All right, buddy, That's great. Well, thanks again, Mick, for coming on. I really appreciate it, mate. You early in the morning there for you? It is. It is quite early here. I was on the, I was on the train.
So I'm in the, I'm in, I'm in work basically, and I'm lucky enough to have a job that supports kind of its team's independent hobbies and interests and happens to also be in the field of podcasting and digital media production, hence the kind of relatively decent camera and and audio setup. But I'm not usually in this early, and it was basically me dressed to come and do a podcast and an entire tram full of construction workers and nurses and all the other people who
usually rise at this time. Right, OK, yeah 'cause I say your your camera is absolutely like it's just magic mate. The the quality of your camera is a 4K or something. Is it or 8? K it's it's not a webcam, it's a it's an SLR set up to A to a, a kind of an auto prompt thing. Hence, unlike most zoom calls, I'm as as far as I can tell. Here, I'm looking you Josh, dead in the eye. Right. OK, so. It makes the Inter, it makes the interaction a little easier.
Yeah. And yeah, but, you know, I don't have to look down at the screen or look away to be able to see what you're saying or see how you're responding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good. It's, it's nice. It's, it's nice to work in a company where you're, you're kind of supported in your hobbies and interests. And yeah, that's good. I mean the the Hammer the backlog project. Would you believe there's a link to the hammer of the backlog project on my company's business website?
Oh wow. That's awesome. That's that's the level to which they kind of get involved in in people's independent projects and interests. Right. OK, mate, that's excellent. I'm glad you can sort of mix your personal hobby, hobby, you know, projects with your work as well. In some. Some regards, yeah. Yeah. Or you in some. Regards, yeah you you wouldn't recommend it to everybody because you don't sometimes you want to have a separation it it just so happens that mine suits basically.
Right. Are there any other gamers in your company that you know of that? That you can sort of talk, no. No, no. But they So I I do. I do bring my I know they say don't bring your work home, but I bring my hobby to work quite a bit. So I have one of those those little portable painting cases that you can see in the background if you're on the video version. And there's always intrigue when they come in because I'll paint at my at my at my at my desk at lunchtime.
And there's always a kind of what what what are you painting is that are those little lizard men or are they obviously for for normal people the kind of the, the thing that generally catches the interest is empire or Britonia or something
recognizable. You know if you're not into fantasy you might not be that excited by goblins but you're going to understand a unit of nicely painted Knights or a unit of soldiers or I I did some flatulence and they they went down well because people you know people get the idea of crazed pilgrims. Anything that you have to explain like no. So these are lizard men they're they're actually very intelligent and they're they
believe in a great plan. It's like the monsters aren't they make they're just the baddies. The the, yeah, human stuff tends to go down better with the when I'm showing it to, for want of a better term, normal people. Sounds like a boardroom kind of presentation, I think. Make for the future, you know. All the rest of. The of the old world, maybe, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Someday I'll subject them to that. They'll never forgive me.
So yeah, I discovered you through your YouTube channel, the hammer, the backlog and you know looking through your projects and being I think everyone and again success to the amount of views and the popularity, it's sort of picked up I think for you. Maybe you're a bit sort of taken aback by that. How many people have responded to your videos or joined up and subscribed and that kind of thing, the last six months or so? Yeah, it's genuinely genuine. Has been a big surprise.
So I've been I've been involved in Warhammer specifically and mini painting for 2627 years. Like I've I've I've always been around the world of miniature wargaming and painting. I I would have considered myself more of a collector. Really then that's just a polite way of saying hoarder. Though. Like I I always have these ideas of potentially painting this game up and playing it and entering these models and competitions, but it was always
more potential than reality. So when I started The Hammer, the backlog thing, the whole point of there being a YouTube channel was a public accountability for me. So if I if I have to, if I go online and I say on the 1st of January, at the end of three months, I'm going to have these models painted, then because I've put it out there into the world, because I've put it out there onto YouTube.
I know in three months time I have to follow it up and I have to show what I've done or explain why I didn't manage to do it. And that was the kind of only point of the YouTube channel to be honest. The IT was to have that public accountability and I put the first video up and you know 60-70. Eighty people saw it and it ticked up to a couple of 100 over the first few months and I was more than happy with that. That's fine. That's exactly what I wanted.
I wanted to have a a small group of people who would watch it and therefore I know I have to go back and show those people that I did what I'd said I'd I'd do. And the second one got 500 views, the third one got 2000 views, the 4th one got 7000 views. And all of a sudden this thing is growing. And I'm, I'm thinking, OK, how can I grow the channel? What can I do next? What can I, what sort of content do people want to see?
But I always kind of pull myself back to the point of this YouTube channel had a very, very specific purpose which was to be the public outward facing accountability side of the
hammer, the backlog project. It's fabulous that people enjoy it. I I really I I I'm so shocked that people enjoy such a potentially potentially boring and rote take on a hobby that is fun and but I think what I've discovered is there are more people out there like me who like that side of it than I really really thought there would be because I mean I'm I'm a decent painter I can paint I I'm I'm my my struggle in in life with with Warhammer
miniature miniature painting has always been over committing to individual models. So, you know, I can paint to I if I'm not being humble, I can paint to a box art standard for individual miniatures, but it takes me a month and I didn't really get a level of satisfaction out of that.
