OK, so Ian, thanks very much again mate for coming into the
Crown of Command and and I really appreciate your time
today. Unfortunately we had me and Ian
had a great, great conversation before, but then I realized, Oh
my God, I haven't clicked record.
It doesn't happen very often, but in today's conversation, we
got halfway through, you know, you know, just talking about
various different sculptors and Kev Adams came up and then I
realized down looking at the bottom that it wasn't recording.
So there you go. But Ian, thanks again for the
second time mate, to chat about this.
No, mate, no, my pleasure. And thanks for your patronage
too, mate, and the models you currently sent to me, which I
showed the guys on Patreon of the orcs that you, you, you
designed. And it was interesting to know
that you've only been doing this for a couple of years now.
So that's, that's testament to your, the skills you, you learnt
and, and all that. But yeah, we, we'll, we'll jump
into just a bit, a bit about your brief history and how you
actually found or discovered tabletop wargaming.
So do you want to just elaborate on that for a little bit, mate?
Yeah, so I was a little kid. I grew up in the UK and I
started with a little book of paper war games called Knights
at War. So if you're, if you're someone
who likes paper tabletop games, you should check that out.
It's old, but it is still around.
I don't think it's in print anymore, but you get it on
Amazon or eBay or something. And it's worth, it's worth a
look if you're into like medieval Knights and stuff.
And then when I was about 9 or 10, I moved to Canada and I fell
in with a group of guys who actually played Warhammer.
They collected Warhammer. We were like 10, so we weren't
really playing it yet. They had an older brother who
played and we kind of idolized him.
And we would sit around and I would just watch them paint.
And I was immediately hooked. Convinced my dad to take me to
the Games Workshop store in Vancouver back then, which was a
a really old big store, nothing like the modern Games Workshop
stores. It was in a place in Vancouver
called Gastown, which is almost like a touristy shopping
district. I don't know if it's even around
anymore, I've been there in such a long time.
The Game furniture store is definitely not around anymore,
but they had a great store. They had obviously the big
tables for like Warhammer and 40K, but they had all the little
games too. You could play Talisman, you
could play Blood Bowl, you could play Man O War all set up on
tables so you could get jump right in.
They had a great staff of guys and played, played.
The first time I went there, the thing that jumped out off the
wall to me was a blister pack of dwarf giant slayers.
Now in the Uki believe they come in packs of four.
In Canada they come packs of two.
So it's even more expensive here.
And I mean, I held up this blister pack.
I was like, this is what I want. And my dad took it from me and
looked at the price and it would have been something like $8
Canadian for these two little guys.
And he just laughed, put it back on the shelf.
He's just like never going to happen.
And we left. And then I just wore my mom down
and eventually was able to convince them to to get me some
a little box of high elves. The little box of 10 was 5
Archers, 5 Spearman. Those were a little hard for me
to paint as a kid. So I moved into more of like the
grimy armies like scaping and stuff, but that was my first
actual set of models was that little box of 10 aisles.
I think I got the starter paint set.
And from there I was off to the races.
Oh. Nice mate, that's wonderful.
I just just looking at that Knights of War book, I just
found it on online here and it looks to be still available.
You can sort of buy it. I don't know whether it's like a
second printing or various other printings or if they're second
hand or not, but you can buy these books.
They look really nice. I like the I like the cover in
these Knights with the all their chivalry and all the, you know,
all the coat of arms and stuff like that.
So it looks like an interesting little thing.
I've never seen them before and I wish I'd I'd picked up
something like this when I was a kid.
I I reckon I'll be really into that.
So they look great. Yeah, if you have kids, it's
definitely worth the look 'cause it's, they're very good.
They're simple. There's four of them and they're
simple to get into, but they're, you know, tactically pretty
complex and they're all different, which is cool.
They're kind of all set in a different era.
So there's this Border Raiders 1 where you, they're, the two
Knights are like the Lords and they have like levees.
One guy is invading the other guy's territory, trying to steal
his sheep and his cows and stuff.
The other guy's trying to stop him.
Then there's a Crusades 1 where one guy's Richard, one guy's
Saladin, and you're trying to get your baggage training across
the desert before you can get raided.
One of them is a siege. And then the last one is like a
late medieval tournament. It's a jousting game.
