 And here we go. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another interview with the artist joining me, the one, the only, Scott, the miniature maniac, maniac himself. What's up, brother? Hey, man, turn me on the show. You know, being a YouTuber, someone calling me an artist is like, it feels good, because I've always looked up to people who I consider to be artists in the miniature world. And it's like, you know, I haven't reached that level. Yeah, I'm just a YouTuber. So here on that, it feels good, man. Thanks. One, you are certainly an artist. I absolutely, as we're going to look at your works, and some of them are absolutely gorgeous. I've actually got your bust up on the screen right now, as you can see if you're watching it as well. The reason that I have that one up just for everybody to look at while we're talking is because I absolutely remember this piece. I know you had talked about it in your recent video, which, by the way, if everybody hasn't watched a mini-act recent video, his channel is linked below, his socials are linked below, go check him out. I mean, if you're, I don't know how you would be watching this and not sub to him, you'd be an insane person, so stop that. But at any rate, like literally the best thing I can say about anybody's work is it affected me and I deeply remembered it because I was like, wow, that's a piece with like emotion that made an impact. This was a bust that that year did that for me. I thought it was the coolest take on this bust to have that like cracking energy flesh. Like it was just such a different take than everything else I had seen with her. So it landed, man. Even to this day, I thought this is fantastic, absolutely great work. Dang, that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about that. So thank you so much. I appreciate that. I really mean it. So all right, we're gonna talk about a lot of stuff. I wanna start with, obviously, we're gonna kind of go through some questions. We'll look at your work. We're gonna do some lightning round Q&A. I'll be watching the comments the whole time. So thank you to everybody who's watching both now and in the future. But if you've got questions later on, we will take them. Don't put them in now, because they'll disappear in the chat and I won't scroll back. I'm far too lazy for that. That's not gonna happen. So I'll tell you when that's just not gonna happen. But here's where I wanna start with. As per usual, I find the beginning is the place to start. So Scott, how did you get into the world of painting? Like what made you decide to pick up a brush and put paint on a mini? Yeah, okay. It was fifth grade, 10 years old. My mom routinely brought me to this mall in Illinois called Gurney Mills. And I hated shopping with my mom. It was never fun. Sure. And, but there was a store called Games Workshop in it. And it looked like a haven of fantasy and sci-fi nerddom. And maybe it was like the third trip to the mall or so. I finally asked my mom if I could go inside and look at it. And so I looked at it and the thing I remember the most was the starter box for the high elves. I remember the picture of the huge wings on that Elvin Prince's helmet. It has this huge long sword. He has it out to the side. I can remember it to this day. And my mom took a look at all the stuff on the fantasy wall and the 40K wall and she saw the demons and she's like, okay, that's not cool. But she was a huge Lord of the Rings fan and still is to this day. And the back wall in that store was all Lord of the Rings stuff. So she's like, you can do this and I'll pay for the models for you but it needs to be Lord of the Rings. And so Lord of the Rings was the first thing we did. She brought him home with me. She helped me put them together, prime them. Yeah, and start painting them. But yeah, that's how it all started because I didn't like shopping and looking at Minis was cooler. That's awesome. And yes, I totally empathize with the being drug to the mall with your mom. That's, I don't know if that's still a thing. Do people like younger children now would experience because do people go to malls anymore? Are those even a thing now? Maybe around the holidays I can imagine, like they get really busy. Like I used to work for a software engineering company and it was actually the office space was in the mall of America. It's the biggest mall in the United States and walking to the office in the morning, I had to go through the mall and on the way back, I had to leave through the mall at like five and around Christmas time it was just always just an absolute cluster. There was tons of people there. So for the holidays, maybe off season, not so much. Yeah, I agree. Cause now it seems like you would just buy most of your stuff online. That's what I do. Like who wants to leave their house? All my paints and Minis and stuff are at my house. That's ridiculous. Outside is scary. Yes, I completely sympathize with that. I buy everything online. My Amazon purchase history is disgusting. I mean, that's, but why? Why go anywhere else? Yeah. So you've got these Lord of the Rings models. By the way, I love that your mom looks at the demons in the regular game and is like, nah, that's a no go, but Lord of the Rings, which is like very much has, this true evil in the world as it were. That's one of the whole points of the story is that there was very good and there's very evil. She's like, this is good. It's teaching a good moral lesson. Get those elves and you go kill those Urakai. So what did you pick up by the way? What was the actual unit that you bought? Was it elves or something? No, it wasn't. I remember distinctly the first thing I painted, and I actually still have the models there, Riders of Rohan. So I have lots of that. But the first army that I committed to was a Lothlorian elf army. And I painted them in green colors because I wanted them to be Merquidian elves because I liked wood elves more than the high elf aesthetic. But yeah, so the first things, Riders of Rohan, I kind of pinged around a lot. I have some orcs. I have some Urakai. But the first army I had, was Lothlorian elves. Nice. Now, did that begin the endless love with wood elves that you've retained to this day? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think I have a disposition to like elves. I'm not entirely sure why, but that was definitely the beginning of the love for wood elves for sure. Gotcha. So you're excited for like, I would assume in 2023 or whenever it happens that there's some kind of Warhammer Old World thing and you might have some kind of wood elf again. Like that could happen. We, yeah. At some point, we should talk about that at length, but that's kind of a love hate thing. I guess we could talk about it a little bit right now, but it's so like, okay, fantasy goes away. Age Sigmar comes in. I haven't fully rebased my whole army. Half of it is repainted and rebased on circles. The other half is still from when I was like a 12 year old and on squares. So I'm in this weird position. Do I rebase the rest of my army in circles and repaint them or do I rebase the newly painted ones in squares and keep all the ones on squares? I'm actually not sure what to do right now with my wood elf army. You should guide me. All right. Here's my best advice. My friend, I've got you covered. I have, I can guide you through this storm. All right. Yes. I made this. Here we go. So here's what you do. You said you got about half your army repainted. Give yourself a project over. I know that you probably like me, if this is something you really love, you want to take your time with it. It's not a speed paint project, right? Like you're gonna bring it up. You're gonna put some love into these guys. For you, your wood elves are the slanesh demons for me. See, my people want to eat your people's souls because they're delicious and tasty and they're sweet like candy. So what you do is you, you focus on just repainting them. If you've got half the army, you still need to repaint. You know that that's gonna be something you want. So you repaint them. It's an artistic project. It's something you're gonna feel creative with. And realistically, there'll be new models when that game comes out too, right? Like that's going to happen. They're not just gonna like throw out a book and be like, well, this was worth three years of effort. They're gonna release new models because they want to make money. And so. Okay, yes. So you'll probably have some kind of new elves from the old world. You would also want to buy then. So then you'll have your whole old army up to, don't touch the bases. Just however they're based, who cares? You're not playing them right now anyways, right? Because really they're not, a lot of the wood elf stuff has just been sort of in AOS. Once they're all repainted, you leave the bases how they are. Cause right now, if you want to play a game of AOS, you can have half mixed squares and rounds in a friendly game. Who cares? It's fine. And then when the new stuff comes out, you got a fully painted army, you're ready to drop. It's maybe like a quick couple of day project to finish the rebasing one way or the other. You're right on the middle of the teeter totter right now. Stay balanced. Then you just, once we know what's going on, boom. You do that and a couple of weeks into the game, you're ready to rock and roll with a beautifully painted army you're super proud of. I love that. Don't make any decisions until you know entirely what the situation is. But prepare for just that quick transitional project. That's right. That's a wonderful idea. See, there you go. Like I said, man, I'm here to help. I'm doing just that. All right. We've solved a problem