So the idea of this was force myself, maybe lower my standard a little bit, but actually get these armies that I've always wanted, that I've had my head out there and it seems to be speaking to certainly a niche audience. But there are as many people who enjoy the productivity, accountability, planning side of this as there are who enjoy the painting and the nice models and the the fun side of it, which is it's great for me. It's it's I I found the little
group of my people, as it were. Yeah, that's good. But I think that people want to see you succeed in your goals, you know what I mean? And they're waiting for that next three month video to come out to see your end results and see all these wonderfully painted models. Yeah, you are a really good painted becoming, You know, you, you know, your stuff really is quite outstanding. I think the battle report you did for 5th edition, you did like the Lizardman and the Bretonians.
I think the starter set armies, you did that as well. Yeah. And I know you have another one planned in the works. I think in the last video you talked about that's. True. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I I kind of, I kind of do one project video per quarter. So one update on what I painted and update on what's to come. And one other thing, either a kind of review of a box set or a battle report or next this quarter I'm working on a third edition Blood Bowl match report, right.
So I've got a friend of mine who's a very good, very amusing voice actor and the the plan is for him, he's going to commentate on the match in the style of maybe an American football commentator who happens to be a vampire or something like that. So. That's the plan, you know. That's excellent. Yeah. So you're sort of finding your own sort of niche there because you've got your own your accountability hammer the backlog thing.
But then you've got, you've found these other ways of being creative in making these battle reports, as you said. And you know you're going to do other things like unboxings or revealing things in your collections. So yeah, you're presenting in your own style, which is nice. I I I respect that. I think that's a great idea because you're making it entertaining, like the battle report, you know, not like mine. We're like 2 and 2 1/2 hours in.
You get to see the end, but you've you do it in more narrative sort of style with the voice overs and nice panning of the camera and looking at all the models. I think that's really what people want to see at the end of the day. You know, they just want to see nice figures and stuff like that. Well I I love your battle reports when I was like really looking at what I want to do your your battle reports, especially once you play remotely.
Now that's where you're controlling both sides and you have someone over zoom for example and they're obviously playing a game at home on their table and I thought that was incredibly impressive. I I think he did one with was it dwarfs and wood elves and the fact that a game like that was played across the world was incredibly impressive to me.
The the the the going for a narrative style on the battle reports was really a a decision because I thought I will not be able to match or produce something to the quality that big battle report channels are doing. And and you know I'm not really I I don't have a huge number of armies I've I've got three or four decently painted 1000 paint point armies because of the nature of the way I collect.
There is a YouTube called Ed he he has a channel called Minnesotes and he he's the he was kind of the inspiration for the way I I say inspiration I just ripped him off and you know he knows he knows and I know but we we kind of came onto the scene at the same time and he was doing 3rd edition 40K and he painted up the 3rd edition 40K set at the same time I was painting the 5th edition four hammer fantasy battle set and he also does really fantastic kind of short form narrative battle
reports in the 40K universe and he was a big inspiration and actually a a good help in in getting mine done because I you know I was annoying him with questions going what how exactly are you setting it up so the the focus is right when you're really down in on the table and what sort of lighting are you using. So it's a very good channel. I I I'd recommend giving it a look.
If you if you enjoyed the way I did my battle reports and you want to see someone who started six months earlier and has learned all of those mistakes earlier than I did and now has utterly perfected it, it's a really good channel to check out. Yeah, and I I know it very well. I interviewed him, was it last year, I think. And yeah, I'm a subscriber to his channel. He's a patron of mine, which is amazing. I was quite blown away by that because yeah, his stuff is so
good. I mean, I always say to him like, you know, you'll make your quality of what you're doing. I think he hit 10,000 subscribers recently, which is
fantastic for him. But then you know, he has a unique style that he brought to YouTube that just like just immortalizes these old games like Spacehawk, the one he just did recently for Death Wing. You know, the 2nd edition box set, painting all the miniatures and playing the scenarios of Armageddon in in the in the box set were just fantastic. I think it just it sort of presented a new way of presenting these kind of battle reports, you know, presenting,
you know, and he's got a voice. He's got a great voice for it. He's got good kind of a sense of directorship in his videos. I feel he's sort of it's yeah, so he's just got everything working together and he does it out of a phone. That's the that's a beautiful thing. Google phone Google Pixel phone started doing that that way, and he found it much easier than using a DSLR. He found the DSLR just took so long and painful and the phone was so much easier. And it's hard if.
Anyone is thinking of getting into kind of slightly more narrative battle reports or anything like that. It's not worth mucking about with a DLDSLR. Sorry about we just broke up there, I apologize. It must be another glitch in the system, another snotling in my computer, no doubt. We're practically as far away as it's possible for two people to be, so I suppose we can't really complain about the the Internet being a tiny bit unreliable.
I'm actually, I'm actually trying to embark on a doing a live stream show this weekend on the channel. I mean, I invited Garth from Garth's workshop on. I don't know if you're familiar with his work, but he's got a YouTube channel as well and we've been mates since the Pandemic basically since I've found his channel. But he's got a really unique way of presenting his painting videos too, and his music videos he makes and that kind of thing.
So I'm trying to collaborate with people to come on and and do sort of like a just a paint just like a basically hanging out painting and chatting. So we like I picked models, yeah, pay along kind of thing. And I think a lot of people are doing that now and I quite enjoy just sitting back and listening to what they're talking about and that kind of thing and having the audience engagement as well at the same time.
So hopefully, fingers crossed, my Internet will survive and be stable without it dropping out halfway through, but. That's one of the kind of. That's one of the big value adds. I found that the brand command has added to the kind of retro Warhammer, but Warhammer painting or mini painting in general is the the paint along Discord that that you set up. Yes.
