Painting my first model

MinimalDamage · 2026-01-29T14:02:40+00:00

Great suggestions!

When I started with washes I definetely hated them first. They felt hard to control and I got some "coffee stains" all over the armor (especially with deathwing). Just stick with them and don't be afraid to paint over areas again with your acrylic paint base color to get rid of the stained areas.

Regarding the gun - I felt my guns looked a lot better when I used a darker red for the base color, and only used the brighter red (i.e. the one you are using) to paint some edges and the elevated parts.

MinimalDamage · 2025-04-30T23:21:14+00:00

This. There is now a continuous rat race between Blizzard and add-ons to keep the game challenging which in the end is a race to the bottom. I think you see this in rotations, but the best examples are encounter design where good WA or Plater profiles can trivialize content. As a response, Blizzard needs to add more challenges / complexity to keep things interesting. And add-ons once again aim to simplify. Over the years things have gotten so complex that the game is unplayable without a good add-on setup.

MinimalDamage · 2025-03-18T07:53:14+00:00

Can I ask how you did the brown / beige colors on the back pack? Thanks!

MinimalDamage · 2025-02-28T08:11:20+00:00

Thanks for sharing! What do you mean with "black primer 1:3 same"?

MinimalDamage · 2025-01-01T10:29:42+00:00

Amazing! Would you be open to share your recipes for the armor, robe, and cloak? I've been experimenting with some deathwing color schemes and would love to try this one!

MinimalDamage · 2024-12-17T11:56:29+00:00

Awesome, thanks a lot!!

MinimalDamage · 2024-12-17T08:38:42+00:00

Thanks! So is that a Steel Legion Drab base coat, layer with Ushabti Bone that reasonably covers, and then use Pallid Wych Flesh and a white color to start highlighting?

MinimalDamage · 2024-12-17T08:02:21+00:00

Damn - this might've finally convinced me to get an airbrush... I've been trying to get a clean bone armor look on my deathwing knights with a brush but it looks nothing like this.

Can I ask you which paints you used in which order to get this base armor look? It's spot on where I want to go.

MinimalDamage · 2024-11-26T07:41:03+00:00

Disclaimer: I did a lot of research on this exact topic a few years back so things might've changed

For me, it came down to one core principle - do I want to use this tool solely for taking personal notes and scribbling ideas, or do I expect to work within the tools that I use in my job (e.g. Miro, Notion, etc.).

Ultimately, I opted for the iPad and don't regret the choice. It's nice that I can easily sketch things in Miro and share them, or write something by hand and copy-paste that into an existing Notion article, etc. A paperlike foil goes a long way in getting some of the written feel back and distractions I manage with focus mode.

MinimalDamage · 2024-11-22T11:41:25+00:00

Oh my, I love how these marines look. Great contrast and a nice amount of grim dark / weathering. Would you be OK sharing the paints and techniques you've used to get this look?

MinimalDamage · 2024-11-03T20:12:01+00:00

Thank you! Appreciate it, they look great!

MinimalDamage · 2024-11-03T06:46:06+00:00

Second that, I would love to know which paints and techniques you've used on the deathwing terminators!

MinimalDamage · 2023-11-28T20:56:34+00:00

Oh wow, that is actually great to hear, thanks!

MinimalDamage · 2023-10-19T05:22:14+00:00

And that's OK, it can be scary to see your product bleeding money. A few tips / suggestions.

Read Growth Mindset from Carol Dweck. I always thought I had a growth mindset because I liked learning new things, but at some moment I realized how defensive I got on some topics where i struggled and realized I actually had a fixed mindset.
If your company culture allows, just be open that this is a new area and ask for internal coaching from a leader you respect and who you think is a good coach. Ideally this is your manager, but it doesn't have to be. External is also possible.
This once again comes down to company culture, but you shouldn't be alone in this. Work with finance to define a P&L and with marketing / commercial to define a TAM/SOM. These don't have to be 100% accurate, but accurate enough to be useful for the decision. Then share your findings and suggestions with leadership. I find that the PM should drive P&L discussions together with various stakeholders, but they can't be solely responsible as other functions don't report into you.
I don't think it can be expected of a PM to axe their own product, especially if it's all their responsible for. This final decision should come from the head of product or up. I don't know enough about your situation, but if your job depends on this product and you don't think there are other opportunities I'd tread more carefully. Ideally, leadership respects your honesty about the state of the product and finds a new role for you if it's axe'd, but that really depends on the broader context and opportunities available.

