 Hello everybody and welcome to another interview with the artist. And today is going to be a really fun one because we have somebody who I am really, really excited to sit down and talk to somebody who truly did one of my favorite pieces ever. We're going to look at it today. You didn't know this, Steve is completely unaware of this, but you did one of my favorite pieces of all time. And that really is because of my childhood and nothing more, well also because it's like an amazingly painted piece, but you just, you hit me right in the feels, right? That's what I mean. At any rate, Steve Garcia, how are you doing brother? Good to have you on the show. Good man. I am very, very happy to be here. You're obviously the personality and the influence that you are, the amazing talent. So it's awesome to have this opportunity to be here with you. I know there's actually been a few conventions where I've seen you across the hall, you know, and hush whisper as people say your name as you go by, and I'm always, always just intimidated by the big personalities and you guys, you know, the pantheon of painters. And I just never had the guts to go up and introduce myself. So this is awesome to be on. Well, it's great. Number one, that's silly. Always feel free to come up and say hi, especially from this point forward. If you don't, I'll be insulted or I'll find you and say hi. That's number one. Number two, when we went head to head in a category of golden demon, one of us walked away with a golden, one of us didn't get anything and I don't think it goes the way that you would describe there. So, you know, I think we see that with your amazing piece we're going to look at later on. And three, I think this last adept con, you were basically holed up, right? You and Will were holed up working on stuff right until the very last minute. Oh yeah. There is no matter how many times I tell myself, I'm going to show up to the convention with a finished piece to be able to enjoy the community. It never fails. And this time, regrettably, like work got in the way. So yeah, I even skipped classes with, you know, like I was supposed to have a class with Ben Comets. Sure. That got mixed just to be able to hang out in my hotel room and finish a couple bits of my entry. So it was well worth it for the time it came out fantastic. So we're going to talk about all sorts of stuff. We're going to talk about Steve's pieces and all of that. But first I want to talk about this little guy. Before we get into your journey, we're actually going to start talking about this little dude over on my right, our little Beta Ray Bill Thor over here. Now this is a little Chibi Beta Ray Bill, and this is available as part of the Nova Open Charitable Foundation's Spring Raffle as part of a very large collection of these Chibi Marvel figures that were done by many amazing artists, including yourself. And like I said, there's like five days left. There'll be a link in the show notes to it. You want to talk about this project a little bit and working on this? Yeah. So every year, you know, in anticipation of Nova's big event, you know, annual convention, they do these charity raffles. I've known about them. I've never had the opportunity to participate. But this year, a friend of mine reached out and said, hey, do you want to be a part of this? And just seeing the number of artists and the names and the who's who within the artistic community, it was very humbling to even, you know, to be asked to do that was pretty cool. And then when they told me, you know, you can have your pick in the mill, Thor was on there. You know, I'm a giant comic book fan. Like I feel like that goes hand in hand with a lot of the Wargaming nerds. You know, you like comic books as well. Didn't get Thor, but I was able to get a hold of Beta Ray Bill. And I was really surprised with just like how much I enjoy paying this piece. For me, the base itself, the Rainbow Bridge and then doing some of the non-metallics and that kind of comic book style was just that hit all my feels as you put it earlier. But overall, the, you know, it's a charity event going on. It's got five more days. This one specifically is to support everything going on in Ukraine, all the all the tragedies and everybody who's in need over there. I can't remember the exact number of the total figures that you get, but it's the entire range of that marble united with all the different add-ons and everything. So I think the final count somewhere like in the 65 range, but 45 of them or something like that are painted by every artist. If you like any type of miniature art, you know everybody in this lineup, all awesome pieces. I think it's 10 bucks to get a ticket and potentially you get something if you really wanted to put some type of a monetary value on it, a commission rate. So, you know, you're getting something that's worth $4,000. Yeah, real quick. You're you're with your headphone cables. Can you make sure they're not touching anything? Electronic. You were doing a little bit of like a bit of a bit of a thing or like that the jack is pushed all the way in there. You sounded perfectly fine when we started and it kind of went a little bit funky. So yeah, a little to make sure it's seated in there. There's nothing else that's touching it. Yeah, that's good. How does that sound? Still doing a little. You know what? This might help. How's that? Probably still the same thing. Any better? Still sounded like it. You you mess with it. I'll talk for a little while. So the what I'll say is, yes, the Novo Open charitable foundation is awesome. Many of the artists that we've interviewed on this show contributed pieces to it. There's stuff from, you know, Will participated. Will Hahn, who was on recently Eric Swinson, who's obviously an incredible artist. So many amazing people contributed to this. So look for the link down there in the show notes. But this is awesome. I'm actually super glad you got Baderay Bill. I think Baderay Bill is like one of the cooler Thor's who's not ever really talked about as much or represented. But for for those of us of a certain age cohort, he holds a special place in our hearts because he's just so weird. In my mind, it's only a matter of time before he shows up in the in the cinematic universe. We're going to get there. We're going to get there. Yeah, I'm super excited for that. Is that any better? The voice now? No, no problem. Still do it. Still do it. I do have another headset that I can plug in. If you have the two seconds, it'll take me to do it. It's probably worth it. Yes, because it will be one of those things. All right, I'm going to appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. I will vamp while while he does that. So Steve obviously painted this. You can see all of the different Marvel figures. So do go check that out. Sound check. OK, you sound good. There we go. I'm not I'm not going to move at all. I'm just going to stay here. You're great. No, no robot. No, nothing. You're perfect. This is great. Whatever we do, whatever you did, it's fantastic. All right, awesome. So let's get into it, man. Let's talk about let's start with hobby journey here. Let's start where we begin all things. How did you get into miniature painting? As I say every show, this is such a weird hobby to decide that we're going to sit at desks inside hiding from the sunlight and putting paint onto tiny toys. What made you decide to pick up this hobby? I think like so many people out there, Games Workshop was my gateway drug. My uncle, he's been following Games Workshop, all the early epic stuff. Actually, when it first came out was what that was his jam was epic 40 K or whatever it was called. I remember, but he was nice enough to give his annoying, you know, eight year old nephew, one of his metal Marines, one of his very valuable metal Marines at that point to just play around within the corner. And I immediately fell in love. I've always had kind of an artistic mindset. I used to doodle and draw Ninja Turtles like every other kid. And then when he gave me this like awesome sci-fi soldier guy, I just I went off the hook. I didn't realize it was subversively just a way to like get me to shut up and sit down and not bother him while he worked on his more important stuff. Nice. But that's where it started. Definitely grew up, you know, started, you know, really kept up with war gaming, skipped around to a different, different gaming systems, Games Workshop, Privateer Press, War Machine Horses, all that. Infinity with Corvus Belly. And then at one point, you know, I just had a bunch of friends tell me that I might want to try to take painting a little bit more seriously in the sense of just kind of trying to step away from war gaming figures and do something that's a little bit more or has a little bit more of an artistic interpretation. OK. I went to Crystal Brush. I did well. And then after that, it kind of just took off for me. I certainly love the different things that I paint, obviously being being inspired by the figures is, you know, one of the top priorities when you get into a project. But for me personally, a lot of the art is just it's the challenge of trying to get better at representing yourself on the in the miniatures. So that's I don't know if that's like a typical artistic answer. I'm a military guy, so I kind of have that mindset. So the challenge itself of just trying to get better and trying to realize like your full potential is is one of the aspects of miniature art that like just keeps me at least going. Nice. Nice. So you didn't what I didn't hear in there was any gap years. OK. So now was was there a gap in there anywhere where you were you always like somewhat involved? I was I was always somewhat involved before somebody told me that you could strip a figure. I probably had the same seven metal space marines for 13 years that just eventually they lost all semblance of detail. There was nothing on there, painted like clowns over and over again. Because of course, you can never decide which space marine chapter is the chapter you wanted. Of course. So yeah, that from from that side of it, there really wasn't a gap. I was always playing some type of a war game. But in terms of like painting specifically everything all the way up until I don't know, five years ago is kind of what I considered, you know, I'm just really just painting it to what's that golden standard that they have the three colors. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. Just get ready on just on exactly battle. Right. There you go. There you go. That's really where I think we're that's the only thing I really kept up when they came like painting the miniatures that I played with. So what was your first crystal brush that you went to? Do you remember the year? What year was I feel like covid's thrown off all semblance of temporary reality? Sure. Maybe I think it might have been 17. OK. 18, 19, 20, 21. Yeah, 17. Yeah, 17. Cool. Very good. OK. All right. Right on. What did you think of it? Was that so here's my question. Was that your first miniature painting competition? Did you go to crystal brush as your first real competition? Like maybe you did something at a local store or something. But as you know what I'm saying, like your first actual competition. Yeah, I understood. Yeah, that was it. It was it was very intimidating. I took some infinity figures that I painted for chorus belly. I entered them into the unit category. And that was definitely like that. That was it for me after just having a bunch of encouraging conversations with like fellow gamers at the local level. I painted some stuff up and just threw it into that competition. I mean, looking back on it, completely ignorant of the level of what Chris was at the time. And then, of course, what it grew into when it continued to grow into. But straight up, yeah, total new. Let me try to put my fingers in there and then just kind of like, you know, I don't think I even understood the rules of entering other than sci fi squad. I've got a sci fi squad. Sure. And then the the online thing also like totally threw me for a loop. I didn't understand that. I don't think I entered anything else but that using unit that year. And I didn't even grasp like I saw my model online and that by itself was like, you know, a dream come true to have my model up there online and some video source for people to look at. Sure. And then, yeah, that was it. I think I actually what they the way that they phrase it was it was the first time that there was a straight up tie by all the judges. And it was my entry with Tom Shaddle. He had done some infinity figures as well for one of the other factions. And and that was it. Like I knew Tom, you know, from playing infinity for a while. He was again, one of those like one of that pantheon of painters, you know, celebrities that, you know, they just get whispered about and you see their shadow go across on the other side of the hallway at the convention. So just kind of like split that with him was that was it. That made the entire convention for me that year. Sure. By the way, your headphones are doing it again. It just started as you talked, but I have a solution now based on what you did before. Just unplug it, plug it back in. My guess is you're it's building it's building up some kind of resistance on the line somewhere. And now talk. Back to normal. That's still kind of it's still kind of doing it a little. We'll we'll we'll see. You have more time. OK. Maybe like unplug it and then say something. So we'll see if I can. There we go. OK. Now plug it back in. You have to say a little more. I wasn't sure. Better now. Nope. All right. Well, so much for my fix. I tried. I tried. We're cursed. That's all right. That's OK. We'll we'll we'll figure it out. Messed up. I said I wasn't going to move and I started moving. All good. All good. Nope. Still the same thing. It has like a like a it has like an interference sound underneath it, basically. I don't think this is a microphone or anything. I might have enough. I don't. I bet it. Maybe it's not your headphones. Maybe it's your mic. I don't know. Like what what mic are you using? It's the one on the headphones. Interesting. Interesting. What a fun thing. I love fixing these live. Isn't it. This makes for this makes for quality programming. I was that that was when you said at the beginning if I had any questions before you went live. My question was oh crap. Is this live or are we recording this? Oh yeah. No, no. We're live. It's all good. All right. We'll do this. Do you still have the other set sitting next to you? I do. But I don't think that they're going to they're in worse condition. I probably have another I probably have another set in the bedroom that I could try to go grab. I would say mute yourself. Swap them. See if it does anything. Why not? Different set. OK. Different set. Go ahead and talk for me for a minute. Um, I can do it up the hill. Tell the water. Yeah, still doing it. So the solution I the only other one I have is I do have one more set in the bedroom. All right. Tell you what. Mute yourself. Go grab them. It's all right. We'll take a little pause. We'll take a little intermission. It's fun. Well, it's OK. It's all good. Better do that than to have the sound. It's OK. I don't give it to sex. Yeah, all good. Such is life. Technical difficulties happen sometimes. But, you know, hey, whatever. One of the things I'm amazed by on the show is, and I'll tell Steve this when he gets back, but Crystal Brush was my first miniature painting competition as well. And I'm amazed by how many people went to that murderer's row of a competition. And that was their first one. It's something I've heard so many times as I've done these interviews with the artist where the very first competition they ever went to was Crystal Brush. And I have to wonder if that's because it was, like, just well enough known that it became, you know, like this thing that drew you in. It was a mecca. Was it because it was seated at such a, like, popular convention? Maybe that was what it was. I don't know what drew it there, but it's so funny to me because it was definitely, you know, probably some of the highest standards in the country. It certainly was up there with the highest standards in the country. And so it just doesn't feel like, oh, if you were wanting to do competition painting, that's the place you would go first. All right, let's try. See what we got. How is that? Oh, you're back to perfect. There we go. Beautiful. Awesome. OK. My trusty Green Lantern headphones, of course, come through. It works for it. By in brightest day and darkest night, no bad technical difficulties shall escape my sight, let those who worship audio's power fear my power of Green Lantern's light. OK, so anyways, no, what I was saying was, it amazes me in doing these many interviews I have, Steve. I don't know if you heard this or not, but, like, Crystal Brush was my first competition as well, around the same time. I think the year before you, basically. And it's shocking to me how many people went to Crystal Brush as their first competition. Like, multiple people I've interviewed, that's the first one they went to. And it's so crazy to me. Like, what a wild competition to pick as your first. We're some of the highest standards in the world, right? Like, it's crazy to be like, where'd you display your first painting? Well, I figured no big deal. I just wanted to get it. My first exhibition as a professional artist, it happened at the Louvre. No big deal, you know, right? Like, OK. No, you're absolutely right. I actually, now that I think about it, you know what, with it being the first one, like, I was completely ignorant to the artist community at all. There was like, one or two guys in my community, like, in my community in Texas, that I knew loved painting models as well. And we all painted to that, you know, that battle-ready standard. It would almost be cool to see, to kind of introduce that idea of some type of like a scalable way of going to competitions. I know some competitions now have like the different levels, you know? Exactly. But I think it might be cool to even just have events themselves that are broken up that way, just to kind of build people's confidence and not make it such a looming thing to like go up against, you know, the who's who and the names that you see in magazines and everything. Right, right. Absolutely. Okay, so that was your journey. Now, that brings you into competition painting. Now, did that light, that competition painting thing, was that then that lit the