I came across this on the GW website:
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/...sp?aId=4000008a

Okay, the Guilliman is interesting (if only they had better pics), but I direct your attention to the Iron Warrior Terminator and what it says beneath.

Sounds like Kieren Swift is going to AoTE!

Looked at these last night, didn't fully read the Pre-Heresy bit about the campaign weekend. I wonder...

Was 'Swifty' not at the LAST event? I recall hearing the name many times...

Who is this Kieran Swift whom everyone is speaking of?

GW head office chap.

Man, as if Adam Troke is considered a designer now! He and I duelled at an interview for the same job at GW, and the title was "White Dwarf Online Content Writer"... :rolleyes:

I have been in touch with Warhammer World and will be writing a few words for my models when they are displayed in the Hall of Heroes.

Anyone think of anything specific I should say. I intend to mention TGC if they will let me.

Excellent! I still can't get over what a great honour it must be... it's nice to see your hard work being acknowledged by GW like that!

You could put something about "I belong to an online pre-Heresy 40k community called TheGreatCrusade.co.uk and it's proven really useful for...." etc etc.

Will they let you print your own nametag for the army? A lot of the GW staffers model little dioramas with their names on it... maybe we could get something up there with the TGC logo if they'll allow it?

Shroud - if you could mock something up - maybe a name plate (printed on paper/card) that says something like:

David Widden
aka Wolf Lord Mjolnir

and has TGC logo and web address on it?

Maybe I can send the mock up to Warhammer World and ask if it can be included in the display.

I am thinking around the size of a match box side - maybe a little larger?

ps models will be on display the Monday after AotE II and be on show for around six weeks.

I shall get onto it immediately!

Great job on getting into the GW case WLM
Maybe you can get them to give/sell you a new Space Wolf sprue early.

Already tried to get into the Studio but was told no way in hell (politely mind) :P

I think GW are holding onto all new Space Wolf stuff very tightly before Games Day unfortunately.

Congratulations WLM!! I didn't know you had won that. If anyone deserves it, it's you. Your Space Wolves are really an amazing force, beautifully painted, very accurate to the PH fluff!

Thanks Kharn.

As I have said before the army would never have been possible without help and encouragement from everyone on this forum.

No problem!

I'm drawing a blank on this, but wasn't your first thread for the SW "hot on the heels" of my TS?? :D

Those were the good ol' days...

Really good work there Mr Mjol :D

Personally, I'm not much impressed with any of the PH offerings on the GW page mentioned, but perhaps I'm expecting too much...

(Don't want to go into a rant about this, but has anyone else noticed just how poor the painted models are on the GW site nowadays? I wonder just what the 'Eavy Metal team are being asked to work on, because SURELY it isn't the dross on show in most of the examples in the webstore!!

Here's an example lifted straight out of the webstore...

I had previously been duped into thinking these had been painted to a decent level, but I am really not so sure now [/mild rant] Sorry :unsure: )

Does anyone know how many studio painters there are?

I think the studio painters must have a vast amount to paint pretty quickly. Also, I am pretty sure that when your hobby becomes your working career it can be pretty hard to keep enthusiasm for it? IMO

I would be the first to say that I have not seen one model in White Dwarf that is up to your standard Iacton. I think your current work is the best I have seen, even if you include Golden Daemon entries featured in WD too!

@ Kharn - yeah would be great to one day face off against your guys!

I believe that there is a "hobby painting" team, a group of painters and model assemblers of a lower standard than the EM guys - then the EM peeps often paint certain aspects of a model - eg head like that model in the link - so that it looks on 1st impression that the models are of a higher level.

If you look at the new SW pics, they have definitely been painted by the EM team, and most likely so has Space Hulk, and it's the same for most blue chip releases if the stuff has been sculpted far enough in advance - for instance the Space Hulk sculpts were largely complete by last summer.

The same problem has arisen with a lot of the FW stuff - the brass scorpion and titans aside - most of the new stuff there looks like it has been painted at play group by Bedford's kids...

I don't think I'm up to what EM are CAPABLE of doing, but I do think that studio character models should be up to a standard in order to sell the plain ones...

I dunno Iacton... I think that your work regularly rivals or exceeds the quality of 'Eavy Metal these days... and as for this year's batch of global GD "winners", your latest work blows everything clean off the radar. I'm very excited to see how you get on at the end of the month. ;)

When I was discussing the newer "tactics" that GW are employing, they said they wanted to make the games appear more accessible to n00bz. Basically, instore gaming minis are painted by GW staff to a lower standard than when I was a kid, which makes the kids happier to field their own dross alongside it. I guess with the proliferation of articles and content online, GW studio stuff is now being done by ANYONE with a spare 30 minutes.

In fact, almost every single person in the BL offices has a painting station on their desk, with 'current WIPs' on the go. BL offices, no less.

I guess that the emphasis on Apocalypse (AKA 40k on steroids therefore don't buy a squad when you could buy an army...) means that EM can't possibly keep up with the demands of painting feckin 100s of minis for each month's edition of the propaganda rag, sorry White Dwarf. :unsure:
Sad really, considering that the job is still considered to be the pinnacle of achievement in the mini painting community. I mean who wouldn't love to get paid to paint spanking new minis every day?