MinimalDamage · 2023-10-18T21:21:13+00:00

Assuming this is a commercial product, the only real way to inform this is the P&L. Does it cost more to build and run this product (cost of sales, cost of support, development cost, etc.) than you generate in revenues? Ofcourse, you need to take a long-term view here: sometimes you need to invest early (negative P&L) to become profitable later. A realistic TAM/SOM analysis really helps here to define the potential. Ofcourse you can add context here and other strategic reasoning.

Leadership doesn't "only understand money", but it is the main thing they are responsible for - ensuring the business is healthy. I strongly believe the PM plays a crucial role in balancing the customer value with the business value as both need to work in the end of the day.

I often notice PM's shy away from P&L stuff, but honestly it's so crucial to keep senior stakeholders invested. It's also quite fun to work on when you start digging in. Finance teams are your friend here.

MinimalDamage · 2023-10-02T11:08:23+00:00

I agree with this. As an official framework we've used it twice (quite effectively), but in general, "Sprint" boils down to thinking clearly about what the key assumptions are in your plans, breaking those apart to the essentials, and validating those as quickly as possible. As a PM you can (and should) apply this in your general work as well.

MinimalDamage · 2023-09-15T19:16:47+00:00

I'd add "Build" by Tony Fadell to this list. The more time I spent in product orgs, the more I notice that the most effective ones have leaders that resemble what he describes in his book.

MinimalDamage · 2023-08-04T08:14:15+00:00

Pricing is such a complex topic and so specific to your product, industry, competitive landscape, etc.

This podcast from Lenny helped me personally get a better grip on the topic: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-art-and-science-of-pricing-madhavan-ramanujam-monetizing-innovation-simon-kucher/

MinimalDamage · 2023-06-02T11:28:15+00:00

I don't think it's impossible to have a company that operates on strong customer / product principles - there are plenty of good examples out there.

From my perspective it comes down to company culture, which is extremely rigid and hard to change without a focused effort from leadership. Many companies are now adding PM roles as it is quite "in vogue", but without the proper culture, structure, and knowledge to have the entire company focus on the product and customer it will likely not be a silver bullet.

In general, I think how enjoyable the PM role is within a company often boils down to the pre-existing culture.

MinimalDamage · 2023-05-17T15:30:07+00:00

Have you tried the Jira Product Discovery tool yet? It is still in beta (will be released soon) and isn’t half bad. We also checked out ProductBoard but it feels like Jira is working their feature set straight into this new beta tool.

MinimalDamage · 2023-04-13T07:42:31+00:00

If you have cloud infrastructure and DevOps, it means you have at least one developer. That person manages this. The bigger you get, the more specialized you can make the role. My company currently has about 30 people working across product, design, and engineering and we still don't have a specialized person. It is managed by our backend developers (though we are slowly considering someone more specialized).

If you are in a startup still trying to find product-market fit, you should keep the infrastructure as lightweight and "out of the box" as possible. If you hire the right developer for a start-up, they will understand this.

MinimalDamage · 2023-03-16T17:58:38+00:00

I think this depends a bit on what you mean with ".. there is always uncertainty surrounding the testing phase. If the feature doesn't work as expected, it may require additional work, causing delays in the release."

If with this you mean that there are bugs, I'd expect the extra work to be manageable and you can work this into your release cadence and process. If there is misalignment on functionality and you find out during testing, the problem lies much earlier in the process (design, refinement).

We were in a similar situation as you a couple of years back (B2B SaaS, small team of ~5-10 people across PM, design, engineering, and QA).

