In order to understand my 2023, you really have to start with my 2022.

2022 was the year the wheels kinda-sorta came off my life. I spent months going to various specialists trying to get to the bottom of mystery pains. I left one job for another, and got tossed aside in layoffs six months later. I was diagnosed with diabetes. I quit smoking. I started exercising 5-6 days per week. I completely upended my diet. I started a new-new job.

2023 was the year that all of that caught up with my modeling.

Things started off fine. I was having a ball with the Zoukei-Mura and Meng F-4G Wild Weasels. And then March struck and everything just ground to a halt. My motivation just vanished. Everything in life felt unrelenting. And one day my wife, who is much more attuned to these things than I am, suggested it might be depression.

Talked to my doctor. Talked to my therapist. Got on a prescription. And things started to turn around.

But they didn’t come back exactly the same.

I don’t think I fully realized it until a month or so ago, when my interest in the Eduard F4F-4 Wildcat I’d been working on just withered up and died.

I really began asking myself why. I was all fired up to do a Torch Wildcat right around the time of Nats. John Colasante gave me an absolutely stunning 3D printed engine of his own design to use in it. I designed wheels for it. It was a blast to paint. I was getting into the weathering funtimes. It had slam dunk written all over it and then just…poof.

The wrong questions

I think it’s human nature – and certainly my nature – to try to troubleshoot and problem solve these things. Why do I nope out on so many builds? What is it about this Wildcat in particular? Is it Eduard’s good-but-often-annoying kits? Is it because it’s blue? Is it because I bogged down on the base?

One of the awesome things about actually getting treated for depression is that I’ve found it easier to zoom out and get outside of the fucked up stories that I tell myself. It’s amazing once you start to realize how much fear and anxiety and stress is completely self-inflicted.

But it’s the same thing here. I realized I’m looking at all these external factors that I can blame. To what…absolve myself? Make myself feel a bit better than my excuse is somewhat justified?

I can’t know if it’s because I bogged down on the base. If I didn’t do a base, would I have gotten further or already finished the kit by now? How the fuck could I possibly know that? I can’t. It’s pure conjecture.

Interrogating why…why…why isn’t helpful. So I decided to flip everything around.

The right questions

Instead of asking why I failed with the Wildcat, I asked why I succeeded with the Trumpeter P-40F, or the Tamiya Birdcage Corsair, or the Kotare Spitfire. I asked what builds in my past have brought me joy. And what about them in particular resonated the most.

And what I found when I started pulling on those threads was so much richer and more informative. A few of my main takeaways:

I prefer 1/32 aircraft. If I had to list out my favorite builds since I came back to the hobby, it’d go something like…Tamiya -1D Corsair, Trumpeter A-6 Intruder, Trumpeter P-47D-20 Thunderbolt, Tamiya Birdcage Corsair, PCM Fiat G.55…all 1/32 scale.

I keep trying to build 1/48 (and even 1/72) aircraft thinking I’ll get these easy (easier) wins, but for the most part they don’t give me that same feeling. Even the really great ones like the Tamiya P-38. They just don’t hit the same.

I like my armor with a heavy dose of whimsy. A few years ago I did that whole Tank the Rainbow thing and it made a hell of an impact. More than I realized at the time. Those builds were ridiculously rushed, but painting them was so much fun, and it’s given me a taste of getting more creative with subjects and colors.

I’m on a big armor kick at the moment, and each of the projects I’m cycling between is heavy on whimsy.

Big projects are fine. I’m usually worried I’ll bog down on a big project. That’s how I convince myself to pick up a smaller 1/48 Wildcat instead. Which I invariably bog down on. So I avoid the big projects for quick projects that aren’t quick and that bog down. That seems fucking stupid. May as well just go big, right? Especially when those end up being some of my favorites.

What does all this mean? I’m not entirely sure yet. But I’ll be using some of the realizations as I think about what projects I tackle next.

Get to the kits!

Fine. This year I completed very few projects. Two to be precise.

The first was Kotare’s 1/32 Spitfire Mk.Ia, built completely out of the box.

Overall, Kotare put together a very solid kit for their first outing. In some ways it has Hasegawa vibes, in a good way. It’s a relatively simple kit that doesn’t fuss with a lot of exposed things, which is to its credit. 

