Hello everybody. Thank you very much again for
downloading the Chrome Command Podcast, and I hope you enjoy
our interview with Broniac. It's Marco over in Norway, all
about his journey into sculpting back in the 90s and how that
sort of evolved into what he's doing now with 3D sculpting and
making some wonderful big hats, The cast wolves, of course, from
4th and 5th edition. So I hope you enjoy that.
And also just a big thank you to everybody who sent out their
well wishes to my little boy Leo, as he's been in hospital
with a broken leg in an incident that happened last Thursday.
It's a week from now since it happened.
And I just wanted to say thank you very much for all your very
kind words, all that positivity that really I, I believe
personally, I believe that really helped in his recovery,
the positive energy from all of you sending it all the way to
Leo over here in Japan. So with a miraculous speedy
recovery. So that's great.
So I'm really happy about that. And he's home, he's happy.
He's got his Nintendo Switch, he's got the TV remote control,
he's got snacks, he's got his grandmother giving me
everything, you know, any beck and call that he has got me
running around, you know, for him.
So you know, you can't, you can't be happier really,
honestly. So thank you so much again for
the people on YouTube, Patreon, Discord and messages I've
received on messenger just sitting there with wishes to as
it was a pretty tough time. It was a very, very traumatic
thing that I hope no one ever goes through because you hear
about these things on the on the news and you just think it
wouldn't have ever happened to you or your family and then
bang, there it goes. So look, just want to say thank
you very much for that and thank you for your patience because
obviously that like now my situation now being a home, like
I work from home and I'm nursing my boy as well and you know,
getting him things as he can't move around.
He's in mobile at the moment practically.
So that's going to slow down things production wise with
videos, podcasts, just, you know, anything to do with my
Patreon, everything like that sort of going to slow down a
little bit. But you know, you guys are very
understanding. I know that, you know, we're
all, we're all, you know, all adults.
We'll have work and family commitments and that kind of
thing. So, but good things are on the
way. So look forward to that when it
does drop and when it does come, I've got some great ideas.
I've had time to reflect on things.
So great interviews becoming through the podcast, great
videos becoming on the YouTube channel and other content
exclusive to Patreon will follow in in due course.
So guys, enjoy that when it comes, but thank you very much
again and enjoy the interview again today with Marco from all
the way from Norway, OK, enjoy well.
Enough about cars, let's talk about house dwarfs and yourself.
But I have an impression to make.
I haven't seen your latest podcast slash video but I saw
that they featured Chaos Dwarfs. They do.
They do starting in. Are you starting a chaos war of
army? No, no, this is a Commission
from my good friend Gordon Ennis, one of my patrons.
So he's very generous and kind and sending me like this massive
box was very heavy. They'd sit very heavier by tray
here. So because they're really solid
models, if you get him in metal, I mean, yeah, they've got a lot
of heft to them, that's for sure.
But that's a Commission, man. Yeah, yeah.
Nice. So starting that one, yeah, for
sure. Will you be going for the
classic red, gold and black scheme or?
Yeah, absolutely. Like it's basically just
straight out of the army book pages, those colour schemes.
Yeah. It's so iconic.
I mean, there are lots of people who paint like my miniatures in
in different shades of teal and stuff.
That the thing I've seen that works almost as well as the
classic paint style is with just with black beards and orange
scale armor that seems to work very well sometimes.
But it it it, it doesn't scream Chaos Dwarf the same way as the
the the really classic. Paint style, yeah, I've seen,
I've seen someone do that maybe in a White Dwarf magazine.
Someone did like an alternative scheme like that with an orange
armor to give that sort of, you know, volcanic lava effect on
their and maybe the the bases were done in lava and that kind
of thing. So yeah, I have seen it done
alternatively, but yeah, I think the red just screams because
it's the red era. So it's basically that really is
an iconic look that is very profound within the Chaos Dwarf
paint schemes. And I think it really works with
them. The red, you know, red scale
armor, you know all the the big what do you call them half
tourist type guys the. They're the bulls and tours.
Nice and red. All the hats are red, you know.
Yeah, yeah. People call it the games
workshops red period right. I I tend to call it games
workshops period, but I like it they love it that's when I got
it hobby thing and you know everything was red even the the
shafts of the undead bright red straight up from the grave.
You know it's. Or you could say it's a bloody
red, period. The bloody, the bloody red
paint. Yeah, that's when.
Did you? But you worked on the actual
heavy metal team back in the day, right?
The heavy metal team, Yeah, just very briefly, about four months.
Wonderful. And that was in 90 something.
I think it would be 96 because yeah, I think I've got my.
I think I, I always say I've got there 94 went to 95.
I think I actually got there 95 basically I got when I arrived,
it was just pre eminent of the Wermer Quest set coming out, the
Wermer Quest box set, it was just getting released that time.
So whenever that date was, I'm pretty sure it's 1995.