So you actually have your horses go across the table each other,
and you have to pick a move, and your opponent has to pick a move
secretly. Then you flip them over.
And if you've done a sweep and he's gone at the head, like
there's interactions of how those all work and you get
unhorsed and the actual little guys actually come off their
horses, it's pretty cool. And then at the end you have a
Malay where everyone is off their horses and they're all
fighting to the death. It's, it's, you know, it's if
you have like a young kid, 8 or 10 or something, it's definitely
a great intro to, you know, the hobby.
Yeah, it'd be fantastic. It sort of reminds me of looking
at this one here with the medieval sort of setting.
It reminds me of that Cry Havoc game that was also like a sort
of hex encounter kind of game with little small cardboard
chips and you would move those on the table top.
So I suppose it's, you know, the equivalent of whatever's out
there. Now.
I'm not really all that well versed or knowledged
knowledgeable about all that kind of stuff these days, but it
seems to be like an old sort of strategy board game tradition
that's sort of carried on for all these years now, which is
nice to see. But that's good.
That was a nice little entryway mate, into the hobby.
And you sort of talked and alluded to before that you got
into Battle Masters as well. Yeah, that was a big one.
There was another store in Canada called Games People and
they sold like Dungeons and Dragons books, like Cyberpunk
books and all that kind of stuff.
But they also sold sold board games.
And I just completely by luck, I was already into Warhammer.
I just saw this game, Battle Masters, and I picked up,
flipped it over and I'm like, Oh my God, it's all Warhammer
stuff. So I had to have that.
And 'cause we were about 10 or 11 at this point, we could
really get our our heads around Battle Masters away.
We couldn't really Warhammer yet.
So yeah, we played a lot of Battle Masters.
They had this great mechanic. You've played it right.
Yes, I have. You had it, But yeah, so I knew
you had it. I wasn't sure if you ever played
it. They had this great mechanic
with the cannon, if you remember, where you place all
those little hex pieces and then flip them over and then you find
out if it's a bounce or if it's hit the ground, like that's
great. That's very Warhammer.
Yes, very much so, yeah. It had the, had the cannon
mechanic and had the, the, the giant or the big ogre that also
had like a, a card mechanic where it would move and it, it
attack and, you know, if you could pull off a lot of attacks
when you're next to something, it could do lots of damage.
So when I, when I revealed this to my son and, and showed him
both the cannon and the ogre, he was like, you know, because
first he wanted to play the, the empire with the cannon, then he
saw the ogre. So I know I want to play, I want
to play chaos with yoga. You know, it's really funny.
So yeah, it's nice. It's a, it's a wonderful, like I
say, it's a wonderful entry for people who have never seen
anything like this because you've got that three
dimensionality of all the miniatures, you've got the cards
and everything was very colorful.
And I'm going to introduce some Japanese, a Japanese family that
are friends of ours and my, his son goes to my son's school and
I showed him the rule book because it's all in Japanese and
he seemed pretty interested. So next time we get together,
we're going to lay it out on the floor and have a game of it.
So I'm really looking forward to that and with, with both our
sons as well. So it'd be really, really fun.
Yeah, still a classic. So, so going on from that, you
you've discovered Warhammer. What were what were sort of your
main go to armies? What?
What kind of armies really drew into the into the Warhammer
universe mate? Well my friend had the 4th
edition starter set that he already played Orcs and golpins,
so I defaulted to High Elves. I'd already had a box of them,
but I to be honest, as a 10 year old, I found them a little
difficult to paint. So I always gravitated more
towards like Chaos and Scaven and stuff, stuff with more of
like a muddy sort of paint scheme where you can sort of
slap the paints on, throw some washes on, throw some dry
brushing and you know, have a decent effect.
My friend was a Charlie. He, he was a really good painter
for a kid. So he would always have like
nice bright colorful miniatures and mine would just be like
metal and brown and covered in brown ink.
Yeah, wonderful, mate. OK, look, we'll just go quick.
We'll just have a quick break, quick segue into a break here
and we'll come back in just a moment to talk more about your
Warhammer history and about Celtic miniatures.
So we'll be back shortly. But mate, yeah, so you, you
discovered Warhammer, you you sort of dabbled with various
different armies like High Elves and Scavenir and Brutonians.
