H.B.M.C. wrote:
Part of the Realms of Chaos books live on in the Black Crusade God-specific books. The Daemonic Name Generator in Tome of Excess is a bigger version of the one in Slaves to Darkness.

 Bomster wrote:
I really couldn't read any of that from the interview (I'm assuming by AM you mean JB).

He seems to be pretty secure in his creative choices (and he did actually *paint* quite a lot of cover artwork during the 90's, so his work is not restricted to ink drawings), and the statement about the Pre-Raphaelites, which you interpret as slagging of other artists' skill sounds to me more like he laments that the artistic style he prefers and would like to see more of has fallen out of fashion.

Especially passages like: "I belong to a community of people, rather than being some sort of icon." and "... and the guy introduced me and everybody stood up and clapped and I was just like “WOAH”. It can be very humbling at times."" seem to me pretty much the opposite of what you are reading into the interview.

 silent25 wrote:
One interesting note from that interview was that the sculpting department has been separated from the rule and fictions people and operates independently now. Not sure how that is panning out.

When I was nine I lived next door to a boy called Matthew. He was a year older than me and we had one of those strange childhood friendships that existed out of school as we rarely mixed in school. He was in the year above and, well at my school anyway, you didn't mix with the older children. We both loved the Fighting Fantasy books which were probably at their zenith by that time. Forest of Doom, Deathtrap Dungeon and the Island of the Lizard King we all conquered with a thumb firmly in between the previous choice so a quick exit back could be executed in case of death. We'd compete, probably along with many other kids, to get hold of the battered copies of Livingstone and Jackson's work at the local library and race home to enjoy them in the safety of our boyhood beds.




One day, I went over his house, probably with a box or two of plastic Airfix WW2 British (he ALWAYS played as the Germans) under my arm, expecting to see his Argos snooker table laid out for a 1944 skirmish. Instead I found him lolling on his bed, flicking rather carefully through a book. I knew it was a library copy as it was shrouded in one of those yellowing plastic jackets that librarians insisted on using twenty five years ago. As I walked in, he glanced up and casually through the book onto the floor.




As the book skidded to a halt on his paint flecked carpet, its cover gradually settled into my view. Two dangerous eyes stared suddenly into my own, eyes that glared from a figure who was partly Robin Hood, partly '80s Wood Elf and partly unknown hero. I had had my encounter with Lone Wolf!


It took me quite a few years to make the connection between Lone Wolf, Gary Chalk and '80s Warhammer. To be honest, it was fairly recently. About 8 years ago now I started collecting back issues of White Dwarf, starting with issue 90 and working by way up until the tone of the magazine turned from '80s anarchy to '90s corporate lunch. I then began to work backwards from 90, picking up the magazine in the pre-Warhammer/Rogue Trader days when it was (nearly) always RPGs all the way. Gary's work cropped up here and there in my random purchases and I started to recognise his style in the old hardback GW books I horded in my bedroom and flicked through from time to time. It was a distinct style. Bright and engaging, and very much against the odds of the darker artwork abundant even then.




I was pleased, therefore, to produce a small article about his work for this blog, entitled The Magic of Warhammer Third Edition. Its seems that my posting was a popular one, as it has been viewed many times and discussed here and there by fans of Gary's work. Well, I am very pleased to say that Gary has agreed to be interviewed for this blog. We talk about his early career, his move into GW, Fantasy Warlord and beyond. Can I just take this opportunity to thank Gary personally for contributing to Realm of Chaos 80s and the Oldhammer Community. From your feedback, I know how much many of you enjoy these trips back down memory lane.




Over to Gary...




Orlygg

RoC80s: You were brought up in rural Hertfordshire, how did the country lad become interested in the fantastical in the first place?

GC: There wasn’t really a fantasy genre back in those days, or if there was I didn’t know about it. Doctor Who didn’t appear on tv until I was eleven years old and the world was only available in black and white. As a result I became interested in drawing and history which were about as far away from reality as I could get. I realised while reading Rosemary Sutcliff’s excellent historical fiction books that someone (Charles Keeping) was illustrating them and presumably getting paid for it. I decided me to become an illustrator, and thanks to a truly inspiring art teacher I fumbled my way into art school.

It wasn’t until I was leaving art school that the whole fantasy thing began to kick off with Dungeons and Dragons arriving, science fiction books appearing all over the place and everyone reading The Lord of the Rings. I just wanted to illustrate kids books and suddenly there was all this stuff! The world was now available in technicolour. Of course that could have been the effect of the drugs, but it doesn’t seem to have worn off yet.

I got a job in a graphic design studio producing anything from shampoo labels ( flash but regal ) to , and, I swear this is true, airbrushing out an old lady’s wooden leg in a photo for something medical. Classy eh? While I was doing this, I kept sending out illustration samples and eventually manged to become a freelance children’s illustrator doing fairy tales and stuff. Fantasy comes in a bit later, so keep reading…

RoC80s: You started wargaming as a teenager. What are your memories of that early time? Was it purely historical for you, or did you find yourself amongst the early D&D roleplayers?


GC: Wargames were originally played with Airfix figures, using Donald Featherstone’s rules. These were the only things available to a teenager who didn’t live in London. You played World War Two or American Civil War or spent your entire life converting tiny plastic men with the aid of plastecine. The strange thing was though, that these games were actually fun! As you know fun is no longer allowed unless it has accidentally slipped into a set of rules by accident. If this does occur, it’s usually weeded out by the fifteenth edition. We eventually started making up own rules for things, but it was okay because nobody ever found out.

There were no fantasy games around at all at this time, except for those played by a mythical figure in a cardigan called Tony Bath who played wargames set in Robert Howard’s Hyborea. As no-one in Hertfordshire had ever heard of Conan or Hyborea, these remained pretty much of an enigma. The D&D stuff comes in later

RoC80s: How did you manage to move from being a ‘player’ to working in the ‘games industry?’


GC: I moved into the games industry by inventing my own game! I had desk space in a printers and one day I was looking at a historical boardgame when I was espied by the two brothers who ran the place. They asked what it was and how much it cost. When I told them how much, they couldn’t believe the difference between the printing costs and the retail price and told me that if I made one up, they would print it. So I did.

