FTGT Hobby Challenge Guest Post - Max Dubois

Today we have a guest post from friend of the blog, Max Dubois, of Hellfire Painting, Torrent of Fire, and his new blog, The One Hour Army.

The FTGT Hobby Challenge:

How one man’s game plan can help you rock it.

For some, this challenge is their only project and they are done by the 3rd of the month. I’m sure many of you are like me, juggling 2-3-4-5 project at the same time and having limited hobby time after the mandatory work/kids/wife/beer time. 

Here’s how the busy as a bee gamer that I am is doing the hobby challenge:

1 Hour a day, everyday.   

Let me break it down for you:  Assuming I don’t paint on weekends, that leaves me with 20 hours to paint my project.  Roughly what you’d get if you paint 5 hours every Sunday.

However, it’s way easier to get an hour everyday than 5 hours on a single day. Because you get to pick which hour you want to paint in.  Wake up an hour before everyone in the house?  Paint for an hour while your wife watches Supernatural? Paint your hour a day after going for to the gym?  You are the master.  Now, try sitting down 5 straight hours on a Sunday without being interrupted. 

The other less obvious bonus of the hour a day routine is keeping you motivated.  It’s possible that after 3 straight hours of painting, you’re not into it; you lost 2 hours.  Maybe that Sunday, you really don’t feel like painting; you lost 5 hours.  If one day you don’t feel like painting, or can’t, you lose only an hour and you’re ready to start the next day. 

Also, for reasons well beyond my understanding, humans are programmed to finish what they start.  We thrive on that feeling of accomplishment.  Paint for an hour and start something awesome, I bet you the next day you’ll count the minutes before your hour of painting to finish that thing you started. 

Now before you go try to run through a wall with all that motivation I just dropped on you, don’t be discouraged at the start.  Things don’t progress a lot within an hour. 

 Here’s the 1st hour of my project: 

 

Not much to look at, right?  Just a bunch of bases, sprues and black primer.  No biggie. I still have 29 more hours to go. 

So stick with it.  Crush it. 

Max Dubois is a hobby enthusiast from Quebec.  Better known as That French Douchebag in the tournament scene, he has never lost a game of Beer Hammer and is always up for sharing painting secrets from the untamed north with fellow gamers.  He writes these articles for the sole purpose of picking up chicks at Starbucks.  You can find his work on http://theonehourarmy.com or by finding him on Facebook.

In addition to Max, we have several other people participating in the challenge and sharing on their blogs as well as in the facebook group. Check them out and their blogs:

• Douglas Glover at Warhammer 40k Refit
• Dan Grundy at Forged at a Painting Desk
• Rob Uter at Rathstar's Ramblings
• Jon Clute at Building Genesis
• Dan Eaton at BDS 40k

If you are participating or want to participate and have a blog I missed, shoot me a note via email, Google+ or Facebook and I'll get you added here so we can follow along. It's been great seeing everyone's enthusiasm for the challenge and all of us here at FTGT are looking forward to seeing these armies come together.