Were you much of A painter mate, or did you really enjoy that
aspect of the hobby? I'd say when I got back into the
hobby, so I was really into Warhammer from when I was about
10 to when I was about 14, and I was out of it because my friend
group, we just lost interest kind of thing.
I mean, I didn't really lose interest, but I pretended I did
because everyone else had. And then after high school, I
remember sneakily sneaking off to the Games Workshop and buying
some stuff. And that was when I got more
into, like painting as opposed to playing the games.
And I think what helped a lot really was the Internet 'cause
you got to see so many good tutorials from really good
painters, more detailed tutorials than you would see in
like a White Dwarf, as good as those were.
And I used to love the tutorials in like the Army books.
But when you're on the Internet, it's just 'cause it's that open
space, they can put so much more detail and you can really learn
more interesting techniques and stuff.
And that's a good point about, yeah, the Internet, when that
sort of started and painting tutorials became more of a a
very accessible thing, it sort of just exploded.
And you see, you just saw so many more people getting exposed
to miniature painting And, and now, you know, we can see the
evidence of that. Like every man and his dog is
painting miniatures now, which is great.
It's really good to see. And a lot of it, it opened up a
lot of opportunities for for women to get involved with a
hobby somehow. And there's a lot more women
involved with not only just painting, but also tabletop
gaming, which is nice to see, you know?
Yeah, mate. So that's great.
So, yeah, I think we sort of remarked before earlier about
Necromunda. Necromunda was a big influence
on you, I suppose, in your early younger gaming days.
Yeah, that was, I think 97, and it was just perfect for kids
because you only needed the starter set.
My friend did a starter set. I had a starter set.
Put all that terrain together, you've got more models than you
even need at that point with two starter sets, and you just play
forever. We even made a Necromander
role-playing game, and we would sneak home at lunch at school
and play like a quick game of that, then run back to school.
We were obsessed. And Necromander.
Necromander really captured that era, like in pop culture 'cause
it was like, you know, like Prodigy was around that band and
like the guy from Prodigy kind of like he was from Necromunda,
you know what I mean? And like, just like pumping,
pumping Prodigy and playing Necromunda.
And it really just felt like this.
It like, it really felt like it captured that, that moment in
like in like culture. Yes, it was.
Yeah, I remember, I remember that that song being played, the
Firestarter song when I was working in Oxford Street Mall at
the Plaza there at Gangs Workshop.
And we had, we had it turned up to like the Max volume in the
store because the manager was out and we were sort of just up
on the tables and, you know, dancing and raving or whatever.
And I think Necromunda was released around that time too.
So yeah, maybe it was like an influence on us that we weren't
aware of. But yeah, the Prodigy certainly
brought out the Necromunda in you, that's for sure.
There was that. There was that one model in 40K.
He was like a a preacher or something and he had the
haircut. Yep, that's right.
Yep. He looked exactly like him and
looked exactly like him. Yeah, I remember that.
Yeah. He's carrying a sword and one of
like a Bible or something under his arm.
So yes, yes, very much so. Very much so in the likeness of
that. So yeah, I think, yeah, pop
culture certainly took an influence heavily on gangs,
workshops, intellectual properties, that's for sure over
the years. So if you can meet one of the
gangs workshop luminaries, like one of the heroes from back of
the day, who would it be? From a sculpting standpoint, Kev
Adams, From a fan standpoint, probably Andy Chambers.
Just because I used to be a big white dwarf guy.
I got a subscription to that in like 5th grade.
I had a subscription for like 3 years and he was in the they
have the pictures of all the guys at the front and he was the
guy we all liked because he just looked crazy and he just wanted
to play Warhammer with that guy. Nice.
I like. Well, I like those answers.
That's great. Can you remember what issue was
your very first issue of White Dwarf?
You had mentioned when we were talking on Instagram that you
might ask this question, so I actually went and looked and I
know exactly which one it was. Have it right here.
I want to get the number wrong. It was 179 which was the
imperator Titan on the front. I wanna say that was the launch
of Titan legions. Was that what it?
Was called. Came with the Imperator, the two
gargens and a bunch of night Titans and I think a bunch of
little orc like buggies and stuff.