I invented with Cry Havoc. I had recently started playing D&D ( I told you it would eventually turn up) and was struck by the difference between the roleplaying and existing historial games. Historcial games, even skirmish games, had rather anonymous playing pieces who were all much the same, while D&D had characters who were all different and could do more than just fight each other. I tried to put a bit of the RPG flavour and colour into a historical boardgame with individual characters with individual strengths. Cry Havoc was born and I was a game designer.

RoC80s: My earliest memory of your distinctive style is probably the front cover of Lone Wolf: Flight from the Dark in 1984. How did you become involved in Joe Dever’s famous gamebooks?


GC: I first met Joe Dever when he was running the Game Centre near Oxford Street and I flogged him a load of copies of Cry Havoc. He need a lots of other products he couldn’t get a regular supply of and so I started a line of dungeon mapping pads and floorplans, which I also sold to him. At this time there were no gamebooks to get involved in and we started playing fantasy wargames using the Reaper and Laserburn rules along with historical games with the now widely available 25mm metal figures.

RoC80s: How did your begin working with Games Workshop? Was it as an artist or games designer?




GC: I left the printers as they had serious financial problems and were milking Cry Havoc for cash, so that it could never really get anywhere. I went to see Livingstone and Jackson at Games Workshop. They had repeatedly threatened to sue me for plagerism over the dungeon planner pads and the floorplans, but had never really been able to make it stick. I told them that if they gave me a job, they wouldn’t have to keep trying to sue me and I could even invent products for them. They thought this over and gave a job they called Games Development Manager! I had an office, a drawing board and a view of the car park. I was only in charge of myself, but hell, I was management material!

Now this is where the story really starts. Joe Dever was fired by the Game Centre and needed a job. Workshop needed a warehouse manager and I suggested Dever. He got the job. While I was working on Talisman and Battlecars, Livingstone and Jackson came up with the idea of The Wizard of Firetop Mountain, based on the solo Tunnels and Trolls adventures. When this started to sell, they asked Joe if he would ghostwrite a solo adventurefor them and if I would be prepared to illustrate it. All for a princely 1% royalty. I pointed out to Joe that if we were good enough to write their books we were good enough to produce our own. Joe wrote a section of the first Lone Wolf book based on a world he had put together for his fantasy wargames. I produced some illustrations and made up a presentation for the publishers. As I recall, the text was put together by Workshop’s very own typesetter in secret lunchtime sessions….


RoC80s: You produced a wide range of material for early issues of White Dwarf. You wrote about painting in the days before ‘Eavy Metal and produced classic articles like ‘Every Dwarf Loves a Sailor’. What was it like working on the magazine in the early to mid 1980s?


GC: It was great working with Jamie Thompson who was the editor at that time. He had a great sense of humour and was always slipping jokes and rude noms de plume into White Dwarf. I particularly remember a writer he called Hugh Janus ... This was back in the days when White Dwarf was still a magazine and even featured articles about other manufacturer’s games. The naval rules for Warhammer were written as I needed some for ships in my own games and decided to make an article out of them.

RoC80s: Among old school Warhammer fans, you are probably most well known for the 2nd Edition expansion packs like Bloodbath at Orc’s Drift (which was played out at our recent Oldhammer Day at Bryan Ansell’s Wargames Foundry by the way) what is the story behind the creation of these scenarios?

GC: The story is that Workshop asked us to write a scenario for them. We were putting on some of the first really big fantasy wargames at Dragonmeet and Games Day. (Sometimes we used Warhammer and sometimes we put Warhammer rules on the table, but were secretly playing Reaper, ‘cos it was quicker. Weren’t we naughty! Anyway Bryan Ansell asked us to write a scenario and I came up with Orc’s Drift and Joe expanded it a bit so that it would use a lot of the latest releases in the Citadel figures range.

RoC80s: You provided quite a bit of artwork to GW (and beyond) during the 1980s and many fans want to know what happened to the original pieces of art. Do you still have them in your possession or have they been sold on to collectors?




GC: I have some of the artwork, but a lot of it has gone missing at Games Workshop. They actually produced a boxed set of Lone Wolf figures at one time and I gave them the artwork for the first Lone Wolf book for the box lid. This is sadly one of the missing pieces. I have it on good autority that some of my artwork, along with that of other artists, was actually seen in a refuse skip outside the studio. Since the witness is an ex-Workshop sculptor, I can only assume this to be true. I am really pissed off about this as you can imagine.


RoC80s: You were involved in the ill-fated Fantasy Warlord project. What was the original vision behind the project and why do you think that it failed?



GC: The original idea behind Fantasy Warlord was to produce a set of rules that actually allowed players to use tactics on the tabletop in a way which was realistic and relatively quick to play. I had given up playing Warhammer because it was incredibly slow to play with a lot of figures. By a lot, I mean two or three hundred a side. Warhammer is really a skirmish game. If twenty bowmen need to throw sixty dice to resolve their firing, then that, in my book, is a really clunky system. That’s why I went for the percentage based rules which allow you to resolve combat and firing with a single die roll.


I didn’t much like the ever increasing rules either. Chaos seemed to need an enormous number of rules. Think about that for a moment… and the background was getting so detailed that there was very little room for the gamer to be inventive. I actually enjoy making up scenarios, war-engines, uniforms and so on that bolt on to the rules for my own games. I now believe that I may be alone in this and this could be one reason why Fantasy Warlord failed. People want to belong to a group where they are one of the boys. They’re one of the people who play Warhammer or Malifaux or whatever, and ultimately it is this community which is as important as the game. They like the in-jokes about the third edition or getting the badges on their orcs to look just like the ones in the magazine. I’m afraid to say, that I don’t really give a damn about this stuff and I can make up my own badges. I must be some sort of pseudo geek who isn’t really geeky…

There are lots of other reasons it was a disaster. We had figure makers who lied about the number of sculptors they had and layout artists who really did deserve to be laid out. We had packagers who were going out of business and hadn’t told us and we had one of those little financial crisis things. The Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, told it was going to be a little blip, but he lied. Imagine that, a politician who tells lies. Seems impossible, doesn't it? Anyway, the project seems to have been totally doomed form the moment of it’s conception. I screwed up big time.