And then I worked, I think I started at the studio in 1996
because at that time it was just at the end we're just doing the
ward off book, the chaos space brains for 40K second edition.
And then the hideous lizard men were coming to make their
appearance in the 5th edition start a box set.
So that's when I, I did, I worked on that.
And then I left just after that. Maybe I always blame Elizabeth
and I think that's probably their fault as well.
I left well too early, before my time.
Yeah, that's, but you never worked on the the actual chaos
stores because they were on the way, right?
I, you know, to be honest, I never gave them a second glance.
I just, and I think someone else, I think Captain Skyhawk
commented on my video yesterday too, that he never really looked
at them, you know, gave them second glance, but now he loves
them. And I think that's the same for
undead For me, I never really gave them the second look, but
now I absolutely adore the undead models.
And same for the the cast dwarves.
I think they fit within the same basket.
It's kind of though the the ugly children of 19951994, but now
they're the beloved children now of you know, of the the 2000s.
So yeah, they're they're the highest collectible army out
there. The army book for cast or
surprisingly goes for like over $120.00 or something US.
Yeah, even I don't have. Oh, we've got to fix that.
I, I have all the white dwarfs from the era and that's why I
got interested in them because it was in at the exact same time
when I sort of, I realized that there was a hobby for nerds with
the athletic ability of a garden snail and it was miniatures.
And so I, I started buying white dwarfs that were basically, I
sent my brother to the, to the capital and then he brought back
the newest, never before seen as white dwarf.
And it was a revelation. And it included it's the, the I
don't remember the exactly which number it was, but it, it was
one with the, the, the elder, the blue elder on in front.
And you have. Oh it's my my first issue 147.
OK, yeah, it's probably, it's got private place in the the
shelf here and it, it has some rules for Chaos Wars, right?
That's it. No, no, that's that's a
different one then. Yeah, 147 had rules for Epic
Space Brain Elder and it I think it was the time when Renegades
was about to be launched for Epic Space Marine had Empire in
it. Right, right, right.
I, I may be mixing things up, but I'm very sure that one of
the earliest white dwarfs I got, that's when the Chaos Dwarf
rules started to be printed in White Dwarf as and serialized
sort of thing. And I, I was on such a limited
budget back then, so actually buying an army book or even the
game was sort of out of my league.
But I could buy the white dwarfs and here were rules for an
actual army. And I, I just took one look at
these caricatures of a pastiche of a it's they're so silly,
right, With their hats. And they're, they're, they're
dwarfs that are friendly with the green skins.
And they're, they're they're deliciously weird, right?
And I'm, I'm thinking, OK, it's gonna be these guys for me from
here on out. That's it, right?
OK. Yeah.
So it was like love at first sight back in the day.
And but as I said, we, I don't think we, I always thought of
ourselves as my family as being poor, but it turned out as I
grew older, I realized that we were just really stingy so.
It was true at the heart. And then absolutely, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway, so spending money on
something as frivolous as miniatures was out of the out of
the question really, at least enough for for getting the
actual army. So the alternative was to sculpt
your own. And that's what I did.
And I, I remember the first thing I did was I saw an
interview with the sculptor and the white dwarf and I figure,
OK, that's it. And I then I saw the, I've
started looking into it and I saw this, that each sculpt, each
miniature had a name under it saying sculpted by.
And I saw Kemmler. The the, what was it?
Inish Kemmler, Beautiful miniature.
You know, the thing with the the skull stuff and and I thought,
wow, OK, I'm gonna just kill this and nip this in the butt.
I can never be good enough to make something like that.
And then I turn the page and I see Nagash.
And I didn't click there. It was sculpted by the same guy.
But I thought, OK, I can do better than that.
That sort of inspired me. Know that?
Yeah. I love that Heinrich Campbell.
I got it sitting here in one of Gary's actually, and the Nagash
model and I I, yeah, if even though Nagash wasn't my favorite
top five miniature of all time. But now I sort of become to
really love it, you know, all these years later.
It has a certain charm and there are parts of it that are
technically very good, like the like the glove.
But the you, you know, the the story behind Gary, Gary's model
here. And he, he sculpted the the head
as a form of revenge or to show that how stupid his art
direction was. And they went for it.
You know, that's right. Yeah.
I usually say that it's it. It wasn't Gary's fault at all,
because back in those days the Citadel creative team was
labouring under the cruel art direction of the Teletubbies.
At least that's what it looks like.
So I I've got nothing but love for Gary Morley.
He, he inspired me to start sculpting and then I started
studying and I actually had a bit of a side gig sculpting
custom minis. And there was AI got AI became
sort of known in the, the nerd circles at the time.
And they, there was a convention in Oslo every year.
And I remember one year, I think this was maybe 1995 or 1996,
they, they had, they had the miniature competition and one of
the, the, the categories was for converted or scratch built
miniatures. And all of the miniatures in
that last case were made by me and then sold to other guys who
painted them, except for one. And the, the judges pointed out
that, see, there's some other guys who's sculpting here, not
just you. And it turned out that no, no,
that was me as well. But it it was so weird because I
couldn't understand why painters were.
