Games Workshop's Texture Paints

On my travels to various comic shops last week I also snuck into Games Workshop, or Warhammer as the store on Tottenham Court Road, London is now known. I only popped in to grab a new pot of black and white paint but came out with a couple of pots more.

The staff were very friendly and helpful and they talked me through the new range of textured paints that GW have recently (a year or two back?) introduced.

Apologies for the poor quality photo, but hopefully you can get the gist of what these paints can do. I was especially struck by the qualities of the Realm of Life and Realm of Death paints. These effects are what I have been looking for for quite a while for my Gondor and Rohan troops' bases. I usually just coat the base in PVA glue, apply sand to the base, liberally apply a dark brown wash to it, add a highlight or two and finish it with some flock and a tuft or two of plants or rough grass. These seem to do that in spades, as well as give a few other effects like the "crazy paving" dried earth look which I especially like.

I talked myself into buying one each of the texture paints as well as an applicator tool - yeah, I know GW's own tooling stuff is expensive and cheaper alternatives can be found but I got caught up in the moment.

Hopefully I will get round to using these soon. I will post some details as and when.

40 Years of Thrill Power

2000AD's 40th Anniversary celebrations

Saturday saw me attending the 2000AD festivities at the Novotel Hotel in Hammersmith, London. I bought the ticket several months back whilst I was still earning and boy am I glad I did.

I had a great day at the festival, I met many of my favourite artists and creators, as well as those involved in starting up the comic (and many of my other favourite reads when I was a kid), and saw a couple of films. After doing all the usual fanboy stuff (getting books signed etc.), I attended a few seminars where I learned many of the reasons why certain characters developed the way they did and why certain stories went in the directions they did. It was great seeing behind the scenes so to speak.

The two films were a surprise package; a fan produced film and a documentary...

The latter was a re-run of the Thrill Power Overload documentary for the 30th anniversary, but apparently this cut (according to the director who gave a brief introduction speech before it was shown) had a few extra bits put in for this showing only - the extra scenes will be on the new DVD to be released soon but as extras rather than as part of the actual documentary.

The former was a Strontium Dog tribute. It was produced by a group of fans and took them a great deal of effort to produce. It is a straight up hunt 'em down Strontium Dog yarn but it was done reasonably well considering the financial and technical contsraints involved. A few of the more professional outfits could actually learn from this group of fans.

It was a long day but it was thoroughly enjoyable - the 14 or so hours I was there seemed to pass in the blink of an eye and I did not have time to even think about getting bored. Here's to the 50th anniversary.


On the gaming front, I have managed to get a little work done on my Gondorian army but nothing worthwhile showing just yet. Hopefully things will pick up a little soon once I get my life back into gear after losing my mum to cancer only a few weeks back. Losing two parents within a year has been harsh and left me quite numb if I am honest. I have enjoyed attending events (like the one mentioned above) and meeting with friends as they take my mind off of my personal life but my gaming hobby has not been able to give me that escape yet as my mind keeps wandering back to my sadness. I am trying as much as possible to get out of the house and do things to keep myself active and my mind occupied but my lack of work (again) is making things difficult due to lack of money and then the worry that involves. I am not in a good place at the moment, but hopefully things will pick up soon.