RoC80s: You were recently quoted in a news article about 40k, this caused some bemusement amongst long standing fans of your work (as you have had nothing to do with the game for decades), how on earth did you end up being interviewed for the piece?


GC: Even though I haven’t had a lot to do with 40K recently I am still unravaged by Alzheimer’s and have followed its progress closely. I have even managed to read bits of White Dwarf down at the paper shop before they throw me out.

The reason I was asked to do the interview was nothing more or less than flagrant nepotism! My son Titus who works as a journalist in Berlin, is a friend of Samira Ahmed. She needed to find someone who knew about Games Workshop’s products and he suggested me. Funny old world innit?


In my defence I can only say that I am familiar with Workshop’s products and I have played both Warhammer Fantasy and 40K, indeed I actually play-tested early versions of the rules. If they had interviewed someone who currently worked for Workshop, it would have ended up as as a piece of advertising. I told her what I honestly thought and that’s about it.

egular reader's will probably remember the interview with Andy Craig I did this time last year. During our discussions, Andy told us about life in 'Eavy Metal, within the famous, and highly creative, GW studios of the mid to late 1980s. Like Andy explained in his interview, Tim Prow, Mike McVey and Ivan Bartlett, among others, banged out thousands of painted models; some classics to this day, others, well, not quite so memorable - Iron Claw skeletons anyone? Judging by the outstanding variety of these painted models, as anyone who has ever cast his eye over Bryan Ansell's 'toy soldier' (as he calls them) collection will testify, it was a time of enormous creativity, with the development of the Warhammer 40,000 universe bringing in a wealth of new models and background materials. Blood Bowl was on its second incarnation, supported by a massive range of models, including the memorable Star Players. Heroquest, and Advanced Heroquest were developed, as were Space Crusade and Advanced Space Crusade. Dark Future, Space Marine and Adeptus Mechanicus took fans of Citadel and British Tabletop gaming to the new and original places.

Residing over the photography, and later miniature management, of all this was Phil Lewis. I had been keen to track him down since interviewing Andy Craig, and through the wonders of the 21st century I was led to the Pendraken Forum (10mm specialists who do some excellent historical models, but that is for another blog some day...) and a sculptor going by the name of Techno. I had it under good authority that this wasn't some enthusiast of early '90s dance music with a perchant for sculpting Thirty Years War miniatures but Phil Lewis himself. With a little help from Steve Casey, Phil agreed to do an interview for us to give us a little understanding about his time at GW.

Enjoy!

RoC80s: I have heard that reading Lords of the Rings was responsible for your interest in fantasy wargaming! Could you tell us a little more about those very early days and when you first became aware of Citadel Miniatures?

PL: It'll probably seem a very strange answer but my start with the gaming industry was effectively down to a really bad stomach bug or food poisoning! I'd been laid up in bed for a few days and was starting to reach the stage where I didn't want to simply wallow there and feel sorry for myself. The better half had just finished the Lord Of The Rings and suggested it as something to pass the time. I loved it! There was an 'old fashioned' model shop a few hundred yards up the road from where we then lived, and I noticed they had some LOTR figures in the window and I think they were by Heritage. Having bought virtually every single blister (almost the only figures I've still got now) I came across some of the really early Citadel models, the Fantasy Adventurer range, and so I started buying loads of those to paint, eventually starting playing a kind of an amalgam of D&D and AD&D.....

I was hooked on the figures by now!

RoC80s: You were a contributor to the early Citadel Journals and these contributions lead to a job at GW. Could you explain what exactly happened and how you were employed?

PL: Again, it's one of those strange 'quirks of fate', if I can put it like that. The wife had recently bought herself a horse (horses are HER passion) and I used to get dragged along to shows to watch either her or friends competing. I used to get bored silly - worse than that really! One of the wife's friends suggested I take up photography as something to pass the time at these 'events'....and it worked! I really 'got into' photographing the horses going over jumps, splashing through water etc (I was really after a shot of someone falling in, if I'm honest) and it taught me a lot. The next thing was, that the photography and the passion for the models got combined. So a different photographic 'discipline' had to be learnt. Once I'd reached a stage where I wasn't actually ashamed of the photos, or my efforts at painting (though painting wise I cringe at the memory now) I started sending odd photos up to the 'old' White Dwarf' that was still produced in London. Joe Dever used to write an article each month called Tabletop Heroes, and one month, apparently unknown to Joe, there was a black and white picture of mine on the text page!

I was SO chuffed.

I ended up sending Joe a few photos each month and he used a fair few of them. I was even more chuffed for they were in colour now! I used a similar approach in simply sending a number of photos to Citadel's then factory at Eastwood in Nottingham and they used odd ones in some of the journals.This was even better because I used to get sent pre-release copies of loads of models direct from the factory each month. For someone who collected the figures it couldn't get much better than that.If remember correctly, when White Dwarf's production was moved to Nottingham there was a month or two when the 'new' version of Tabletop Heroes/'Eavy Metal looked a bit 'thin'. Looking back now, that was hardly surprising, moving a magazine lock, stock and barrel from one part of the country to another. I mean, White Dwarf appeared on the shelves each month by magic and I didn't have a CLUE how much work could be involved in producing a magazine at that stage. Anyway, being keen pay back something for all the free figures I was getting, I wrote to Nottingham, basically saying; "anything I can do to help ?"About a week or two later, out of the blue, I had a phone call from John Blanche.

"The boss wants to know why you want to be a figure painter."

"Ah....No John...I just wanted to see if there was anything I could to help." I replied.

"Oh right.....In that case, we're after a full time photographer....Are you interested ?"

The rest, as they say, is history.

RoC80s: You have stated that you worked in 'various capacities' while at GW. One of these was the taking charge of photography at the studio. How was the photography organised? Were you responsible for many of the miniature set ups in the 1987 Warhammer Fantasy Battle rulebook, for example?