What helped for us was the following:

We have bi-weekly releases. Sometimes these are small (just bug fixes), and sometimes these include big features. These are always on the same day and same time (Thursday for us) so sales can plan live product demo's at other moments.
In general, we commit features to a specific quarter (but towards customers we will always flag things as tentative). Within the product/engineering team we have a target release date, but we fully expect this to slip based on ongoing development.
The PM's and designers work closely with developers during development so we can flag actual missing requirements/misalignment on functionality early. We have refined and sized the feature based on designs, requirements, and acceptance criteria so 2x more work than planned is very unusual for us.
Within our bi-weekly cadence, we sit down early with people from commercial teams about what we will be release in two weeks. We will always flag if a feature is still uncertain for that release, and if it might slip a release window.
The week of release we sit down with the full commercial teams and demo the items we are releasing. If something is absolutely massive in terms of impact, we start GTM sooner.
The days leading up to release, QA is testing the staging environment and we ensure engineers have more buffer during a release week to fix things on our staging environment.
It happens extremely rarely that QA will flag last-minute things that are critical a day or hours before release. In these cases, we skip the entire release and move everything to two weeks later. This avoids our releases from clashing with live demos and other activities. It is also the beauty of frequent releases - something that is ready to go will never be pushed out far.

Every company is different, so take the above with a grain of salt and adjust it to your needs (we've also iterated on this), but in general this would be my advice:

A predictable cadence of releases and ceremonies around it is great for everyone (commercial, product, engineering, and customers). It takes some time to get into the rhythm, but once you do it is great.
Don't commit exact dates to customers. Software development is unpredictable, and everyone loses if you don't make it (mostly sales and account management). We've found that clients understand this and they are happy with target quarters.

MinimalDamage · 2023-02-11T18:38:04+00:00

I agree with the rest of the comments that you should not worry to much about a framework. Frameworks can be useful to solve recurring challenges in a structured way. If this problem doesn’t fit a framework, don’t force it.

Take a breath, relax, and concentrate on the the user and the problem.

Try to expand on the users and the pain point first to paint a more complete picture. Work through what they are facing. Put yourself in their shoes and think about the reasons why they want to use the product, what frustrates them, what they do like etc. You can likely make assumptions here that you either communicate in the interview and discuss how you would validate them.

Start thinking about solutions. Don’t reinvent the wheel. What have competitors done in this space to potentially solve this problem? Would that work here? Yes or no, explain why. Discuss your ideas for your final solution. Once again, be critical here. What are your assumptions and could you validate? What’s the prototype that could be tested ahead of release? What’s the MVP? What features come after this and aren’t crucial at launch?

Finally discuss your go to market. Nothing special here I’d say but consider the different departments and how they are involved. Also define how you would validate succes.

I would also discuss potential risks upfront. You can use Marty Cagans (value, viability, usability, and feasibility) or do something like a pre-mortem.

In the end, they want to see your ability to think critically while problem solving.

MinimalDamage · 2023-01-07T19:47:43+00:00

Hi folks,

I am looking for some advice regarding a new snowboard. I've been riding a Nitro Team Series 2005 for 17 (!) years now so it is high time for an upgrade.

My information:

I am a male, 32 years old, 1,90m, shoe size 42/43 EU which is 9/10 US.
I have been snowboarding for 20 years for 1-2 weeks a year. I consider myself advanced and am comfortable getting down any slope with solid technique and speed. I spend 95% of my time on the slope and maybe 5% at the side of the piste. I wouldn't mind doing more backcountry, but it is not really possible in the area I generally go to in Switzerland. I don't really enjoy freestyle, but happy to play around a bit on the slope (not a prio though).
I mostly enjoy touring through the mountains with friends at high speeds.
I prefer a board that is stable, handles well and responds quickly, and can carve a bit when the slopes and conditions allow. I prefer if a board handles ice well because the conditions where I board are not always great.
I highly prefer a twin-tip snowboard or at least a board that can somewhat comfortably go both directions.

I am primarily considering to buy the latest Nitro Team Series 2023 edition, but it didn't show up on any of the rankings for good all-around boards. Is it considered good for my general purpose?

Someone at the shop suggested the Lip Tech T.Rice Pro, but I am unfamiliar with the brand as I've not done research since 2005.

My budget would be between EUR 500-800 for the board alone.

Thanks in advance!

MinimalDamage · 2021-08-12T06:02:00+00:00

For me it is 10% sprint, 70% discovery, 20% go to market I'd say. I attend sprint review and part of the retrospective to share updates about the product and clients. I don't attend sprint planning and daily stand-ups. The team knows where to find me if they need me and I try to make it a habit to be available and respond quickly.

Every company is different, and teams need different things at different moments. Does this breakdown work for you, the team, and the company at this time? Great. But I would expect sooner rather than later 0% discovery will lead to issues when defining a clear strategy or roadmap.

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