Yeah. Like that's a big, that's a big community and anyone can just kind of drop in and turn their mic on and and talk painting and it might be like regular faces or regular voices that returned or you never know who's going to be in there. It's it's a really interesting way of doing things. I've always been a kind of solitary painter, so the idea of it took me a while to get my head around going. What is it better to paint with people talking? Is it not distracting?
But it actually is. It's great once you get into a flow, once you once you're not. Once your cognitive load on the model you're painting isn't too high, then it's great to have other voices and people to chat to while you're doing it. Yeah, well, yeah, we like, when I first I got into Discord, I was kind of against it because I was like, Oh no, it's another one of these social networking platforms. I don't want to do that. I've already got Facebook. I've already got, you know, YouTube.
But once I started getting into it, I realized how what a valuable tool it is. It's so great to connect with loads, loads of people. You've got that paint and video aspect to the channels as well. So we can, you know, basically remote game there. Chris Snyder, one of our regular guys there, he does a lot of Space Hulk remote plays and Necromunda, Blood Bowl and Man of War was a big popular one, especially through the pandemic. We played a lot of Man of War
over discord. So it's just been this revelation for me and I've, I've been hanging out in Discord way more now than I ever do for the other, for like Facebook or
whatever. I think it's a really great place to like you say, go and paint and chat with people and and talk to some guy in in Ireland this morning, a guy in Australia, a guy in Norway. So yeah we have sort of like this regular, yeah, regular or irregular sort of meet ups depending on time zones and people are always in there chatting and painting or showing off. It's really good. It's really a great, great place
and to hang out. So yeah, I I recommend anybody to come and check our Discord out. Even you make you should come chat with us mate. Yeah, yeah, I'm, you see I'm all, that's the thing. I'm always lurking there and so I'm always kind of hanging about on the outskirts, never never quite fully committing to jumping in because as I was saying there like one of the big things for me was I I find painting has a fairly high cognitive load for me. So you know I want to do it
right. I want to make sure the colour placement is so I I don't get into that kind of flow that a lot of people described. I'm I'm always I'm. I'm probably an overthinker. I'm I'm thinking about what is the exact colour that needs to go on this neck highlight stage. And it takes me a while to get into painting an army, to the point where basically I don't need to think about it anymore. And once I get to that point I relax and really enjoy it.
But I actually find the kind of first couple of weeks of painting a new army stressful is the wrong word. But, you know, there's certainly something, something where you're going. I I don't want to be distracted while I'm doing this. I want to. I want to get this right. This isn't quite working. Why is it not working? And I think in the past, that's what used to stop me. That's why I never finished projects until I started to hammer the backlog.
Kind of I would reach that point and go this this isn't turning out 100% the way I wanted to. It's taking up too much of my thought space, trying to figure out why it's not turning out the way I wanted to. I'll put it aside, I'll come back to it in a few weeks and then obviously that never happened that that. Just 20 years. Boxes and boxes, exactly, yeah, just boxes and boxes and boxes of started projects. So anyway that's that's why.
That's why it's taking me to kind of till now to be able to feel like I can engage a little bit more with other painters. Because I feel a little bit more like I know what I'm doing now and I've I've got, I've got a system and if I need to I can switch my brain off, rely on the system and therefore also think about other things and and talk to other people and do other things at the same time. But yeah, it's it's it's
definitely a challenge. I think it might be not to get into pop psychology too much, but it might be a part of the reason why a lot of people who can't figure out why they don't finish projects don't finish them all. Right. No, I mean, that's a fair assessment. Yeah. Yeah. No, I I I knows. I'm, I'm a psychologist. Yeah, we're all different in in that regard I suppose and and. Exactly. You know, some people just like bringing out grey armies. Just no pain. You know what I mean?
Like. It's not really. They don't care. Bigger, bigger problem for them. So yeah, it it we're all individuals in that in that sense I think and you know we all have our own standards and you know our own processes and that kind of thing. But yeah, I think the social networking groups give us the motivation maybe to keep pushing through and and the challenges that have come up by the last few years the call of the Crown.
But there's been a Cow Bunga challenge and you know, many others out there that have really pushed people to, you know, exceed their expectations, maybe improve their painting, you know, get long lost projects, actually finished and started gaming with them and that kind of thing. So it's been really cool and really encouraging. So, but I just found out to make the last last two years, I just
can't do challenges anymore. I just can't do them because I'm always going from one to the next to the next to the next project, you know, and I just cannot commit to anything anymore. So and now, now being a full time painter, it's now made it just almost impossible for me to actually, you know, do something seriously like a challenge. Seriously. Because I just don't have the time. Yeah, I I totally get that. And that was one of my kind of principles set when I started
hammer the backlog. I said to myself, OK, this is a pretty rigid system that you're setting up here. So I have, I basically divide my painting time into five blocks during the week of about three to four hours. So I, you know, I have other, I have other things going on in my life. I have work, I have other hobbies. And so I I probably paint around 10 hours a week on a really bad week and 20 hours a week on a on
a good week. So. And I pack my my schedule 1/4 at a time, so I know today exactly what I'm going to be painting every day for the next three months. And I know that would drive some people buck wild with boredom, just like, Oh my God, I can't believe you know what you're going to be painting on a Thursday six weeks from today. But for me that is getting stuff done. That is, it's getting modeled, painted that have sat dusty for 20 years or moved around attics
as I moved house. And it's just been so rewarding. But to get back to the original point, it means that I kind of had to make an agreement with myself right at the very start. No challenges. Because if I join a challenge, that's outside of the scope of the project that I'm doing, and I can't invent another 20 hours a week to get the project done. So every now and then I'm very I'm very tempted by joining a challenge that might match if I can match it up.