PL: How was the photography organised ? Hmmmm. To a certain extent is was down to 'what was ready' on any particular day. For a month or two after I joined the studio didn't have its own plate camera, so I'd wander up to a studio a few hundred yards away and they'd take the 'big plate' shots. Then I got to spend lots on a wonderful set of kit, and it was all systems go at the studio. I haven't got the book in front of me for checking, so I can't say for absolute certainty now, if I'm credited in the cover as photographer I'd have probably taken virtually all of them. Though there may have been 'stock' photos that were used that were taken before the time I joined. As far as setting up shots would have been concerned, I tended to rely on John Blanche to come and have a look at the composition before I clicked the shutter. Either that, or I'd take a Polaroid shot and run downstairs to show him what it looked like. Sometimes it was "Go for it"... Other times he'd get me to tweak something slightly.

RoC80s: Andy Craig has told us many a wild story about his time working under you as part of the figure painting team. How did you end up in charge of the painting department? How was it run? And what made a miniature 'good enough for White Dwarf?'

PL: That was almost a natural progression from the photography, I suppose. As there were times when there wasn't anything to actually photograph, or I wasn't strolling back and forth to the place where we got the photos developed, I seemed to spend a fair amount of time down with the figure painters. A lot of the time it would involve me asking something like; "when can I have the figures to photo?.We need the films back in the studio by tomorrow ready for WD." I ended up helping in his capacity as the chap then in charge of the figure painting part off the studio gradually took more and more on andso that he could concentrate on other stuff he had to do. I got bored with taking photos all day and ended up 'taking over' the figure painting unit.

What made a figure 'good enough?' To a certain extent it was down to deadlines. Sometimes the painters would have days and days to paint a range, if the figures came over from Eastwood in plenty of time. On other occasions a number of figures would turn up with almost no time to get them painted and photographed. Those tended to be 'rush jobs', and it was a case of "that's as good as we can do in the time we've got!" The one thing to me, was that the overall standard of painting improved as the painters swapped techniques and ideas.

RoC80s: And those wild and amusing anecdotes of your time with the company?

PL: I remember trying to stop Mike Brunton sneaking a plastic sheep onto one of the ROC battles that we photographed in the studio... he didn't try but then I was watching him like a hawk! Or nearly electrocuting myself on one of the flash units when it went bang! Honest Guv, I disconnected everything and then stuck my fingers into it to bend the 'pins' back into place and got a hell of a belt from what I assume was a capacitor kick. I went downstairs swearing, told another member of staff what I'd done and falsely assumed that I'd completely discharged the unit through me. WRONG! So when he stuck his fingers in, he got a nice belt too!

Or there was the time I thought I'd gone completely mad. I broke a tiny little aerial from one of Tony Cottrell's Dark Futures plastic car conversions. I wasn't going to try and repair someone else's work, so I locked the photography room and went to look for Tony. I couldn't find him anywhere...So I went back to the Photography Room. I unlocked the door, looked at the car and ... eh? The aerial was back in place! A few minutes later, Tony came down and said;

"Did you want to see me Phil?"

"Er ...yes...but..." (dribble, dribble.)

Fortunately, Tony couldn't keep a straight face and admitted that he'd heard what had happened and had used a spare key (which I'd forgotten about), sneaked into the room while I was wandering around looking for him, mended the car and then relocked the room!
Then there was Trish Morrison (as she was then) playing a joke on me, and pretending that she was going to resign as a designer, soon after Bob Olley and Mark Copplestone had said they were leaving Workshop.
This was when I was Miniatures Co-ordinator. So it was bad enough thinking about how to re-jig things at that point.

She took pity on me when she saw how far my face fell.

RoC80s: Between 1988 and 1990 GW produced three 'Golden Demon Fantasy Miniatures' Books. Were you just the photographer behind these projects or did you have a wider involvement?

PL: Now you're asking !!

I think with the first one I simply took all the photos. The other two, I believe, would have been photographed by Chris Colson who took over the photography from me. I might have helped with some of the text and co-ordinating of the figures but I can't really remember now. Again, if I had the books in front of me, I'd have a better idea!

RoC80s: Your Chaos All Stars team for Bloodbowl is still very famous and homages are still being produced today. Could you give us the story of these models and what their eventual fate was?

PL: When the Chaos All Stars appeared simply as a drawn colour plate in White Dwarf, I thought they looked dead zippy so I just decided to try and 'make' the team. Some of the figures and poses could be relatively quickly converted from existing models we made at the time. So I did some conversions for those but there were a couple that proved more challenging, so I made these from scratch. Bryan Ansell allowed me to have those particular ones pressed and cast up and I think I originally ended up with all the copies, as they weren't really up to par for Citadel to release. Many years ago now, I sold almost my entire collection of Citadel models, because they were gradually being moved up into the attic and I had a larger than expected tax bill one year, OUCH! I think the chap that ended up with them, and as far as I know still has them is Tom Anders of Impact Miniatures. The last time I looked, the firm produces loads of different figures/races for their own Blood Bowl style teams.

RoC80s: For a while you 'edited' the 'Eavy Metal articles in White Dwarf. How were there articles selected and put together? Could you just show the models you liked or was their far more creative control?

PL: From memory, we always had a plan on what the next 'Eavy Metal would contain. Sometimes it would be very structured as if there was a rule book or game due for release then that's what we'd really be concentrating on. Sometimes there would be planning going on for well over a month on these. Though on these occasions 'the big feature' might be going on as a gradual 'slow burner', so we didn't have an impossible task to do it all in one month. Other times, although we had a good idea on what we were going to do, it could end up as relatively free as regards content. Odd months, strange though it might sound, there could almost be big gaps that needed filling. I suppose you could say, it could be swings and roundabouts, and almost anything suitable (or just 'nice') could find it's way into the articles.

RoC80s: You have said you did 'four years at GW until you were surplus to requirements'. What other roles did you have during that time?