There were such a lot of talented painters around, but
very few sculptors. Yeah.
So I never understood why, why painters were.
To me, painting seems very, very complicated, right?
You have to understand texture, you have to understand form, and
you have to understand the freaking light, how that
interacts with everything. You have to basically do
Maxwell's Equations in your head.
Whereas sculpting, that's just understanding the shape of
things, at least for me, it seems very, very simple.
So yeah. So anyway, I started, I did the
sculpting on and off while studying and I, but I had to
experiment. There was no green stuff
available, at least in my area. I, I, I read the interview and
White Dwarf mentioning it, but I had no idea how to get a hold of
it. So I tried different types of
putties and hobbies, hobby clay and stuff.
And I found something that they sold in the hardware store that
was bright, bright red. And it was used for as like, I
don't know, caulking, like metal pipes or something.
And it was poisonous. This whole house stank like,
awful. Yeah.
And I remember I, I had this, I was living in a, like a
student's apartment, tiny, like 13 meters square.
And I, I, it, it looked like shit was, you know, I, I, I
everything was like a sea of untidiness, except for this tiny
sculpting area where everything was like totally clean.
All the, all the tools I'd made were there and a big light.
And I was sculpting in the summer.
It was really hot. So all I was wearing was like a,
a vest with all my little tools in.
And I had a, a gas mask on and I had this bright red sticky sub
substance. And the doorbell rings and I'm
like, OK, I basically have three choices here.
Either I take off all the gloves and stuff and by that time
whoever knocked on my door has left.
Or I can just go out there dressed like this and scare the
shit out of them. Or I can lean into it and give
them an actual heart attack. So, so I I slam open the door
and I shout the doctor is in and and this little blonde girl
who's moving in next door to me said, oh, you're the weirdo I've
heard about. Yeah, that's me.
Mind the poison. So, yeah, so it was.
AI didn't make a living by sculpting integers.
Of course you couldn't in those days.
But I did have a bit of a stroke of luck because one another one
of my hobbies was that I tried to teach myself to juggle.
Basically what I did was I was just throwing balls up until
they didn't fall down again. Needless to say, that takes a
lot of time. And while I was doing this, the
door knobs again. I open it and there's an irate
French for an exchange student screaming that he's trying to
study and he's living underneath me at the balls or make me look.
Then he stops and says what the hell is that?
And he points out this little sculpting area I have and I show
him and and he turned it turns out he's really into Warhammer
and others mini games at the time.
And he he looks at and he says wow, this is actually pretty
good. And I was pretty shocked really.
I, I thought what I was doing was like a hobby and didn't have
any legs to stand on, so to speak.
And he says, no, this is actually, but he knew what he
was talking about. He, he talked to sculptors, he
knew people in the industry. And he said, this is actually,
no, you got the proportions right.
You got the, you know, it's creative.
It's the, the, the scale is right.
You, you got the most to think. But are you by any chance
sculpting while looking in the mirror?
And I say, why do you ask? And he says, because even this
Elvin Princess sort of looks like you and I, yes, I, I look
in the mirror while sculpting. That's the reason why this Alvin
Princess looks like me. That's the only reason he was
right. I had a mirror and I yeah,
Internet wasn't a big thing back then.
So basically you had to act out whatever you were sculpting.
But he sent, he bought some in his of me.
He sent them to some of his his friends and months later I got a
phone call from what turned out to be Target Games.
They made Cronopia and one more sci-fi.
So you're looking. Yeah, there you go.
And turns out they were looking for sculptures for their
Cronopia range, which was just taking off apparently.
And they the guy I talked to, I think it was from Seattle and he
said he they would like to meet me and if I could bring some
examples and told him, sorry, I'm full up with the there is AI
have a lot of exams next week and I really don't have time.
And he says, no worries, we'll send some people.
All you got to do is to set aside 48 hours and we'll buy
plane tickets and everything. And right enough early, bright
in the morning, I walked down to the parking lot and there's two
huge tattooed guys who turns out to be they, they had business
cards and that said Torpedo, which means that they beat up
people in order to make them pay their debts.
They, they, they're like bullseye legal, like debt
collectors. And somehow this Target Games
guy had got in touch with them and told them to to be my
minders and take me to the airport and to this convention
in Stockholm and back. And they took their job really
seriously. To them, I was like the VIP.
And I tried to explain to them, I'm, I'm a sweaty nerd and I, I
make these little tiny minis here.
They're like, whoa, those are so cool.
So I clicked immediately. It was really cool.
And yeah, so I, I ended up in in Stockholm and the I had a
meeting. With the the target games guys
and they looked over the stuff I had and they were very polite
and they told me in as nice a way as possible that I shouldn't
give up my day job. The the reason being that while
it turns out it's it's relatively easy to scope
something that has a certain life energy.