fire? Do you still do any armies or what's your journey been over the, you know, intervening years in between? Has it been just straight display pieces? No, well, no. So I guess like if we work our way back from the first Crystal Brush, I definitely kept playing games. I'm a really big Corvus Belly fan. I love their figures, I love their lore. The idea of just having to paint, you know, 10 models, you know, for your army is obviously really appealing. Especially if you're trying to get them to like a higher quality, it's more, you know, more bang for your buck and for the time that you spend. But so I kept playing Infinity and I think for the next two or three years, I kept taking like Infinity figures for the single sci-fi figure and then the unit or it was sci-fi for, I think, another year and then they kind of grouped them all together. Yeah, they grouped them all together in the unit, yeah. Yeah, which I have heartache about. I've got an opinion about that, about breaking up sci-fi and fantasy, but here and there there. But the years after that, I want to say at least in the last two years, a lot of my focus has shifted from doing like the 35 millimeter scale to now doing like things that are larger. It's a scope creep that I think was, I noticed it after that first year in Crystal Brush, you know, a lot of stuff went away from the 35 mil and then it went to busts was like the next thing to aim for and then 75 mil and then it became 75 mil like semi diorama and then 75 mil with an entire like scene that you had to like have four people carry with you. That scope creep is crazy. I think that's an interesting topic by itself. Yeah, well, I think everybody realized like, whoa, it's actually a lot easier to actually sit down and I don't mean easier like easier to achieve something great. I just mean like it's actually not a straining on you physically when you're painting something that's like 54 mil or 75 mil, right? Like it's actually the thing I noticed. I put in more, you end up putting in more time because you have to render more detail, you know, higher level quality at the bigger scale but it's much more relaxing. Like the something about that scale, it's so small like miniatures are surprisingly small and you're just so dialed in like it actually causes a lot more strain. You feel more relaxed. I don't know when it's a bigger scale, something about it. That's fair. I've definitely kind of grown to appreciate that as like a little bit older. My reading grasses used to be a nice to have and over the last year and a half, they've become much more of a half to half if I am gonna sit down and paint anything. Yeah, we all get older prime, absolutely. So the, okay. So then we had the pandemic period, right? So we've got the great dark age that we were emerging out of here. What was that like for you? Were you painting during that? Were you still, you know, prepping theoretical competition pieces or did it like, or did it kill all your motivation? It didn't kill it at all. I'm actually between my wife and I, I'm kind of more of the introvert. So the unfortunate circumstances of COVID, you know, people being home and spending more time meant for me like more time at the paint desk. Sure. I am in the army right now. So of course, you know, the first year of the pandemic was a lot of response stuff that kind of just took me away from the house period. So I didn't get to paint as much there. I think I worked on the same two figures, which was a dark angel that I took to this year's Golden Demon and a K-Dwarf figure from Privateer Press. And I worked on them for the majority of the first year of COVID, like out of a hotel room. Well, and it was nice. I mean, it was nice to kind of just have that carefree or worry-free time just in the hotel room, you know, after a hard work day just painting on a model. Sure. Yeah, I did. After that first year, when things kind of slow down from a work perspective, yeah, I kept working on models. Not with the intent of like painting anything for competition. I don't know if it's good or if it's bad or I'm really not sure if my opinion of it has developed, but the majority of stuff that I paint, like, I do try to render it to the best of my ability. I don't really have like speed jobs or things that I do to just kind of like, just try new techniques and everything. You know, for me, my painting, my time at the desk is so limited that if I'm going to sit down to paint, I am trying to like put every, every, I guess, Iota skill that I can into it. And I'm not saying that's a good thing. That just happens to be how I prioritize my time and how I work on figures. Gotcha. By the way, it started doing it again. So just so you know. So it definitely tells me it's not your headset. So I have a theory. Mute yourself. We'll try something else here. Mute yourself and then switch your voice and video, like in the Discord. Switch your voice over to something else if you can or unplug it or whatever, like mess around with your voice, make it go somewhere else. And we'll see if that does anything. We'll let it rest for a minute or two. Because the common thing here you were doing was not talking for a few minutes and like switching things around. And when you unplugged it, it would have had to fall back to a different input and so on and so forth. So we'll see if maybe that solves it. It's all right. It's all good. We'll figure it out. So the idea of not having a speed setting or a speed paint, like obviously I'm sure you could paint fast if you wanted to. But that's really fascinating. I think you're one of the few people I've talked to where sort of every piece is you're pushing yourself like that. I think we all try to learn on every piece we do. But that is really fascinating to me because I mean, I know oftentimes I'm doing less than sort of what I would consider my optimal painting capability, very much so. More or less just because I feel like if I did sort of my best all the time, I would lose my mind. That's me personally. Like for me, I sometimes need to like sit down and do less. So that's a really interesting sort of is it, for you, is it cathartic to actually take the piece and work it all the way through? Oh, now there's no sound coming through. So you want to, like it turned off. You might need to switch it back. That's what we got. There you go, and see, and you're back to normal. There you go. No, no robotic noise. So now we know it's just a matter of you maybe not, I'll have to go on rants every so often, but that's okay. All right, we got this. I'm really sorry, man. It's all good. We got this. We got the rhythm now. We've solved the problem. We know how to solve it. We're in the right place. So yeah, is that part of your catharsis with it? Is taking it to the high level like that? For me, it really is. I guess I have tried doing like speed jobs in the past and there's definitely lessons learned in doing that. You kind of, you figure out pretty quickly like what's worth it, what's not in your painting process. Sure. Corners you can cut and everything. But I find that when I'm done with the piece for me, it's kind of a look back in terms of like, okay, I was lucky enough to get an hour of painting this week. What did I do? And those smaller lessons learned just they don't resonate with me as much as if I were to just say I completed an arm on a figure regardless of the scale. I did a gauntlet in a cool non-metallic, right? It's a free hand or something like that. Just kind of having that sense of accomplishment walking away from the desk. For me, it is part of that painting process. It kind of just in the chaos of normal work and normal life, being able to just walk away knowing that you accomplished something after like 30 minutes or 45 minutes at the paint desk that helps me mentally decompress. You feel that sense of accomplishment, whatever, not a chemist, whatever drugs get released from that type of a thing. That's my fix for the day and I'm happy. That's how I equate that type of doing a speed job versus doing something to the best of my ability every time I sit down at the desk. Nice, all right, fascinating. Well, speaking of sitting down at the desk and the high quality work you've done, I think it's time we look at some of your stuff, man, because you have some really amazing pieces you've shared here, so I'm gonna bring these up. Now, you won't be able to see them, but the audience can and I will describe it. This will give me a nice chance to talk for a little while and hopefully delay any issue we run into because I'll talk about kind of the piece here. So the first one, by the way, I did these in the exact order you sent them to me, so that's literally the order they're in here. The first piece is your gold dual piece from this year's Chicago Adepticon Golden Demon and this is Russ versus the Lion. There we go, that I think is correct. I think that's the two people here. I will openly admit that of my knowledge of all the samey-looking Primarks is very limited. I don't mean any offense to people who are fans of these two, but about 10 of the Primarks just look exactly the same to me. They just look like pretty much vanilla dudes in armor. I like the weird ones. Like when it came time for us to paint the Primarks recently for the Heresy Open, they gave me perchorabo