PL: Well as I have said, I was the photographer first, then I ran the figure painting department. After that I was given the title of 'Miniatures Co-ordinator', which basically meant trying to keep 'tabs' on the designers. What they were working on, how long was it likely to take to finish the current projects, and then what was planned for each designer after that particular project. It sort of worked in the respect that I could give the factory some sort of clue as to when they might expect master figures to go over for pressing but usually the dates kept slipping forwards. I wasn't particularly happy doing that, I have to admit, So Bryan (bless him) gave me a much more fun job to do, making plans for buildings and scenery with Dave Andrews, which we put into White Dwarf.

Dave is, I think, one of the absolute top men in this particular 'field'. He'd make something (like a cottage or house) from total scratch, really really quickly! Once he'd finished, I'd sit there and 'dissect it'. Not physically I hasten to add. We'd work out the dimensions and then do a 'plan/diagram' which we popped into WD, with stage by stage photos of the Mk2 as it was being built.

RoC80s: You judged a number of Golden Demon awards in the 1980s. How serious was the judging taken? Did anyone have the final say?

PL: I was only 'chief judge' the one time and then I had help from quite a few others from the studio. The trouble was we'd end up with a number of different 'favourites'! John Blanche would be the one with the final say. But YES, it was taken very seriously. With the amount of time and effort that went into the entries, it would have been so wrong to have done anything else.

I think my only regret was that doing it all in one day, as we did then, it felt a bit rushed.

RoC80s: You have stated that once you left GW you became a figure designer. Any special projects or memorable moments?

PL: Not especially, though I've had figures eaten by dogs owned by the 'MDs' of the firms that had commissioned the work. One three occasions! By the same dog twice, though! This meant I got paid twice in each case, though it's a tad boring making exactly the same thing twice. I've enjoyed making all the figures for the firms I've worked for, though I did get a bit fed up with 'straight-line' work after making an enormous number of Mech type models for both Ral Partha and WizKidz. I never seem to have the time to do special personal projects. The only time I have done something like that, the models never got a proper release, so there are only about 8 sets of the original 'Kaos Krew' floating around as I think that's all that were made from the original mould. I actually repaired the greens and had 12 or copies of each cast up for myself. Those are sitting in a box in one of the barns outside now.

I am sure that you will all show you appreciation to Phil for taking time out of his busy schedule to complete this interview for us. Its taken some time to get things sorted out but I am sure that you will agree that the wait was worth it. After completing the interview and researching the images I was going to use in this article I tried to find out a little more about the Chaos All-Stars and was pleased to find a number of projects in recent years had come to fruition. The first is a little project to paint up the Chaos All-Stars using Phil's original team as inspiration. Have a read of this mission statement and then follow the link. There are some truly lovely painted models in this particular collection.



http://www.blood-bowl-miniatures.de/bb/bb_projects/bb_chaos_all_stars/index.html


Secondly, I found a link to the impact miniatures website that once sold the new castings of Phil's converted Citadel models and original sculpts. Sadly, these miniatures are out of production now, which is real shame as I would have bought the lot there and then. It appears that there is a little 'history' between the modern GW and Impact in recent times, which may well explain this. As you will have read above, only a few hundred castings were made of the models so they must be kicking about on the collection scene somewhere. Hopefully, one day, more reasonably priced versions will see the light of day once again. Then we can all own our own Chaos All-Stars.

http://www.impactminiatures.com/index.php?option=oopimpact

Finally, Joe Dever and Gary Chalk have made their editions of Tabletop Heroes available on-line. All the articles they worked on are here I believe, including a great many with contributions from Phil. There is a great deal of inspiration here, especially close up shots of painted examples of classic miniatures that have not been readily available for viewing online before. I really do recommend popping over to the site and downloading a free pdf of this material.

http://www.projectaon.org/en/pdf/misc/JD_TabletopHeroes.pdf

The Grand Master Returns: A Second Interview with Tony Ackland





I am sure that it came as quite a shock to you as it did me, when the news broke that Mick Leach, of Eastern Front Studios, had commissioned Tony Ackland to produce concepts for a new range of 'Oldhammer' inspired miniatures, now called Antiquis Malleum. Considering the amount of traffic that has flooded this blog since the announcement, its obvious that lots of other people are also very intrigued by this project. For many, its come just at the right time, as various members of the community have been struggling to make an Oldhammer miniature a reality. If this project is a success, it will be a green light for smaller groups to successfully crowdfund and produce similar miniatures. I am lucky enough to have seen the concepts that have been held back and I can assure you that the best stuff has yet to be seen. With excellent sculptors like Tim Prow and Drew Williams on board, we know that the modelling side of the project is in very safe hands indeed.




Hot on the heels of this news is Tony Ackland's second interview with us - and here is the link to his first, if you are coming to this post cold. As we have come to expect, Tony is extremely generous with his time and knowledge and he patiently answered our many (and rambling) questions. This time we take a closer look at where the influences behind the artwork for Warhammer were drawn, as well as exploring Tony's contribution to Marienburg and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in greater detail.




I am sure that you will all join me in thanking Tony for his time with us and that you enjoy a second stroll into the recollections of the Grand Master of Chaos.


RoC80s: So tell us, how did Eastern Front Studios manage to tempt you to return to creating chaos inspired art considering you've retired, and was it easier to slip back into form after so many years?




TA: It came out of the blue as a Facebook message. Although I am retired I do occasionally take on small jobs now and then. I have recently done the All Quiet on the Martian Front concepts, and some World War One style posters. I have also finished a Fantacide Map and provided illustrations and concepts. I did have a look back at some of the images from that period I have filed away. The overall look was not that difficult to get back into. Its kind of in my DNA now. What I had to check was how I handled the smaller details back then. As for inspiration, I read a lot of science fiction, fantasy and horror stories. I watched lots of films in the same genres. I also have an interest in natural history, with a particular fascination for invertebrates. So I suppose with all that imagery floating around my head it all came out sort of naturally.

RoC80s: As most readers will not be professional artists could you explain if the process of creating these concepts has changed in any way since you began work on the Realms of Chaos project in the mid '80s?


