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  • Writer's pictureThe Italianmoose
    • Jan 1, 2022
    • 17 min read

2021 - Year in Review

Well I can safely say 2021 "was a year"! I'd say it ended up being fairly productive despite all that. Join me as I ramble through the year and some highlights, month by month. Most of the year I admit is a bit of a blur. Sorry, this is quite a long post. Turns out I did a lot this year.


 

Highlights


The TL:DR for this year! My big highlight was Andy Chambers picking a ship I'd designed as his favourite of the winners from the Facebook BFG painting competition. DoublebaseFanatic did a beautiful paint job on the model and base. Crazy foo' also kept the sails translucent which is incredible.


Coming a close second was being awarded the "Commodore of Turbidious" award in the end of year awards that Turbidious does every year (https://portinvicta.weebly.com/bfg-painting-comp/turbidious-painting-competition-awards-2021) . Thank you!


And third is that I've created two fleets more or less from scratch this year. First was the Diasporex Tiamat pattern (Chaos proxies):

Second was the Space Fleet Eldar ships:

I'm very pleased with both fleets, hopefully I'll see some out in the wild.

 

January

Models released this month:



Most of the work this month was behind the scenes, making things that were released later in the year. The only release was a revised version of the Void Stalker which had some improvements done, particularly a hex pattern added to the sails.


Of my own stuff, I was still getting the hang of a resin printer. In my crusade against boob armour (I'm not a fan of it), I converted a squad of Sisters of Battle with my plate armour torso. It was not as easy as I expected, they're all designed to be monopose so I had to do a lot of cutting and green-stuffing. They look alright from the front at least, and I immensely prefer this look.

I also started my journey into Warmaster/10 mm minis with some High Elves. These are some Irregular minis spearmen and Kallistra cavalry. I'm not a fan of the Warhammer look as I was after something more Tolkien-y. I really like the smaller scale though, it's pretty quick to paint and the goal is the look of a lot of painted figures on the table.

I had my first full game of BFG this month as well!

The job-hunting continued this month after deciding to leave my old job towards the end of 2020.


 

February

Models released this month:


A bit more public work this month. The Siluria cruiser finally got a model, a bit of a mash-up between the Dauntless and Endeavour models, with a few extra bits added on.



The Elfdar Grand Cruiser took the hull of the Sunjammer (which will forever remain weaponless), and added more of the Corsair aesthetic. It also received a couple of different weapons fits. It has cannons or lances, which means that it can proxy for a Supernova cruiser, or for a Penumbra (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/798219460473126953/812408911139045436/Penumbra_Grand_Cruiser.pdf) (thanks for the rules, Zelnik!). I really like this model, the wings/sails look very predatory.



This was an interesting one! I wanted some asteroids, but the whole issue with 3d printing is you get the same thing every time. Which is kinda the point. So I modified a script I found on the internet to create randomly generated asteroids made from one or more lumps and then deformed. I think it works rather well.



This was a nice quick one I mostly did over my Christmas break. A proxy for an Idolator. This got modified later on to have a casemate mounted cannon instead of a turret and no antenna after a suggestion. I've got to admit it looks better.


I also actually bought spaceships I didn't have to design! Madness... these are a Helian Dreadnought and Assault Frigates; and a Zeus pattern cruiser from Vanguard Minis.


One of my other hobbies is astrophotography. My dad gave me a focus motor from ZWO as a Christmas present, and I had to do a bit of work to get it to mount onto the telescope. 3d printing to the rescue! I made this neat little mount which worked adequately, and after a couple of iterations worked really well. The telescope can now auto-focus, which definitely beats standing outside and trying to manually focus on stars with shaky hands in the freezing cold.

Job hunting continued...


 

March

Models released this month:


This was a modification of the Dragonship as a request. I've never been a huge fan of the Flame, shocking I know. The outriggers are in fact heavily modified Shadowhunters. It was resized several times, I think the current version is correct according to Turbidious' very handy sizing page (https://portinvicta.weebly.com/general-hobby/battlefleet-gothic-ship-measurements).



This is a slight revision of the Shadowhunter model to add proper thruster outriggers and add hex patterns on the sails.



This was a boringly important model, it's a revision of the Dragonship with the hex pattern on the sails, but more importantly tabs and slots for fitting the parts together. Starting to make designs easier to build, as well as just pretty.