It communicates certain idea, that's fine, but sculpting
something that can actually survive the casting process,
that that takes a skill that I just didn't have.
And yeah, so basically that was the end of that.
I left the sculpting business more or less on the shelf, got
into 3D graphics instead until a little bit on and off, but until
the the pandemic hit and everybody were locked inside due
to COVID. And then I took got my old white
dwarf. So look at this.
Maybe I should pick this up again.
And I thought, well, hey, that's the old Chaos Dwarfs, man.
Has has anything happened with, you know, Games Workshop and
Chaos Dwarfs since I left And I looked up and Internet I say,
OK, so Games Workshop has basically turned into, what do
you call this French firm that I think you're sort of a fan of
the Rackham. Rackham.
Yeah, they turned into Rackham, right?
They, they, they had suddenly all the games worship models had
all these, the, this movement. They, they didn't have the
static pose and they, they, they had the sculpted, like smoke and
other like intangibles, basically stuff that Rackham was
doing like 20 years earlier. So it's a good thing that Games
Workshop is on that. But they had more or less
ignored Chaos Dwarfs. The tone of Tamarkan, I don't
really count because their hats were too small.
But I figured, you know what? I'm going to sculpt my own Chaos
tour for me. I'm going to do it the way that
I wanted. Because while I love the
original sculpts dearly, they are like peak aesthetic to me.
It's like, it's like Star Wars. It's like all these weird ideas,
all these random, you know, what do you call the artifacts of a
production process that coalesce together to make something
really, really unique? Right.
And I figured, I want to do that.
But there are things with the original line that always
bothered me. Like, for instance, the, the,
the handguns, the, the blunderbusses of the Chaos
Dwarfs. They're sculpted as one solid
piece, right? They're not hollow.
You have to hollow them out and then you'll usually break them
off. And that is just so obviously an
artifact of the production process, right?
Same thing with the, the, the rather static two-dimensional
poses. I thought I I want to stick as
close as possible to the original ID of the design, but I
want to make them and if I can't 3D print them in a way that sort
of has more movement has more life, so to speak.
And so I found this chaos Dwarf online guys and that was also a
revelation. I thought I was the only chaos
dwarf fan in the world until I met those guys and it turned out
that I'm not really a chaos dwarf fan.
Those guys are crazy. They, they really love their
Chaos Dwarfs, but they were still full of ideas.
And for some reason, it turns out that Chaos for fans are not
like other Games Workshop fans, even retro Hero Hammer fans,
because they have a special place.
Their army is, has had less support from Games Workshop.
And so they're forced to be that little bit extra creative,
right? And so, yeah, so the, they more
or less bullied me into, once they saw my first sculpts, they
were only intended for myself, but they more or less bullied me
into making a Patreon and putting it out there.
And yeah, it turned out there were Chaos Dwarf fans
everywhere. And after posting to Facebook
and stuff, the I now have, yeah, I think there's 150 or so
patrons. And that's, that's very, very
encouraging. So yeah, that's basically the
the Brawniac big hat story. Well, good on you, Marco.
Yeah, it's great, man. I'm great.
I'm glad it's a big success for you.
I think you actually reached out to me just thinking about that
during the pandemic when we did the Hero Hammer fanzine and you
sent me some catalogue pages of your cast orbs and you thought,
you know, if you wanted to, you can include these and the Hero
Hammer fanzine. So I think that was the very
first time I saw your work and you, you did it beautifully.
You rendered all the pictures exactly like the old black and
white catalogue photos of the miniatures when they would ink
them and photograph them and put a title under them and a code
and everything. So you'd sort of reproduce those
exactly how they were historically, which is great.
And of course, now it's sort of blossomed into this entire range
of models that you said you had on Patreon that people could
access the files and download and print them out.
And you have various different fans all around the world that
you're actually going on a road trip to see some of those in the
US soon. Is that right?
Yeah, it's it's actually a happy, it's just a happy
coincidence. I'm going to Seattle for like a
man trip with some people I knew when I was studying.
And it turns out that there are lots of Chaos Dwarfs fans in the
Washington area. So yeah.
So basically I'll be take bringing like a a ton of 3D
printed miniatures and going on the road.
Mate, Awesome. That sounds great.
Yeah. Just to go back to when you were
first designing miniatures yourself, what kind of you?
You sort of. You touched on a elf Princess,
but what other stuff were you actually making then?
Let's see, I did. I made as a test range.
I made miniatures of the from the Predator movie, like all the
characters and stuff, and I sent those as proof of concepts to
Grenadier miniatures. But back in those days I didn't
pay attention enough to know that Grenadier had probably
already gone bankrupt by the time I said so.
I think I was angry for years why I never heard from them.
Yeah, So that was it. And, but basically I made custom
models for people who wanted to have, like, a special character
model. And remember back in those days,
that was sort of unique because I could copy the style.