TA: Actually it is not very different. I use the computer as a drawing and painting tool using traditional techniques, e.g. a graphics pad and pen simulating various brushes and pens. A lot of guys doing concepts in the video game field use 3D programs too. Also, some plastic miniatures are now produced using CAD programs rather then pantographic scaling.


RoC80s: Last time we spoke, your Malal art created a great deal of interest. What can you tell us about the origins of these pieces of art and how his/her pantheon was to be organised?




TA: They were concept illustrations of lesser daemons that were not used. I think that the insectoid ones were for Malal. I think it was that one that was the riding beastie, and the other one a kind of war dog. I don't think that Malal himself was particularly insectoid though. This was probably me just trying to give vent to my inner entomologist when I started designing the daemons. These concepts were not only for miniature design but also to help develop future illustrations. It was accepted in the studio that the illustrations would show the 'reality' of what the miniatures represented. So the miniatures would have been simplified to some extent. The problem with Malal was that by the time Wagner and Grant has contributed their bit it was hard to pin down distinct characteristics. In comparison, the other Chaos Gods were very heavily planned. Bryan Ansell had the original ideas, John Blanche did some sketches, and then I developed them. I think that Ian Miller threw some ideas in too. Whereas Michael Moorcock's Elric stories were the main source of inspiration for Bryan, I leaned more towards H P Lovecraft. Without knowing what discussions took place when Wagner and Grant took the job on, its impossible to know what the true origins of Malal were. I do recall that Bryan had thoughts about another Chaos god prior to the strip.




RoC80s: Would you be interested in developing a new range of models inspired by the old Malal designs, much like George Fairlamb has done with the Hooked Horror?




TA: It certainly would be fun to play with the deities of Chaos again!




RoC80s: In your opinion, where do these images sit in regards of copyright?




TA: The copyright one is fun. They way I understand it is that the images are GW copyright, but they can't use them in reference to the name Malal. This shouldn't prove too much of a problem in using them for figure designs. The latter rests on the presentation rule and the fact that they made no sculptural representations of them themselves. The name is copyright to Wagner and Grant so that could be a problem to commercial usage. Gawd knows what the position is to the Chaosium/GW co-productions!

RoC80s: Being heavily involved in the way early editions of Warhammer 'looked', what can you tell us about the development of the beastmen? Broo inspired or something different?


TA: Back when Games Workshop had a licence from Chaosium to produce figures for Runequest and I had the job of creating the concepts. Bryan wanted something more radical than those that Chaosium had created. So we added the heads of elephants, crocodiles and some incorporated mixed features. Although Chaosium approved the concepts, I don't recall any of the former two types being produced. When we created warhammer, we did try and incorporate most of the figures Citadel produced in the rules. As chaos became more important, the larger the role that beastmen would play. But at that time there was no distinct plan. So the starting point had been the Broo, which originally had the heads of cattle, but from then on I pretty well ran with my ideas as they came to me.

RoC80s: Making the impossible seem real is a challenge artists have struggled with for centuries. What is the secret of making concept art convincing?




TA: For me a reasonable knowledge of anatomy is a big help. When I say anatomy not only of humans, not only of vertebrates, but most animals forms. And having a good understanding of perspective is essential. Of course, then its using that knowledge to serve your imagination. Individual creatures present their own set of problems. For instance dragons and Green Martians (ERBs Martian Stories) can be a bit of a pain. The original Space Marines were designed by Bob Naismith. In the studio they were referred to as Space Wombles. I must confess that I was never a great fan. It was fine until you put them in an action pose, then it was a case of 'how the bloody hell can they move at all?' Jim Burns and I have agreed how difficult it was to do this when he posted a couple of examples from the Space Crusade box art. I always thought that Kev Walker was the most at home out of us all at depicting them. Of course, when it came to Chaos Marines I had the latitude to take them in my own direction, so that was a pleasure.


RoC80s: Marienburg, the unfinished WFRP project, is a very fond memory for many Old School fans of White Dwarf and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. What can you remember of how the project began?




TA: I am not sure of exactly when the first Marienburg stuff was written. Hal (Richard Halliwell) used to come around and visit us quite regularly but I can't remember if he created any new material. I know that Mike Brunton wrote some of them. GW had decided to drop Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay because it didn't promote miniature sales. However, we did get a lot of mail asking when the next scenarios would be published. They also had a lot of unedited manuscripts they had never payed for. The solution GW came up with was to create a small subsidiary to publish them. They could also use it to claw back some tax and prevent three of the more difficult staff from contaminating all the other staff. And hopefully those three would realise by running their own unit that they weren't as clever as they thought they were. We actually became the most productive part of the company.

Marienburg was a setting created by Richard Halliwell. I can't recall if there were any articles published prior to the setting up of Flame. There was some material written shortly prior to it. As the purpose of Flame was to deal with all things 'roleplay' it became part of our purview. Halliwell continued to produce material but other writers did too. It was all edited by Mike Brunton until he left Flame.

Remember the scenario inspired by the Maltese Falcon? The main setting was a brothel. Although edited by Mike, he had left when it was due for publication in White Dwarf. Once I pointed out that putting it in White Dwarf might not be the most appropriate place for it. I had the idea that it could be included in a Flame compendium, but we were closed down before that could happen.
RoC80s: I have heard all kind of tales about Richard Halliwell since beginning these interviews into the glory days of GW. He seems to have had a great deal of influence over a wide range of classic GW games. What was he like to work with?




TA: He was a really good ideas man, but not quite so good at developing those ideas. But during the nineties when he was working on computer games he did improve his skills. Hal was actually fun, he never took things too seriously. He was a little over fond of certain substances, even compared to many of the other staff. But by the time the studio moved to Castle Boulevard those days were over.




Sadly, Hal now suffers from a dementia like complaint.

RoC80s: The artwork you produced for the original Warhammer rules, and later WFRP, is extremely varied. How did the studio go about ensuring their was a coherent look to the illustration?

