Hi everyone!

I wanted to write something a little different today. Not a monthly release post, and not really an announcement either, but more of an honest look at what has been happening behind Proxywars lately. I think it explains a slightly strange situation: I spend an enormous amount of time working on Proxywars, and yet sometimes very little of that work actually becomes visible online.

Over the last few weeks I have been working a lot, probably too much. There have been quite a few days of 16, 18, sometimes close to 19 hours of work, between sculpting, preparing files, supporting models, testing prints, producing and packing orders, updating the website, answering messages, working on Damocles Wars and trying to finish the rules. The funny part is that I can still reach the end of one of those days and think: okay, but I didn't finish what I was supposed to finish.

The never-ending project

One of my biggest problems is actually a pretty nice problem to have: I genuinely enjoy creating things. Unfortunately, that also means I am extremely good at giving myself more work. I can be finishing a vehicle and suddenly think that a rebel version would be fantastic. Most of the assets already exist, so in my head it is always, “it shouldn't take that long.” Then I think of another weapon option, another crew, another little improvement, and suddenly the thing that was almost finished has become another project.

The Kegara is a good recent example. It was technically finished, but then I thought an automated weapon system on the roof would be cool. So I made one. Then I wanted to improve the protection around the weapon and integrate it properly into the rails so that it looked like it had always been designed that way. And while doing that, of course, other ideas appeared. This happens constantly because the creative process itself creates new possibilities.

It is the same with Damocles Wars. I can be working on rules that I absolutely need to finish and start thinking about a special rule that would be perfect for one unit, or a campaign mechanic, or some interaction that would make the game more interesting. None of these ideas are necessarily bad, which is precisely why it is so difficult for me to ignore them.

When 95% finished isn't finished

I have realized that I have a very strong tendency toward perfectionism. I have difficulty showing something when I know I can still improve it, and of course there is always something that can be improved. A miniature can have another option, a render can be better, supports can be optimized, a rule can be clearer, the army builder can calculate something more elegantly, or a faction can have one more unit that makes its roster more interesting.

I know perfectly well that this isn't always the most sensible way to work. Some creators show projects extremely early, release things, get feedback and improve them afterwards, and I actually think there is a lot to learn from that approach. My instinct is almost exactly the opposite: I want the 21/20 before I feel comfortable presenting something. I grew up a little bit with that mentality, and even though I know today that it isn't always healthy or productive, knowing that intellectually and actually changing the way I work are two very different things.

So I end up with this strange paradox: the more I work on Proxywars, the less time I sometimes have to actually show Proxywars.

Some models have been waiting for years

This isn't theoretical. Some of the models I finally added to the physical store today have been sitting around for an absurd amount of time. The buggy, for example, was made more than a year ago.

There are also files that I should have released through Patreon much earlier that have existed for two or even three years. They weren't abandoned and I didn't stop liking them. They simply kept getting pushed behind whatever was urgent at that moment: orders, another sculpt, another rule, another test, another project that was almost finished. At some point I have to admit that this becomes a bit ridiculous, and that is one of the things I am trying to change now.

There are several jobs hidden inside one

Another thing that is sometimes difficult to see from the outside is how many different jobs are hidden inside making a miniature and a game. Even before sculpting, there is a lot of thinking: what is this unit actually for, what weapons make sense for it, where does it fit in the army list, does it have a role that is genuinely useful or am I just creating a second unit that already does exactly the same thing? Then comes the sculpting, assembling, polishing, variants, renders, supports and print tests. And because I tend to get carried away by the creative process, somewhere in the middle I will usually discover another option that would be cool and add that too.

But the sculpting itself is only one part of what I do. On the same day I can move from sculpting to resin printing, from production and packing orders to answering customer messages, from writing rules to programming tools for those rules, then working on the website, preparing files, taking photos, painting miniatures, testing the game, making renders or trying to find time to make a video. They are all parts of the same project, but in practice they are completely different jobs and require completely different states of mind.

And to be clear, I am not saying this because I dislike doing all of that. Quite the opposite: a huge part of why Proxywars has grown the way it has is that I find all these different parts fascinating. I love being able to have an idea, sculpt it, turn it into an actual miniature, give it a place in an army, write rules for it and eventually put it on a table. It is incredibly satisfying. It is also exhausting, because there are only so many hours in a day and I can't give every part of the project the amount of attention I would like to give it.

And inevitably, the things that disappear first are usually the things I am less naturally comfortable doing: communication, videos, promotion, sometimes even simply putting finished products online. It isn't because I think those things are unimportant. Economically, neglecting them is probably one of the least intelligent choices I make. But when I have a few hours available, it is much easier for me to disappear into a sculpt, solve a rules problem or work on a new unit than to sit down and make a video explaining what I have been doing. So the project keeps moving forward, but from the outside it doesn't always look like it.

Trying to break the loop

Today I did something extremely simple: I published twenty-four products. Some of them are recent, some have existed for a long time, and several are part of the work I have been doing lately and will progressively appear as STL releases on Patreon over the coming months.

I had already planned to move toward four Patreon releases per month, and I am currently organizing the models I still need to release around that rhythm. The current batch should take us through Christmas, and possibly into the beginning of next year depending on exactly how I organize everything. There are still files I want to improve, models I want to finish and variants sitting on my computer that I would love to add, but the important thing for me today is that these 24 products are online.

That sounds ridiculously obvious, but for me it is actually part of changing the way I work. I need to get better at accepting that something can be finished even if I can still imagine ways to improve it, because otherwise “finished” simply never happens.

Showing more of the process

There is considerably more finished material than what is currently visible from the outside, and that is something I want to change. Not by promising that I am suddenly going to become a perfectly organized person who publishes everything on schedule — I know myself better than that — but by trying to show more of the process while it is actually happening.

I would like to show more of the unfinished things, the iterations, the models that change, the rules that seemed like a good idea and then didn't work, the print that fails, or the vehicle that gets rebuilt because I realized there was a better way to do it. I think I have spent so much time waiting for things to be “ready to show” that I have probably hidden one of the most interesting parts of a project like this: the fact that it is constantly evolving.

Proxywars has never really been a finished product. It has been growing for years, and Damocles Wars is the same. So perhaps I need to become a little more comfortable letting you see that growth while it is happening, rather than only showing you the result when I finally decide it has reached 21/20. We'll see if I manage it, but publishing those 24 products today is already a start.

Have a nice one!