I also started work on the Tiamat pattern ships for the Diasporex this month. By the end of the month the cruiser hull was more or less complete. It took a lot of work, making the fleet used up most of my free time for several months. It did mean I could make a funky teaser:

This was a side-on image of the basic hull blurred and added on top of an RGB solar image I'd taken previously. Taking images of the sun via solar film and a telescope is honestly the scariest thing I've ever done. Anything goes wrong and it's goodbye telescope and camera!


Also lots of models made or painted: First up is the first of my Chaos cruisers printed in resin. All my others are filament prints, and most of those are tests so they look a little rough. The new turrets especially are a huge improvement.


Work on my Warmaster elf army chugged along.


My 6 mm Epic Imperial Guard army got a lot of reinforcements, a company of SPGs, APCs, and Shadowswords. It's nice sometimes to print models I've not designed myself!


A friend of mine is a massive fan of Voyager and was having a bit of a horrible year, so I printed them off a model, assembled, sanded, and primed it. You can see my old printer struggled a bit, poor thing.

This month I had a new job offer! I handed in my notice.

 

April

Models released: Nada


Between finding somewhere new to live, writing up all my work at my old job (several tens of thousands of words), and work on the Diasporex, nothing got released this month. The Diasporex cruiser hull got finished and I made the escort. I did manage to paint up the core of my Craftworld fleet.

Also did a more fluffy teaser for the Diasporex:

I need to write up the code I cobbled together to make the images jump around like that, it was good fun.

 

May

Models released: Alces-Pattern Strike Cruiser (https://italianmoose0.gumroad.com/l/alces-pattern-strike-cruiser)

This one got designed as a break from work on the Diasporex. It is also imporant as it's the first model I sold for money. I decided it was sufficiently unique and that it was time to make some room for new creators. The quality of work I reached meant that releasing stuff for free didn't give other people much room to make their own stuff. It's hard to quickly beat it on quality and impossible to undercut free without paying people to take it! Note that I've linked to Gumroad as that's my preferred sales site now, this is also available on Cults but I'm trying to move away from them currently.


This month I also started streaming on Twitch as Discord and Fusion360 don't play nice together. You get a lot of flickering every time something moves or changes, and I work quite quickly so it was bad! I now run the world's most boring streams over at https://www.twitch.tv/italianmoose/


Started my new job, which instantly became incredibly busy. I left the old job because I was bored and didn't have anything very interesting to work on. Be careful what you wish for!


Modelling work this month was continuing on the Diasporex. The light cruiser was completed. The end of the month saw work on the battleship hull start. And another Teaser!


 

June

Models released:

These were a challenge to myself to see how quickly I could create a new model. I wanted some fixed artillery pieces for Epic as none of the ones I could find quite hit the spot. I made these from scratch in two hours. They're designed to be average models that are easy to print and robust, hence the solid areas underneath the legs to make them stronger and attach to a base.


Work continued on the Diasporex including completion of the battleship and tweaks to the other models based on early print tests and feedback from Zelnik's models too.


This month was exciting in terms of physical models too, I finally had time to print my own Tiamat cruiser tests. Being in the office most days means I didn't really feel comfortable letting the printer run on a first print of a model without me in the house. There were a few areas for revision of this model. For example some areas were too fragile or the detail wasn't defined enough.

The first test print drying

The assembled first test


And the initial paint job! I'm not very good at painting (not got a steady hand unless I'm holding a sword). Test prints are always a useful exercise.


In other news, I got my own copy of the Alces-pattern painted up. A few areas which needed revision. This is also the first ship I supplied supported files with, took me a while to feel confident enough.


I finally finished painting up my ships from Vanguard. The Dreadnought is an Exorcist Grand Cruiser, the frigates are Firestorms.


In other exciting news, this month Turbidious asked me if I could come onto his Tabletop Tour streams on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tv/CQnw5ZLn7tx/) . The whole lot are all worth watching, the guests are an interesting bunch (including the one and only Andy Chambers, Turbidious had such a fanboy moment: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CRD_4Djn_jV/)

Below is an extract from an old White Dwarf which was one of the most important influences on my designs. This was talking about the old WFB Cold Ones, but it carries across into mechanical things too. It's something I personally feel GW has forgotten in its modern vehicles. They all have too many guns for the size of hull, which makes them look like they were children's drawings. While I know how insightful and intelligent children can be, it's not a design look I appreciate. The models don't look dangerous, they just look silly.