TA: Well, the original Warhammer was written by Richard Halliwell, though he was not a part of the company at that time. It was then edited and expanded by Rick Priestley, with input from Bryan and myself. The visual side was left to me. So apart from some artwork we brought in from John Blanche (who was yet to join the company) I was pretty free to do what I wanted. Bryan, Rick and myself were all keen on history and SF/Fantasy so the images tended to reflect what my interests were. The other factor was to include the look of figures already in production prior to Warhammer. But then again I was also the one producing concepts for those figures. Many of the subjects for WFRP were based on members of staff as capturing the character was more important than an absolute likeness.


All that is left for me to say is THANK YOU once again to Tony. I hoped you enjoyed this little wander into history. Look out for more of Tony's more recent work for Eastern Front on these pages as soon as its ready. Fingers crossed that we are soon pushing some of his designs around a table or two worldwide.




Orlygg.

Many years past, Simone de Beauvoir, the French intellectual, philosopher and existentialist stated that; "one is not born a genius, one becomes a genius." I am sure that in her varied writings she never, ever imagined that such a phrase would be applied to the world of toy soldiers but then again, its highly unlikely that she ever heard about Kevin Adams.

For the Goblin-Master looms large over the world of fantasy art, miniatures and gaming. For it was his fevered imagination that conjurered up the wild, comical faces of the goblinoids all those years back and left a cultural legacy that resonates to this day.

It doesn't matter who you are. If you knead putty and lift the modelling tool in order to create a greenskin, you are working in Kevin's shadow.

And you will fail.

For no-one before or since has been able to capture the cruelty, lunacy, delight and comic insanity of the goblin as well as he can. If you don't believe me... just go and look! Nearly every major manufacturer out there has employed him to create their goblinoids as no-one else can compare, and it shows.

For years I wondered why the Orc and Goblins range that GW put out had lost its comic dynamism and why they became simple, muscular brutes lacking any real imagination or depth. It was only when I scratched the surface and did a little research that I learnt that other sculptors had taken over the range.

I felt sorry for them. After all, who would really want that gig? Then I went out and bought loads of Harlequin gobbos!

So welcome dear readers to this interview with the one and only Goblinmaster. For the first time, Kev shares with us the story of his life during the Golden Age of British Fantasy and a load more besides. As many of you will be aware, he was brutally assaulted in his own home last year and his resulting injuries have seen Kevin need a series of operations to repair the damage done to him. Despite this, Kevin still gives up his free time to help contribute to running a coffee bar at his local mental health hospital. This selfless commitment is best summed up in words by Pete Brown who said;

"Every week, sometimes twice a week, he’d walk through pouring rain or blazing sun-shine, or howling snow-storms to give a few hours of his time to those residents whose only respite from their dulling hospitalisation is a couple of hours with a coffee and a chat to someone outside their direct situation."
All that is left for me to say is a big, big, big thank you to Kevin to taking the time out to speak to us in the Oldhammer Community.

Orlygg

PS: No goblins were harmed during the making of this interview.

RoC80s: So what are you up to at the moment? Are you fully recovered after the attack last year?

KA: I've been working at the Wargames Foundry factory and will be for next two weeks or so as my eye is not good right now and Foundry could use me as I'm a grafter. They have limited time to move. I'm enjoying Bryan's company and having fun and look forward to Warmonger.

Last year, I was making Egyptian models and had just finished my lunch while sat in my loft when I saw what looked like my son at the top of my ladder wearing a hood, but I noticed a knife in his hand and it turned out to be an intruder.

He ran at me pointing and waving this knife in my face and was shouting angrily and demanding to know where all the weed was and I told him he had got clearly the wrong house. Two more of them came up carrying knives and they all wore hoods and scarfs around their faces so I had them down as cowards straight away, they were all acting like they were on drugs and they smelt like they hadn’t washed for weeks.

They then demanded money and gold jewellery and wanted my mobile. I said there was no money, no gold and that I never used a mobile so I got stabbed and then repeatedly hit in the face with something heavy. They were really agitated and getting angrier and prodding me with their knives.
I tried to get up to show them there was nothing in the house and the biggest one panicked and told me to sit down.

They kept making demands but I kept calm, so one of them stuck a knife in my face but I didn’t flinch and got hit again and again. I’ve never felt such hard punches and it never really registered that it was a knuckleduster and my face was all smashed in including my eye socket. They then fled taking my I-Mac because by then I was bleeding pretty bad.

I thought they had stabbed me in the eye but luckily I was ok and rang my son. My daughter came round and couldn’t look at me and I was then taken to hospital and had to have my face rebuilt and had metal plates in my cheek and eye socket rebuilt. I still have tingling and nerve damage and my nasal passage on the right hand side has been blocked since the attack. I also had a broken jaw and smashed teeth plus my nose was broken in three places.

My vision is OK but my eyeball is exposed so it gets very uncomfortable and I cannot work long hours. I've been told by the hospital that I need plastic surgery to rebuild my lower lid but its taking forever to get a date as they keep putting the operation back , its been a year already! Somebody who lives nearby was their real target and they got the wrong house. I was unlucky that my door was unlocked and left open for my kids.

They haven’t been caught and the police have given up looking but CID said that they were after a house where lots of cannabis was being grown and told me thats these sort of attacks are getting more common.

Thanks to Ian, Dags, Paul Reid Wargames Foundry and many others, I managed to survive as I was unable to work for the best part of a year. Goblinaid has been a great help to me because being self employed I would get no benefits even though I’ve paid national insurance and tax for years. I would have been in financial trouble if it wasn’t for Goblinaid coming to the rescue.

I spent the time off redecorating the entire house so I was really busy, plus I had lots of hospital appointments and I did some gardening too as well as painting the house exterior. This is one reason I wasn’t on Goblinaid in person because my time was fully absorbed but I’m not a Facebook member and don’t have time to social network due to all the work I get.

I don’t know when my next operation will be but I will get the message out when the time arises, until then I would like to say a big thanks for all the people that helped me!

RoC80s: As a child were you always interested in fantasy art and gaming or did the interest come later on in life?