already. All right. So you're working on these elves. Now you kept that army. Here's my big question. A lot of times when I talked to people, so in this interview series, it's funny because there are sort of four entry points into miniature painting, right? One is like Warhammer. One is like scale models, you know, stuff like that. It's these are the kind of stories, right? Some people come in through War Machine. That's another big gateway. And then some people come in just through D&D minis or something like that. Yeah. All right. But there's always a break. So many people I talked to, they're like, well, I started painting and then I discovered girls and you know, that was what happened, right? That's always the story. It's always girls that end up or significant others that end up sort of derailing the miniature painting. Did you have a similar gap or have you stuck with it and painted all the way through? Yeah, no, I definitely had a break. I don't think it was particularly girls. I mean, I've always been the kind of person to have a significant other, but it wasn't that that derailed it. I think it was probably a combination of things. When I was going to high school, I was like, I was super into playing sports. I played soccer and volleyball and I was also taking like college courses and what I thought was gonna be my future career, which was software engineering. So I just had a lot going on and that kind of just fell to the wayside. And I think another motivating thing that you might be aware of and some of the listeners might be aware of was that I took on this massive commission that was like a burden on my soul. And whenever I thought about doing the hobby that I loved, I thought about, I owe this person something because they already paid me and that just made me not want to do it. So I kind of just shut down on the hobby because it had this negative association. I think that's probably one of the bigger reasons. The ones were kind of just like, they just kind of added to that feeling of this is not worth it for me right now. Yeah, I like that story. I think you shared that in one of the Trapped Under Plastics, right? I think it's for you. Yeah, I think so, yeah. Which by the way, another great thing. So I like, again, if you're watching this and you haven't subbed already to Trapped Under Plastic, which is Scott and John's wonderful podcast. It's both on all your podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I'll link that down there as well. I'm remiss for not linking that already, I apologize. But I'll get it down there. All right, thank you. You've been too kind right now. It's great stuff, man. Really, you guys have a wonderful banter together. You're lucky that he just randomly showed up at your house one day for what I just told you. That's the craziest story, yeah. It's just that he emailed me and I decided to even allow that to happen and just like, yeah, let's hang out. Sure, why not? And it just turned out to be the coolest guy ever and we hit it off. It was the luckiest thing in the world. Sure, but I understand that. You had this sort of Damocles as it was, right? Hanging over your head and just constantly being this weight. And it's one of the things I talk about a lot is there's a value to not having that shelf of shame or to having it under control because you can sometimes feel like, oh, I want to work on this thing. You're motivated. You feel that passion to do a particular project, but you're like, I can't do that. Instead, I need to work on this thing for an army competition just because it's been sitting there a long time. This thing's been on my shelf for 10 years. I shouldn't paint this new thing I'm excited about. I should paint this old thing I don't care about but it's been sitting there collecting dust. Right. And you end up just like painting nothing. Right. This is like, my heart's not in this but the obligation's there and it's just they just kind of negatively cancel themselves so it's no good. Yeah, I agree. All right, so you're coming forward, you're continuing to paint stuff. When did you make the transition? This is always a fascinating sort of point in the inflection of miniature artists to me is we all started out painting stuff for ourselves, for our own armies often, right? Or whatever, just we were painting for as it were fun. Sure, we were trying to get better maybe but it wasn't sort of a serious thing. When did you start thinking I want to be able to paint a display piece? I want to really focus on getting better. What was that move? What triggered that? Yeah, okay. I think it's a few things. So there's a thing, there's Reddit, there's a subreddit called mini thing and I joined the IRC channel for it which is basically like the old version of what Discord kind of now fulfills. There's a chat channel and the two people there, they were moderators for the subreddit at the time, Matteo Spinello and Kenny Hivards, not mods right now, but they really challenged my view of the miniature painting world where I'm coming in and I'm like, listen, GW is the best manufacturer of miniatures in the world, prove me wrong, kind of mentality. And they're like, shut up, you're stupid. Here's a list of a thousand amazing European like miniature manufacturers making beautiful models. It's like, holy cow, okay. So this is a thing like painting models just for the sake of painting models. And so I started to look into these vendors. And the first thing I did was I bought a model that was a GW one still, but I painted it just for the sake of painting it. I bought a corn slaughter piece. I don't want to have a corn army or anything like that, but I just loved the model and I wanted to do an experiment where I painted it for fun and sold it on eBay. Just to see if this was like a viable thing. I didn't want to keep the model for very long. And so I did sell it on eBay, but the funny story is that it sold for less than the model is in just regular gray plastic, unassembled. And the guy who bought it was Uncle Adam. Oh my God. Wow. So that was the first experiment and then I was kind of hooked, but really it was just those two guys challenging my view of the miniature world and kind of opening my eyes to all these amazing manufacturers and creators that exist that I had not been aware of at that point. That's, first of all, that's amazing that Uncle Adam was the one that bought the mini. I think we're breaking an expose here. Uncle Adam's not painting his stuff. He's just buying it from Scott. That's what's going on. You heard it here first. Go to Fred. That was like four or five years ago. It was a long time ago. I know. And Adam's a good dude and obviously he paints a lot of stuff. But so you start going down that road with the slaughter piece, but anyway, I agree. Beautiful sculpt. Like that is truly, because it has that muscularity to quote. Yeah. It's such wonderful. I love flesh tones and that like, I love a big muscled shirtless dude. You can quote me on that. Yeah, so many millions. Yes. It's well known on this channel that I love muscular shirtless dudes. That is something I stand behind. All right. All right, Vince. All right. Exactly. I'm just saying I know what I like. So you get that guy and you're sort of progressing with him, trying to paint him for fun. When do you then go from, okay, I want to start pushing my skill to I want to compete, right? How do you, what triggered that decision to like, well, I think I want to compete in something. I want to put myself up against other people. Okay. So I'd always been aware of miniature painting competitions. And I think the thing that first introduced me to the idea obviously was probably Golden Demon be my background being games workshop products. I had, I looked at them a lot in White Dwarf. My first experience with Golden Demon was GD 2013 in Chicago. Yep. That was the first games day I ever went to. And I think the winner of the Slayer Sword that year was a conversion of a dark Eldar model. It's a female. Her name is Oth Hesperex. And they turned her into a wood elf. And it was, I was the happiest person in the world because I love dark Eldar and I love wood elves. And it was put together and it was the best thing. This is the peanut butter and chocolate of your particular miniature painting world. Yes. Yes, absolutely. So that made me super happy to see. So I was aware of the idea of competition. And I think I think I actually, in the video that I put out this Friday, I talked about it. Me and Kenny saw this tournament or this competition on Tyler Mengel's site, Mengel Miniatures. And he's now a pretty prominent writer for Game with Workshops Warmberg community. But he was doing this thing that I wanted to kind of try out. So we both entered it together to kind of give the competitive thing a shot. And then I was kind of intoxicated. Read it, put on a competition. I was into that. I was aware of the P3, is it called Iron Painters thing? Or is it like a monthly or a weekly? Here's a topic, paint it based on this topic. And then it's like week after week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was that called, Iron Painters? The, yeah, what is it? Iron, gosh darn it. Yeah, iron something. I don't remember either. Someone in the comments will correct us. So yeah, that was, I know several of you have entered it and that really is like you have to have steel in your spine. Yeah, dude, you stamina for sure. That honestly scared me because that's just not the way I paint. Like I appreciate it. I love by the way the idea that they sort of set the time limit and that they have this theme you've got to operate around because like I am a sort of restriction breeds creativity kind of person. You know, you can like self limit your, like limit your palette, limit the tools you can use, whatever, just to sort of test yourself in some way. But nope, that was never for me. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, I just, there's no way I'm going to be able to stay with that. Yeah, yeah, it takes quite a lot of perseverance. Yeah. Okay, so as competition progresses, you know, you're doing more competition. How do you look at competition now? And by the way, I really would encourage everybody to go watch the video because I don't want to make you just recount everything you said out of there. Sure, though, yeah. But there is stuff that I think is really, like your message in there was so strong and resonated with me as I kind of told you off air beforehand. There was a moment in that video where you just were like, you reached through the screen, poltergeist style and just like grabbed my heart and was like, I understand you. And I was like, yes, yes, preach Scott, preach. So, but how are you looking at competition now? How do you see it as part of what you do when you're painting? I think, I mean, I think this is a timely conversation because even after putting out that video, I got so many messages from people about competition about having a healthy attitude about it from people that I really respect, like Chris Suri and other people. So, I guess competition is like a, it's a hard thing to talk about because it's like the advice you want to give to someone who's going to compete. This is the advice I give to myself is like, don't get tied up with your piece emotionally because you're going to be let down and it's going to make you sad. This is kind of like, I think that happens sometimes. But it's the hardest thing not to do that when you spend so much time painting something to not get emotionally invested in it. So, I think the best advice that I got in that video that I'm really going to try to take to heart is kind of like the whole Roman Lappatt approach to painting miniatures. It's just like, if you're not finding joy and love in what you're doing and you're beating yourself up over it, like it's almost like you're kind of wasting time because I don't know, like this is how I have fun. This is a hobby at the same time, a serious artistic pursuit. It's a really interesting combination of things, but I think I want to try to have joy in the things that I enter into competition and hopefully that sings through in the piece. I have yet to do this, but this is kind of a thing that I've kind of been mulling over in my brain like the past couple of days and hours since messages and comments been rolling in on that video because it is very much so an American thing to want to win, to want to compete and win and be the best and dominate. And that's totally true of me. I want to win. I want to prove myself as worthy of people's affection, but I think I need to pump the brakes on that mentality and just be like, Hey, this is fun. I get to see my friends and I get to put a lot of effort in something that I really care about. But I'm still kind of forming that opinion, that's what I'm at right now. Yeah, I completely agree. It's hard because on one hand, you need to be emotionally invested to produce like good quality art as it were, right? Like you have to love the thing. If you're paying, people ask me a lot, like what's one of the most important element? Like how do you be a better competition painter? Like it's a common thing that gets asked. And I say, well, the first thing you got to do is pick a mini that you really love because you're going to be staring at it for like 60 hours, 80 hours, 100 hours, 200 hours depending on what it is. And if you don't absolutely love that thing, you're going to put it down or you're going to cut corners or you're not going to do the work, right? So you better be in love with that thing on a level where you're like, you'll jump in front of a bullet for it. You know what I mean? Because if it's anything less than that, you're going to give up. So the, but then of course, what that means is that you end up just setting yourself up for disappointment if it doesn't end up placing, winning, achieving whatever you thought it was going to, whatever, I'll share something with you that was my habit, that's been my habit. It was my habit every year. It still is to this day. This is what I do. So at Crystal Brush, at Golden Demon, all this stuff that I've competed in, I will walk, like whenever there's a quiet moment, if I'm talking to people, I'm not thinking about the competition, right? So I try to spend as much time hanging out with people. I agree with you. That's the value, right? You've got to find that joy in the community. There's so many great people sharing the art. When I'm alone and it's just me in my head, and I don't know if this is what happens to you, but when it's just me and I'm walking around at like, when I was walking around at a depth con or something, and there's a moment where you're going from place to place, I start thinking about that competition. It creeps in. It's that little demon in the back of my head, right? Like, how you doing? When's the voting gonna happen? What do you think you're gonna do? So I would drown it out by just repeating in line with my steps, you're not going to win. You're not going to win. And I would just say that to myself all weekend and make myself intentionally pre-sad, okay? Pre-sad? Yeah, I would be pre-sad. So then at worst, I'm just like, well, that was exactly what I thought was gonna happen. And then I would be happy because I was correct. It's this sort of Oscar the Grouch syndrome, right? Okay, okay. So, okay, keep going, keep going. If I would win, it'd be like, what's amazing? I totally did better than I expected. I would just crush my own expectations into the ground over the whole weekend that my mantra was like, I'm gonna lose, I'm not gonna win, just get it through your head. So anyway, that was my trick. Okay, I have a question for that trick. Does that, does repeating something for you make you believe it? Because my cynical brain says that, okay, I could repeat it a million times, but I know in the back of my head what I really think. And what I really think is that I deserve this gold or whatever it's gonna be. Does that work for you? Do you actually believe that mantra after a while? I mean, you gotta fake it till you make it. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The answer is no, of course not. Like to some degree, when that awards ceremony or whatever happens when they're calling names, that does go out of your head, right? You're still there, your mind is still like, but maybe, you know, like it could be, yeah. And it's a killer, but I think that in the end, it is worth it, if for nothing else, because I think one of the things that I've come to value at it, and I'd love to know your thoughts on this as well, do you find that you push yourself harder because of competition and that you learn a lot just by deciding to compete? Absolutely, if there wasn't a competition, I wouldn't push myself that hard because it's driving force to wanna win, to wanna prove myself. And just the nature of competition, I don't know, it's okay. I hadn't realized that I'd do this, but whenever I paint something in competition, I always do something that's not comfortable to myself, which is kind of stupid. And one person asked me, they're like, okay, if all of these things aren't in your comfort zone, like what is your comfort zone? Like what would you paint if you had just everything in a comfort zone? And that kind of like blew my mind. I had no answer to that question. I was like, what would I do if I just did everything that was simple and straightforward and easy to me? And I think I spent so much time trying different things out that maybe I don't have a comfort zone at all. I think maybe my comfort zone is painting things fast that look okay because that's what YouTube has taught me to do to fit in a one week video schedule, but that doesn't really jive very well with competition. So I don't know if I have a comfort zone and I'm not sure if I answered the question very well, I'm sorry. No, you absolutely answered the question well. And what's, I think that's an amazing question. What's in your comfort zone? Because I'm not sure I could answer that either because every time I'm doing something for competition, the answer is I try something new as well. Yeah. Like it's just, it's what inspires you to try to push. That's a great, that's a great point, yeah. I don't know where the motivation like sometimes, sure, I'll push myself some on my own personal stuff. I'm doing something for an army and I want it to be display quality. I'll push myself some, but there's a difference, right? If you're, if you're lifting for like Mr. Universe, you're going to be putting more plates up than if you're just lifting on a Saturday afternoon. Like that's, you know what I mean? Like there's a difference in what you're trying to achieve there, right? You're going to push it. I understand exercising analogy is clearly because I am jacked. Right. I knew this would, I knew this would land with you. I could tell right away that you're one of the ones who's definitely, you're spending a lot of time lifting the bar. Absolutely. I mean, yeah, you're right. Yes. Do you and Sam down there just cranking out, just rocking them weights? I know. Yeah, yeah. His body just takes better out of the weights than mine does. So it's more lean muscle you're building. I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I understand, no problem. All right. No, and so, you know, I think that it's one of those things where like, why wouldn't you try to push yourself in some way? Because by the way, let's say you do push yourself and you fail and you hopefully get some feedback from the judge. Yeah. You still then now have that new tool in your toolbox and you're one step closer to actually being able to integrate that next time you decide to go out for competition. Yeah. All right. So it just, to me, I agree. Like I totally resonate with that point. Like you've got to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Most of the big swings I've taken, we're like, well, I'm gonna do this thing for competition. So let's freaking go nuts, right? Yeah. Yeah, and getting that, I mean, I got great feedback this past year from Jose Palomera is about just miniature selection and other minor details. But yeah, that's always great. Because I don't know, I guess when you are, I guess when you're making, when you're trying something new, you make the most mistakes. But if you get that crucial feedback, you learn the most as well. So yeah, that's always a good thing. Totally agreed. Okay, so here's my next question. You prepping for Golden Demon in Chicago? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So what are you looking for in competition? Like there's gonna be suddenly many competitions at Adepticon. So, Oh yeah, there's like three or four this year, isn't there? Yes, yes, exactly. So are you just going Golden Demon? You go in Resident Beast as well. You're gonna try the, because I'm pretty sure, I think like P3 is doing one. I'm not sure yet, but I think I heard that. I don't know. Okay, okay. Yeah, P3 is doing one. I think Atomic Games that came up with their Marvel stuff is doing one as well. Oh yeah, there you go. I think I heard someone say that. I can't compete in Resident Beast because John's doing that. I don't wanna lose to him because you know, I don't really, I'm not the biggest into big monsters. Gotcha. So I think if I'm being honest with myself, I'll have one solid entry for Golden Demon if I'm lucky I'll be two. And I have no problem telling you what I wanna do and talking about that. I'm not big into keeping secrets about anything. Absolutely not. I mean, I share all my stuff out, but absolutely. What are you working on? So I'm not working on it yet, but I've had this idea for a long time called Precite. So I want to, I read the books by Aaron Demsky Bowden about the traitor legion that's just escaped my brain right now. What the heck is it? If you're gonna ask me a 40K thing, I cannot tell you. Oh my God, someone help me out here. It's tough. Oh my God. Okay, it's a traitor legion and they have a particular thing called Precite which is basically heat vision or whatever it is. Gotcha. But in a particular portion of the story, a person stole a space marine's navigator. A navigator is the person that navigates your ship in the warp. It's an incredibly important thing for a giant spaceship to have. If you don't have that, you're sunk. So this guy, he goes out, the space marine, he goes out and hunts the people that stole, night lords, that's what it is, night lords, sorry. So Talos, the character goes out and hunts the people that stole his navigator. And it's not even a competition. Like this is a game for him hunting humans. And so I want to do this thing where it's a night lord either standing on top of a sewer pipe and peering down into the metal sewer pipe. And you can see the heat map below him. And you can see the outline of a human body in there. And he's just waiting there with his gladius, like ready for someone to come out so we can grab them by like their scruff and just let their throat immediately. It's like the hunt. But so basically the idea was inspired by the single figure gallery in Crystal Brush because the biggest question is, you got one miniature. How do you make a story with that? And it's like, well, you add a second fake one, which is like the outline of a person, right? With, you know, in heat vision. So I want to do that one, it's called Precite. I told this idea to Sam Lenz and he was like, I love the idea, but I think you should take it easier and just really focus on technique. So I kept that idea in my back pocket. I love that idea. I want to do it. I wanted to think of a different thing that maybe it might be a little bit easier to accomplish, but also just demonstrate technique in a better way, which is so important in Golden Demon. And so I have this second idea where it's an ogre sitting on a pile of corpses, dwarf, stormcast, eternal elf. And in one hand, he has a partially eaten leg and the other hand, he has a little flower. It's tiny, it's like, it's dwarf by the size of his hand. And he's just, he's just taking a moment, taking a breather from his consumption and his murder, just to analyze the flower. And it's simple, it's fun, it's cute, a little bit of humor in it. I also love ogres because they're giant buff dudes and it's a lot of fun to paint all those muscles. Yep. That's the second idea, so those two. I love the second idea. Like the first one's cool. It's tough to pull. Obviously there's a lot of complexities there. And like part of the problem with that might be just looking at how it's, you'd get that heat to show or whatever in a way that they could photograph it because they do pay attention to stuff like that because it's partially a sort of, it's a marketing exercise as well, right? But the ogre with the meat and the flower, holy crap, that is amazing. You sold me on that one right away. Like it's just such a cool image. It just grabs you, right? Because it tells so much story right there. I love when you can pack a lot of narrative into just a very simple single second in time. Yes. Yeah. And I agree, ogres are like beautiful sculpts. They're so much fun to paint. You've got a bunch of flesh. You can do lots of fun stuff with that, right? Yeah. And that new, that new tyrant that just came out and that Feast of Bones box, I mean, he might not be good for that particular diorama of that new tyrant though. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful model. He is crazy awesome, yes. I agree. All right, let's get into some of your stuff, man. Let's take a look at some of your work. All right, so I'm going to bring it up. It will cover your face. So we'll be looking at your work. We won't see you for a minute. So you can feel free to pick your nose or whatever you want to do. It's fine. Take my shirt off. Whatever you need to do. All right, so I have, yeah, it should be coming through. So I have your black Templar up on screen here. Yeah. And I thought we'd just start by having you kind of walk us through, walk us through this mini and, you know, why you painted it, what you like about it, what you don't like about it now, or anything like that. Just tell the story. Yeah, absolutely. So this is a commission for one of my patrons. And this is the first time I ever did non-metallic metal copper. And there are certain parts of the model where I think it really works out on in other parts where it's not so great. So I really like the trim of his shoulder that has the freehand logo on it. I think that turned out really good. I think the winged thing on the other side didn't turn out the greatest. One thing I don't like about this when I look at it in retrospect is his chest. So this is the first time I tried the whole car temperature thing where it's okay. He's got a warm sword. He's got warm copper. He's got warm cloth. I want the armor to be a cold tone. So I'm going to do it all blue highlights. Right. But the chest, I highlighted it so incorrectly. I assumed it was a cylinder. And so I made these long vertical streaks of light. But it's not. It's a subjection of a sphere. So I should have brighter circular highlights on tops of his pectorals right there. And maybe some earth reflection below. So whenever I look at that, I always see that area right there. And it looks stupid. If you look at his backpack and those little spherical things on the sides of his backpack, like their vents or whatever, those have nice circular highlights. I should have something similar to that on his chest. That always annoys me. The other thing about this when I was painting it was originally the shoulder pad that's white with the symbol on it was also black. And this was an important thing. I got feedback from the person painting it saying like, you know, he would like to do that. And I was okay, let's let's switch it up and do that. And it actually made the model so much better because it broke up all that black armor and introduced that white area over there. And it worked out so nicely. That was kind of a really fun time where when getting feedback from a client actually really, really helped in improving the paint job like a lot. So that was a lot of fun too. And then the last thing to talk about is probably the sword. I try to do this thing like the edge was like glowing. But I didn't pan out. And at this point, I kind of sunk a lot of time into a commission and was like kind of not making the hourly rate I wanted to make. And I kind of gave up on it. But that's kind of like a point of just like you kind of you kind of mess that part up a little bit. So I wanted to be nice and glowy, but it wasn't that great. I should have gotten brighter with the whites, I think probably. I really like the sword color like that sort of solid black with like the reddish, the bright reddish line. This is going to sound like a weird inspiration, but I don't know if this happens to you too. Do you just like see things in the world randomly and think, oh man, I want to make that a paint scheme somehow, right? Yeah, I take pictures of graffiti. I have a whole folder in my phone of graffiti. And I often use that to help inspire people. Right, right. For me, it's like rust and old weathered things. Like if I see beat up cars in parking lots, I take pictures of them, which I'm sure their owners appreciate. Who's this weird creeper taking a picture of my jalopy? But there was like a there was like a Samsung commercial or something for a phone where they were like showing the phone in ultra close up and the phone was kind of spinning around. And it was like solid black, but it had that red edge just like you have here. And I just thought it was like the coolest looking thing. And I've always wanted, but I've never found a good way to do that. And I actually thought I saw this. I was like, huh, okay. Scott actually did pretty good swing at that. Like that's exactly what I was thinking about. Yeah, that's it. Cool. It was just, it's funny because that it's something that had been in my head for a long time. And I was like, I could just never figure out how to implement it or what even what to implement it on to even try and screw it up. Yeah. So no, I think it looks good. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. It's like the edge of something is such a little area to work in. But you kind of have to obviously bleed over onto the other edge. Like the idea was I wanted there to be like a glowing core to the weapon, but like there were like armor plates on the outside. Like the glow is kind of seeping in through the gaps of the plates. Yeah. But yeah, that could have been better with a little bit more white. But yeah, thank you for the kind words. I appreciate it. Absolutely. All right. So let's see. Next up we have, oh, we all know this one, the Vovich. So we have the, Oh, is that a horror movie reference? It is indeed, my friend. Right. Okay. Let's go. I mean, that is one of the best horror movies of the past decade. Have you seen Midsummer? I haven't seen Midsummer yet. I do want to watch it. The Witch is great. I love that guy's movies. They're great. I watched Midsummer. It blew me away, but off topic. Let's talk about minis. It'll be a separate show. We'll start up. It's Vincent Scott review horror movies. Yes. Hell, yes. That's awesome. I'd love that. All right. So take us through this one. Yeah, sure. It's my wife in the background. This is, I've talked about this before, but this is the first time where I was like, okay, I have an idea for a thing. Actually, I mean, this is kind of inspired by that movie, The Witch. I wanted to, I had an idea for a story and I wanted the model to fit into the story. Typically it's the reverse, right? You have a model and you try to make a story around it. And I was like, okay, I don't want to do that. So I put out a lot of feelers, but the question was, okay, guys, I need a female in a dress with a face. That's insane. I need happiness, but like maniacal happiness. And so I spent a good month, two months trying to find this model. Like whatever the time period was between the first video in the series called Homecoming and the second one was me looking for the right miniature. So I found it, but like she was holding knives. Her arms were in ridiculous poses and her dress was just like flailing everywhere. And so I had to hack this lady up a lot and do a lot of conversion. This is a Malpho mini, right? So I mean, this is tiny for the viewer's sake. This is so small and so fiddly. Yes. Oh my gosh, man. The face is a separate bit in this kit. Drive me insane. They do that all the time. Oh, do they? Why? It's terrible. I have had heads in it because I have painted and collected a fair amount of Malpho. There are heads that are five pieces. That's the head is a five piece assembly. That's too many pieces. The nose, one eye, two eyes. Two, no. There is a guy who just, you know, like, so there's one guy I don't remember his name at the moment. He has a little like beard. So he's, he's some, he has like the little pointy beard. You can picture. I'm talking about just a little tiny, you know, just a little tiny jutting out goatee in a little shape. Okay. Not a long, swoopy, dupe beard. A teeny, tiny, like, like my goatee, but coming to a point. Okay. Okay. That is a separate piece. You have to do this. Oh no. It is a quarter of the size of your pinky fingernail. It is insane. Oh my gosh. All right. Anyway, continue. I'm sorry. That's so terrible. I mean, this is, this is like the second mouthful model I've ever assembled. So I didn't know it got that bad. It would be more admissible if, if they didn't, if like it wasn't true scale and it was heroic scale, but just, just to add an entry to insult, it's a true scale model. So it's even smaller. By the way, if you're in Minnesota, this model is in a store called the source. And you can go and look at it at the store up there. And you're like, Hey, if you wanted to put it in the store, you can. And I said, sure, it's not doing anything at my house. So if you want to check it out, you can. But okay. So this model, I pour a lot of time into the conversion. And it doesn't, it doesn't, there's a lot of things about that aren't that great. That's why I ended up spending a lot of time. That and making the base. I had so much fun making the base. And it's so easy to do it, right? Because structures. Structures are so just boxy and square that you can just take regular styrene stock and go so far with it. Just kind of gluing it together at right angles. Right. I had a lot of fun with this. The shingles I used to trick or use sandpaper for the shingle. That was so much fun to do that. The cobwebs on top, that was a crackle medium sprayed through an airbrush. It makes this cobwebby look. Nice. And the black vines on the sides of the building. This is a, oh man, it's from Ari Painter. It's a, it's poison ivy, but I sprayed it with black ink to make it black because green didn't look that great. But yeah, everything is just styrene cut in certain shapes. It's so, it's so easy to do. And everyone could do it is to get some inspiration, look at it and build it up. But yeah, building that and paying that took a long time. Converting the model took a long time as well. And then I had like two weeks to paint it, maybe maybe a week and a half. And I was still like working, you know, at Cray, which was my software engineering job. I was like working from home and like painting this model while I was working from home in air quotes. But it was a rush job and I can look at that now and safely say that there are lots of technical errors in this model that could definitely be fixed. But I think, I don't know, I think the narrative that I was going for is there. Like she's, she's suffering. I loved, I thought of some last minute additions, like the whip marks on her body, the rash near her wrists, where the rope is rubbing on her wrists. Yeah, so there were a lot of those kind of last minute things that I thought helped drive home that story, but their third model is kind of, is kind of riddled with technical issues that I should have fixed, but just did not plan accordingly, unfortunately. I still think the narrative completely lands. Like it does tell the story. And I think in that way it's a huge success because like you absolutely get what's going on here just with a casual glance, which is very powerful. Okay. I got a question for you though about it. I'm ready. Does the name make sense? Like maybe you know the story, but before you knew the story, does the name homecoming make sense? Yes, it does, absolutely. But it is a rather, I'm always suspect how much names matter. In general, like a lot of my pieces, I've just literally named like Imperial Fist Space Marine. When they tell me to write it down, that's what I write down, right? Okay. So you have some stuff and you're like, your plinths and stuff are always really top notch. I really like a lot of the work you do. I'll see that in a minute. But like it does, but I, you know, you have to know, I think you can play with that in your name. You can make it kind of, what's the word I want to say, opaque to the point where they have, if they don't get the reference, it doesn't matter. Okay. Sure. Right. That's the least important thing in this entire entry is the name. Yeah. I got you. That makes sense. And then for the people that do get it, they'll be like, oh, that's kind of cool. You know, so yeah, make it a little Easter egg. Yes. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's fun. I like that. Yes. All right. Now this beautiful lady, she's the next one up here. These are kind of alphabetical in the way that, that I had saved the files. So the Duchess, whoops, sorry. That I meant to zoom in. The Duchess. Yes. I am excited about this one, buddy. You did some great freaking work here. And I can tell we have similar tastes in vampires. So yes. I love hearing that. That makes me so happy. Yeah. I love the Duchess. So this was the first time that I actually went out and purchased materials. So I went and bought a polyester jade and black cloth and took reference photos of them with certain bends in the fabric and in certain shapes and curves that were similar to that in the model, took pictures and I use them as reference while painting. I've done that before, but I wanted to give it a shot. And I think it really helped on several spots. And I think particularly on the jade, what I was going for was silk. I think it helped there a lot too to get the right intensity of highlight. Right. And to get the right highlight location. Like the biggest thing is like, if you look at her breasts, the highlight isn't on top. Yeah. It's in that specular highlight zone where if I'm looking at her front on, I'm looking at the spot where the light rays hitting that volume and reflecting into my eyes. So that, that was the first time I did that. I also want this model. I really, really kind of dove deep into TMM and I can, you guys, you could probably give me some feedback right now on it because I am not like TMM to me is like the easy thing to do when I'm speed painting. It's like, like whatever, like base coat, wash some scratchy edge highlights. Boom. Done. If I want to put an effort, so this is the first time I really tried to do TMM and give it some love. Yeah. And you've made a lot of videos about TMM. One of the more recent ones was doing TMM in an NMM style. So highlighting and shading volumes as if it were using TMM colors. Right. I try to do that here with mixed results. I could do it. I could do it better. So I mean, I can give you a few quick thoughts if you want. Hell yes, please do. Okay. So this thing on her belt right here. Yes. Okay. So we'll zoom in. Here's Chad. This thing on her belt. It's a split angle. Okay. And so your lighting is coming. You have it fairly from above, but it looks like it's slightly off center. Okay. Like your, your lighting is telling me it's about one PM. Okay. On the clock. And one PM like in December or. We'll call it, it's one PM on September 24th. You know, basically. All right. So when I, when I see that basically you're using a slightly off center Zenithal, which is normally what I'd recommend. Like I, I always, I never try to, even though I like start with a base Zenithal, I actually always lean to one side. I always go to like 10 PM or 2 PM to, and then blow the white harder because I always, and I always want to, a piece is just more visually compelling when the light is slightly tilted. And that's what I see here. So. Right. Right. So at any rate, when you've got a piece like this running a counter shadow. So think of like kind of how you did the sword. Okay. Is, is a more interesting way to go. Tilt the light where it's collecting at the bottom on the side of your light and make the opposite side reflected light. Because if it's really bright metal, it would, and it's turned away even slightly, it will fall into deep shadow to counter the reflection. What I mean by that is when you think about the centerpiece here, you would then have a bright silver on one side, opposed by a dark on the other. And anytime you're sticking light and dark next to each other, you're generally winning. Right. Right. Right. And so just a little tiny thing like that. Like always think about how you can alternate. You did it on the sword exactly how I would, but I would push it even farther. So like with the sword, I don't know what metals you use, but I would say that you need to use different metals because I can see the texture in them. So like, Okay. Vallejo metal color is what I would recommend. It's not model air or metal or any, it's metal color. Everybody who, everybody who knows my channel knows, I'm slavishly devoted to this stuff at any rate. And like with the sword, I would push a little like blues into the highlight or something like that. I would push some greens on the backside of the sword harder. It looks like you might have a slight glaze of it. Did you do a slight glaze of green on the bottom side? I did purple in the shadows and blues in some other areas, but the blue didn't come through very strong, but the purple was a little bit more stronger. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, I mean, I like the shadow work. You're right on how I would attack it, right? So it's just that kind of thing. And then I would have just brought the brights up to a slightly stronger silver on the top middle. Okay. So I mean, she's gorgeous, man. The things, I want to just say a couple of things I really love about this. Sure. So I want to talk about the face and your use of the colors in this vampiric skin because I think it's absolutely freaking gorgeous, my man. Boom! Thank you. I love the slight tints of magenta still to infuse a little bit of life around like her upper temple area there, near her ear, just slowly trailing into the under of the cheek. But then I love the addition of those greens that are hinting the jade reflection up from the dress on the lower side of her jaw. That's really, because her skin is so pale, it would just naturally pick up a ton of environmental light pollution, right? Right. And you really, really captured that well in using those greens down here, like people who are watching and see where I'm touching my face. And in this kind of area around her mouth and her lower jaw, it's gorgeous. Thank you. So I want to tell a story about this face. Okay. I filmed a video series for this as a digital course. I'm not selling that, but I was painting this face and I filmed the whole thing on a black SD card. Took the SD card out, put it next to me. And then kept painting, whatever. Next day, kept painting a different SD card. Filled up the gold SD card. Took it out, put the black SD card back in and formatted it and lost the entire painting of the face. I lost the whole face and some of the hair. And, okay, so like, I needed to finish this thing before I went on vacation. I went to Europe recently in Brussels and I had to finish this thing. And a setback like that was emotionally devastating. I was like, I need to do this whole face again. So I was super pissed for like a whole day. I couldn't sleep. I was so mad at myself for being such a rookie mistake as far as video content creation goes. And I did the whole face a second time. But I learned that, okay, I had practice and I did it a second time. It was so much faster and easier. But man, it would have been so much easier if I didn't have to do that a second time. It's really good. I love this model. Like just your design, obviously it's something that you had custom made. You made a video where you walked through the whole process and my God, your video told me I should never get into commissioning my own miniature. Why not? Other people keep doing it because you did it the right way and I would cut corners. That would be the problem. You put in the work, man. I mean, I just told people what to do and they put in the work. Right? I mean, I painted the thing, but like the concept art, the sculpt, the molding and casting and creature castor, they went so far as to fix the 3D model to make it better for casting because Pete has that knowledge about what works and what doesn't work. So like a lot of the heavy lifting was done by other people. I had to wait and also supply dollar bills. Sure. But dude, you should do it too. I want to do it again. I want to do it with a wood elf. I got an idea for a wood elf. The only thing I know I want is that I want to be holding a scalp of something like that invaded his forest. He killed him, scalped him and now he's got like a fresh bloody scalp in his hand. I don't know any of the other details, but I'm working them out. I mean, classically you've got to go either like Bretonian night or beast man. And like a beast man would be a good counterpoint, right? Right. Yes. That'd be the classic Warhammer. Those two guys were always the ones wandering too far into the forest and getting clipped. Getting shot up. That's right. No, this is so great. Like I really, I just, it very much is my aesthetic because when it comes to like vampire lady, to vampires in general, I love the sort of Victorian Gothic or, you know, high Gothic kind of thing of just like this class and elegance and sort of like the ladies that are sitting on the coven throne in the thing in Warhammer, right? Yes. Yeah. Super duper my favorite aesthetic of the vampire thing. Yes. So, and this is just so wonderful. And real quick, I want to hit on something that you mentioned earlier, but I really want to hammer home for the viewers. One of the most powerful things you can do in painting is control like your light volumes. And I think you did a really, really good job of it here because the silk, the green, which is clearly way more reflective, you took up to this extremely bright highlight. But the dress, which is the clearly, or the outer dress, whatever it is, the black, which is not as, which is not as satin, right? You made that to be darker. It's a different material. You didn't push up as high. And it feels like a softer, more matte material than the almost like sharp, bright silk. And that really reads like snap of the fingers. I can see that. Thank you. Yes. Yes. I learned this from Dimitri Faeco. I don't know how to pronounce his last name. Russian painter. Do you know of this guy? No. He wrote an article, I think on, I can't remember his name, but he wrote an article and he was like, take the model. And if you make it black and white, all the materials should read as what they are based on just the highlight information. The colors shouldn't matter. And I was like, that's so powerful. So I, you know, I thought about that. And I use that as, as reasoning for, for why certain things get punched up way higher than others. I took the picture of polyester and cloth and made them black and white. And I put it in Photoshop and I analyzed the brightest and darkest colors in each of those materials. Nice. And, but yeah, so that, that's why I did that. Cause what, what he said, however long ago, you and Ben Cantor would be fast friends. Oh dude, Ben, Ben is a crazy guy. I love Ben. Yes. He's a mad man, a mad man with his planning. That guy. Yeah. He's, he's nuts. I watched, I watched a portion of that interview and he was like the product of the painting is the photo. And I was like, I was like, what? No one thinks that. It was interesting to hear that. He is a singular guy. I love him. He's like, these are coolest dude. So, okay. Yeah, she's gorgeous. I