2016 Painting Log In Review

While a handful of units still need their shot at a photo session, The Painting Log for 2016 received its last entries on 29DEC2016 before I departed for Mexico.  In summary, 

• Total Number of figures painted: 1,105 figures and 25 pieces of equipment
• Total Number of Adjusted Painting Points: 4,317

Given my Top 5 goals put forward at the beginning of the year,

• Reduce The Lead Pile for Second Italian War of Independence (1859) project in 15mm
• Reduce The Lead Pile for 1799 Suvorov in Italy and Switzerland project in 18mm
• Add to Great Italian Wars project in 28mm
• More gaming including first game using the 1799 collection
• Reduce The Lead Pile for 18mm SYW and 15mm Samurai Battles projects (100 figures each)

How did I do working towards these goals in 2016?

1. Reduce The Lead Pile for Second Italian War of Independence (1859) project in 15mm - 373 figures.
2. Reduce The Lead Pile for 1799 Suvorov in Italy and Switzerland project in 18mm - 376 figures.
3. Add to Great Italian Wars project in 28mm - 108 figures
4. More gaming including first game using the 1799 collection - No increase in gaming seen in 2016 and no 1799 game.
5. Reduce The Lead Pile for 18mm SYW and 15mm Samurai Battles projects (100 figures each) - Not much work here.  No SYW figures crossed the painting desk and only one unit of Japanese mustered off the painting desk.

Even though I noticed Goals 4 and 5 were slipping away at mid-year, no corrective action occurred.  Plenty of time to adjust the course but I failed to make changes.  I suppose other tasks took higher priority.  One example is work on the 19th Century Great Game project where 101 figures crossed over to the painted side of the tally slate.

Having made good progress on fielding figures for both the 1859 (373 figures) and 1799 (376 figures) projects, The Lead Pile did not experience much reduction since I restocked both projects throughout 2016.  Tough to reduce The Lead Pile when it keeps getting replenished!

Enough of that.  Time to move on to the graphs.  As with past years' analytics, painting totals are presented in unadjusted (raw) figure counts as well as adjusted figure counts.  Adjusted counts consider figure size as a component while unadjusted simply tallies the number of figures processed.  Adjustments are made based on Analog Hobbies' Painting Challenge points system.

On an unadjusted basis of painted figures by era (Figure 1), the major efforts were in the 1859 and 1799 projects garnering about 33% of total production each.  Next, The Great Italian Wars project and Great Game project come in with about 9% each.  Work on The Great Game project was motivated by expectations to put the Russians and Sikhs onto the field of battle in their first taste of combat.  Alas, we never could get schedules coordinated to put on such a game.  Perhaps in 2017?

Figure 1

On an adjusted figure count basis (Figure 2), the percentages by project transform as the weighting of the 25/28mm projects (Italian Wars, Great Game) dampen the effects of the 18mm projects (1859, 1799).  As in many classifications, size does matter.

Figure 2

Turning to disaggregating counts by scale (Figure 3), 15/18mm production dominates the output by more than two-to-one over 25/28mm painting. 

Figure 3

On an adjusted basis, the 25/28mm classification not only closes the gap with 15/18mm production but actually dominated it with a 55% to 45% margin.   

Figure 4

On an unadjusted basis, painting trends show consistency in 2014, 2015, and 2016 with each producing about 1,100 figures (Figure 5). My painting goals for the last three years have targeted about 1,000 figures annually.  I can hit some goals!  The 2016 stacked bar confirms that my focus on the 1799 and 1859 projects paid dividends.  Now to get these projects onto the gaming table.

Figure 5

Converting these counts to an adjusted basis by Year and Scale (Figure 6) shows that painting output in 2016 reached the fourth highest output since painting statistics have been tracked.  2015 was the third highest.  Again, I am showing some consistency.

Figure 6

Project diversity continued in 2016 as seen from the variety of differently colored bars in Figure 7.  Even given the 2016 focus, many projects crossed the painting desk.  For me, project diversity is key to preventing burn-out or loss of painting mojo. 

Figure 7

On an adjusted basis, Figure 8 reconfirms that 2016 was a good year at the painting desk registering my fourth highest annual points' total to date.  

Figure 8

While neither the 1799 nor 1859 projects saw action on the gaming table in 2016 as planned, games in these two periods are very close to seeing fruition.  The 1800 and 1859 battles of Montebello are almost ready for playtesting.  The map for Montebello has been transferred onto the gaming table and OB and scenario details for the 1859 action are in the final stages.  Playtesting should begin by the end of January.

What lays ahead for 2017?  Well, in general, more gaming would be most welcome and a new project (Neo-Assyrians) will likely take center stage.  Those thoughts are for another post.  Until next time.