and I couldn't have been more thrilled because you cannot mistake him for anybody else. That dude's a weird monster. But this is a great piece. I assume this is what you were working on, basically up until the last minute there in the hotel. Obviously, the judges recognize the quality here. Tell us about this, man. What made you wanna do this dual, this particular thing, walk us through this piece? So right off the bat, I am a big fan of the 40K Lehor, especially the horse Heresy stuff. And these two Primarks, even though they may not be the most visually representative ones, they are my two favorite ones. And the fact that they're just kind of like on opposite ends of the spectrum of personality and the story and everything just really spoke to me the first time I read about the two of them. You got one guy who's your space biking and then you got the other guy who's like your space knight in the most proper sense of the word. So the two of them, they're epic dual. Like within the lore was the first motivating point. And then after that, the figures themselves are actually probably two of four of the Primarks that I actually like. The faces on a lot of the Primarks can look a little janky. These two, I mean, the lion's not great in that regard, but Russ is cool, the space biking one is awesome. And then their poses actually really lend themselves to kind of just being put up against each other without too much effort. That helped with the timeline. There were quite a few decisions that I made going into this project that were strictly based on how much time I had to prepare for Golden Demon. And then the other part of it was is I got some good advice from other friends who have had a lot of success at Golden Demons. And they reminded me or pointed out to me that at the end of the day, the GW judges, you know, they're fanboys of their own world. So I think that was probably the key to it is that there's a lot of stuff in the story and the fight between these two that just lend themselves to being easily represented on the figure without being misrepresented or without being confusing my wife other than our like four hour car rides where I forced her to listen to the horse heresy with me has no idea like what's gone down between these two. So throughout the project, I would kind of use her as my soundboard to be like, look at this, babe. What do you think is happening here? And she, I mean, she nailed it every time. I mean, maybe she listened to it. Well, you know, when her time driving, when I was sleeping, maybe I don't know, I doubt it. But she got it every time. So I think a lot of that just lended itself to like a very narrative piece of fan fiction that, you know, I try to represent as accurately as I could. There's a lot of details from the stories that I try to put into the piece, the dead body. You know, that's the ruler of the world that was essentially like talking crap to the emperor and Russ got offended. And he said, I'm gonna be the first one to take you out for talking crap to me. And the lion beat him to it, pretty much said you go into slow bro came in, chopped the dude's head off. And then that was a slight to Russ's integrity and his honor. And then they immediately just went at it. So I tried to represent that on there. And again, you know, my wife with no knowledge, she was all like, these guys are clearly upset about the guy who has his head chopped off on the ground. Yeah, yeah, sure. That worked for me. Your sound's doing it again. So I'll repeat the whatever process you did there. And I'll talk about some stuff on this that I really, really find amazing and love. Because I mean, I think I want to point stuff out to our audience that I noticed and then we'll have you kind of fill us in on other items. So I want to just take everybody into this piece. I really love, there's so many things in this. I really do enjoy it a lot. And one of the things I really enjoy is the subtle difference in their armor. And so what I mean by that is when we look at, when we look at the lion versus, let's just put it this way. I mean, make this more simple. When we look at the knight versus the wolf, okay? You have a lot more like micro damage scratches. By the way, you're good again now. It looked like it worked so, because I didn't hear anything when that noise happened. So there's a lot of like micro damages, scratches, little tiny elements of battle damage that just gives the impression that he's much more rough and tumble than the other guy who's like very, very clean, right? And everything he has, the cloth on him looks very clean. His armor looks much more refined, much more well taken care of, right? Everything, all that little stuff like that. That's such a small detail, but to me it jumped right out. I was like, oh, okay. You get the personality of these two figures, carries through to even those tiny little details. And then you mentioned the faces. And I did zoom, I did show everybody else here the other pictures, but I really like how you captured the color in these faces, the amounts of other, like the red hues, the yellow hues you've worked in here look really, really nice, very credible to the lighting of the overall scene. Same with, you know, I agree these are two that actually have good faces. Some of their faces are like, oh boy, you know, yeah. But these two, you really captured it. You brought out a lot of their detail. And I just, I think that they, you managed to actually build, I think more emotion than maybe is even there on the base sculpt through your use of these color tones and what's happening there. One other small little detail I wanna point out to the audience that's super fun and that I like is the difference in the color of the base where they are. So like where he's emerging up from shadow and it's like darker down here, you have this more blue tone on that area of the stairs coming up into the light where our night is, right? Where he's like rushing out of darkness into the light where you've got the other figure standing. And you've reflected that really well through the overall lighting schema on the armor here. So that's the stuff that jumped out at me. I appreciate it. I mean, you hit everything on the head. The contrast between the two characters, I try to put it in every little thing like you talked about the armor on the wolf guy. You know, he's a lot more damaged in the fluff. He actually has to fight his way to like the castle where this scene ends up happening. And then you have the night guy who was already like in the fluff, he's a little bit more pristine and polished. He's essentially the guy that needs to be worthy to go into like combat with him. So he pretty much shows up to the battle pretty much clean and polished. And in this scene, he teleported down to where this took place. And it's interesting that he brought up like the blue parts underneath the wolf guy. So in the fluff for him, he's actually like, he's from an ice type of planet, you know, that type of a cold world. And in the fluff, they kind of describe it as when he enters a room like, you know, the temperature kind of drops, he brings the cold with him. And I thought it would be cool to challenge myself to try to depict that in some way like on the base itself. So a lot of those blue tones under him are just meant to be like him bringing that sort of cold with him without making it look kind of cheesy with like some type of like icicles. Yeah, sure. He's not actually Mr. Freeze. By the way, it was still, it is still doing it a little. So you may want to jiggle with it real quick there, whatever you did. But no, it's fantastic. One other small thing I want to bring everybody's attention to, and when I say small thing, I mean like super duper ridiculously important given the area of focus on these figures. But I always, when I'm coaching people and I'm talking to people, one of the things I always talk about is making sure that you have the focal point as, you know, being the faces of the miniatures. Now you've done that through a lot of interesting color tones and additions here. You know, Russ versus the lion and the way that you've actually colored their faces, differently, but still integrated red tones to draw the eye, but also in the hair. You did such a great job at creating this like pop light of the line with both of their hair. They're very different hair obviously. But it's just really nice because even from like when we zoom all the way out, the colors that they have, not only are they real to the lore, but of course they're drawing a lot of attention. They focus our eyes on these two staring at each other and meeting it. That it's frames in both cases, the bright hair and then both of them have a really bright color underneath. And then we've got the yellow tinted pop in the face creating this like real area of poppy focus in the center where we want our eyes to be drawn. Yeah, all that's intentional. I really appreciate you pointing it out. When I was making this piece in my head, I had a very different idea of what this looks like and acknowledging the going into like a golden demon, GW competition and a vendor sponsored event. It is what it is. And there were quite a few decisions. Every decision actually that I made on this was meant, kind of had those limitations. And