Deepthought: We. Are. The Hobby.

This is a hobby editorial. I went to school to become and try to make my living as a writer. Though I love the hobby, and I'd like nothing better than to sculpt all day, posting amazing things on here for all to ogle, there are times when the urge to write strikes, and I try to use these interludes to delve deeper into important parts of the hobby. I hope you find the following article interesting, and I promise to get back to posting cool models soon!

First off, I'd like to state that this is not going to be one of those articles.

Anyone who knows me from Warpshadow knows that I don't go in for Games Workshop bashing. Though this may start with a bit of negative sentiment, I would ask you to stick with the article and read it through 'til the end as the end, in a way, is the most important part. That being said, it's a biggie, so best to grab a cuppa something to go along with it.

Though I don't go in for Company Bashing, I got very close last May, when it seemed like The Company was doing everything in their power to squeeze more money out of their Hobbyists (heck, at one point I was planning a revolution). On May 18th of last year, at the height of the Internet furor over price hikes, Finecast (and its further price hikes), and the restriction of UK-based, world-wide online retailers, Games Workshop CEO Mark Wells sent out a letter to hobbyists. If you missed it, the full letter can be viewed on Beasts of War.

There are many things I could take issue with in this letter, but the greatest and most glaring of them is the following, taken verbatim from the letter that Mark Wells, CEO of Games Workshop, sent out to a hobbyist:

...the simple fact is that European internet traders will not invest any money in growing the hobby in your country. Their model is to minimise their costs and free-ride on the investment of Games Workshop and local independent shops in creating a customer base.

For all my lack of Games Workshop bashing, that was a statement that rankled me. Though there may well be some free-riding internet retailers, there are also SCADS more internet retailers who support themselves by selling models so that they can spend the rest of their days writing hobby articles or creating cool conversions for other hobbyists to use. Some of these online retailers who invest a goodly portion of their time into growing the hobby online took the statement as what it was: a direct slap in the face, and they posted comments like this one from Matthew over at Miniwargaming.com.

The gist of this letter seemed to be the idea that Games Workshop invests more time and money than anyone in growing this hobby, so it makes sense to pay their prices and not to support freeloading online retailers. It got me thinking about just how much time and money all of us in this interconnected, online, miniature community invest into this hobby. I had a revelation about the nature of what our communities had evolved into: I thought that if we could ever herd together the 1,000 cats of our online community and convince them to dream a single dream, we would be the ones at the controls of this hobby community and not The Company. I came to a realization that is the first main thrust of this article. It was a simple statement that belies the foundation-shaking strength of the sentiment behind it:

We. Are. The Hobby.

You, and me; what we do here, and the interactions that hobbyists have on miniature-based blogs and forums all over the net. We are the hobby.

That's All, Folks!

That's it; that's all. The window of opportunity for the 10,000 view giveaway has now closed. Thanks to all of you who emailed and commented and linked to the blog. I hope everyone managed to get their comments and emails in on time. As I'm about to go away for an extended long weekend, I may not be able to draw the two winners until next week sometime, but we'll see how things shake out. I'm really excited to see who wins and see what kind of diabolical things they come up with for me to make for them.

If you missed this opportunity, I'm pretty sure that I'll be doing another giveaway in the near future based on how much interest there has ben in this one, so keep on pointing people to the blog, and we'll see how long it takes to reach another milestone.

25,000 views? 50,000 views? Who knows?!

10,000 View Commission Giveaway

UPDATE: The 10,000 View Giveaway is now closed and I've shut down the comments for this post. Thank you for your entries, and I look forward to the next milestone giveaway I'm able to run.

Folks, it happened sometime Monday night: Modern Synthesist broke 10,000 views. Now, I know there are blogs out there that are viewed a heck of a lot more than that, but it's a momentous sort of a milestone for me now, shortly after this little bloggerino celebrated its first birthday.

There are certain folks I should thank for getting the Modern Synthesist name out there:

Warpshadow - The crazy, tentacle-saluting kids who have been with me since the beginning (nearly 10 years ago, EEK!), commenting on all my Nid projects and helping to make them perfect. If you've been looking for a positive, constructive, talented group of Tyranid players and modelers, you should check out the forums on Warpshadow.

The Dark City - I've lurked around the Dark City for a while, but I only began posting there recently. A more wretched hive of scum and villainy you will never find, so if you're into Dark Eldar, check the forum out. The folks over there have been wonderfully complimentary of my modest progress on my Coven units.

Eye of Error - LuckyNo.5's fantastic conversion blog. If you haven't seen it, you need to check it out. He's got some great Dark Eldar projects, and he's currently working on some Undersea Chaos Marines, with all kinds of sweet diving gear and TENTACLES! Also, he's come up with a clever Grotesques conversion that I love second only to my own (in fact, his may be a bit more elegant than mine).

Faeit 212 - I've been following Natfka's 40K Rumours blog for about a year now, and he always keeps me in the know. I'm pretty sure it was him adding me to his list of blog affiliates that pushed me over the 10,000 mark last night, so I'm glad that we're talking about sharing some of my modeling content on his blog as it's the least I could do to repay him for the favour. What's more, if you've come here from Faeit, this post will be your chance to possibly be rewarded for your hard work!

To say thanks to all you fine folks who roll up here so frequently, as well as to those who have just stumbled across this blog, I thought I should do...something. I wasn't really sure what to do, so I'll jump in with both feet and probably bite off more than I can chew:

Mr_Pink's First Ever Commission Giveaway!

SEXIFIED!

Not particularly interesting, but as you may be able to see if you've been 'round these parts before, I've done a bit of Sexification on the ol' bloggerino. I'd always been intending to apply some design savvy to this place, but it took a generous and very beautiful gift to get me going––a wonderful piece of art from a woman who I wouldn't know from a hole in the wall were it not for the wonder of The Internet.

She and I had arranged to do a Tyranid bits swap by mail, but then I realized that me and Hyrda and The Norn Queen would be heading through Sforementioned Internet Personality's neck of the woods here in Ontario anyway on our road trip, so we made a stop, all met each other IRL, and it was lovely. She gave us a tour of her workspace and her woMAN cave (it put every other man cave I've seen to shame), and in addition to the bits we'd arranged to trade, she gave me this:

Which is, of course, Hel: one of my oldest and dearest conversions, re-imagined as a bad-ass cartoon version of herself. I thought it would be a pretty good anchor for a new header for the site, and while I was working on that, I thought I should finally whip up that greenstuff "Y" that I'd envisioned a while back for the Modern Synthesist name, and before I knew it I was in the advanced Blogger settings, tweaking this and that.

And all of it was thanks to that one sketch. One day I'll get around to writing the post I've been intending to do for a while now about how everything I know about sculpting I learned from friends I met online, but until then, here's photographic proof of the wonders of the interweb:

Also, here is the artistic wonder that is Krewl Rain: http://krewl-rain.deviantart.com/