Even though I had crappy materials, I could still copy
the style pretty closely to what Games Workshop was putting out,
except I added a little twist of humour.
I remember I added I made like a Blood Bowl ogre and his pose is
like he's he's using his finger like come here and behind his
his back, he holds a baseball bat with a nail in it.
So and the guy I sold that to you, he painted it up very, very
well. So I remember I was very, very
proud looking at that. There was this.
I was shocked when I realized how young the fanbase had gotten
by 199596 thereabouts. So there was this young kid, I
don't know how old he was, 12 years old.
And he approached me and he had saved up his like, you know,
allowance and stuff. And he wanted me to to sculpt a
an orc with an orc war boss on the on the hydra.
And that was a challenge. And it was allowed back in the
days in the 4th edition, right? Yeah.
Like, yeah, basically you could have any character riding any
monster. And so, yeah, so I showed up and
but I couldn't, I couldn't bring myself to get paid.
So I said, yeah, just keep it. It's fun.
So. So he still has an authentic
Bronic sculpt, hopefully. Worth a fortune.
Now that's for. Sure.
So did you. Did you actually change
materials later on? Did you actually find green
stuff in the end? I did.
They started selling green stuff
strangely at the same time in Games Workshop stores and in the
local hardware store. But by that time I'd sort of,
I'd moved on into 3D graphics. And the, the thing was, I, I
also took a master's degree in, in computer science in order to
have something to fall back on. But I, I always kept up the
artistic side of things. And I remember going into a job
interview and I showed some of the fish that I'd created and
the, the job interview was for your job for architectural
previous. So I showed some photorealistic
manta rays and sharks and stuff that I could make.
And I said, that's not exactly what we're after.
And I said, Oh yeah, I I've never figured out how to make
straight lines on the computer. Complex organic shapes, no
problem. But straight lives.
Oh, no, sorry, that's too difficult.
So they sent me out. I think they understood I was a
bit sarcastic, but yeah, so. But no, I never really left the
Warhammer thing. I always kept a little bit of a
tabs on it. I remember when the first
Vampire Counts book came out, I was in Mexico doing like
backpacking and travelling and I brought that as a like a think
something to read while waiting for the next truck or whatever.
And I remember going out to, to dive on this super tanker and we
went way too deep. And I, I got the bends and I
thought I was going to die. And I remember thinking, OK, if
I survive this, I'm going to sculpt warmer sculpts from now
on until I'm going to stop doing all this crazy stuff.
So yeah, that didn't last long. I sculpted like an attempt at
the the hearse type thing. You know the the.
The Black coach. Yeah, the black coach, but but
then I went out, started spearfishing in Kenya and stuff
like that. And then until the the the
pandemic came about, then I then I got back into it.
Your thoughts? Back into your sculpting chair,
mate. Yeah.
Right, So, but yeah, it's, it's weird.
They, as you said, it's, it's everybody has sort of the same
story there that the when the Kia sports first showed up, at
least if you were in the in the industry, it was like a brain
fart. It it would never amount to
anything. It wasn't interesting.
But from the standpoint of people who were in the target
audience, it resonates with some specific people, right?
Because in the fantasy genre, it's kind of weird.
It's called fantasy because it's basically retelling Tolkien
endlessly, right? And then you have something that
is actually somewhat creative, like the Scathen, for instance,
or, or, or the Chaos Dwarfs. And, and that's, that sparks
something in some people. It's, it's very, it's quite
inspiring. And and they latch onto this
tiny little bit of something new to fight their elves against.
I guess so. Yeah, that's a good point.
Yeah, they they did make some interesting race changes, sort
of branch branching out from Tolkien and making their own
kind of IPS. So we'll talk more about that in
just a moment. We're going to go for a very
quick ad break and when we come back, we're going to delve deep
into what you're doing now what what kind of ranges you're
making now for your patrons and fans out there for the Cast
Wharf range. So just a moment Mocha, we'll be
back in just a second. If you are enjoying this podcast
and the content on the Crown of Command Games YouTube channel,
then please consider supporting me on Patreon.
So check out patreon.com/the Crown of Command Podcast.
It's interesting they brought up the what I'm doing because
there's, there is one thing that I probably should have mentioned
And you've seen this right, that I, I sometimes make these sort
of photorealistic renders of my 3D sculpts as if they're paint.
Yeah, they're amazing, man. Well, it's it's it's weird that
nobody else does that in the miniatures.
It isn't it. It's common practice in the in
other sort of related industries.
For instance, there's an there there, there's whole sub
industries of people making 3D prints of, for instance, animals
like tiny rhinoceroses and stuff like that.
And those guys regularly texture their 3D models and render them
as if they're painted. It's like standard practice.
But, and I, I've seen some stuff from Games Workshop where I'm
thinking, is this one really painted?
