Hello everyone, and happy holidays.

When I think about it calmly, I’ve probably read just as many science-fiction novels as fantasy ones. All of that stayed somewhere in my head: Dune (all the books), Starship Troopers, Altered Carbon. The same goes for video games — Command & Conquer (especially the early ones), StarCraft, Supreme Commander (I even managed to kill a world top-3 player once in that game). As for movies, I’ve watched pretty much everything science fiction had to offer.

All those influences shaped the way I imagine armies, conflicts, and worlds. They didn’t come back on purpose — they resurfaced naturally while working on this project.

At some point, while sculpting the Bug Army, I realized I had been listening to the Command & Conquer soundtrack on repeat for days. That’s when it clicked. This faction carries a lot of that influence. Not as a copy, not as a tribute, but as something that had been absorbed over time and re-expressed through my own work. It wasn’t planned, it just happened.

More specifically, the idea of a desperate faction of outcasts, contaminated by a cursed resource that allows them to keep fighting — both the cause of their downfall and their only means of survival. That theme had been somewhere deep inside me since childhood.

For a long time, my work focused mostly on environments and terrain. Sculpting full armies was something I kept pushing aside. Not because I didn’t want to do it, but because I knew how demanding it would be. Building an entire faction alone means sculpting every unit, writing the rules, testing them, painting the miniatures, writing the lore, handling visuals — and still keeping everything afloat by selling models as a regular job at the same time. It’s very different from working in a team of four or five people. When you’re alone, every shortcut you take eventually comes back to haunt you.

That’s why I spent a lot of time thinking about the process upfront, running tests with the miniatures I released on Patreon. At first, I went for multipart models. But I quickly realized how limiting that was — especially for two-handed weapons, rifles, and more dynamic poses. It also added a lot of extra assembly time. In the end, it didn’t fit what I had in mind for the Bug Army.

So I redesigned the whole process to produce pre-posed, single-piece squads that require no assembly. At the same time, I designed the miniatures to be as easy to paint as possible — without sacrificing detail, but by placing those details in areas where flat colors and washes naturally do most of the work. I wanted as few barriers as possible for future players.

I went all in on this for two full months, and I still have one or two months of work ahead. I made quite a few mistakes along the way, some of which I had to correct mid-process. I hope I can fully apply what I’ve learned to the last squads, the characters, and the vehicles.

Committing to this project was a real gamble. There were plenty of reasons not to do it. But at some point, the desire to finally do it properly outweighed all the doubts. I wanted to see what would happen if I stopped postponing it and went all in.

When I look at how much fun I’ve had sculpting, printing, painting, and chaining battles with my son, I know I won’t regret the time I invested. Now I just can’t wait to finally share all of this with you.