Well I know I frequently find myself wondering about how I got here, what I'm doing, what I should be doing, where I left my pants, and other such universal questions. So gather round while I tell you a little story. First we need to go back aways...
In the beginning, God created...whoops, a little too far.
Let me tell you about my father. My Dad is a gamer. It's all his fault really. He has many, many armies in 15-25mm ranging from ancients to medieval to World War II (and more recently Reiklanders, Space Marines, and Cygnar). He was my first introduction to miniatures. I used to go with him to hobby stores when I was little. In junior high, I cut my teeth on Grenadier's Fantasy Personalities and Ral Partha figures. The Fantasy Personalities cost a whopping $1.25 each (Yeah that's $1.25 for a whole figure, not just left arm #3). All of these figures were painted with liberal applications of Testor's enamel paints. Good times!
I remember seeing Citadel figures in the stores back then and thinking how ridiculous and cartoony they looked. That hasn't completely changed (though they are doing much better than they were 15 years ago). But still, who could resist a box of thirty plastic space marines for twenty bucks? For a 12 year old who liked putting together my own figures, those were perfect.
I enjoyed painting and my friend Tyson and I would make up rules to play with our miniatures, but I never did any serious gaming.
And that was that. During high school basketball became my passion and miniatures were left behind without a second thought.
Then in in late summer of 2000, I found out about Ebay. My brothers had picked up a copy of Heroquest, a game we had played when we were younger, and had started painting the figures. I checked out Ebay and found painted figures selling for astronomical prices: $30 each!! "I can do better than that," I thought to myself. With my wife returning to school in the fall, painting looked like an interesting second job. So I dove head first into the world of miniatures. I spent way too much money on way too many figures, most of which I never got around to painting and later sold back on Ebay. What a great way to get started...
Of course I had no idea what I was doing when I started. I was awful and didn't know any better, but I improved. I got hooked up with a local club and met many fantastic painters and learned a great deal from them. Painting led to customizing, known as converting, the figures I worked on. I read an article about a product called "green stuff" and found out that it was used to sculpt miniatures with. Sounded like fun! My conversions became more and more involved and eventually led to my sculpting entire figures, which of course, were terrible.
I also stumbled into the market of unpainted, one of a kind conversions. I had converted a Space Wolves Lord, but still hadn't painted it after several months. I put it up on Ebay and was surprised to find that it was better received than my painted figures! We'll just ignore what that says about my painting at the time. Of course the one figure that most people remember is Typhus. I think my personal favorite conversions would probably have to be the farseer I did in May 2003 and one of the wolf scouts from Last Stand, done around the same time. I have a thing for wolf scouts. I think it's a combination of the feral Viking imagery, the sci-fi element, and the commando role that they play that does it for me. That combined with the last two official versions of the wolf scouts being pretty bad, has led me to convert quite a lot of them.
During the summer of 2002, a Games Workshop retail store opened two blocks away from our apartment in San Francisco. They held several competitions and I entered a few, winning most of them. They were pretty small, never more than four or five entries, but I had gotten my first taste of the pinnacle of ubergeekdom: Competitive Miniature Painting;)
I soon painted my first figure strictly for competiton: A Leman Russ conversion for Conquest in August 2002. My real reason for going to the convention, being a budding sculptor and all, was to attend the Perry twins' sculpting seminars, but the competiton was a close second. I managed two first places out of my four entries. Russ was runner-up for best of show. Since then I've competed at Kublacon, and two Golden Demon competitons (the highest level of fantasy miniature painting competitions in the world) , doing fairly well at each. Of course I expect to do better in 2004...
All of the responsibilities that go along with pretending to be a grown-up don't leave me much time for gaming. I played Mordheim for a while, but money was tight and I pretty much had to sell everything as soon as it was finished. I had illusions of starting a space wolves army but that suffered the same fate. Warmachine is currently the game of choice, although I only play once every three or four months.
Although I'm not a fan of the game, most of the figures I've done have been for Warhammer 40,000. It's a big universe with lots of elements and imagery to explore. I lean towards chaos and space wolves primarily because these are armies that allow for a huge degree of individuality and conversion potential with every figure. It works for me because I get bored pretty quickly of doing the same things over and over (yes, even wolf scouts!).
As far as other painters go, I really admire what Victoria Lamb is doing. Most people (myself included) rarely go beyond the "I'm a big bad ass" motif when creating figures. Victoria is one of the few who really explores other avenues, something I'm trying to do myself. Cedric Lurkin, aka Brother Sinaer is also someone who I occasionally draw inspiration from. His creative combinations of different pieces and the amount of mind-blowing detail he crams into his creations is a stark contrast to what I do. His work is much more detail oriented while I focus more on creating a mood through the pose of the figure.
Johnny Wong is definitely up there as well. His painting is fantastic and his conversion work is flawless. His style is very distinctive. Cyril Abanti is another guy who is both a world class painter and sculptor and is probably most responsible for what we consider the Rackham look.
While these are all people whose work I admire, I generally try to forge my own path. I've developed a style that is dark and gritty (gritty being the diplomatic term for sloppy) with a penchant for creating strong, dynamic and dramatic poses. To me, the pose is everything. With any still medium (like sculpture) you have one shot to get your entire point across. You have to be able to communicate not only what is happening, but what just happened, what's going to happen next, and how the subject feels about all this. To me, this is the difference between a good figure and a great figure. Technical skill is one thing, but applying that skill within an effective context can elevate the piece to a whole new level. Sorry if that comes off as too "artisty," but that's what I shoot for with my more involved pieces. Whether or not I'm successful depends entirely on the viewer.
And there you have it, more than you ever wanted to know about me. Now get off the computer and go paint slacker! You've got 371 primed minis just sitting there waiting for you!