Is it heavily photoshopped or is it a 3D sculpt that they just
paid well? I, I think maybe, maybe it's, I,
I, I doubt that I've come up with something truly original
there. But, but it is, it has brought
back to me the, the, the concept of painting as meditation
because the process is extremely similar, whether you're doing it
using paint pots and paint and, and pencil and brushes, or
whether you're doing it in 3D software like Sculptress or
Blender. It's exactly the same thing.
You find, you, you, you find make an imaginary light source
and you make the high build up the highlights and the shadows
and you can use techniques like automatically calculating where
the deeper portions are and you can mask those out and so on and
so forth. It's a lot faster than painting
it in the old fashioned way. But the and of course, you can
add as much detail as you like, right?
And if you can be as precise as you like.
So it's basically cheating, but it works very well for box art.
It does now I'm I'm constantly amazed at your your digital
coloured renders of your models because I saw the I think the
Lamassu one. I think that was the very first
one I saw of you, you doing on Instagram.
And it's like, wow, that looks amazing.
And I thought, and it actually fooled me.
I thought someone actually painted it, someone painted your
model and you had it all done on a nice, you know, scenic board
and table. But then he's told no, no, it's
all done in digitally coloured and that kind of thing.
And you showed me on our Discord you you're doing that.
So yeah, I was really impressed with that, how it came out,
looked beautiful. And like you say, it's the
perfect advertisement for your miniatures.
This will this what it could potentially look like painted in
real life, you know, so and I even like I love the effect of
the board because you've you've actually got that granular
looking flock, you know, thing to the board and the the right
hue of green and the bases are done in goblin green bases.
And yeah, it's really impressive, mate, what you're
doing with that. It's great.
Thank you, I I think it's how miniatures are supposed to look.
They're supposed to have goblin green bases, God damn it.
But yeah, so anyway, what's what I'm working on now is that I'm,
I'm trying to texture and paint virtually all of my models and
then put them up and on like a, a huge poster, just like you'd
see in White Dwarf magazine back in the day with the like the the
flock table and the obviously staged.
But I, I want to add, go that little bit of an extra distance
and add some, some visual effects like the, the
blunderbuss is actually firing because I, I did a test of that
that looked beautifully in Congress.
You have this obviously painted miniature and you add the depth
of field to the, the, the virtual camera lens.
So it looks like a picture, like a, an actual photograph of a
miniature, but it's actually firing the bloody blunderbuss,
you know? Yeah, I, I really like that
style. I like the incongruousness, the
the unexpectedness of it. And it seems to resonate with a
lot of people. I get a lot of likes on those.
Another thing that seems to resonate a lot, and that is the
addition of, of humour, right? The, when I, I sculpted this one
blunderbuss dwarf that had the misfire and his blunderbuss is
like exploded like Bugs Bunny banana peel gum.
And yeah, that was what caused the 1st.
That was the first time I got I think 10,000 likes or something
ridiculous. But it's, it's such a simple
idea, right? So now I'm making some, some
goblins. I obviously I know that it's
silly to make goblins when you're not Kev Adams, right?
You can never do as good a good a job as that guy.
But on the other hand, goblins are beautiful clay because you
can go as wild as you want and you can their their faces are
caricatures. You can do anything.
So what I'm doing is I'm trying to make like animosity markers
so that the, I sculpt like a gang fight of say goblins or
orcs. So the idea is that when you,
when you have one of the units that comes to animosity and the,
the, the models start to scrap with each other, you can switch
some of the models out with these models that are actually
fighting each other. And then you know that these
are, you know, they're out of action for a while because
they're, they're squabbling. That's great.
I gotta say too. Just just touching on that now,
I'm not a, I'm not a big proponent for 3D sculpting as
you know, I'm, I'm, I like traditional sculpted miniatures,
but I'm constantly amazed at what obviously 3D sculpting is a
thing. It's a massive part of the
industry. Now look at Kickstarter.
I mean everybody, every man and his dog has got a, you know, a
Kickstarter with 3D printed STLS on it now.
But the thing I like about and I buy about your work and people
like Fabazzell is another person that obviously the the other big
bugbear in the room, because he's also doing Cast Wars as
well. You guys have sort of imprinted
your own style and like I say, you put humor in it.
You've got character to the models.
And I think that's very important because that's the
something that 3D printing sort of, well, 3D sculpting kind of
lacks for me. There's no sense of your
fingerprint on the miniature. There's no sense of.
Your style, I can look at your minutes and say, OK, that's
definitely Brawniak. I can look at somebody else and
think, OK, well that's that person that designers
miniatures. That's where you guys are sort
of separating yourself from the other guys.
I think for me personally, with my limited experience, but I can
know that when you look at your stuff, you have a sense of
character, you have a sense of humour in your designs.
You have your own fingerprint as you like on your work.
And I think that's very important because it's sort of
it's now that it's, it's sort of narrowing the, the, the gap.