As for my own efforts, I know that there's a lot of guys out there still WAY ahead of me, so if I did win anything this year, it would be very much a case of standing on the shoulders of giants ;)

I dunno, they're looking sparkley so far! Good luck anyway.

I agree, to my own eyes your stuff is at least as good as anything else I have seen, Eavy Metal or no. I mean I'm sure there are people, and maybe the judges are at GD, who will view things on technical merit or difficulty, but to me as a piece of art your latest stuff is without peer AFAIC!

Its funny you should mention it but I've noticed actually that the standard of work in LGS windows has gone down recently. In my own local, alot of the better stuff is done by regulars, but then again when all the stores have 1 less member of staff in than they used to and seem to be constantly snowed under then thats hardly suprising!

I can see what you mean in that Chapter Master example Iacton, it doesn't even look like the gold stayed where it was supposed to on the leg bits. Maybe that's why most of the pictures on the GW site are so small, so you can't tell the quality of the paint job. Even I can stay in the lines!

About the level of expertise of GW staffers.

I went a few weeks back, to my local GW, and found they'd turned over the staff again. The staffer had a PH project (Smurfs!) and was working on some metal models.
And I was astonished by the fact he didn't know how to remove mould lines from a model using a knife, the scrape technique.

Every so often I've gone into that shop and ended up either helping him, or a hobbyist while in there, and not just Nooby kids either!

It seems that there is a skill shortage in GW stores, and possibly elsewhere in the company.

I've been good mates with a few pretty talented staffers in my time and I can vouch for the theory (Pacific's!) that now they have zero time to work on store models because they are typically a staff member light in every shift. They are still under the same pressures to have painted models out in the cabinets for every new release and something has to give... and i'm afraid thats quality at the moment.

I also think that the quality of the miniatures in GW publications have decreased over the last couple of years but thats because very few of the models that appear in White Dwarf etc are actually painted by the eavy metal team any more... as stated before by Iacton, the "the Hobby Painting team" allow for all of those cool massive army shots, but dont really stand up in comparison under close scrutiny due to the massive amounts of models they churn out.

Gah... i'm so old....... give me Mike McVey back!!!!

now he is what you call a painter! i was lucky enough to see his diorama of horus and the emperor at WHW befor he left EM.

i was just having a browse thru his web-site and his work just seems to get better and better over the years

we should start a petition, BRING BACK MIKE McVEY!! :lol:

Heh, they couldn't afford him! :D

Now, see, I get the whole "one member light" idea, BUT (and this is a fairly big but)...
They ARE now selling spray guns, boxes of washes, basing kits, etc...
I would have thought that, as the propaganda will show, a prime coat, spray of foundation base coat, spray of wash to shade, stick them to a base and add some sand/flock/rocks/whatever - sum total less than an hour - could theoretically paint a couple of squads of models (less the details of course) ready for a game the following day... in fact, if you used the spray gun to zenithally highlight, you could base, shade and highlight an army in 3 coats - IF that was your bag...
At no point have I mentioned so much as filling a water pot ready to sit down at a paint station...

Hehe yes thats true. But, at least they haven't gone the route of AT-43 with pre-painted miniatures yet.

I remember a couple of years ago Mongoose Publishing were saying that they'd developed an entirely automated method of painting miniatures to a basic standard. Nothing came of it with them (I think it was meant to be used on the re-release of starship troopers which never happened) but apparently the technology is there. Whether this is the method used for AT-43, or those guys are painted using cheap labour in China like all the Corgi stuff, I'm not sure!

At least GW recognises that a large part of the hobby is the effort you need to put in to get a painted force on the tabletop. Although there always seem to be a percentage of players who barely get beyound blue-tacking their miniatures together, I definately think it would be to the detriment of tabletop gaming if it were ever to go. In my mind it moves them beyond 'toys', and I think alot of parents support their kids getting involved because of the art side of things.

I thought the Emp. vs. Horus was still pride of place in WHW no?

Emp vs Horus is still there, alongside that Marauder launch hangar and the Exodite vs Chaplain duel.

Mongoose are full of booshee... and they don't pay for completed video work... :angry: I wouldn't be surprised if their "automated" method was just training little orphans to hold a brush.

I took 4 hours to paint 3 sections of glacis fortification last night. That's 6 inches of resin barricade, 4 colours total. That was an evening well spent, what with having Lord of the Rings on in the background! I pity the people who can't sit and enjoy their painting, and who consider it to be a chore.

Then again, this community is based on the geekiest of the geeky, converting and painting obsolete colour schemes! :lol: Maybe our expectations are too high?

You should have used a bigger brush.

Size 000 is for detail not walls.

Or were you painting eachbit of aggregate? ;)

I was taking my time, enjoying waiting for each layer of wash to dry! :D

I did ruin a perfectly good brush by caking concrete grey onto them in places, then drybrushing it lighter grey...

Kieran Swift is in my battle group! We're the only two IW players at the event, if you can imagine such a thing... :rolleyes:

Guess what (or should I say who's?) army has appeared on the GW site?

Here's a big clue:
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/...p?aId=5100020a#

That's outstanding! Well done Dargor! :D

I must admit, he showed me his little purple chaps in his hotel room on Friday night... I found them all impressive.

(Damn, Slaanesh putting words in my mouth again...!)

At least it was only words!

Well done Dargor looks great.