That was so it was 179. I remember that one.
I don't remember 180 because I looked at that one too.
So I think my subscription started with 181 because that
was a January. I got the subscription for
Christmas and I remember from 181.
I remember about the next 36 in a row.
I was obsessed. Right.
OK, so I'll have to check that. I think maybe we covered that
issue already, but I'll have to check in on my My White Dwarf
YouTube channel playlist and see if we've already covered it.
But I've always enjoyed doing that with people who've been on
the podcast or just people out in the community covering their
first White dwarf because it holds a lot of great memories
when they go back and flip through the pages, like either a
digital copy or physical copy of their first White dwarf.
And I get the same feeling when I look through issue 147, which
was my first one, and seeing all those cool looking elder
drawings on the front and paintings and miniatures and
epic and empire and everything, you know, it was awesome.
So that's great mate. That's awesome.
So then at some point, like during your hobby career, you
must have decided that you wanted to make your impression
and legacy in the hobby by starting your own little company
called Celtic Miniatures. So can you just tell us how
exactly that happened? Well, I had a very boring job
doing deliveries and I would Daydream.
I daydreamed about releasing my own line of miniatures.
And so I got in contact with a sculptor and I think you had a
story similar to this. And when I heard the price tag,
I was like, that dream's dead, that'll never happen.
And then years later I got my first resin printer because I
had seen this guy, Monstrous Encounters.
He does some really good old hammer looking stuff and some
really good like Hero Quest style miniatures.
And I wanted to print some of his stuff.
So I bought the files, they're called STL files for people who
don't, who aren't into printing. And I went and sourced someone
to print them for me. And the price of that was going
to be astronomical too. So I was like, I'll just get my
own printer. So I just got my own printer.
These resin printers, I don't know if you have one, they set
up in 5 minutes and you're off to the races.
They're really easy to use. I had an Annie Cubic photon
mono. I want to say it was a 2K It's
old. It was a few years back at this
point and they start printing his stuff, printing Duncan
Shadow stuff. Duncan Shadow is a really good,
my opinion, the best sculptor out there for the 3D stuff.
Not necessarily because these miniatures are the most
complicated or the most technical, but he gets the
limitations of resin, which is really, really important if
you're going to get into sculpting For 3D printing resin,
you can't have little skinny swords.
They're going to break. They might not even print
properly. You can't have little tiny
details. The supports are going to RIP
them off. You have to know the limitations
of the actual material. You have to make them chunky.
You got to make them durable. Plus you're going to drop these
guys and resin if it's, you know they're going to shatter.
So you got to make it nice and chunky and durable.
Drunken Shadow is really good for that.
His stuff is really, really solid.
You have to fill all the gaps. You'll see a lot of people who
produce really good renders of their miniatures, but then when
you print them, they're too delicate or they'll even have
big hollow sections inside of them because they don't
understand the, I mean, I'm not sure condescending.
A lot of them are much more talented sculptors than I am,
but they don't understand the limitations of you can't have a
big hollow Cape 'cause that's gonna, it's not gonna print
properly, it's gonna break. You have to fill that space in.
So it's a lot like sculpting old metal miniatures where you had
to keep in mind the actual mold. And so that's why a lot of old
metal miniatures, the shield arm will be attached to the body.
They don't want that negative space in there, You know what I
mean? So, you know, Duncan Shadow's
one of those guys that I think is really, really good.
So I started printing all these guys stuff.
And once you start printing stuff, you're like, well, I want
to switch this guy's weapon or switch this guy's head.
And then you so you start watching YouTube tutorials like
I did and you learn how to cut miniatures and how to put them
back together, how to manipulate the meshes, which is the mesh of
polygons on the surface of the shape in the computer.
And once you've swapped a few guys arms, swapped a few guys
heads, you realize I'm almost sculpting at this point.
So I'll try making my own parts. And I approach the actual
sculpting differently from a lot of the tutorials I watched where
guys will start with an actual wire mesh and start manipulating
the mesh to get the shapes they want.
What I do, which is a bit more like old school sculpting, is I
use a very, very simple program called 3D Builder, which is
free. It comes with Windows and I'll
start with simple shapes. Like a sphere and a cylinder for
a, for a head, you know what I mean?