 

July

Models released:


The tensioner and adjust-a-duct needed to be made as I'd been tweaking my old filament printer. Every time I added something new to the extruder I needed to make a whole new part cooling fan, and it was getting annoying. The X-axis belt was also a pain to tighten. The tensioner was a modification of another design which I made from scratch to fit my "unique" printer.



This was a request for a design that someone was having trouble with, CAD tools are good at this sort of shape.


And the big one, the Diasporex Fleet was released this month to coincide with the release of the Book of the Void vol. 1! This was a lot of work, creating a whole fleet from scratch. Escorts, light, standard, and grand cruisers; and a battleship. I'm very proud of them. The book is cool too, including both the Diasporex as well as fleets for the Sisters of Battle and the Grot Revolution. These were put together by the BFG Discord, the PDF looks AMAZING.

And the BOTV 1: The Discordia Incident is available from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h4L9MA8eynELYwJRvYwGvD0P2hyadpyT/view


This month I also started selling supports for some of my models (I'll not include all of those here, they're not very interesting).


In physical model news, I finished the footsoldiers for my Elves.


I also started a brand new Epic army, using Vanguard's Eloi available from https://vanguardminiatures.co.uk/product-category/defeat-in-detail-6mm/eloi-federation/

Beautifully packed as always. The infantry got done this month, a formation of Guardians, Seers, and support weapons.


 

August

Models released:

These I paid to get supported and test-printed, the chap who did them did a really good job. I think this is probably their final form.


After realising that the scaling was all horrible for my original Corsair models, I had to do some tweaking and this basically led me to redoing most of the fleet! Not quite the project I expected but it needed to be done really. The original models were some of the first I'd ever done, so they were a little outdated. I started with the Hellebore which is one of my favourite ships in the game. It came together from scratch quite quickly as I had the design language down and I knew what tools I'd be using to make it.


The rear hull on this one went through some substantial revision to make sure it looked good with the correct scaling, the sails especially had a lot of work done.


This is one of the ones I was really happy with. I designed this using the book artwork as the reference with only occasional looks at the original model. The only major change is adding a second dorsal lance to make it more WYSIWYG and make the prow look less empty. The sails are separate components and are identical (left and right are the same), which saved a lot of time in design and print.


The Nightshade was a major revision of the original model. The lower hull was a completely new design while the upper hull was substantially modified. They're so dinky!


I managed to finish off an Eldar tank formation:

Added two more cruisers to the Diasporex fleet (resvised designs), alongside a Grand Cruiser.

Also possibly the last models I'll buy from GW, some terrain and a Vindicare assassin. I really like the model but they're just too expensive for what you get. Plus I'm generally moving away from 28 mm as a scale as I don't have space.

More excitingly, the new Eloi walkers from Vanguard (https://vanguardminiatures.co.uk/shop/eloi-federation-fire-banshee-detachment/) came out. I really like them so I bought some as soon as I could and got them painted up that same weekend. I also used my new favourite tool, a big makeup brush, to get them done in record time.


Looking back, this was a very busy month! I also made my very first humanoid models, some more Tolkien-y elven spearmen. The design was partly done in Fusion and partly in Blender. These came out pretty well, but there's a long way to go yet.


After finally working out a nice clean white paint job for this cruiser, I decided to go nuts and weather it. So it's got muck everywhere to make it look really beaten up.

The rest of the Eloi/Eldar tanks got done, this is how the army looked:

The addition to my DIY elven spears made my 10 mm army up to this:

And, very excitingly, I finally started on the project I'd been looking forward to for ages, turning the old Space Fleet Eldar sketches into models. This kicked off with some sketches to try to understand how the designs should work.


Some of the new Elfdar got printed and painted this month in a classic "Blue with red sails scheme.


And finally, actually spent some time on the model railway! It's not very good, dad and I started it a long time ago. Lots of scenery work to be done, I might start throwing the printer at some of the bits that need doing. It's a hobby area that's not yet been touched much by printing as far as I know. However the production prototypes certainly do get printed. This is in British N-scale (1∶148 scale with 1∶160 track gauge).