I really do think there were little limitations because in my mind, this scene would be a lot more dramatic. I think I would have really enjoyed making it more of like, you know, they're fighting in almost like a cathedral that's been torn up and brought down, like very dramatic lighting coming through like stained glass windows and everything. So the things that you're pointing at now or the, I guess the details that I decided to have fun with as I was putting it together. So definitely appreciate that it's come through that way. Question that was asked by the way in the chat and it's something I've wondered as well. Is that column from the AOS terrain set? The column on the backside. Yes. Yes, it is. I thought I recognized it. Just filled it in and painted it a different way. Yeah, there you go. I like that. The obviously doesn't normally come with that damage either. So I like how you added those like holes, indents in the stone. Those came out really well. Those cracks look really nice. Just very, very credible, really realistic. So awesome stuff. Okay, let's go to our next piece here. So I don't know who this guy is, but I think he's a private tier press fellow. He also is very icy and cold. He's in a lot of armor as many, like very big armor with very big shoulder pads as many of these types of figures are, but take us through what this dude is, our single figure guy here. I call him angry Santa Claus. That's what I call him. I think that's probably the number one name that he gets by everybody. He is private tier press and I do not know the name of the figure either. He is angry Santa Claus. The majority of him was just based around, I wanted to play around with the color temperatures or different temperatures of the color red. So on one side of him, you have very warm red tones. And then in the other side, it gets a lot more cool. So you start getting in like those light blues, the lilacs, the purples that get mixed in. And then from just a, I guess from a lower standpoint, I do know that at least for these guys, Santa does, they do play around like ice magic. Oh, I thought it would be cool to try to represent some of the power that they bring, which is where I had a lot of fun using clear resin with a little bit of tint to kind of create that frost effect on the war jacks that are on the base. And outside of that, that was really all it was meant to be for me was just an experiment or a way to challenge myself to represent red on the warm side of the spectrum versus the cold side of the spectrum. It came out really nice. And I do love how you're playing with color temperature here. And we're gonna spin to the second picture of this in just a moment, because I really wanna get everybody ready because they might even not like, it's funny because when you spin around to the back it's when it really snaps into place, how much you're really controlling the overall feeling of the temperature of the thing. But the things that jumped out at me here, just that I quite liked about this figure. And obviously when you sent this to me this was the first time I saw this guy. I saw your dual piece in person before, so I had lots of time to stare at that one. But the thing I really liked about this guy is again, I found your skin work is always really top notch. There's not a lot of skin on this guy. It's just sort of his nose and the top of his head. But it was so very, it was so completely credible to me. The use of these, again, the off yellow tones, the red tones and then working in the blue into the cold side of the face as well, almost, you know, that blue green kind of tint in there feels very natural. And not just talking about the glowing eye but I also just mean like your shadow colors and stuff like that over there on that side really bringing it up. So I really like how that came out. And then I also just quite like the way you're rendering the lighting falling on the red where it's got a satin shininess to it. It's not reading as bright as your full, you know, sort of non-metallic metal, right? Like your various gold pieces, but it's still rendering as a very shiny surface. And I think that it really displays an excellent control of you rendering the finish of the individual surface. Like you wanted the red to be reflective but not full on NMM red. And that came through really well where we're getting the color temperature, we're getting the lighting, it's clearly reflective but not, you know, chrome reflective or bright polished metal reflective. Yeah, no, again, you nailed it. One thing I definitely, it's kind of a sidebar, a compliment to you for sure is just your ability to articulate all of these like, you know, artistic representations in terms like I love listening to you just because it's always like it's a time to take notes. If somebody asks you a question, just refer to Vince and the way that he describes things because he describes it perfectly. Oh, thank you. Oh, your sound got out. Oh, no, there you go. Okay, you're back. Talk again. I think you find out. Yeah, there you go. You're back. That was weird. It just cut out for a second. Okay, but yeah, you're back. Cool, cool. It fixed itself. Yeah, it's cool to hear that appreciation of the skin because I probably get a lot more kudos about non-metallic technique that I apply versus like skin tone. So I do try to put a little bit more work into those. So it's great to hear that that's appreciated for sure. And then you're right about the red. So the red was supposed to be a metallic surface, but I didn't want it quite to be like as speculative as you see like in the silvers and the gold that I rendered on them. So just spot on as always. Fantastic. And so now I want to shock everybody. So we saw this guy close up here. Now let's spin around to his backside and boom. Like I love the color temperature difference back here. This is where we really, really get the cold infusion. Even the gold on the backside has just had all life sapped out of it, right? And that spin, that transition through where you can still see some on the half or whatever it would be the head of the weapon, I suppose, where there's still some of the warm light trickling through. So we still have some of the yellow and then we transition all the way down to the backside of his shoulder where it's just the most against the shadowed blue sort of moonlight kind of temperature. And here, basically there's almost no yellow, right? We're just full on like nights in white satin here, right? Where like red is gray and yellow white. And I just love how much you still, it still reads as gold to me by the way, but it's just had all the life, all the warmth just drawn completely out of it. Yeah, that was the most fun of the piece was kind of airing out like how to change those. The color temperature is what I'm still reading is what they are originally on the warmer side that where they probably, they wrote more of that conscious communication to you. This is gold, that's silver, that's red. And it's, I've had people like kind of ask me for those color palettes and what I used. And the best I can do is really just kind of like that. So the color picker tool in different apps and stuff. And the spectrum is never what they think it's gonna be. There's almost no yellow tones on the back just because of the way the light shifts and everything. And I played around with it a lot because I've had some really good discussions and debates with friends who do this very well, which is using backdrops as a focal point or to help focus the point, the viewing point of a figure. And I prefer pieces that you can spin around and you can kind of see in 360. And I don't think that this piece would work in another way. It's certainly not painted to work if I were to put like a backdrop on it. So I do enjoy that you can take the time to like spin the thing around. And as you do spin it, it has a very subconscious, all the colors are very subconsciously translated as you rotate it around. Oh, this is still red, but it's on the cold side where if you look at them just individually as different pictures, you might not decide that some things are red, some things are gold or some things are silver. I enjoy that play and that trick of the eye that we can render on all of the miniatures. Absolutely, yeah, it's great stuff. It's very much a masterclass in like, the light is the, the color that's in the paint bottle isn't what's relevant. It's about the light that's in the scene, right? That's what you're actually trying to paint. That's what all these bottles that we keep around us are actually trying to create. The light, the light, the light, what is the light? That's what actually matters. Absolutely. Okay, next up we have this bust, which I do not know where this is from. I do not know the source of this. I assume this is like Odin, is what I'm reading it to be given the one eye and all of the like space stuff that you have reflecting in him, which I love. So this guy, again, playing around some more, again, with color temperatures, very warm side of the thing, very much more, I don't wanna say cold, but almost dark side of the thing. It reads a little colder, but it reads to me more like a darkened side, almost like that literally is the side's facing space, just like the emptiness of space. And you've really done a great job. I'm gonna zoom way in here because I wanna show everybody this awesome work of like the little renderings of these stars and clusters and nebulas and things like that that are over here in planets that are over here on this side in his armor and caught in the like shadows of his beard, all these little dark spots where you're capturing all this little stuff. You know, if we go over here to the light side, now that's facing like obviously an extreme light source, I assume Asgard or something like that, right? So there we have it rendered to be warm, to be rich. We've got a lot of saturation. The yellows are strong, the reds are strong, everything's punchy and infused. Whereas over here, it's colder and we have this almost feeling of, yeah, floating in the coldness of space on it. So tell us about this guy. Where is this bust from, by the way? What even is this? I've never seen this before. So it's a 3D printed bust, a friend of mine oversees Sense It To Me from a shop that he runs, another artist, but he does that as a side business. I think it's something 3D, Artman 3D. Hold on, I can give you the name exactly. It's definitely, knowing him is definitely worth a look. This is his entire catalog and his sculpting ability. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, send me that link. I'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, I mean, this is such a unique, cool piece. Yeah, so the sculptor on Instagram, his tag is Eastman3D and I will send you his link, but that's his tag on Instagram. And they guide, he sculpts tons of different busts and full figures, a comic book figure. So that's my jam, so I love looking at everything he does. For this one, it's funny, like I've got another buddy of mine, we both love Thor, Thor's like our favorite comic book hero of all time. And we saw the bust and my buddy was telling me, like, oh, that is Odin and I looked at it and I was like, no, that's Thor. Because when Thor in the storyline, when he gets older and he loses his eye as part of this like transition to King of Asgard, they actually poke out the opposite eye of the other. So if you're that big of a comic book Thor nerd, like that's the stuff that kind of like pops out at you. So this is actually supposed to be a bust of Thor. It is, it's supposed to be like him after he became King of Asgard. Sure, old man Thor. But, yes. Exactly, actually, I'm sorry, I'm fast-forwarding too much. It is actually, it's a bust of regular Thor like contemporary Thor. It does not come with the helmet, it actually comes with like, or, there is a helmeted version, but this is not it. The majority of them come without the helmet, it just shows him like, you know, with his hair and everything. He's got the eye patch on. My dog in the last year and a half has become addicted to Blu-Tac. And regrettably, my spouse, my partner-in-life left my office door open and my dog came in and proceeded to rip the head off of what I had already painted on this bust because I had Blu-Tac doing something. I think I was masking him at the time or something. Sure, sure. And my dog ripped his entire head off, came home from a lovely date night, and he was just in pieces. His head was all nod off. Like, it was horrible. Like, it was one of the rare moments in my life where I decided to almost cry. And just super ticked off. I was about ready to give him a proper send-off to Valhalla in the backyard. My wife was super supportive and put a bucket of water out there. She brought some matches and we were gonna send them off. But decided not to do that. She convinced me to like, hey, why don't you try to like just pull off overnight, come back and see what you can fix. Thankfully, it was not so far gone that I was actually tempted to try my hand at sculpting for the first time. So I sculpted his helmet, the entire thing. And the inspiration for that, I tried to draw between Odin's helmets, like in the past, all the different versions that they've done for him. And then it also incorporates a little bit of like that low-key feel. So I just tried to imagine something that would be like Keith or in the future, what would a helmet that he were to look like. And I was actually pretty happy for once with my work and pretty proud of like how it came out in the end. I would say so, man. I would have never guessed that that was a sculpted piece added on. I mean, it's seamless, the integration here. You did a fantastic job with it. Oh, thanks. That's really glad to hear that. And then in terms of like the paint scheme itself, but again, you nailed it. You know, the cold side is the cold side. You know, it's got all the shadows and you have the warm side. And what I wanted to really do was when he becomes Keith Orr at this point in the comic books, he's kind of like, there's this duality where on one side, he's like that. The Asgardian, the best of the Asgardian warriors, he's in his prime, he's fit, he's strong, he's vibrant. And then on the other side, he's transitioning into kind of taking his place on the celestial canvas of all the Marvel gods. Sure. He's stepping up to be Odin. So I wanted to try to interpret that in some way visually. And I thought it would be cool to kind of take some notes from, there was one version of Captain Marvel, if you follow the Marvel comics, where his costume, when it was like rendered in the comic books and the shadows, it was pretty much like space. Yep, absolutely. And all the stars, all the constellations. So I thought that would be cool to try to do that and represent it here on Thor. So all of the shadows on his cold side, they all went straight to black. I put in all of the different color variation just to make it look cosmic-y and everything. But balancing the shadows with the specket of highlights and the forms to still give that side shape, that was a real challenge and that was a lot of fun. The warm side, that's fun because it's Thor. He's got a lot of gold and that the colors are a lot more saturated. But I definitely had way more fun and spent a lot more time on that cold cosmic side. And then regrettably, because of the helmet, you can't see his eye too well, but it did take the time to kind of give it that atypical Thor, kind of like OSL, lightning bolt glow that's down there. Yep, I jumped over to the picture that has that so everybody in the audience can see that because it is really well rendered. Oh, thanks, appreciate it. But yeah, I just, you know, comic book, miniature painting, this guy hits all the buttons for me. So this was really a, what did the laborer love? I guess. Well, what a story behind this. As someone whose dogs also eat things they shouldn't very regularly. Thankfully, they've never taken an interest in my figs, I can only say, but they love to eat everything that causes me a great deal of agitate, I promise. Yeah, well, what a redemption story here. Truly, Thor, you know, this is the Ark. Yeah, he in fact was worthy. And so there you go, that's, and he's back. Okay, fantastic, really great stuff. All right, next up, we have, I do not know her name, but she's from the Niko Galaxy fig. So this is the girl in the wheel. I've seen this fig around. What a fun range of sci-fi figs. Can I just say that this whole range hits me exactly where I live because it's science fiction the way I love it because it's just, it's weird and imaginative and they're always a bit playful and fun. It's not like just the most dour, everything's awful all the time. Some of the, you know, it's got some fun to it. There's some interesting stuff going on. You get a play with like color. It's what you mentioned about Infinity, what I always really, because I played Infinity back in like version one and I had a hacky force. But what I always really found fascinating and loved about Infinity was you got to use color. You had to use like bright colors and really go nuts and have like shiny surfaces and you know, really like things looked striking, you know? And I think this whole range absolutely does the same thing to me. I'll just point out a few things to the audience here. I mean, obviously, first of all, what you chose to do with the face is simply cool as that is where I will leave it. I'll let you, I'll have you talk about the way you decided to render the face because I just, it's really, really wonderful. But the little things that jump out to me about this piece that I really enjoy how you've rendered all of the little, again, just like small micro textures on the orange, on the steel, stuff like that. There's just like little tiny scratches. This thing's in good condition, but it's not perfect, right? There's, there's wear to the universe. And just all of the different texture differences we have here between the metal that's around, like especially the green or bluish tinted metal versus the more steel and the way you're doing the cylinders and moving through these, you know, chromed cylinders, which feels very credible, then those chrome things are naturally capturing the reflection of the other areas in them. So like you've rendered orange reflection into the chrome bits to show that these are in fact super duper, duper shiny. They're not just kind of shiny. They're real shiny, right? Because they're shiny enough that they're reflecting the ambient color of