You know if someone is. If someone is doing a Warhammer 5th edition 500 point challenge, and it happens to be a time when I'm also painting Warhammer 5th edition. But it's again it's not worth generally the disruption that it was caused to what I'm doing and what's I don't really use this word very often but what's proving very fulfilling for me and the the the the challenge, the hobby challenge might be a
bit of a distraction. And as someone who is into this whole accountability, commitment, achieving goals, I I I feel I feel nearly a level of physical pain when I see the jokers or the wildcards or the skipped months start appearing in other people's challenges. And and I did.
That couldn't be me. I just there there isn't a world where I could commit to three challenges and my name would be beside it and it would say skipped week or missed month or yeah, that would drive me absolutely crazy. I would not be able to handle that at all well. That was me for the Call of the Crown. I didn't get one one entry in, so that was, wow, Two Strikes out. So and and rightly so. But yeah, I I can understand that. I mean, for me, the motivator for me is games.
So for example, yesterday it was announced we're going to have another one renaissance tournament in on March 24th. So I said OK, I'm going to take my dwarves and I want to paint Ungrim Iron Fierce. And I want to, I want to, you know, finish off my iron Breakers, put new Shields on them, paint a new banner. So I've already got a plan already that I know by the 24th of March I should have my 2000
points of dwarves ready. And then I'm going to paint some extra different things that I haven't brought before or you know, finish that minor unit that I started ages ago and never got finished. So and that way I'm sort of just that incremental step closer to actually finishing the entire army. Yeah, very, very close now. So I'm really looking forward to that. So yeah, games for me is a big motivator.
But I was thinking too, because in in our discord we had a very brief time where we did something like that. So each month we'd we'll pick one of the game systems and say OK for this month, please paint something, you know, either, you know either a squad or a you know battalion of guys or a squadron of of ships from Man of War or whatever it might be.
It might be another way of sort of getting back into that, maybe for people, because I think people, some people did enjoy that they had like sort of a themed month and they sort of just painted, just grabbed something off the shelf or in their collection or whatever to paint for that month. So maybe you should be the instigator for that, Mitch on our Discord. You should start. Telling the troops and. Doing some kind of. Order. Let's go guys. Let's do it. It doesn't become the scrum
master of the Discord channel. It's a funny thing though. It's like it's something that really, genuinely interests me, is people's motivation to paint. Because I'm not a huge gamer. I do game. I I have. I do a lot of TTRPG particularly Warhammer TTRPG which is fantastic. I just really love it. But that that has a very low mini requirement. So you know I could I could knock out the five or six minis for a session in an afternoon if if if I needed to.
But you know I I had the Warhammer 5th edition fantasy box set for 24 years before I played the game with it. It it, it doesn't. It doesn't motivate me in the way it motivates Someone Like You who gets their armies painted to play games. Or I don't know if you know Andy from mediocre hobbies. I've known Andy for a long time and Andy just can paint anything non-stop. As long as he needs it for a game, it'll be done. It's incredibly impressive. He just always has a paintbrush
in his hand. But then there are other people, like you said, who are more than happy to put a grey army on the table, and therefore that doesn't motivate them. What I've learned about myself in miniature painting is I need to have exactly what you have, Josh, I think, but for you, it's for you. The point of really pardon me for putting words in your mouth, but for you the point of done is
the models are painted. They're on the table for a game and the game is played and then you've achieved it. Yeah, But for me, that's not the that's not the moment. For me, the moment is getting the models photographed, the photos edited and put online somewhere. And I mean, I don't even really care if people are seeing them. It's it's, that's not the point. The point is, that's for me, that's the point of achievement. That's the point where I go.
I've done it. I've done what I set out to do. The games for me feel like a happy a happy thing I can then do with the with the models and. But it also means that if I'm playing with my models, if I'm playing games and a Lance breaks, I don't freak out like some painters. My some people who are primarily painters are scared of damaging their models in games. It doesn't bother me because it's already achieved I've once it's on that, you know Instagram
pane. Sure. Yeah, what I set out to do and then I can fix it up. I can fix it up, and maybe I don't fix it up quite as perfectly as I did when I first painted it and but it doesn't matter because I've already achieved the goal that I set out to do with that model. Right. OK, That's interesting. Yeah, that would, that would drive me nuts if I broke stuff after I painted it.
Because putting all that hard work and time and everything into into making that perfect for me and then seeing it scratched or break or something like that, Yeah, it sort of breaks my heart a little bit. But yeah, that's good. You can shrunk those that that kind of thing off though. That's nice. Me so. Yeah, yeah. It kind of crystallizes the moment in a way. It is.
There is a record out in the world out in the universe of when this model looked exactly like I wanted to look, and if if it goes on a journey after that, that's absolutely fine. One of my favorite ever models is a a Chaos dwarf bull Centaur that has been dropped about 45 times and you know his his
weapon is irreparably bent. The spike on the top of his head is gone, and he sits on my my painting desk on his own as a reminder that models can break, things can change, and so move on. He's still there. He's still one of my favorite models. He doesn't look picture perfect like the day I finished him, but he doesn't need to. That's fine. Sounds like he's the perfect member for the Kasdorf Blood Bowl team. Actually, he's been beaten up, so yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It'd fit in, right? Right. Well, it'd be good. All right, buddy. Look, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk about paints and that kind of thing. I want to. I want to scratch your scratch your brain about paints, mate. So we're back in just a tick. All right, buddy. So yeah, you've got me. You've got me interested in contrast paints. Now, mate, because I've seen your stuff online.
