our figmentia

[Guest Eastern Front Studios]

just wondering the stories behind how we got into miniatures to begin with?

myself I always loved toy soldiers and would cover the floor with them and act out battles but they were usually limited to the plastic cowboys, indian's and soldiers or knights..when I discovered Heritage miniature in the late 70's I was hooked..skeletons..goblins..never had I ever seen such cool stuff aside plastic models..which of course led to a huge D&D fascination and massive miniature purchases and always a wouldn't it be cool to make minis thought in the back of my head..led to conventions and painting competitions((minis and models)) and then painting for alot of companies and then full time miniature painting and of course eventually seeing a 20+ year dream come true in our on designs... sure was exciting..I still get giddy ever time one of the painters or sculptors show me something new..yes i'm a miniholic and probably always will be ..

[Ritual]

When I was a kid my father and my big brother used to cast metal miniatures at home in rubber molds (the kind you can buy for home casting). The miniatures were pretty horrible, but when you're a kid that doesn't matter. It was exciting melting the metal and pouring it into the molds.

When I was a bit older my brother gave me an RPG for Christmas and afterwards when I looked in shops for books and accessories for the game I came upon miniatures. That sparked my old interest and I bought a couple and some paints.

Now, 20 years later I've dropped the RPGs, but still paint minis! More than ever even...

[matty1001]

My mates used to collect it when i was about 12, then i never bothered with it until my brother started playing 40K about a year ago. So i bought some minis and 8 month in im still enjoying it. I did start as a gamer, but primarily a painter now.

[Guest Eastern Front Studios]

@Ritual thats a cool story I can see a kids eyes lighting up seeing your dad make the minis and giving them to you ..I would have to say I have a dad that got me hooked on the stuff giving me Conan the barbarian comics..sgt.rock..turok..hes in his 60's now and still loves sci-fi and usually tells me about new sci-fi movies/ shows coming out.

matty with me if it hadnt been for the minis I doubt the rpg/gaming aspect of it would have never caught on..boardgames with card pieces never did much for me..I have always been about the visual aspect of it..especially playing D&D so many years..some people can play just by talking & rolling a few dice..I wanna see the whole layout..the dungeon, the characters, the monsters..the whole smeer..I think it really puts you in the gaming moment.

[cdukino]

Well my sister had heroquest but that didn't really spark my miniature intrest. Found them fun and we did (or my sister did) paint them with nailpolish and wierd coloured plastic boat kit paint.

Years later (about 4 years ago now) I met Ming-Hua (Minimaker)... who sculpted miniatures and i met through a Dutch Elfwood meeting (The Dutch and Belgian yahoo group of the Elfwood fantasy sci-fi artist (mostly drawing and painting (2d)) site. I was drawing pictures at that time, he sculpted and painted miniatures.

I went to a miniature convention with him to see if there was intrest for my drawings, but most of all just for fun as Ming-Hua had become a good friend. I met Werner Klocke there and got my first commision for drawings from him (the fairies I designed came from then). Ming-Hua showed me how to sculpt not much later (still got the first one) and I tried it out and liked it (though the greenstuff was horrible I thought and the first sculpt is a bundle of flaws made figure).

By then Steve Buddle had found me to through Elfwood and I did some concept commisons for him.

Went to another miniature convention a few months later. And ofcourse tried out painting to after seeing all those great examples at the conventions. Werner was actually also the one who gave me my first paintset at this convention (about a half year into my sculpting/drawing concepts for miniatures) and a few more figures and I started painting with that. (I had a few figures I picked up at the convention and some I got from people I met, though at first I had them as inspiration and learning for miniature concepts to draw). And found out I loved that too. Found CMON by randomly surfing the net for a color sceme for a miniature. Uploaded some of my first sculpts and paintjobs there.

Pete from Sacred Blade found me through CMON very soon after and I did my first commision sculpting for him. Then a private collector commisioned me to sculpt his RPG character and very soon after that Mick commisioned the ogress from me for Eastern front. This all sums up my first year of miniature addiction.

Been doing freelance on and off since then, sculpting and drawing with the occasional paintjob thrown in.

In the meantime I went to more (or every I could go to) miniature conventions (about 4 each year). Getting the collecting miniature bug even more (still suppriced with just how much I gathered in 4 years).