And I'll cut them and I'll get them close to approximating the
shape I want. Then I'll throw them in my
sculpting program, which I use as Blender.
And then I can turn that into a lump of clay that's roughly the
shape I want. And then I can actually start
sculpting. And Blender has all the tools a
traditional sculptor would have. So you can smooth, you can cut,
you can crease, you can build up clay and they can smooth it in
and you can add chunks. And I'll switch back and forth
between Blender and 3D Builder, take them all those in and out,
the two programs so I can manipulate them two different
ways. And I just, and I just try to
build up from simple shapes to something approximating, you
know, the work of the really good sculptors from the olden
days. I've only been sculpting for two
years, so I don't flatter myself that I'm anywhere close to those
guys. But what I do like to hear, like
your review of my orcs or there's this guy who runs a
YouTube channel called Rule of Carnage.
He works for a company called the Lecti Studios.
They just did a hobgoblin. Are you familiar with that game?
So his reviews and your reviews tend to like hit on the what I'm
going for just like chunky parts, not breakable, durable
and at least evoking that feeling of the old models.
Even if I'm not anywhere close to Kev Adams, I'm not even close
to Ally Morrison, obviously. But if I can make something that
you know on the table when you're standing at the table
looks something like that, then I'm feel like I'm doing my.
Job yeah no well said mate. I think it's the yeah.
Now, now that we've come into this era where we have people
with resin printers. I don't have one myself.
I, I don't think it's really my thing to have.
I prefer just to get someone to print them out and I'll just buy
them that way. I just don't have the time or
the, the space to facilitate something like a printer.
But I can see why for some, for certain people, it'll be really
interesting to get into. Or it's a, it's another fun part
of the hobby that they can explore like you did, you
started, you know, customizing your own prints and models and
that turned into sculpting miniatures.
And, and here you are, you know, you've got you, you had that
dream of having your own miniature company at, at, at at
first it just seemed just in crime, you know, it just seemed
not, not not possible given the financial outlay initially.
But here you are making your own stuff.
And I think a lot of the tools available now to people online
now, a lot of those can be free, that you can actually go in and
start making stuff and be creative.
So that's great. And it's a lot of skill to do
that too. I just don't think I have the
patience for it. But personally like, and it's
interesting to know that and I haven't asked you this, but did
you ever do like traditional sculpting before sculpting
miniatures digitally? Little bit of green stuff,
modifying miniatures, but to be honest like drawing or like
sculpting by hand. The art side of things.
I'm really not a super artistic person.
The reason this works for me is because I'm a computers guy.
My dad, my mom, both worked for IBMI, had a computer in the
house since I was a little kid. I had the Internet for anyone
else. We had DSL Internet when
everyone else didn't have dial up yet.
I've always been around computers my whole life and so
the, the digital technology side of things for this come to me a
lot easier. So I can, you know, I'm still
obviously if anyone can look at my miniatures, they're not at
the top end of the sculpting yet.
Obviously it'll be probably another eight years.
I think think for art to really be good, you have to do put 10
years into something that I put in two.
But what I'm hoping is I can sort of capture the attitude of
of the old, old hammer miniatures in a way that'll at
least, you know, give, give the customers we're looking for
something like that, something close to the feel.
Nothing will ever be the same as those metal miniatures that you
hold in your hand. They feel the weight of them and
the history of them. But this is the really the thing
for me with the Oldhammer stuff, before Oldhammer was Oldhammer
in like 2010, I used to buy old models on eBay because they were
cheaper. And then what's happened in the
last 15 years is now those models are way too expensive in
my opinion. And there's like a lot of like
manipulation of the value of them going on.
So what resin printing brings you is shockingly affordable
Miniatures, I mean, pennies to print a guy.
And if you can find the designs you like, if you can find
sculptors that speak to you, in the long run you will save a lot
of money because one resin printer is not that expensive.
I have 7 now because I actually run a printing studio for my
stuff as well. You do need space though, like
what the thing you pointed on about.
You pointed out about space, that's very important.
I have AI live out in the country.
I have a big basement with a ventable room with all the
printers in it. I don't even go in that room
except to flip prints. You don't want a resin printer
if you're in A1 room apt. I hear about guys sleeping in
the same room as their resin printer.
