Month: June 2021

We just finished our latest project, which was all about continuity, change, and the 1950s. In this project, we had to do interviews, research, and of course, a podcast episode, with the driving question of “How did Canadian life develop after WW2?”. To help us answer this question, we did a collaboration with the Deep Cove Heritage Society, to learn more about the 1950s and to also help them out with their archives.

To accomplish this, our task was to interview a prominent Deep Cove resident. We did this in partners, and my partner was Noah, who also wrote a great post about this which you can check out here. We conducted an interview with Wendy Bullen, who lived in Deep Cove in the 1950s.

She talked about a lot interesting stuff, like what life was like in the 1950s, and the changes that have happened since then, which brings us into the competencies for this project.

I think this interview was actually a pretty good introduction to the Continuity and Change competency, because a lot of our questions were focused on what has changed and what has stayed the same. We also dipped a little into the Discuss, Listen, Speak competency, because we had to listen carefully to come up with follow up questions.

And while this was a good introduction, there were some assignments that went more in depth and that I think are a better example of my learning. The first of these was Milestone 3, which was our Canadian connections keynote. In this milestone, we had to make a keynote presentation on our podcast topic in the 1950s and today.

My topic was Wargaming, which I’ve already done some research on before, but never on the 1950s specifically. To show continuity and change, I decided to talk about both time periods separately and then show the contrast afterwards. Then we the had to present our keynote to the class as well as take questions afterwards. I think this was a great example of my learning, as well as both competencies. I covered the topic of Continuity and Change in wargaming throughout the whole presentation, and I think I covered it pretty comprehensively. I also used the Discuss, Listen, Speak competency during the presentation to best get my points across and answer any questions that came up. You can see the full keynote down below:

Another milestone that I think is a good example of these competencies was our final podcast episode, where we had to cover continuity and change in our podcast topic, which again was Warhammer and Wargaming. However, we had to go much more in depth then our keynote presentations and we had to have an interviewee to back it up. I ended up interviewing hobby shop owner Mike Tong, because he has been in the hobby for a long time and had an interesting perspective on how things have changed. This and the additional research helped me come up with my thesis statement for the episode, that changes in audience is what drives change in wargaming. I think this was another great example of my Continuity and Change competency, because I showed what changed and stayed the same from the 1950s to now, and used it to back up my thesis statement. I also think my interview with Mike is a good example of the Discuss, Listen, Speak competency. You can listen to that and the whole episode down below.

Now for my answer to the driving question, “How did Canadian life develop after WW2?” We actually did an activity related to this, where we had to write a few paragraphs to show our learning throughout the project. I decided to write about how escapism started in the 1950s, which isn’t really my focus for the driving question. However, if you want to know more you can read the whole thing down below:

But, there was a part where I talked about how the end of the war led to the economic boom which led to the conditions that kicked off escapism in the first place, which I think applies to the driving question. Because if you look at the changes to things like social programs and human rights in Canada, you can see how they connect back to the end of WW2. Which is why my answer to the driving question would be “The political and economic situation in the postwar world led to many positive changes that make Canada what it is today.”

So, in conclusion, I learned a lot from this project. Continuity and Change is probably one of the most interesting topics we have covered so far, and being able to explore it with our podcast topics made it more enjoyable than other projects. I also learned a lot about the history of the 1950s era, and even some things about Warhammer and Wargaming that I never knew before. That’s about it for this blog post, and remember to stay tuned.

Hello and welcome back to another weekly blog post. In this post I wanted to build off of something we did in class, which was a writing activity to reflect on what we had learned so far. As I’ve covered in previous posts, we were learning about the 1950s, and the thing I chose to write about was how the 1950s started escapism as we know it today. If you want to read the whole thing, I’ve put it down below.

But what I want to talk about today is if you can use Warhammer as a form of escapism, and to answer that we need to know what escapism is. Well, the definition of escapism is “the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy.” Well, Warhammer is a tabletop game, so it is a form of entertainment. But, you do have to find someone else to play with, and games take a while, so it takes some commitment to actually play a game.

When you think of someone trying to distract themselves, it would probably be something instantaneous like watching a movie or daydreaming. But escapism goes much further than that, because it can be literally anything that distracts you from something boring or unpleasant in your life. Forms of escapism can be simple things like playing video games or listening to music, but they can also be things that take a lot of commitment and time, like traveling or going on a vacation. So yes, Warhammer can be a form of escapism if you use it as a distraction, but the same goes for pretty much anything that you use to distract yourself, be it another hobby or interest.

I know this may have been a shorter post than normal, but this is just something I wanted to talk about, and researching this topic was also pretty interesting. So that’s about it for this blog post, and remember to stay tuned.

Hello and welcome back to another weekly blog post. I know that I’ve already done a lot of posts on continuity and change and Warhammer, but something I wanted to do is look at how the artwork for Warhammer 40K has changed over the years. And like I’ve talked about in previous posts, artwork is actually a pretty big part of Warhammer, because it reinforces that important aspect of the story. And like I’ve said before, the introduction of the story aspect of miniature wargaming has become an important part of the hobby. So without further ado, lets get right into it.

The first edition of Warhammer 40,000 was actually called Rogue Trader, and as I’ve talked about before, it was a far cry from modern day Warhammer. So, it should come as no surprise that the artwork was too.

As you can see, they are certainly interesting to say the least. The art style uses shadows a lot and has a weird, but unique, vibe to it. Also, the majority of artwork at the time was just black and white, with the coloured images being reserved for the covers of the books. The coloured one I included was actually the cover of the core rulebook.

When the 2nd edition of the game came around, it was renamed to Warhammer 40,000 and some big changes were made to the game, including the artwork.

Almost all of the art is coloured now, and the colours themselves are more vibrant than the few coloured pieces prior. There is also now a larger sense of scale to the artwork, with huge armies being presented, usually with a central character in the foreground. The massive, monolithic structures in the background help establish this as well.

3rd edition saw perhaps the biggest change to the story, the switch to a more “grimdark” setting. You can see the artwork beginning to reflect this, and it also gets more detailed and realistic.

Interestingly, they was actually went back to some black and white artwork, although there is still plenty of coloured ones as well. And since this era is what established Warhammer 40,000 as a setting, not much really changes in terms of the actual content of the artwork. However, the style and quality does change, so I will show artwork from 4th to 9th edition.

As you just saw, modern Warhammer art is incredibly detailed, and all of it is coloured now. It’s had a lot of changes since the days of Rogue Trader, from tone, to setting, to pretty much everything else. However, some things have stayed the same, like how it continues to use the same scale from 2nd edition, and the grimdark feel from 3rd edition. I’d also like to add that this is just the official artwork, there are tons of talented fans making artwork of their own that are worth checking out. But anyways, that’s about it for this blog post, so remember to stay tuned.