 

September

Models released:


This is a version of Elfdar Cruiser 3 which improves on the Mk. 1c by adding locating tabs and supported versions. This also went into the first fleet pack! This generally indicates the fleet is complete.


This brand new Shadow was again based off the book art like the Eclipse. Another model I'm very happy with.


My first Aconite was a definite rush job so it deserved a proper model. This one went pretty well although after printing I decided to scale it up by 10% to give it a bit more bulk. I'd measured the original but the subtly different shape on this one didn't have as much mass.


Hemlocks! Those nasty little blighters. Again, designed off the book art. These were substantial revisions of the original models. I kept the gun turrets as they were in the art & original models and BFG:XR has batteries even if the original rules do not. Plus they make the prows more interesting. Getting these done meant I could release a fleet pack! The Void Stalker and Grand Cruiser got supported, and the Aurora had some tweaks (not very major, mostly rescaling and adding locating tabs).


Getting the remakes of the Corsairs out of the way meant I could move onto something even more exciting! I started designing the ships that Jes Goodwin drew up before Space Fleet was even released (they're older than I am!). Only the Wraithship and Shadowhunter ever got models, so I had to do something about that. This is the first design, which definitely took the longest as getting that hull shape to work took some effort. I got a quick print done:


My Chaos fleet was a bit short on escorts so I printed off the modified Idolators and got them painted up. They're nice little ships.


 

October

Models released:

This month saw the release of the Space Fleet Wraithship proxy, which I think looks fantastic, I'm really happy with it. Getting the sails right took a bit of effort but that's all fixed now. I realised these work better as Dark Eldar proxies rather than Craftworld, although I'm hoping for some dedicated rules too at some point.


Every now and then I've been playing about in "Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts", which reaches back into the pre-dreadnought era. Some of those ships look fantastic and really lend themselves to BFG style. Lots of casemate guns and side turrets, plus the tumblehome hulls and tall prows really suggest the Gothic look. So I whipped up a cruiser with various options, I think it went rather well! Definitely heading into the Dieselpunk world with these.


October saw me quit Thingiverse and open a store on Gumroad. I can't recommend Thingiverse anymore after all the leaks, the shoddy UI/UX, bots, spam, etc. On Gumroad I can categorise things and have sales, however discovery is absolutely pants. You have to advertise and work for every sale, stuff doesn't come up in searches. You can find the store at https://italianmoose0.gumroad.com/


This month I also got myself a brand new printer! A Prusa Mini+, which you can see in the top left of the below image. It's a really good printer which I can totally recommend. The cost is pretty low for what it is. I still use filament printers quite a lot (indeed probably more than the resin one).

And in order to test out the printer I did something a little crazy. I decided I'd do a 3-up Diasporex Cruiser in my Chaos fleet colours. After a couple of days of printing, and a lot of painting:

I'm pretty happy with it, although some areas needed filling or sanding as I didn't orient the prow that well. The weapons were printed in resin as they're the most complex bits. This was mostly a lot of drybrushing, as always with me. I actually did some hand-painted colour transitions on the prow windows too, madness!


I also made some old-school Tau in filament as they've always printed well that way. Here's the raw print:


Most excitingly, the Eloi super-heavy tanks I'd designed were finally released and I immediately bought some, this is another design I'm really happy with. The Cobra turret particularly, I've never been happy with any of the other designs but this one works really well. They're available from: https://vanguardminiatures.co.uk/shop/eloi-federation-typhoon-heavy-tank/

Not bad for a month where I had to work 50+ hour weeks the whole time.

 

November

Models released:

These were substantially hand-sculpted in Blender, I'm still learning. They also need to be a lot chunkier.


Shadowhunter-sized escorts for the Elfdar Ancients. They'll proxy for Dark Eldar escorts too. I plan on doing a larger one next year to proxy for the Space Fleet Shadowhunter which is much larger. These resulted in me finding a bug in Fusion360! On export the mesh was a bit manky and nothing I did seemed to be able to fix it. However creating a mesh based upon a STEP file exported from Fusion worked fine, so obviously there's something wrong there. Working on them made an Autodesk support engineer very excited.