I saw your videos, I saw your stuff on Instagram and then I think you talked about it in one of your videos or something like using contrast paints. And I thought, I've really got to try this because I think you're the only person I've seen. Well, probably maybe Ben Sayoni too, like whiskey and Wizards. I know he uses a lot of that kind of stuff. Yeah, but paint technology, like the new modern paint sort of style.
I'm sort of interested. A bit curious because it looks like it does work and it does give a certain effect that does look appealing if you're doing this kind of very vibrant colors. Things like, you know, using yellows and Reds and oranges and purples and Blues to certain effects. Yeah, using contrast with those colors, you know, really make models really, they're almost like shine using this contrast method.
So I I picked up some contrast medium from Citadel and started and started using it for my for this Jean stealer cult project and a Commission I've been doing and it worked to treat. So I really wanted to thank you about trying to just inspiring me to try contrast my finally dragging, kicking and screaming into the into the New Paint century.
So yeah, no that was that's that's the real achievement for me because I know, I know how resistant you were to them and it's, I mean there's a couple of aspects to it. The the first thing is obviously paints are paints are just tools really and you know you can you can use them. I would say that I don't paint using the contrast method as it were. So when when contrast came out, obviously Games Workshop had this promotional drive to say this is a new product called contrast paints.
And in order to buy to in order to convince you to buy contrast paints, we're going to sell you the contrast method. And I can see why people were resistant to that because the contrast method of spray it white slather on the contrast paint and then put on one normal highlight as you usually would. It has a look. There's a distinctive look to it and as someone who's a little bit of a kind of painting snob, I can, I can tell if someone took 15 minutes to paint a
model. Yeah, yeah that's not not that there's anything wrong with it. But if if your if your goal is getting your models on the tabletop and having them look a nice array of color from a decent distance away, fantastic. But you know to to to put it with a display to put them in a display case if there's a whole army painted in the contrast method. Looks great, looks fabulous. But I kind of like my models to be approaching box art
standards. Maybe not quite there because I'm kind of forcing myself to lower my standard in order to get things done. But you know, I I like them to be vibrant. I like them to be neat. I like them to be detailed. If there's a shiny reflective surface, it better have a highlight. Otherwise what? What's the point in painting it? So I use the contrast paints as a tool to achieve that, but I would say that I don't use the contrast method.
So basically what I do is I spray paint white like everyone else always did for years and years and years until about about 2005 and suddenly we all started spray painting black. But I spray paint white and I do 90% of my base coats with contrast paints and and you you said it particularly on the Chaos Wars. I I did a An Army of Chaos Wars by Fabalzell 3D printed sculpted 3D Chaos Wars and with them it was Reds, Blues, yellows, flesh, purples, blacks.
And you can achieve just as vibrant a look as the the 90s paint schemes with contrast paints if you're using them in a controlled way. So if I'm doing a red, say my, my, my, the there are two Reds in the contrast range that are really, really nice. Blood Angel's red and Flesh Tear is red and Flesh Tear is Red is a little deeper and richer and Blood Angel's Red is a little oranger and lighter.
But it doesn't really matter which I use most of the time because it's not just put that on and then highlight. So I'll put that on, then I'll go through basically the normal highlighting process that we've all been doing since the 90s of put on a mid tone, put on a broad highlight, put on a a fine line highlight, maybe a a a dot highlight if I'm really pushing something to the edge of of making it look shiny and
reflective. And all the contrast does in this case is eliminates the need to go back in and shade because it naturally fills in the the shaded areas. And that's what I really enjoy about it it it eliminates the need to shade, but also it's a fabulous if you're using the medium you've you've experienced it. The flow that you get from this new technology, it leaps off the paintbrush And for me, in 2530 years of painting nearly, I always found base coding the most boring stage.
Because you have to, you have to get a, you have to get a good coverage, you have to be super neat. Otherwise you're spending a lot of time trying to go back and correct later. And you're correcting over either very vibrant or very dark colours with paints which are much thinner or much more opaque. And it's it took a lot of effort and a lot of energy. But I can put the let's say I'm painting a a Chaos Dwarf trooper. I can get his red base coats
done in about 90 seconds. And just to me, the time saved and doing that is incredible. To get his base neatly painted in 90 seconds because the contrast paint flows so well. And when I reach a transition, so where his sleeve meets his arm, the contrast paint stops. Yeah, it stops at the hand naturally. And then when I paint the flesh on the hand later, also with contrast paint, the the paint
stops where it meets the red. And I mean, I know you've, you must have experienced it and I've experienced it. You're using a brush. You've been using it for so long, it's starting to fray a little bit. Your paint. You're putting down your base coat of Kadian flesh tone. The paint is drying on the brush faster than it's getting onto the model and you're poking it
into little recesses. And I do not like the the base coding stage of painting models, and that's what contrast does for me. Then let's say I'm painting red, you go Evil Sun Scarlet, which is my favorite paint that Games Workshop I've ever done. Wild Rider Red, Frostbare orange and maybe a a little dot of of a white or a yellow and you're done. And you get, for me at least, exactly the same quality of finish as if you had done it
with traditional paints. And I'm I'm putting traditional in air quotes for the people who aren't looking at the video. But you get exactly the same quality of finish in about 60% of the time and for me that's a worthwhile, worthwhile trade because you're skipping that fiddly base coat stage and you're skipping the the wash stage. That's that's what contrast does for me. You know, I I experienced exactly the same thing because I
used the the contrast medium. So I'm adding it to paint, I'm adding it to ink and that kind of thing, but did exactly that. I applied it to the to the model, it sort of stretched out and it sort of seeped into the areas where I wanted to go. It didn't over over go or overlap anything.