And it all just got worse from then. Finding online paintingcompetitions pushed my painting a lot. Commisions and sculpting for my self pushed my sculpting. The drawing which started it all got a bit more on the backburner due to me having to devide free time. But I'm still doing that. But mostly commisions with the occasional thing for myself.

I never was a gamer, and likely never will be. I did 2 short basic introduction games at a convention (Warmachine and Confrontation) and ofcourse played heroquest when i was a lot younger. But that's it.

[vincegamer]

I have always liked small things. I don't know why.

My older brothers played war games, and a nearby (short walking distance) shop called "the Armchair General" sold games.

It also sold miniatures.

I thought they were cool so I bought one. I remember asking the guy who ran the shop (his name was Pat - we're talking around 25 years ago here but I still remember) what were the "good guys". He suggested dwarves so I bought some Ral Partha dwarves. My brother, to play the obverse, bought some RP goblins. We didn't have any games, but he and I started buying more minis to rival each other. He eventually got bored though, and gave all his minis to me.

Round about then I started playing D&D and stuff and my friends thought the minis were cool visual aids, and since they would look better painted, I started painting them - I'm still just about 12/13 at this point.

[supervike]

I've been intrigued with scale models since as far back as I can remember. My Dad had some models that I can recall...one of one of the NASA rockets....but the thing I loved the most was the little astronauts...so precise in the details.

Of course, I loved the plastic green army men, the cowboys, star wars figs, that sort of thing.

When I hit Jr. High, a little train store opened up in our town. The lady also sold military models 1/35th. The tanks were cool, as were the other vehicles, but again, it was the soldiers that caught my fancy. I still got them, in an old coffee can, with the 'realistic' german painting (I got my color schemes from Hogans Heroes)

It wasn't till my freshman year of college that I really discovered lead miniatures....thats when I became hooked. I had put them away for several years, but dug them back out in about 1998...then I really got hooked. Been that way ever since.

[Guest Eastern Front Studios]

Cindy yep you were there at the first for us

Vince now I think about it when you mentioned goblins and dwarves I got a small game before D&D called "Caverns Deep" made by Ral Partha that had a small playing mat, cardboard cut outs..but the main thing a pile of dwarves and goblins.

Vikey heres to the mom and pop game stores that dragged us in and kept us interested .

[EricJ]

well, I first got minis to play RPGs with, back before college, then in college found warhammer 40k which I played a lot of, tournaments and the whole bit. This whole time I put color on minis to make them look not metal, but not much more than keeping solid colors in the lines. Which in retrospect actually did a lot to help with my brush control.

Then I found CMON, and I thouht that perhaps I could try this blending thing...and this NMM thing...and well the rest is history. I don't play any games anymore, just paint

[Thryth]

Back in the late 80's/early 90's I used miniatures while playing AD&D and a 'mech game. I painted them with a very low quality by today's standards. I really just wanted to have miniatures for gaming, and was not very concerned about high-quality. I had other things to do and dropped both hobbies.

Aside from four miniatures that I painted in 2002, I didn't paint miniatures again until 2006. Luckily I found some bases at the Wyrd shop that looked good, and when I purchased them Nathan mentioned some contest that Wyrd was having, and I have been painted (mostly to enter the Wyrd contests) since. I no longer game, painting is an end in-and-of itself (in what little time I can manage to get to do so).

Glad that you asked now, aren't you?

[Guest Eastern Front Studios]

eric well im sure you painting has inspired more then a few people, I recall going to the cons and being amazed at matt sturms work in 25mm for ral partha..absolutely uncanny even by todays standards.Matt was so good when Darksword started the owner asked asked Tom Meier who he would get he said Matt..unfortunately Matt had by then pretty much hung up his brushes ..even so he was the guy who made me want to get better.

Thryth we all have long spans of down time in things we like((due to jobs..illness or whatever the case may be)) its getting back into it is the point..if you didnt enjoy it you never would have..myself I dont have the patience for the 200 hour jobs I want gratification pretty quickly so maybe 8-10 hours i can handle but painting full time also is a strain in itself ..sometimes hard to enjoy a hobby after painting several hundred soldiers the weeks before.I know guys though that love it for the sheer relaxing effect it has..and yes in the 70's 80's there were no great paint jobs id dare say and testors was the word but still glad you picked it back up.