This one was fun. This is the largest ship from the sketches. The whole thing is the aesthetic turned up to eleven. I call this the Radiant Dragonship because of the radiant dragons from various places and their ability to travel the void (spelljamming). When I painted it I went all out on the metallics, and then did my best to age it a bit. I've also started mounting things with brass rod which looks a bit more professional.


I finally got Chronos' Dire Avenger models painted and based. I had to go for the really bright colours, it works especially well in small scales.


I got a set of the Ancient Elfdar ships painted up too in a more moody scheme, although I moved on to metallic copper for the sails.


November also saw the completion of the Eldar force as it stands, with the addition of a pair of my own super-heavy tanks.


I finally finished some Imperial artillery too, my cannons (though they look better with shorter barrels), Vanguard crew, and boxes from Malika.


This month also saw the completion of my own Corsair Eldar force. The fleet I wanted way back when but couldn't afford! Definitely the long way round to do it. This fleet came third in the November painting competition on the BFG Facebook group, I was very happy with that. I need a better background.

 

December

Models released:

There wasn't a Siegfried proxy that really hit the spot for me, so I had to make my own. It started with a tractor design which was based off various WW2 armoured tractors. So ugly, but mostly making sense. Then the next step was to turn it into an improvised tank. This involved making a fairly logical turret and bolting it onto a the body in a slightly illogical way. So the driver's hatch is blocked by the turret, and the whole thing is really tall. Delightfully ugly! After spending months on Elfdar ships this was a nice change of pace.


I went back over my old Marine Fleet and did some updates. I added locator nubs, replaced a few turrets and made some extra broadsides and prow tweaks, and did a few modifications to make them easier to assemble. They also all got supported.


Continuing the Dieselpunk theme, I made these based on early 1900s British destroyers with their turtleback prows, they look nicely funky. I've got prints that I've not managed to get painted this year, I'm really happy with them. Nice and sleek.


Another ship based on the old sketches, the OG Eldar transport model in BFG has a lot in common with this design but those were less sleek. This was a nice quick one and after a few tweaks from the test print I'm happy with how it comes out. Probably my smallest multi-part model! It made printing them much easier. The loft to create the tail was surprisingly difficult to create (you can watch me wrestle with it in the recording). My last released model of 2021... What a year.


I joined my first Patreon! Wake's Emporium is doing some full-on Tolkien models for Warmaster and I'm all there for it. The White Tree Spearmen are really well designed, they're a doddle to print. I could gush for ages how well put together they are.


I played a little game of Minigeddon on the kitchen table against myself to remind myself of the rules. It was good fun, things not following orders definitely keeps it interesting.

While setting up I set out all my Imperial models in 6 mm. There are rather a lot! Plus the pile of terrain I need to paint. The infantry and sentinels are all Vanguard, the Valks are GW models, and the rest are printed from various sources.


This is the Ancient Elfdar fleet as it stands at the moment. It needs some escorts and I have some transports to finish.


Some people paint busts to practice painting, I paint 28 mm... These are my Marine kill-team, the Mixed Nuts. All different colour schemes, generally a bit of fun in different colours of models I've had for ages.


I got the filament printed Tau ships painted. A pair of Heroes, excellent choices for the old-school Tau fleet.


I painted up some heroes for my elves along with the second unit of cavalry before they go in the box to move house again.


This was a really touching idea from a work colleague, the Dice of Optimism (https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/the-dice-of-optimism) . These have the maximum number on each face, for the days when life rolls you Nat-1s. My colleague was really happy with them, I hope they bring a smile to a few faces in dark places.



A recommendation from a lovely person on Instagram, I'm a big fan of Mesopotamian history. One day I hope to do a range of 10 mm models for them based off the amazing bas-reliefs in the British museum. I've mostly finished reading through Babylon.


And then it was Christmas! My dad gave me the starter set for Blood Red Skies, I got the planes painted up in record time and then we had an honest to goodness game. It was really nice, and playing with painted models is great.


To finish off the year we had a game of X-Wing. You can see my beloved Assault Gunboats in the background.


So there you have it! Well done if you made it this far. A year in one blog post. May the next one be better and still full of tiny spaceships. I still have a huge todo list, so I'm not stopping anytime soon. There might be a few pauses for crazy workload though, don't fret if it goes a bit quiet. All the best!


Moose :)

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