So, you know, before in the early days of 3D printing and,
and, you know, 3D modelling, there were very, this very
static, very lifeless, soulless miniatures.
But now I think the more experience these people have in
doing 3D sculpting, you're you're you're giving your own
sort of identity to your miniatures and your own, if you
like the way I like to call it, your own fingerprint.
Yeah, You. It's, I can see it's a Brawniac
Chaos Dwarf, not a Fabazzle 1, not someone else's, you know.
Yeah, well, in my case, I'm just lifting the humor and the, the,
the idea from the Perry twins and the, the original sculptures
from the the the 80s and 90s from Games Workshop, because
that they, they that was the way they did it.
They did it. And it's the way that I'm
inspired to do so. Pebbles L He's doing his own
thing and he he wins out on a lot of even though we're we're
we were for a briefest while competitors of a sort, but it's
kind of hard to compete with a guy because he's so super nice.
He he has a he has a whole different approach to things
because his miniatures are obviously designed to be cast in
metal, right? And that sort of that that
limits the amount of detail and overhangs and poses that you can
have but ranked up if you, if you have some fable cell, either
mixed unit with the old sculpts, they, they mix perfectly.
And yeah, so he was, he was he, he's a great guy.
And I'm sad to see that he he seems to be planning to wind
down. He has completed his range
apparently. If I can get hold of him, I want
him to come out of retirement so we can do a collaboration
because that would be awesome to have.
Like I thought, I thought he was going.
To grab him and strangle him, but he want to collaborate with
him. That's good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, I think when you're
supposed to have like a boxing match or something at some
stage, wasn't that something proposed?
Yeah, they, they, they, they, they was the on the chaos work
for him. They proposed scoped scoped off
in Italy because apparently there that's where the most
hardcore fans were. But they, they couldn't find the
venue that was suitable. The Colosseum was obviously too
small, so. That's funny.
Yeah, he does sound like a really nice guy.
He does, yeah. He does great work as well.
I mean, he he, he's obviously the other person that I can
think of that does great work in this feel like, you know, like
yourself, like, you know, characterizing the sculpts and
the aesthetics to the 4th edition, you know, aesthetics.
So you guys were, you know, and I think that's why, you know,
one of the reasons when you come here to Japan, I would like to
have one of the originals, one of yours and one of Faberzel's
all together to see and to see how similar they are.
You can mix them all together, You know, you can have a very
distinctively, you know, nice looking chaos door farming using
originals and the STL resources today of you guys creating these
miniatures and yeah, build something really beautiful, you
know, because you've got, like I said, you've got your grand
skins, you've done some orks now, like black Orks, which are
wonderful. And yeah, it's just going to
grow and create this really unique line of miniatures that
are accessible for everybody, which is the most important
part. Absolutely.
I I always want people to. It's weird, I, I now have
collectors, there are people who are collectors of my work.
Are these people insane? It's extraordinarily flattering.
It's really humbling and it's extremely inspiring to, to have
people actually, you know, they, they, they, they take this way
more seriously than I had expected.
And it certainly pushes me to to produce the best quality that I
can. And so far, it seems to
resonate. Yeah.
The, the The thing is, this is not a hill that Games Workshop
is particularly interested in occupying.
Apparently, the I'm fully aware of my role as a parasite.
I'm copying basically the a a dead style from a company who
has moved on and totally ignored whatever bastard child the the
chaos towards. We're supposed to be so.
But from what I've heard and what the interviews I've seen
with the Games Workshop brand managers, they they seem to be
pretty hardcore about not using. Nobody should use their
copyrighted designs, their, their symbols, their glyphs,
particularly their copyrighted or trademarked names.
And that is absolutely fine that that's no problem at all.
So that's why I've had to be a little bit creative with what I
call the miniatures. So I, I had a problem with the,
the, the black orcs because what do you call black orcs like
African American orcs? The the the the the what was it
11 suggestion was it was goblin X, but they so I end up with
dark works. I I think that's the most
sensitive I can be. The the Lamassu was a bit of a
challenge. I had to ask ChatGPT and it came
up with the sorceress behemoth and I thought it was pretty
cool. Damn, I should call it that.
What did nothing like so yeah. So anyway, I, I also have an
interest in the, the fiction writing, the, the stuff of Bill
King and the, I haven't read many of the games Workshop or
the, the Warhammer books, but I understand that some of them
like Scaven Slayer, they're, they're like, they're, they're
legitimate classics of fantasy literature.
And from what I've read from the the, the army books and the the
White Dwarfs, some of it is quite high, high quality
actually. Particularly as I mentioned,
Bill King and others also have been very.
So I've made my first forays into writing fantasy and
Warhammer fan fiction. They have a wonderful
competition on the Chaos War forum that I was lucky enough to
win last time. A little bit of a, a plug there,
but yeah, if you bring back the Hero Hammer fans in, I have a
lot of stuff I would love you to read and at least consider for
publication there because that's it would be nice to see.