[Hinton]

I got into miniature painting in a kind of roundabout way because I wasn't looking to get into the hobby.

I played D&D and other RPGs when I was younger. I knew that some people used miniatures and some even painted them, but I never got into it myself. In fact, there was a time when I was co-owner of a gaming store and we carried minis, paint, etc. and I still didn't get into mini painting.

Several months ago I was hanging out on the forums for an online game I used to play. One day, someone posted a link to some project a guy in France had done where he had built a model of the cathedral from the video game Diablo (the original).

Some of us got to discussing building things like that and why people would do it. One person mentioned Hirst Arts and posted a link. I headed over to that site and was simply amazed at what some of them could do with little plaster blocks. I ordered a casting mold and started building little things with them.

Shortly after that, Bruce Hirst was asking for miniature painters for a project he was working on. A few people posted and I was absolutely amazed at some of the paint jobs. They were so intricate, so detailed and so smooth. Bruce often mentioned using Reaper minis in his models, so I checked them out.

After looking at several minis and well they were painted, I knew I had to try it. I ordered Ragnor, picked up a few paints and brushes from the local craft store and dove right in. Over time, I found other sites (such as Wyrd) from other painters.

That was about 6 months ago and I'm really glad that I finally got into the hobby. Like others, I don't game anymore (mostly because this is a small town in Nebraska; I don't think are any gamers here) and just paint for the love of it.

[Wren]

I played RPGs on and off from age 12 up, more off until I joined the game club in college. (The guys who played at school in high school said their game was full and wouldn't let me join.) I also started running my own game in college, so hit the game stores occasionally to look for supplements. One day I was game shopping with a friend/player, and we decided to get miniatures to represent our characters. She got a couple of Mithril LoTR minis to represent her characters. While they were more nicely made than the one I picked out, it resembled my character (Wren the Bard) to an astonishing degree. (This fig, minus the bow - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tpope/miniatures/painting/flesh.html) Another player painted up the figs for us, and I was mightily impressed at his ability to paint something so small. Though I did question him about why no eyes, but he said they were too small to paint at that scale. ;-> Someone gave me a couple of other minis for DMing with - Leprosy Guy (peeling paint on a flesh golem) and Undead Guy. Otherwise we just used dice or what have you on those occasions when we needed to plot out combat in 3D.

And aside from rolling those minis up in an old sock to keep them from chipping, I didn't think about minis again for years. A few years back I was looking for a hobby. I wanted to do something with a physical/artistic component, because I'd really enjoyed art classes in school. I pondered needlepoint, rug hooking, beading and other similar hobbies. But I didn't really care for the end results of those, either to keep or to give as gifts. I saw a Learn to Paint Kit on a trip to the game store and started thinking about that. Minis were small enough that they wouldn't take up a lot of space to display and could be easily tucked away and forgotten if given as unwanted gifts, and they'd have a second purpose if we ever got a game group going again. I didn't want to fork out for the kit without knowing if I'd like the hobby at all, though. We made a trip to GenCon and I got to try it out at the Paint 'n Take, and as soon as I got home I picked up the kits.

Though I have this suspicion that as much as I like fantasy and so on, part of the appeal is related to childhood dreaming over ridiculously expensive dollhouses on display in a shop near school...

[lauth81]

First and foremost, I´m a gamer. I play all kinds of games, not only ones that feature miniatures in some way.

I encountered RPGs when I was about 12 (that is 22 years ago) and always played one system or another since then. You didn´t need minis with the rules we used ("Das Schwarze Auge", a german DnD spinoff).

With the coming of DnD 3rd and it´s emphasis on using minis for combat, I bought my first minis to rpresent our PCs and some opponents. Didn´t paint them yet.

And then, 3 and half years ago, I got the (then) new edition BloodBowl game as birthday gift. That was my starting point for painting miniatures. Most of the tournaments and one of my local leagues enforces painted miniatures (or punishes unpainted ones), so I started painting the plastic humans and orcs, which came with the box set, and then another team, and another ...

And while I was at it, I painted our DnD minis.

I´m still painting mostly for gaming purposes. The few others are either for contests here at Wyrd, mini exchanges at reapermini.com or Legacy teams in the BloodBowl community (talkbloodbowl and NAF).