2018 Painting Log in Review

Sharpen the pencil and slide the visor down over my head to shade the glare from the lamp.  Time to reconcile the parade of painted troops passing over my painting desk in 2018.

Before we move on to the Bring Out the Charts section, what were my painting goals set out at the beginning of 2018? To recap from January 2018:

With all projects in sufficient quantities to field armies for games, there is little pressure to concentrate on any one project to reach that critical, gameable mass. No new project(s) planned for 2018 either. Without either of these incentives, the 2018 painting goal ought to be something more pragmatic. As a step towards pragmatism, the 2018 goal is to make a dent in The Lead Pile by buying less than I paint. A painted figure goal of 900 seems reasonable.

To reduce The Lead Pile, effort should lean towards the 15/18mm category since 2017 saw most painting activity in the 25/28mm size. To aim towards that objective, the 1799, 1859, SYW, and Feudal Japan projects should see renewed activity. With moderate effort, the inventory of the Peter Pig Samurai figures in inventory could be brought down to near zero. If enough progress is made on the 1859 project to field French, perhaps, a start on a small Prussian army for either 1866 or 1870 could be contemplated? Does starting a new Prussian army for either the 1866 or 1870 conflicts count as a new project or an expansion of the existing 1859 project?

The outlook for 2018 provided just enough details to give direction to the painting year yet allow plenty of wiggle room to veer off course.  Let us see how I did.

• Painting Goal:  In 2018, I painted 1,268 figures and 31 pieces of equipment.  That equates to about a 41% increase over expectations.  That is a good start! 
• Paint More Than Buy: While I have not taken account of figure purchases, it is most likely that I painted more than bought in 2018.
• Concentrate on 15/18mm: Yep.  About 77% (1,004) of the total painted figures were in this class.   

While figure count was up from 2017 (1,268 vs 911), Adjusted Painting Points actually decreased slightly (3,896 vs 4,334) over 2017 due to the concentration on 15/18mm.

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 painted figures produced.  Adjustments are made based on Analog Hobbies' Painting Challenge points system.

Bring Out the Charts!
On an unadjusted basis of painted figures by era (Figure 1), the major effort (39.52% of total) was in the 18mm 1799 project (Suvorov in Italy/Switz.).  Next, coming in at 228 figures (17.57% of total), the 18mm 1859 project took second billing followed by the 18mm SYW project (189 figures; about 15% of total).  The Feudal Japan project saw activity too, coming in with 74 figures completed.  My sense is that few figures remain in The Lead Pile for this project. 

Figure 1

On an adjusted figure count basis (Figure 2), the percentages by project are transformed slightly due to the weighting scheme but the 1799 project still comes out on top at 30% of total output.

Figure 2

Turning to disaggregating counts by scale (Figure 3), more than 77% of all painting production was logged in the 15/18mm classification.  I stuck to a goal!

Figure 3

On an adjusted basis, the 15/18mm classification loses some of its dominance with almost 31% of production booked into the 25/28mm classification. 

Figure 4

How does 2018 fit into the historical trends and tendencies over the life of my figure tracking?

On an unadjusted basis, painting trends show 2018 experienced a slight bump up in total figure count over the previous four years.  This increase is almost certainly due to the concentration on 15/18mm figures (Figure 5).  I expect that if 2018 painting output been more balanced between 25/28mm and 15/18mm then 2018 would have seen very similar raw figure counts as 2014-2017.

Figure 5

Converting these counts to an adjusted basis by Year and Scale (Figure 6) shows that painting output in 2018 managed to creep into the Top 10 years since painting statistics have been tracked.  Again, by painting a little most days, consistency remains in place and good gains can be realized.

Figure 6

Project diversity continued in 2018 as shown by the variety of differently colored bars in Figure 7.  Even given the 2018 focus on 15/18mm in general and the 1799/1859 projects in particular, twelve different projects saw figures muster off from the painting desk.

Figure 7

On an adjusted basis, Figure 8 reconfirms that 2018 was a good year at the painting desk.  The graph also confirms that my painting production has found a very sustainable level of consistency since 2008.  Consistency over time is key to building large armies.

Figure 8

That is a wrap for the 2018 Painting Review.  2018 was a good year at the painting desk and many a fine recruit mustered to the colors.   For those whose eyes have not yet glazed over from the charts, 

Happy New Year!