finally getting back to the same level of 'skill' and finished miniatures.   I've been able to do that by learning new techniques,  some I found online,  others I figured out on my own- a sort of invention by necessity process.   A big part of that process has been finding the right materials and products(or making them) to simplify things.   As lets be honest,  many of the products available for the modeling and painting we do have been traditionally a pain in the ass to use(prime example is Green stuff).

The day after christmas I was chatting with a fellow blogger,  I had commented on a youtube vid he had done.  I'll let him remain anonymous for now(and he can step forward and accept the blame if he wants ;) ) but it was a rather benifical discussion for me.  As he liked the content of my blog and suggested I could do some Youtube vids of my own.   I didnt really think anything in my blog was really that great- I mean at best my posts get maybe a dozen replies right?   But thats not really how the internet works is it?  On a good day the average high quality content forum post will get maybe 1 reply for every 30 or 40 people that view it- and depending on the forums,  that reply might just be pointless trolling.  So, as the conversation with this fellow continued I realized that if an established video blogger thought I had content that was worthwhile maybe I needed to give it a try.   But, that brought up the next hurdle- being that I have about zero equipment to do any sort of decent quality posts.  

I've been using my phone cam for pics for over a year, and while its an 8mp cam,  its sitll only working off a celphone sized lens arrangement.   Lacking just a HD cam to do some video wouldnt normally be an issue,  but those aforementioned health probs have caused a long term lack of income- so I dont have the disposable income to just buy one.  Much to my surprise, this guy actually offered to spot me a camera if I would use it to start doing some appropriate vids.  This kind of surprised me to be honest,  as I still barely know this guy- and yet a random act of kindness transpired.

So, Im not gonna lie,  Im no movie star and generally hate being on camera.  But,  I can let my minis do thier job and handle the camera time right?   When I actually started thinking about what I can offer in terms of sharing knowledge I came up with more than a few ideas,  which in turn each sort of spun off a few more of thier own.

Im not going to be doing lengthy or in depth vid's any time soon- as for stuff like painting theres painters out there with much more skill/talent using traditional methods that are already doing excellent and detailed tutorials.   Same for sculpting, terrain making and even making molds and casting.   What does that leave me to cover?  Alot actually,  theres alot of very useful info that can fall between the cracks of the bigger video tutorials,  not to mention the stuff I only learned when I had to adjust my techniques to deal with the onset of some disbilities- and info like that might really help others enjoy the hobby alot more.  

So, I'm going to be making vids on stuff like what tools Ive acquired over the years that make various modeling tasks easier,  how I paint stuff really fast but still get good results,  How to make your hobby budget go a little farther,  products you might not be aware of, and one Im surprised that no one else have ever really done much with-  recycling household stuff to use for making models, terrain,  tools and other 'equipment'  that can save us time or money :)

So keep an eye out,  I should actually be getting out some regular content at least a couple times per month.   To start off Im going to be focusing on useful content of getting a super polished shiny video,  I'll hone my video editing as I go rather than trying to make perfect vids from day one(which would keep me from posting anything while I figure out how to use Vegas...).