It's funny you should say that, Marco.
We hope to resurrect it in some form.
If it's just going to be like a thin booklet style thing that
you could just yeah, it's a digital product anyway.
It's, but we're, we're we're in talks about, you know, trying to
get a, a small team of people together.
Maybe you want to come and join us.
You know, it's, it's a collective, it's it's a
community, it's a community driven project.
I think it's a shame that we all got busy and lives changed and
it sort of got left to to sort of, you know, a work in progress
for later days. But I think we can sort of maybe
with certain assets, we can sort of re, you know, bring it back
and resurrect it in a way that it's still accessible to people.
Have some small articles like yourself looking at photos of
your work or whatever, and other interviews with people in the
community and some bad reports or some scenarios.
So yeah, who knows? We can do something, mate
together, We can collaborate because that's what it is.
The Hero Hammer fanzine is a collaboration with loads of
people. Anything you need because the
the first issues of the OR at least the only issues that I've
seen, they have been super high quality and it was like going
back in time and read, except it made sense this time yeah.
So anything I can do to help, I'm more than happy to help.
And I, I, I am thinking maybe maybe that's something to
consider for your Patreon as well, if you, if that's possible
to make some sort of connection there might be a good idea.
Yeah, I, I, I think that maybe should be separate because of
the, well, I mean, it's, it's an interesting point.
You know, you touched on IP before and how sensitive it can
be, you know, using certain names, certain iconography
styles and that kind of thing where you sort of sit within the
IP lawyers breach of IP and that kind of thing.
So we wanted really wanted the Hero Hammer fans seem to be
separate from any kind of monetization at all.
But obviously it mentions the podcast, it mentions my YouTube
channel and links. So they will be there.
So I think maybe it's better just to keep it separate
altogether. But look in a in whatever way it
comes back in whatever form, I'm sure it's going to be wonderful.
It's going to take a lot of hard work because Ang Hill now master
genius artist, graphic designer, a painter, you know, he's just
the master everything Ang Hill, lovely guy, but he was kind of
the, you know, the conductor behind all this.
He did everything. We just, we just supplied him
with photos and, you know, text and he made all these beautiful
pages for us. Unfortunately, his life has
changed for the better and he's got a great job and, you know,
he's very busy and so he just cannot commit to doing that
anymore. So we need to pick up the mantle
and we need to learn all the stuff.
I need to become a graphic designer.
Please help me out. Please insert the chip in the
back of my head and just download it.
Yeah, there is a guy, I'm not sure I should mention his name
directly here before I've asked him, but he he made, he took my
little renderings of my miniatures and he made a retro
inspired graphic design box for them and he did it like this.
So I'm definitely going to mention this for him.
He might be. Sure, mate.
Because again, it's, it's collective.
It's just whoever wants to chip in, who wants to give us a hand
in certain things because there's certain aspects what we
are very limited in and that is technology.
I'm not a, I'm not a tech savvy guy, as people would know.
And, but I want to learn. I want to learn.
I'm still kicking myself in the balls.
But you know, for, for dropping out of like college and not
pursuing being a graphic designer because it wouldn't
really help right now, but because that was the time of
technology, when technology was just coming into things then
during that time after school. But but yeah, mate, look, we'll,
we'll, we'll talk about that. We'll look at people who can
possibly assist us and, and resurrect the old Hammer Hammer
fanzine because I do want to see it back again.
Because it's, it's a labour of love and it was loved by many.
So yeah, the more the merrier. For sure, for sure.
All right, my friend. Well, I think we'll wrap up
today's interview. It's been great to talk to you,
Mark. I'm literally glad we've got to
get together to do this because it's been lots of stops and
starts and I felt I let you down last time.
And then yesterday, yesterday, we got the times fixed up and
everything. So I'm really glad we got this
time to chat and to bring your story to the Crown and Command
podcast for people who don't know anything about your work.
I'll leave links in the show notes so people can go check out
your Instagram, your Patreon as well.
And so they can and your Facebook group if you have one,
so people can connect with your work.
And then if they have a 3D printer, well, they're in,
they're in, they're in luck because they can just get you
STLS, print them out and start playing Cast Wolves as they
should be. Wonderful indeed.
And I see myself is starting to show up on Etsy as well, by
resellers who are by all means. I should probably mention that
they they are, they do pay me handsomely.
So if you see any of my stuff on Etsy, go for it if that's your
thing. Right.
OK, mate. Well, there you go.
It's it's a smorgasbord of Chaos Dwarves.
It's a time to be alive if you're a Chaos Dwarf player.
Yeah, well, I look forward to you coming to Japan and us
meeting up in person and showing, showcasing your models
in a special video presentation in the future.
And until that time, mate, you take care of yourself and I'll
see you again next time. Likewise.
Thanks a lot. Bye bye.
Thanks, Michael. Thanks mate.