have a side, I've pulled some more photos here. We've managed to cover most of it. So I don't, I would love you to spruke. You made this, you were selling it. I know the first run sold out are more going to be available for people. Absolutely. So right now you can backorder it in that guarantees you one. You don't have to do the, but I ordered, I ordered more from creature casters. So they're being casted right now and being sent to me. And as soon as they get to me, I'll start fulfilling the back quarters. And I'll, I'll tell everyone that there's more available and we can do that. And additionally, you can purchase along with it a, a digital course. It's not on YouTube. It's paid for a course to self-contained educational experience. I guess you could call that where you don't need to go diving around YouTube to find all the information for how to paint this model. It's all in the course itself. It's about five hours long. Half of the footage for more than half is sped up about 150 or 200%. And I go over a lot of different concepts, TMM, the, I show that, I show that a whole analysis of materials and black and white and diving into Photoshop, making paint schemes, all kinds of stuff. There's actually free lessons that you can look into if you want to check it out. It's 67 videos. And then there's 10 more that are, 10 more lessons. Oh my God. It's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. And then there are more that are, that are quizzes, downloadable resources for you to use and things like that. So yeah, I put a lot of work into that video series. I'm happy, happy with it, but I'd love people to start grinding through it and tell me what they think. It's actual, if it has value and it's helping people paint the model like I painted it here. It's, that's awesome. I will 100%. I'll grab a link from you for that specifically so we can include that too. Sure, sure. Yeah. All right. So next up we have the Forgotten Paths. Yeah, okay. So walk us through this one. This was, this was also a crystal brush piece, right? Yeah, I paint, I painted this one, not entirely, but I made the whole base live on Twitch when I was streaming. At this point in my painting career, I had given NMM a shot a few times on some guild ball figures and also on another arena rex model called Gaius Politis, just doing things like weapons, weapons and smaller things like belt buckles and little pieces of metal. And I wanted to really give it a shot. And the, the main inspiration for this piece was a piece done by Enrique Velasco. His online name is Amuse. Oh, yes. I know exactly the piece you're talking about. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Elrond. He painted Elrond, right? Yep, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I love that piece. I love Elrond. I love elves. And so I wanted to do that. So this, this piece is a, is a conversion. It's a combination of, of two models. It's the head of a model from Andrea's warlord saga line. Okay. I think it's called Anariel. Or maybe I'm wrong, but it's, it's an elf. And the body is from a different company. I can't remember the name of it right now. What scale is she? 54 millimeter. All right. So I actually, I didn't know what cat. I didn't research categories at all for crystal brush. I didn't know what I'd end up in. Right. Submitting this model. So they put me in large scale. And I think this was the year that um, uh, Rafael Pica showed up with the son of corn model. Oh my God. Yes. That 92 millimeter corn model that was just like, oh, get out of here. The model is amazing. He was checking in right behind me that year. Okay. So like I had checked in my large and I was like, I was feeling pretty good. I was like, I was happy with what I did. And then he like, he had it in a wine cake, like a wine bottle. You know, it was like wooden boxes that you used to transport wine. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. And then he slides the thing up off of it. And he's like, takes this out. And I was like, oh, get the hell out of here. Come on, man. Dude. Okay. So I think about crystal brushes. I always hate it when people tag team entries. I think that's bull crap. Um, but I am totally for it when someone can sculpt and paint their piece as a solo man and Rafael of Pica is that kind of dude. Um, and so that thing is painted amazingly. I love the red TMM. And the, the sculpt is just, it's wonderful. I would 100% buy that if it was available. It's amazing. Yep. So yeah. So this piece inspired by the Elron piece by a muse. Um, my first shot at doing, um, NMM armor in a, in the full suit. It works in some areas. The hip area looks okay. The breasts look okay. Everything else is kind of pretty lackluster. The helmet's total garbage, the arms are garbage. Um, the thighs. I don't know. Okay. So I took a picture of this model. It's a pewter model under a light source. And I cranked the contrast and I used that as like a light roadmap for where to put my highlights and shadows. So like the picture had those thighs, the top parts really dark. And I was like, okay, whatever. I'm just going to follow, follow the thing. And maybe I shouldn't do it, do a good enough job. But those, those thighs look abysmal. Um, but the base, I had a ton of fun with that's entirely a scratch built the, the, the bridge, the, the pillars. Um, the tree was a twig. I found in my backyard that the tree is kind of lackluster. Um, but I had a lot of fun with that. The quiver and the bow. Um, those are both scratch made too. Uh, the string, the string on the bow is, what was that? I didn't know the bow was he scratch made the bow. Yeah. Uh, a piece of brass. I bent it over a form and then sculpted the ends to look like an elephant, whatever, whatever, whatever that means. Amazing. Thanks. And then I screwed it up and tied a string to it. That was way too big, way too thick. Um, I think I was, that's when I was kind of getting close to the end and I just wanted to be done with it. Gotcha. But they make a product called, I think it's called easy wire. Um, that, that is two scale string for miniatures. And I should have used that. Now it would have made it a lot better. Yeah. The quiver was also scratch built. Super easy. I just took brass round stock that was hollow and I cut it on an angle and then I squished it. I kind of sandwiched it. So it was kind of ovular instead of round. And then I kind of sculpted a little top armor part that was, had a cool curve in it and put some arrows in it that I scratch made as well, which arrows are super easy to make. Right. And then put a little strap on it. Like any, anyone could do that. It's really easy. Well, you've got a real talent for, for like, you have a real talent for the craft side of the hobby. I mean that, like the most sincerity, like the basing videos you do are really good because I'm, I'm a, I love basing as well. And you do some great, really creative stuff. And it's amazing to me how good you are at just scratch building things out of stuff. Like you have a great eye for that, for that element of the hobby. Like I'm, I'm unbelievably jealous of it. It's wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. I love, you called it the craft side of the hobby. That's absolutely what it is. It's just like the making stuff out of what you have kind of thing or, or going out and getting the raw materials, styrene, balsa wood, aluminum, brass, whatever it is. Right. Just kind of figuring out how to, how to do it. It's almost like it's kind of like cheating. Like I'm not, those pillars, for instance, that's just styrene, square, square stock. I put milliput on it. And I just carved little lines in it. Once the milliput dried with a triangle file, a triangle file. I don't know why I put the emphasis in the wrong syllable like John does. Yeah. It's just carving down a triangle file. And it was super easy. I didn't need to like sculpt something. It's just, it's kind of thinking about how you can kind of work with the materials properties and kind of cheat it a little bit to get a good result. No, it's great. All right. Excellent. Next up, we have a, your Hellboy bust, which I've got. Oh yeah. I was talking about like the plinth work. Like I love to use the comic as the, like covering the plinth. Yeah. So take us through this guy. This is a gift from my mom. She's a Hellboy fan, which is like a weird thing to say about your mom. I am fascinated by your mother. Let me just say that. I mean that in the nicest way. The fact that she was like, no to D&D because of demons, but Hellboy. Yes. That's a guy I'm backing. So all right. That's great. Your mom's cool. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. Let me knock my mom down a few pegs. She doesn't like read the comic book, but she does. She loves the movie series. That's why she likes Hellboy. But yeah. So this was a bust. Man, I can't remember the sculptor's name. It starts with an O. It was sold on that. That one site that British guy fulfills that his logo is like a, it's like a chipmunk or a squirrel with an accent. It's wearing plaid. You know what I'm talking about? I only know Mr. Lee's minis. That's it. Mr. Lee's minis. Okay. So it's all on that site. And I bought it for my mom for the intent of doing a gift. I'm not sure what the purpose, like why I wanted to paint it. Yeah. I have no idea. But while I was painting it, I was like, okay, this is a fun opportunity to work on the color red and really focus on red. Right. Because red's a tough color sometimes to, to make look really vibrant and punchy. And I did, I think I did okay here. I did the whole idea where I think Ben comments illustrated this on his, his corn figure where he painted the model in gray scale and then did it in, and then like inked it in red or whatever colors. I didn't do that. But I brought my highlights all the way up to pink and white and then kind of combed it back with red ink to try to get like a really punchy color. And then the eyes, I did some OSL. I didn't turn out the greatest. I got some feedback during this process from one of the, one of the best OSL guys in the game, Roman Lopop. Yes. And he gave me some advice. And I adjusted it and in some areas it looks okay and in some others it doesn't look okay. I wanted to do a mixture. So this sculpt looks more like the comic than it does the movie. Right. Right. And so in the movie, he has this really dark eye-lining. And so I was like, okay, how do I, how do I do the dark eye-lining while also doing yellow OSL? And I couldn't figure it out. So I just kind of ditched the black eye-lining thing. And then I had fun. I put some blues in the shadows. And then had fun with the shirt. Everyone had, every version of this shirt has a different metal band on it. And I was like, okay, someone's done KISS. They done Metallica. So I had to do Slayer. But yeah. Nice. Nice. No, it's good. I like the texture on his collar. And yeah, you can definitely feel the nice warm to cold transition. Right. The shadows feel deep and blue. Yeah. I dig it. I dig it a lot. Thanks. Cool. All right. And then we've got this boy right here, which is the Lord Executioner. Yeah. And his, and his very, I suspect based on the video I watched frustrating to you, Axe, but I hope you're happy with it in the end because I think it looks awesome. Yeah. It was frustrating to do at the time. So I'm a big consumer of YouTube videos. I really like watching him for entertainment. And at the time I've been watching a lot of Alex Steele, who's a blacksmith on blacksmith on YouTube. And so I wanted to do a fresh forged weapon. And because I was inspired by that. So that was, that was fun to try and to, and to work with but the idea for this model was I wanted to be a Wild West Executioner. Right. And so all the, all the colors were kind of done, like with that as, as inspiration. Yeah. So, okay, about, about the Axe, I didn't necessarily place the highlights in the bright spots and areas where it makes a whole lot of sense. Like a, I guess in the area where the head of the Axe attaches to the part of the handle, that makes sense because it's small and thin, but that bright spot should carry over into the core of the Axe because as metal cools down, it cools down on the edges first and then more on the core because they're like, they're like, it's like insulation for itself. Right. I had it painted that way initially. And then I started to add in things like slag and, and other impurities in the metal rising up on top. And it didn't, I kind of messed it up a little bit. So it didn't work out the greatest. Yeah, I love this model. This model was one that was painted by a patron in a giveaway. And I had a lot of fun with that. I had fun with eyes. So like the model, as you know, has, it doesn't have eyes, but I, you know, I painted it dark in the eye socket and then gave it kind of like, like pink eyes. Yeah. Bright on the top and darker on the bottom. Had a lot of fun with that. No, there's little choices on here. I really like, first of all, the base thing is again, top notch. I love the scene. It totally sells. It's awesome and works well with by the thing on his back. Like you matched the, this thing, man's noose. He's carrying around to everything else below him, which is awesome. But what I really like is your, your robes feel like dusty and dry and kind of muted and naturalistic, which is unusual for ghost. You don't see that, but it fits really well in the scene and it's contrasts really well against all the fire that's surrounding him. And I think the flaming acts is like such a great choice because then it made him, you created the circle around him. Ah, yes. Okay. Not intentional, but yes, that works. You created like a nice ring to view him. And so it actually goes this very hot. By the way, his hands are also doing that, which I love that you made them red. Very unusual choice. Both people do like ghosty stuff. The red works itself because it keeps that outer ring of heat. And also then, so it's like hot and then his natural tones and then the little red spots in the middle. And you formed a nice red triangle between his eyes and his arms. Yes. It was this great alternation between colors. It's really good. Thank you. Yeah. This model was a test piece for a model that I haven't painted yet. There's a company called Terrible Kids Stuff. And they made this model called the Executioner. And I have it in 75 millimeter. Oh, wow. It has like a pyramid head. Okay. So like Silent Hill or whatever. Exactly like Silent Hill. And he has this huge weapon that's like attached to his entire forearm. And I wanted to paint it inspired by the video game Doom, like he's a guardian of hell. And I wanted the weapon to look like he was glowing, not necessarily a forged weapon, but just like it's going like, you know, it's a hellish weapon. Yeah. This was an experiment for that. So hopefully someday I'll get that done. Right on. All right. So now let's put these away. Great stuff. I mean, beautiful, beautiful stuff, man. Let's go back to your back to you. Let's close out here with our lightning round questions. Yeah. Put my shirt on first. Hold on. I was kidding. All right. Here we go. Are you ready, sir, for the lightning round questions? Yep. Okay. Question the first. And you can only pick one, which is why this is a hard question. You ready? Yeah. Who is your favorite miniature painter past? Michael Posarski. Wow. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Rodrigo Acore. Okay. Yeah. All right. Ripping off an answer. I love it. Consternation. You've got your pony. You know who you're picking. I love it. Yes. All right. Awesome. What is your favorite single color of pink? Okay. I knew you were going to ask this question. I'm looking it up right now. It's a scale color. It's dark blue. It's not abyssal blue. Deep blue. That's what it is. Deep blue. Deep blue is a great color. It's a frequent go-to for me as well. I support this. Great color. All right. What is your favorite type of mini to paint? You can construe type however you want. Okay. Evil. All right. There you go. I like that. Why so? I've always been a fan of villains. They're always more interesting to me than good guys. Good guys are always so one-dimensional. Bad guys have just more going on in their head and in their lives that interest me. Like you kind of, with evil, sometimes you can encapsulate anti-hero as well. Sure. Like Michael Morbius, a vampire from the Marvel world, is an anti-hero. So yeah, I think they're just more interesting characters. Nice. Nice. All right. Final question. Are you a brush-licker? Hell yeah. What paint tastes the best? Vallejo air color. Because it's got a sweet edge to it, right? Yeah. Yeah. What the hell? Yeah. Don't eat paint. This is not a recommendation for many of us. Don't do it, kids. Wipe your brush safely. Clean things off. Don't do that. But it is true. All right. So it's true. And I agree with Joe Orthober, who in the comments said good always loses because good is dumb. Yeah. It's true. That's right. All right, Scott. Absolute pleasure, buddy. Having you on, man. This is a ton of fun. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was a lot of fun being here. I'm super happy to talk about the art form. It's a lot of fun. Absolutely. As always, everything I mentioned will be linked below. Go check it out. I would imagine you already knew about it already if you're here. But anyways, thank you, Scott. I want to extend my personal thanks for you coming on. It's been great to hang out with your brother. Great to look at your work and for your share of your story. And I am thankful. We'll have to do it again. Absolutely. Actually, before we end, let me just say, if anyone's here, that's a viewer of mine who doesn't know this is probably. He's probably. I don't know. What I appreciate so much about Vince is that he doesn't play the rat race of YouTube. So I've played the rat race of YouTube, right? I use clickbait thumbnails, titles. I make videos that I know will work on YouTube. That's probably the biggest number one thing that I'm concerned about when picking a topic for a video. Vince makes incredibly specific videos for miniature painting nerds who are looking for deep drill like dives on very specific things. So if you are looking for an educational experience that deep dives on specific topics, he's got thousands of videos and you will find exactly what you need. So check it out. It's he's he's wonderful. He's selfless in that sense. Well, I appreciate that man very much. I really do. Yes, that's it's what I like, like just doing that thing. It's a sharing a single thing that I discovered or that I know and hopefully it helps other people take a step on their journey. And in the end, that's that's why I like to do this because I think one of the fun things about doing this interview and sharing your story is a lot of people look up to you as an artist, as a miniature painter. And I think it's important for us to talk through how we went through that journey because, you know, I see all this all the time. It's like, oh, I could never paint like that. It's like, well, yeah, you could. You could. You just got to take the steps. And that's why I like to share these stories. Absolutely. All right, everybody, well, thank you very much for watching. We really appreciate it. As always, leave any comments down below. Check out the links and we will see you next time. Bye-bye.