You don't want to do that. No, you need a a room with
ventilation and you need to keep it away from your kids and your
pets and really yourself. It's it's volatile substance.
Yes, that's I think someone told me about that and that
immediately put me off getting one all together.
Now I've got to say, I'm a traditional metal miniature guy.
I, I love all my metal models and I think I'll die being a
metal model lover and the the lover of the, the plastic motor
post stuff. But I do again appreciate that,
you know, people like yourself and other.
There's a load of 3D sculptors out there now presenting their
stuff on Kickstarter. We talked about Kickstarter
before in a previous conversation, but, and how
important that is to launch people's projects and to to
realize their dreams and to form these small companies and sort
of build upon their reputation from that.
But it's giving people accessibility, like you say, to,
to a cheap alternative. And in the spirit of the old
models, which is what attracted to me when I saw you all ball
boys, I thought, well, you know, they look really like the sort
of the late 5th or, you know, edition models from Warhammer.
And I thought, well, this is a good alternative.
And I saw some more stuff through Instagram too, other
people doing very similar projects.
And I thought this is a great idea because this gives people
the opportunity to get the models at a fraction of the
price and then they can actually start playing.
And that's what we're really trying to do.
We're trying to get people out at the games table, you know,
and I don't want that, you know, the the ridiculous amount of
inflation that's happened now with Oldhammer models to be a
barrier for people. We want it more accessible.
So, yeah. So more power to you guys.
I think it's, you're doing a great service out there.
So now just looking at you because I know you've got a,
because I know you talked about selling physical copies.
You don't have just STLS, you have actual physical copies.
And I'm just going through your Patreon now where there are
actual tiers where people can per month pay, say $25.00 a
month in order to receive, you know, you, you will actually
send out, you know, physical copies of the models, which is a
really good idea because a lot of the problems is that like me,
I don't have a 3D printer. So then trying to get someone to
print those models out for you can be a bit of a hurdle
sometimes. But to offer that is a really
good idea. Is that has that been successful
for you mate? Is that been better for you to
sell just the physical copies or is the STL market still pretty,
pretty strong? For me, it's been huge.
It's what it's really what sets me apart from the other
companies like to do what I do. If you look at my Kickstarters
that have done well, like the wave 2 of my undead stuff or the
wave one of my orcs, surprisingly the wave two of the
orcs, the cavalry didn't really do as well as I was expecting.
I think part of the reason for that is because more people have
printers now. So if you look at my Kickstarter
from last summer, the Undead Wave 2, a huge chunk of that was
physical miniatures because I only charge about $15.00
Canadian to pledge on the Kickstarters, which is not a ton
of money. I think it's about 9 lbs.
I might be wrong on that. I think it's about 9 lbs.
But I mean, obviously physical miniatures, that bumps up the
yield significantly. I still try to charge a very,
very reasonable price for my resin stuff, especially on
Kickstarter because I'm trying to give the absolute best value
I can. But yeah, the the physical side
of things helps a lot. The Patreon, yeah, there's an
option to get 20 infantry a month or like 10 cavalry or in
the case of last month where it was war machines.
I didn't think I did 4 war machines.
Or there you can do the larger one, which is 40 infantry or you
know, 20 cavalry or would have been 8 war machines last month.
Right now I'm doing Dwarfs and I'm trying to capture, if you
looked at them yet, the Marauder Imperial Dwarfs.
That's kind of the look I'm going for.
I just before I talked to you, I've been sitting in the last
few days working up. If you remember, the old
Marauder plastic Shields were really, really good.
So I'm trying to work on an approximation of those for my
dwarfs that an eagle head. I've done a bear head and a
tower and just like trying to trying to make something that
feels like those classic Marauder Imperial Dwarfs.
But I'm really try to be conscious not to be doing direct
copies. I'm not trying to RIP anyone
else's ideas off. I'm trying to be inspired by
them and I'm trying to put my own twist on them.
Because obviously there is a problem with 3D printing right
now. If people send selling direct
copies of stuff, which obviously I think there's a lot of stuff
like that because it's so out there 3D printing and anyone can
do it, There's going to be like bad actors who kind of hurt the
whole scene. Because the vast, vast majority
of people pay for the files and they support the independent
sculptors and stuff. But there is a large market of
people just sharing direct copies of stuff.