It sort of just sat right on those the the you know right on the cusp right on the areas where I had to see it and I thought wow this has just saved me so much time because naturally I'm I'm working full time now as a painter so I need to work fast and I'm looking at different ways of doing that to to get those base coats down. Now all for these blood Angel, I had to I I airbrushed them just to get all the the the Orangey Red base bases on them, the base coats on them.
But I could see potential for more organic shaped models like like clothing or like for the for example the Jean Steelers Tyranids that kind of thing. Whereas that could just speed up, you know like you say about 60% of your time just applying those quick base coats down. So you get a nice sort of deep shade. You got a mid tone there and then when it's dry you sort of just build up the layers a couple more times and then you've got a really nice finish
at the end. So yeah, I think they're real. I think it's like liquid gold mate to be honest. You know, it's drinking, It's incredible and adult content will probably drink it. But yeah, it's it's really good stuff and I'm really, I'm really glad I've tried it now.
So I'm really curious, you know, from yourself and other other painters out there of what other kind of additives they're using for their paints, what other stuff they're using to like I've heard of Flow Enhancer and you know, things. Which? Yeah. The Flow enhancer. I've been using Flow Enhancer for years and I told you this story very briefly in text, but I used to enter quite a few painting competitions in Dublin
and it was a small. It was a small scene in Dublin so I'm not waving a flag and saying I was the the the all and end all of painting. But I was entering a few competitions and I was generally winning. And I think it eventually came out that one of the reasons I was winning was I was essentially cheating by being the only person who was using these additives.
Things like Flow Enhancer and things like Medium because it was, you know, the early early 2000s and it the early 2000s was still a time when we were trying to convince people to thin their paints. It wasn't just straight out of the pot onto the model. So Flow Enhancer is fabulous. It's a fabulous product for acrylic paints because it it deals exactly with what I was complaining about earlier.
So when you're on, let's say you're doing a display model, let's say you're doing a Greater Demon, and it's when it's 2006 and paint technology isn't quite where it is today and you're you've got your size 0000 brush because you're doing, you're
painting on his eyelashes. And everyone who's ever got that deep into specifically painting details on models has known the frustration of dipping a model, dipping A paintbrush into a into a pot, lifting it up, steadying your hand to start painting the the model, steadying your paintbrush hand, licking your
lips, bringing it ever closer. And by the time the model, by the time the paintbrush touches the model, the tiny amount of paint that that brush can hold has has dried solid and you're just poking it. You're poking in, you're hoping some paint is going to come off onto the eyelashes and you're going harder and harder and nothing's happening. And that's what Flow Enhancer does.
It stops that from happening. It it just gives you that tiny little bit of extra working time to to get from the pot to the model without it drying out. Now I think it's much less important these days because paint technology, it's really, it's really easy for us to ignore how much paints have improved. Paints are incredible now.
People who are learning to paint now have such an advantage over people who were dealing with the chalky fast drying or coverage paints that we we used to try and paint with in the the 90s and early 2000s. But if you know if that's something that you're experiencing, to be honest, the real solution is get a better brush. Get a brush that has a a thicker body so it holds more liquid. Yeah, but has an equally fine point.
But if you don't have that option, or you you can't find a brush that has the fine point you need, and you are working with a tiny, tiny tiny brush that's only a handful of hairs, then yeah, flow improver is the absolute secret to making sure the paint comes off that onto the model where you want it to go. It also means it's very easy to smudge it though in the drying process, so you have to give it a little bit more working time. Yeah. Now I'm glad we can talk about paints.
It's a really, it's a subject that I really wanted to broach with people, a guest on the show at some point because we haven't really touched on it much. But yeah, like, I'm just astounded how many painting, how many paint companies are out there just specifically for miniatures. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. I could think like, because someone said to me, a mate of mine, and he said, oh, do you want to, do you want to buy these paints?
I've got a couple extra sets. They're from Monument Games and they're the Pro Acryl paints, and I've heard of them and I've sort of kind of curious about them. Then I saw Duncan Rhodes paint set and I thought, wow, he's got some really nice hues of color in there. That was really interesting too. Then the Vallejo model color new range came out. Try one of those paints, They're absolutely fantastic. Then they've got this new Express paints, which is sort of their contrast equivalent, which
looks really cool too. Ali Paint has brought out a new version of their paints and their people are raving on about that. So we're just engulfed with all these different paint companies. And that's just mentioning a few. That's not mentioning all of them that, you know, because Vallejo, I'm big Vallejo guy. I've painted. I've used Valleo for now for 20 years since I made the big switch from Citadel to Vallejo
and never looked back. I found it very hard to compete with other paint companies to have the same level of well, same range for example, or same quality at a very good price.
But yeah, now it's just seems that there's just saturated with with different painting company, paint companies and I'm just thinking these these people must be really brave to do that because they're competing against some pretty big boys like Vallejo. And Vallejo probably be the biggest one I think in Citadel, you know, huge companies when you think about it and then she'll reach their, you know, their the, the amount of stock they can get into stores and
that kind of thing and how available they are. So I really give give credit to those guys like Duncan Rhodes, like making his own paint range. That's pretty big. The Internet has democratized it in a way, hasn't it, that it's a a small paint manufacturer can come and make a big splash on the Internet. They don't need to by GW for shelf space in retailers. They can, they can go out and go, hey guys, we're advertising directly for you the audience.