what's around and bouncing off of them. So I just, I really enjoy those little touches and I want to, I hope the audience catches all those same things in here. So tell us about this piece. Yeah, so this is Niko Galaxy. The figure itself, her name is Yawa, which is just fun to say. I think after I learned her name, I made sure I said it a few times during the day. And just like you said, everything about this line is awesome for me. I love that you can kind of like go whimsical with it if you want or you can go more serious if that's your thing. I dig saturated colors. So kind of going that more whimsical pop art type style is a lot of fun for these. And I think they just suit the line very, very well. With her, this was actually kind of a benchmark or a milestone for me because this was the first official box art that I was asked to do. There was another artist, another Spanish artist that was asked to do the box art as well. And Niko does everything online. So the traditional idea of box art isn't quite what it used to be. Now it's kind of just like whatever the online gallery is whenever their miniatures go on sale. But anyway, so that was significant for me. It was cool that it happened. And the fact that it happened for this figure on this awesome like model wheel looking thing was pretty bad ass. But so for her, the colors definitely wanted to go the orange route. I think for nothing more than it's been a while since I had painted orange at that time. So I thought like a tangerine color would be pretty cool to render on her. Sure. And then from there, the rest of the palette just kind of blended itself to that, put in all the green tones, all the turquoise and the purples. Her face, like for some reason, like I mean kind of going back to the whole idea of like I don't consider my rendering of skin to be like awesome. It's not one of my favorite things to do. So whenever I have to render skin on any type of a sci-fi figure, it's getting the robotic treatment. Sure. For her, it was too easy to decide to do that. And I just thought it would be cool, you know to kind of write off the bad because a lot of the Niko scopes like their female faces have very large expressive like that anime style eye. Yep. And I wanted, I straight decided I wanted to go to the dark eye with the light iris just to give it that robotic otherworldly like feel. And so that just kind of like started to slowly develop itself. I would say more than anything else doing the face and that type of robotic style was the driving, was really the biggest thing that I was motivated to do on the entire figure and everything else just kind of flowed from the face. I also had decided that, you know with all the cloth and the different layered textures that Niko takes the time to put onto their sculpts that I wanted to play with all of them. I didn't want to just do like, you know solid black bootleys or a solid black jacket. I wanted to make it more interesting and highlight the fact that they take the time to put all these layers onto their figures. So I went with the, is that like that Scottish? What's that pattern called? Tartan. Yes. Oh yeah, you're Tartan pattern. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Let's say yeah. Okay, so the Tartan pattern was definitely something I wanted to do and because this is a larger scale of 75 millimeters it was definitely a lot more fun to render, more intricate and more detailed Tartan pattern. And then that I thought would contrast very well with like kind of more of a punk militaristic camo pattern on her jacket, on her bike. And then there's, you can't see quite all of it in the picture that I sent, but there's a little bit of like, you know like a chaos bunny or kind of like a, the matrix neo bunny on the painted on the back of that. That was a lot of fun. And then the only other thing is like you mentioned like the reflections on the metal that's definitely something that I've paid attention to a lot more in the last couple of years. I think it just lends itself to that realism that contained realism on any piece that you do. And then also because this was going to be viewed online I made a decision to, you know, put that backdrop on her. And that was really cool because without, without like conversing with the other artists who was doing the other version of her we both actually did the exact same Flint style but in totally different colors. As it's really fun to see our two versions of her side by side because it looks very planned and purposeful that we chose the palettes that we did because every colors present we just superimpose the quantity of each color in opposite directions. So where the majority of mine is orange majority of his is blue, you know and it's just really fun to see them side by side and the fact that that wasn't planned was just kind of a fun thing between the and I. That's awesome. And again, we're working in I've talked about the power of, you know orange and cyan or teal or turquoise that kind of a combination the Hollywood combination, right? The movie poster combination. And you know, here we really see that in effect. It just, when you put those two colors next to each other each one is making the other look way more vibrant, right? It's a good, it's a good lesson in that colors don't just exist and avoid. And we talked earlier about rendering the light. Here it's also about your color interaction, right? And the composition here the orange never feels as rich as when it's against that cyan backdrop against that sort of more aqua, you know engine parts that you've got there where you've got this green, blue infusion of sort of energy and light there. And it just makes it pop just straight off the page and just punch you in the face with saturation and vibrancy. So you're dealing with this saturated color that then also because of what's around it feels even more intense and grabbing. I think that's awesome. I think there was another aspect of it that I played around with her that I was kind of just it took me quite a bit of time to kind of make some decisions on the color which is because she's got this giant monowheel on her you know, the wheel itself frames the figure. And then the fact that there's a background as well just that creates like a little trinity that can be difficult when it comes to like deciding what colors you want what's gonna make one thing pop versus the other. So the cycle itself, you know it pops off of that blue background like really, you know to everything that you just mentioned it's very purposeful. But then you have her with her blue hair that's also like right in the middle framed by the orange cycle. And that was obviously I did it the way that I did it there's multiple ways to skin a cat but that was for me that was kind of that was a good talking point that I had with other artists was just kind of the idea of when you have a figure that's completely encapsulated like this, that's pretty much framing itself what are the implications when it comes to the color scheme and then a background if you choose to do so. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so now we come at last to it is time it is time for as I said at the start you didn't know it but not only is this piece rendered magnificently well but one of my favorite pieces I didn't realize by the way that this was you I saw this a long time ago and I just didn't even it didn't even register Steve that it was you who painted it and I apologize that's me being a dumb dumb and not paying enough attention to like scrolling through my feed and seeing something I'm pretty sure I have this saved in a file somewhere that's just called like my favorite stuff. Okay, like I just immediately was like that's super cool, grab the image saved it love this thing, right? And so here, I mean look I'm an old man but I grew up watching the Thundercats, okay? I thought it was super cool I still think this is super cool this is what I want fantasy to be because this is 80s fantasy where it's like one guy's got a sword and one guy's got nunchucks and also the guy with nunchucks drives a tank and this is all completely reasonable all of these things belong together like people's conception of sci-fi and fantasy is way too limited I say more laser tanks along with people with swords Thundercats and a lot of other shows like that in the 80s did that so this is just fantastic Lion-O obviously with the sort of omens at like sort of the final moment of rendering it because it's up to full, it's full size here I'm trying not to make this in any way untoward but yeah so really, really super fun tell us about this piece obviously I know you sent me on both here and the black background so take us through this so the motivation is the same thing man 80s kid that was it Thundercats was it them and Ninja Turtles were probably like even best cartoons for me on Saturday morning but you can't beat the Thundercat theme song so they went out just because of that the figure itself is actually sculpted by Javier Udena he is a Spanish sculptor he does a lot of stuff for a lot of gaming companies he does everything that I've ever liked from Corvus Belli by happenstance I didn't know this at the time but he was the sculptor oh there you go yeah all of the privateer press figures that I love the most