And I mean, the big problem with that is it's just going to get
these websites like My Mini Factory, which is a great
website, Colts 3D, which is a great website shut down and
that'll suck for everyone. Yeah, that's right.
Yep. So message to those people out
there who are doing that. Don't be a Dick.
I think would be the most appropriate way to to stop that
because, yeah. And we, we want to see things
like 3D cults, which is a great resource for people who want to
just pick up something on the fly just to get that last maybe
40K vehicle or last regiment they need for their army or
something. Just to download the STLS which
are most, in most cases for free or for a very small fee.
It's doing a great, great reward to the community for that.
So yeah, I'm looking at your Dwars now, mate.
So yeah, they're looking pretty, pretty cool.
So that's good to see. We're going to talk about your
ranges because we know you have obviously the orcs and the
dwarves, but you've had some other previous Kickstarters, we
released some other factions. So you want to talk about those?
Yeah, well, the very, very first thing I did was evil warriors.
So think like very old Chaos Warriors style, but also like
Ralph Partha did a lot of stuff looked just like that back in
the day as well. Wasn't wasn't Chaos was kind of
a shared term across a lot of the old miniatures companies.
So I started with a Chaos Warriors kit back at the end of
2022, largely because when I looked at all the different
miniatures I liked, those felt like the ones because it's
almost all hard surfaces that would be easy for me to do when
I was really, really just learning at that point.
So I started with Evil Warriors and then I did a second Evil
Warriors Kickstarter the next winter, the January, the
February where I released Chariots, Knights Infantry.
But I was still really learning at that point.
I think those guys, I think that was called Army of Evil Wave
One. I think they're really
evocative, but I was still kind of learning how to get them to
be easy to build and in the interest of having more very
variation maybe when a few too many parts.
So they're kind of an expert kit 'cause you've got body, head,
arms, shoulder pads, shield, all separate parts within resin is
quite rare. But I do think they're, they're
good models. I've come I think a a ways from
there. So I kind of did another attempt
at evil warriors and evil Barbarians last winter, more
like Marauder type guys. And then another attempt at
Knights and warriors and stuff. And then my most successful
range has been the undead, mostly skeletons, which I just
always loved the old Warhammer undead stuff.
And yeah, that was my biggest Kickstarter to date was the wave
two of the skeleton army. I did some skeletal giants,
chariot, two different types of cavalry and another kind of
infantry and just try to like really give you something that
looks. I actually had a guy, I was
playing Dragon Rampant with a friend and the guy came in and
thought my stuff was old Warhammer stuff, which was
really cool. I was like, no, these are
actually brand new and they look closer.
He's like, Oh yeah, they're bigger and they're chunkier and
like they're a little different. But he just really kind of
capture that look and that feel and that sort of era in all of
our lives. So I think that's like a big
part of the Oldhammer thing, is the nostalgia.
Yes, very much so, yeah, It's, it's great to see.
And I, I think I was talking to you about that.
There's actually a Facebook group all about those people
like you yourself and like Brodiak, Faberzell and Red Bard
games. All these people who all the
creators who are making these 3D sculpted models in the style of
the well, hero hammer, old hammer, middle hammer errors.
There's a whole Facebook group just date dedicated for that.
So just new models, but in the old style, which I think is a
really, really cool to see. It's really nice that it's sort
of living on and people hark back to that era because they
just, yeah, I mean, those designs, there was a reason why
people were attracted to it, not because it was the first thing
they picked up, probably because it was just like, it's a lot
cooler to look at or the models are just much better maybe in
some regards to a lot of the other stuff that came out later,
all the modern stuff. So yeah, it's really good to
see, mate. So and look, I think we'll wrap
it up today, mate. So thank you very much again for
coming on and to taking all that time with the false start
initially and then coming back for a second run.
I hope that people will become more aware about what Celtic
Miniatures offers and they can always check out the links in
the podcast description here to check out.
Yeah, your Instagram, your Patreon there and any other
links you want to send me. I'll leave it there mate, so
they can go and check out your stuff and and hopefully make
some enquiries about it. So, Ian, so thanks again mate
for your time today. Thank you very much.