We've got this niche product and I'm specifically I'm thinking of the the range of niche paints that are coming out of. These are the paints you remember from the 90s. These are the paints you remember from the early 2000s. They they, they don't have to compete. They just go out and they say we're we're aiming these at you. These are the paints you remember from the 90s. These are the paints from 2000s, These are the paints from 10/20/10. These are the paints that do do
this faster. These are the paints that never dry out. There's always new additives, new different ways of selling them to you coming along. Personally, I have a fairly modest number of paints that I use daily, and I have a huge number of paints, but I probably use about 50 paints in total. OK. I don't know about about you, Josh. Would you use more or? Not really. I sort of have a set, you know, set number that I really like and it's really hard for me to to change them out with
something else. I've I've grabbed a couple of Citadel paints just because of necessity and availability try them out and I've been impressed with that. But I really like drop a bottle paints and it's really hard for me to budget off Valeo personally. I do have a set number of favourites but then it's just it's me, not really you know wanting to experiment and step
out and try something else. Because I think, I I'm think I think at this this stage and this year I want to really try to just grab a few AK Interactive paints. Few you know the TT Combat paints. Ben always says they're amazing. So there's another, you know we mentioned two other companies that make paints as well that people seem to really you know, champion because how good they are. War Colours is another one
that's stepped on the market. Well he's been around for a while, but he's got his own nostalgia 94 range as well and had previously 88 range. So you know, we could just keep on you know, rifling off many different companies. They they all offer something interesting and you know, I've got some of the the Nostalgia 90, sorry Nostalgia 88 inks, which are just brilliant. They're absolutely fantastic. They're the best inks I've ever used.
Unfortunately, they don't make them anymore because they're like a gel based ink. So the contrast with them just makes them even better. You know, there's really quite dense, you know, when you're using it. So I'm I'm sure that these companies that have come out now and they have something like even Army Painter probably have something they're talking about their speed, paint metallics, maybe they're really, really good. I don't know. I just need to try it.
So yeah, it's been, it's been. I think this year it's going to be more of an experiment for me because I want to try out different things in different colors and different paint ranges. Not that I'm asking any sponsorship from people send me stuff, it'd be nice. I'd be more than happy to try it out. I know that Nick Neo sent me some stuff from wall colors and I've tried those out with, yeah, some success and some not. But yeah, it's been interesting though.
But. Ben, Ben, Ben from Whiskey Wizards. Ben, Ben, Tony. He's he's a fabulous example of, I think, how I I think maybe in the last couple of years there was this slight feeling amongst people getting back into retro Warhammer that the only way to get the retro Warhammer look was to use the retro Warhammer paints. Yeah. And then a couple of painters came out. Maybe I'm a little bit one of them because of my insistence on you can get her, you can get a crisp, clean, retro look with
contrast. But then there's also, Ben was a fabulous example and Will who does this, the space walls, they all use modern paints. You do not need to use classic paints to get that classic look, especially like modern Games Workshop paints like Wild Wild Red or Evil Sun Scarlet. Evil Sun Scarlet is, in my opinion, the best red paint the Games Workshop has ever. I'm going to write that name down. Actually, I'm going to write that down. Evil Sun scarlet.
It's an incredible paint. Now. It's not like it doesn't do anything magic. It doesn't it. It's just the red paint. But it's it's it's so I don't even know because I I kind of ignore what the manufacturers say paints are for. So when Games Workshop started saying base layer, highlight, edge, doesn't matter. So I don't care what. I don't care what they say it's for. It's how does the paint behave? What does it do? What does the tone look like, What color is it, and how am I
going to use it? And you can get the exact feeling of a 1994 Army book relying on evil sun scarlet, very modern, very opaque, very well nicely flowing, super easy to use Red. You take that paint you, you put a white base coat on something, you thin that paint down. I would use Lamian medium. Which is which is Citadel's Other medium that they sell. They sell contrast medium. They sell lamium medium. Lamium medium is more. It doesn't give the contrast effect. It basically. It mats it.
Bins your paint down without being water. Right. OK, gotcha. So you you put you give three coats of Evil Sun Scarlet binned with lamium medium over white and that is just as crisp and as vibrant as as if it came out of the heavy metal studio in 1996. It's it doesn't matter what paint you're using really it's more about the technique and what you're what you're trying to achieve and the look you're going for.
I think sometimes people and I I think this is part kind of sometimes the paint manufacturer's issue they they they bring this on themselves when they kind of say this is what our paint is for and and and Games Workshop did that with contrast and they put people like you and people like me initially off buying them because when they said this is for getting your army quickly onto the table. I don't want my army quickly on the table.
I want my army to look nice and vibrant and and detailed. I don't want it to look sloppy and fast and and and like I I didn't keep caring about where. I washed out. I think that's that's what the initial put off was for me. Once I saw people using contrast early on, they they look bloody awful because they looked all washed out. There was no kind of solid color to them. There was this just really, yeah, I just was totally. I just thought it was going to be like just a fad that was just
fade away. But it hasn't. It's time to stay because like all these other companies are now making their own versions of it so. Yeah. Well, I mean games Workshops also had a certain irony in that again which they brought on themselves that their flagship models, Stormcast, Eternals and Space Marines amongst the worst models to paint with contrast paint because they're just full of large flat areas or metallics. They're the two worst things to be painting with contrast paints.
Space Marines can look very nice. You can do very nice Space Marines with a base of contrast if you're careful and then you build up the layers afterwards. But contrast paint just straight onto the flat panels of a Space Marine. One of the worst combinations of model and paint technology you can get. So they kind of caused that themselves. But Josh, you probably remember when washes came out, like the when when Agrax Urch State first came out. Never used it. Every.