he is the sculptor wow okay we ran into each other at Corvus Belli like they're equivalent of their games day at Interplanetario in Vigo, Spain and he was a fan of my work once I figured out who he was like I bowed down to his greatness and told him that I loved everything that he did we were just sitting there having lunch and he was scrolling through different things he was working on and he had this sculpt and I just asked him humbly like hey man like what would it take for you to print that and send it to me so I can paint it because it's Liono it's Thundercats I love it he did it it had a journey I think it went back and forth between the two countries like three times before it ended up in my mailbox and when it finally did it sat on my desk for another year and a half because I didn't have the balls to paint this figure but finally did started painting it and I really wanted to stick with the inspiration you know the actual cartoon and what that looked like it going through the process of this talking with friends and artists about how to render it or what would be cool what wouldn't be cool there was a lot of advice I got from them to like render him in a much more realistic style giving him like micro fur bringing a lot more natural skin tones into him just a lot of stuff that would that I felt was gonna take him away from that iconic 80s cartoon look I did take a few liberties there were some things that I wanted to kind of make look a little bit more realistic like in the cartoons on his forearm he has a very definitive like white or line where his like the light skin of his hand transitions into like that orange tone of his forearm so I decided I blended that out more made it look a lot more natural his elbows, the area around his lips and his eyes they have a lot more natural skin tones and reds like rendering into them right and then everything else was just I just wanted to take that cartoon vibe to the max and just balance that off against like a little bit of a sense of realism too to some of the stuff like the silver is obviously not the two tones silver that you got in the cartoon it's got a lot it's got there's a lot more nuances to it and then the base itself, you know, I painted that I imagine that to be the Mumra's like throne room in the cartoon and it wasn't until later once I had primed the figure when I was looking at the details of the base that he took the time to actually sculpt all of those details from the cartoon of the inside of Mumra's like tomb they're actually exactly rendered on this thing and I was just blown away by the fact that he took the time to notice those details because we're talking about like the green vines and stuff that are on the base those are like very, very subdued in the background of the opening sequence of Mumra's like tomb so the fact that he took the time to render that detail to me was just it just added to the flavor and the awesomeness of the sculpt to begin with you know, the reverse side of this thing I think I sent you a picture of that but the reverse side of it has all of the purple tones that you would get from that opening sequence in Thundercats you know, when he does the thunder, thunder, thundercats Yeah I don't have the reverse so sorry maybe I didn't get it, I'm not sure but yeah, it's okay worries keep going but the back of it is rendered to match up so it has like the purple sky that you get from all of the bad guy scenes in Thundercat whenever Mumra and his henchmen are around and that was a lot of fun on here this is also the first time that I tried to do something like I tried to do a more complex cast shadow with the sword being kind of up in front of him I wanted to have, I thought it would be cool to actually render that cast shadow of his arm and the sword like on his face that it would be very dramatic and it was actually pretty easy to do on the face in terms of like conceptualizing how it was supposed to look and then the back of the arm had a few issues I had some good friends kind of like very bluntly told me like, hey, this just looks janky man like this line is too hard, this and that I loved it well, I should say I gracefully took their feedback after spending so much time on a piece like this but in the end I made the corrections off of that feedback and I think he was better for it but long story, not so short being able to just paint everybody's childhood hero and Lionel, especially myself you know, that was actually the true value of doing this piece of the first phase nice, yeah, it came out absolutely amazing you know, I didn't talk about the things I love on here because it's just everything, I think I'm not even sure I could get in this specifics I do love the mix that you hit and I really do feel, you know, you mentioned this but I really do feel you hit the perfect mix of like realism and still being the cartoon things like the softness of what happened with the white to orange ochre transition right, on his hand, within his face in those areas, integrating the red tones into the knees and elbows and stuff like that the gold and the way that you're rendering the NMM there, the steel it feels just like if he walked out of the cartoon and into reality, that's kind of what I would get right, like this, that's what it feels like to me so I think you just did an absolutely fantastic job with it absolutely love it, man, it came out so well yeah, great stuff so, all right that's all the pieces we're gonna look at today truly amazing stuff, Steve, just wonderful thank you very much for sharing and as we come down and we move to our close here we're gonna do a little lightning round of some quick questions, okay so you ready for this? You ready for the lightning round questions? I don't think I have a choice, do I? You do not, that is correct you do not all right, so here we go question number one and all of these questions need to be answered the key with them is, you can't pick more than one thing with any of these questions, you gotta pick one thing okay, that's the challenge, here we go question the first what's your favorite color? turquoise okay, that's an excellent pick it is very strong, I support this completely you and I are simpatico, love it okay, good choice all right question the second and you may answer this in whichever way you may answer this in whatever way you feel is appropriate okay but what is your favorite type? Construe type however you like what is your favorite type of miniature? sci-fi sci-fi is a good answer, there you go, all right sci-fi in general all right, last question, hardest question, Steve prepare yourself this is the tough one that trips everybody up everybody trips on this one, but here we go, ready? who is your favorite, your favorite miniature painter currently active or not, and you can only pick one Robert Carlson okay and why? uh, he, what you described about Lionel where he strikes that balance between like realism and cartoon everything that I see Robert do is exactly the same way now he doesn't do it, he doesn't have the cartoon vibe but his balance between realism and fantasy and again, Construe fantasy how you want and I make believe is always on point if his skin tone has a more fantastical hue to it his metallics that he renders are like almost like they're real you know it's like he's blacksmithing little pieces of armor for his figure almost type of a scenario and the true vice versa if he renders something that's a little bit more comic book style for his metals then his skin tones are have that extra bit of realism to it so just because he can swap back and forth and he does it so just he does both versions so well like I'm always more than entertained to like look at his pictures for hours and hours that's awesome fantastic answer Steve thank you so much brother for coming on I hope you had a good time uh I really appreciate you coming here don't forget about the nova open charity raffle uh spring stuff you got five days link will be down in the description so go hit that up and win uh enter for your chance at the raffle to win just a truly incredible set of miniatures but Steve thank you so much man hey thanks for having me Vince I appreciate your patience with all the audio issues uh this is still memorable and it truly humbled that uh that you had me on here and the next time I see you at a convention I will definitely have the guts to to walk up and say hi that's what I want to hear buddy that's what I want to hear I can't wait to see you at whatever the next convention we run into into each other uh at I mean undoubtedly certainly next adept con if nothing else so but if but hopefully before then too you're gonna make it to nova that is the current plan yes so if you're going we can have a brew there we go all right that's the plan very good Steve absolute pleasure to talk with you all of you out there thank you so much for watching we really appreciate it uh hit like if you didn't already subscribe we have new interviews uh every month with the artist uh always just uh looking to share and hitting those those buttons helps other people find the show Steve thank you one more time all of you out there uh absolute pleasure thanks for spending your your Friday night or whatever time it is wherever you are with us and as always we'll see you next time