The only things I didn’t particularly care for were the injection molded harness and the decision to fill in much of the wing detail. I get why they did so, and it’s absolutely justifiable from an accuracy standpoint. But if you put one of these next to, say, a 1/48 Eduard Spitfire, there is so much surface interest that is lost. I, for one, would prefer some stage makeup even if it’s not 100% accurate.

There’s also the matter of…I just don’t find early Spitfires that appealing. I won’t be getting another Mk.I or Mk.II, but if Kotare decides to roll out a Mk.Vb or Mk.Vc, I’ll be there with bells on.

The second? A Sabot Miniatures Medieval Soldier bust.

This is my first completed figure anything, and it started life at a painting workshop Jim Rice put on back at the beginning of April. Just getting it over the line is a hell of an accomplishment for me.

I don’t know how many figures are in my future. I always seem to like the idea of it so much more than the reality. But knowing that I *can* do it and that I did enjoy it gives me some hope.

And…that’s it.

I also started or otherwise interacted with something like 23 different kits this year. I won’t bore with all of them, especially ones that were just kinda tinkered with and set back in the box. But here are some of the ones that made real progress this year, even if they aren’t reaching the completed column.

1/72 3R M1128 Stryker MGS – a fun little kit that I went after in one of those misguided urges for a quick win. It’s a decent enough kit, but yards from the finish line I was like “what am I doing?”.

1/48 Zoukei-Mura F-4G Wild Weasel – This one hurts, since it’s my favorite jet. But I just hit a wall with my Wild Weasel builds. Something about Phantoms is just a lot. And since I care extra about the G, I don’t know. I got too much into my own head, and the depression on top didn’t help at all.

1/48 Meng F-4G Wild Weasel – Same story as the ZM F-4G. Both of these were going along swimmingly until they suddenly weren’t. One day I’ll get back to them. It took me five years to get back to the Trumpeter A-6 and look how that turned out in the end.

Bold Miniatures Vesha Bust – I love this bust. In a world where so many female figures are ridiculously sexualized, Bold Miniatures is one of the few places offering some fun alternatives. I actually got a decent way through this one before stalling out. I think I swung too hard with the pink hair. But it’s an STL, so I’ll try again. I do think I nailed the sheer fabric effect on the shirt and didn’t do awful with the skin tones.

1/48 Eduard F4F-4 Wildcat – Hey look, another one I made it a good way through before flaming out. With this one I think it ultimately comes down to two interconnected things. First, while Eduard is certainly to be commended for the amount of detail they packed into this kit, particularly the outer surfaces, I really wish they’d take a bit more consideration with their engineering. While parts generally fit, there’s often minimal positive location and no real chance to test fit a few steps ahead to find out how you’re fucking yourself.

Second, in 1/48 the Wildcat is not a large aircraft. A thicc aircraft, but not large. And I can’t help but feel like the effort to output ratio is wildly out of whack.

Will I come back around on this one? Probably. But not quite yet.

1/35 Object 666 “Apocalypse Tank” – What started out as the Border Models Apocalypse Tank (representing the Soviet tank from the Command & Conquer: Red Alert games) kinda morphed shortly after I started it for a what-if Soviet armor group build inspired by Adam Wilder’s newest book. There’s the Border kit, a turret yoinked from a Resinscales kit, Voyager fenders, Aber barrels for a T-10M, and tracks, a mantlet, rear deck grille, fuel tanks etc designed and printed by yours truly. I’m still working my way through this one but I’m having so much fun.

This is my main project at the moment – there’s just no way it’s crossing the finish line before the end of the year.

Bring on 2024

The last two years have seen a lot of changes in my life – overall for the better. But getting to that better has been anything but a smooth upward slope. Still, I feel like the past few months have seen a lot of that struggle start to pay off. And it’s been resulting in what is easily the biggest burst of creative inspiration I’ve felt in a long, long time.

For now, I’m just trying to ride that wave and not worry about output specifically. I’m tinkering with a lot of kits. I’m even (very slowly) designing two kits in Fusion 360. I have plans and ideas for at least five armor and ground vehicle subjects and more aircraft than I can easily account for. And none of them are “normal” projects. I’ll be very curious to see which one rises to the top first.