You never touched it. That's amazing. It's both amazing and not surprising. I. Suppose I'm an ancient beast. You know, I'm very very simple. But that came out. I don't know. When did that come out, 2006, something like that. Maybe a little bit later. But there was a phase when every army in your local game shop had that same overall brown tone to it. That's. Probably why I didn't use it. Because it sounds exactly. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it it so you know the if when people talk about the periods of kind of Games Workshop art, they they always talk about like the red periods and the early 90s when they were putting red on everything because it was the best paint they had. But for me, kind of 1999 to about 2007, I just remember that as the brown period, right? Everyone's models were sloshed in Devlin Mud or Agraxler's Shade or, and I think it took me a while to go, you can actually use this.
This does have uses. Don't lash it on every model, irregardless of the colour scheme or the vibe you're going for or what you're trying to achieve. But there are areas where having this paint as a tool that you decide how to use it is is great. The whole kind of liquid talent is basically where I draw the
line. If someone says use this product as liquid talent, basically to me that says also what you're saying is everyone's army is going to look kind of broadly the same and a little bit washed out and a little bit under detailed. Yeah. But again, you know I'm not a mass army painter, I'm not painting a 4000 point army every couple of months.
So I'm not judging the people who do that, but it does produce a very formulaic result, yeah, which isn't the only thing you can do with the paint, which I think was my original point. Yeah, I think, I think it became kind of a process that people, everyone sort of started doing because they sort of learnt from other people. They learnt from the game
sweatshop store. Yeah, you just paint it, paint it blue and then just just dip, you know, just get this Aggrath Earth shade and just, you know, just, you know, drown it in that. Because like even when I see Ed's videos on Minisodes, he's painting his Marines and he's put it like a red base coat or something on the Marine and then he puts his aggreth earth shade over it as a Washington. And I'm like, no, don't do that. You're ruining it.
You know, Like it just, I would never do that, you know. But for him, he gets his certain results that he's looking for. But I think, yeah, for that, you're right, it it fits a certain style at a certain point. So if I was doing like Dark Age miniatures or something like that, or and I think that Earth, you know, the Earth shade would work perfectly for that. They're really grimy, you know
that. You know, a lot of those armies are just brown, you know, But for a blood Angel, space marine, I wouldn't put it anywhere near it, you know, so. So there's there's actually aggress. I think one of the things that I've painted that people particularly like were my Chaos Wars. Yeah, yeah. And you know, they were, they were vibrant and old fashioned but beautiful models. Again, I'll say Fable Zell, the, the guy who made them, just incredible job. But there's a there's an earth,
there's an egg rice earth stage. Earth's, what's it called? Egg racks, Earth shade stage. There's an egg racks, earth shade stage in that painting process. So I use it for the metallics on those models. Only the metallics. I don't slush it all over because I've spent an hour per model highlighting individual scale male from Eelson Scarlett to wild rather red to troll sailor orange to Dorne yellow and the thought of them washing agraxas shade over that just sends a shiver down my spine.
But I like my Chaos dwarfs to have kind of not rusty but a a dull metal a a lustreless metal. And for me, for for that effect I got, I got. I can't say the name of that paint. The brown, paint the brown the brown liquid works really well. Yeah, but I I totally get, I think, I think like you said, for a certain particular purpose for an application, it's perfect. But you know, just thinking about it now, it's kind of like the modern equivalent to dry brushing.
Because when we got into painting initially in the Citadel paint guide, I mean this is going back to 1991. The first thing you learn about was dry brushing and if one dry brushed and one base coat dry brushed and the. Earth. Cracks Earth show. Whatever it's called that thing is what the what the modern equivalent to Brunt because no one dry brushed. Everyone just put a base coat and washed it down. You know what I mean? So that's what the modern day
painters are. But yeah, I mean it's just a it's just a bad habit people got into. But maybe some people worked with it and they just got the results they desired by doing it. Maybe they didn't or they maybe that's why they just never felt very satisfied with their paint jobs. And maybe for some people it's just, yeah, that just hits the right note and I think Yep, that's done. You know, I don't need to highlight. It's a shade and that's it. And you know where we go.
Especially if they're large army painters and they they they step back and look at their collection and go there's that army. That army looks fabulous and they don't get down to an individual model level. But that's you know who who am I to com? Who am I to judge in the sense? Because the the fact that I want my individual models to be display worthy is why I spent 25
years not having any armies. I only had individual display models, so I'm on a journey basically to bring myself back from the other extreme, which is, you know, it's been a nice, a nice journey, a nice experience. Absolutely, mate. No, it's been really good to talk to you today and I really appreciate your time.
I know it's early in the morning for you and you're going to have to start work soon, so but we'll have to get you back on because like I said, I'm going to do this live stream show series hopefully if my Internet will survive it. I'd like to get you back on at some point when it's not in your early morning, maybe you're in your sort of afternoon on the weekend or something. We can have a bit of a paint and chat about more about paints and stuff like that.
And you know the revolution that's happening in the in the painting world for miniature painting. That would be fantastic. I would be delighted. Wonderful, mate. And I'll leave some links in the show notes of this podcast episode so people can come and check out your YouTube channel. And you have a blog as well for Hammer the Black backlog, Is that right? Www.hammerthebacklog.com. Right. OK. So people can go and check out and then they've got a nice point of reference.
They can see, you know, the very start of your projects to completion, that kind of thing. So it'd be nice. Exactly. And that especially if the project management side of it is, is what's more interesting, right then that's that's where you see that side of things particularly. Right, OK, Mick. Well, you take care of yourself mate. Enjoy your painting. I look forward to the next video you you drop on the YouTube channel and until then, take care. Thank you very much.
OK mate. See you then. Take care.