KA: I started collecting Airfix soldiers when I was about six years old and then used to build kits of tanks and paint them. I would make plasticine sandbag gun emplacements so I've always improvised and had a creative streak. I loved painting models too and have done since I was a youngster . When I was eight I would often draw pictures of Spanish galleons in class rather than do my school work and loved pirates!

My first model was a Noddy Holder model 10 inches tall that I made in pottery lessons, its still in my parents garden and one day I will get a photo and post it online. Its quite comical. I was 15.

At that time I used to make turnip men, miniature scarecrows three inches tall out of straw and twigs with turnip heads and would cut eyes and mouths in them and let them dry out and they would shrink and resemble old people. I would put them on peoples doorways on the estates for a laugh or hang them from trees.

I have made turnip men miniatures for Monolithe that are based on these.

I've never really got into miniature gaming or roleplaying although I did play some modified Dungeons and Dragons in my early twenties with my old mate, Gavin Baddely and he was an entertaining dungeon master and a real miniatures fan. I never understood the rules but had some interesting characters like a witch and necromancer as well as the other characters and I would play in his imaginative campaign and had lots of fun. Miniatures were always my main hobby rather than games.

Artwork that inspired me was Arthur Rackham and Brian Froud as well as Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch, and I loved that people of the pines poster by Rodney Matthew's and read the Corum books by Moorcock . It was the minifig and Ral Partha skeletons that inspired me back in 1981 and once I had collected all the undead models I could lay my hands on I started collecting goblins and loved the great goblins. The Night Goblins by the twins really caught my eye as they are so much like the Jawa out of Star Wars .

Back then I would spend hours painting models and would often swap weapons on duplicate models and eventually started to attempt faces. I used to paint models for Nick Lund and loved his Chronicle hobgoblins and every month I would look in White dwarf for painted models and was a big fan of John Blanche's style of painting which became an inspiration.

Around this time I entered a Citadel painting competition and was in the top ten and I received a standard letter from Bryan Ansell inviting me to paint him models. I took his offer up and painted him some Slaan and he was impressed so I ended up painting him models regularly and would get boxes through the post with all the new releases- many more than I thought I would be getting but Bryan was always generous, they were really exciting times with all the new models coming out .


RoC80s: According to legend, you were taught to sculpt by Bryan Ansell himself. Is this the case and hat were your first steps into miniature sculpting?

KA: I met Chaz Elliot at a Dragonmeet back in 1983 I believe, and was stunned by his orc standard bearer which was painted in acrylics asIi was still using Humbrol enamels. We kept in touch and became friends and he visited me in Cambridge and gave me my first lessons in using putty. Soon after that I had a go at making an ogre because a larger model seemed easier and also made some very large goblins.

I sent these to Bryan who decided to have them moulded but first I had to change them to be mould worthy and this took over a year of continually changing my models and learning about undercuts. My teacher was Alan Merrret who taught me everything I know about what will work in a mould and to this day his teachings serve me well.

Bryan taught me my earliest techniques regarding the sculpting of toy soldiers and was a great help, he also gave me the opportunity to make my first range which were lesser goblins and they were well received so I was offered a job. I worked from home in Cambridge for a year but moved to the new studio in 1986 and worked in a room with Nick Bibby, Jes Goodwin, the Morrisons and Bob Naismith and learnt a lot from watching them make models.

Later on, the Perry Twins joined us and I also met Bob Olley and Mark Copplestone .



RoC80s: Describe what the working environment in the Design Studio was like during your time there. Did it change? When was the most creative period for you?

KA: The studio environment was exciting for me because I was working with John Blanche who was like a father figure to me at the time and the whole studio was alive with exciting new ideas so it was a really creative atmosphere. I liked Enfield Chambers as it was in the middle of Nottingham and not far from the pubs and shops. I would spend a lot of time with the 'Eavy Metal lot and got on well with the artists. I used to sit with Dave Andrews and watch him build some amazing scenery and buildings.

I met some real characters too like Sid the Painter, Adrian Smith and Jamie Sims.

Sid would come into my room for a smoke and leave his fags so I would put bits of mould rubber in them or stick wire up his fags so he burnt his fingers but he got even and put Biro ink around my glasses when I was in the loo and I ended up walking around town with black rings around my eyes!

I would prank lots of people back then and have always been mischievous and you can see it coming out in the goblin faces. Chaz Elliot would chase Richard Halliwell around the studio with a Rambo knife, catch him and pin his hand to one of the desks and stab quickly between his fingers and it would make us cringe! They were heady days and I met loads of people there including Brian May, the guitarist with Queen, and his son who both stayed in my room for 30 minutes watching me make epic orc vehicles. We never even mentioned music, only what he had come to see because his son liked the models.

Enfield Chambers was the most creative time and Bryan would often come in for a chat with people. I used to have my own room in the end because I would get distracted with people around me. There was a certain manager who would often sneak up on me and watch me work, and I wouldn't hear him with my headphones on so one day I put a box full of Milliput scraps including lots of dust from filing it on top of the door and sure enough he crept in and it fell on his head and I still remember these wild and angry eyes staring at me through this dust cloud, it was hilarious!

We eventually moved to Castle Boulevard and it wasn't the same anymore, but I still had a laugh with people. I remember rolling going off putty balls under my door towards the twins' table and this went on for a long time. One afternoon I was sat there and a whole shower of putty balls landed on my head, it was one of the twins throwing them over the partition, they were characters to work with and amazed me how they worked.

RoC80s: How were miniatures designed and built back in the 1980s? Did you always work from concepts or did you have the freedom to invent?

KA: When I first started making models I would use copper wire for the armature and bend it into shape.I would then build wet putty straight on to the wire and if I did legs I would attempt to make them in one go and would end up chasing the putty around the wire so I learned the hard way. People like Jes and Aly would put Milliput on the wire and build on to that and its a better way to work really and its how I work now as its wise to have some support to work on.

One afternoon I watched Jes and Aly make a batch of chaos warrior dollies with superfine white Milliput. The next morning the Milliput was still wet because somebody had mixed the Milliput tubes so I guess they used two lots of the same catalyst with it all being white. They were gutted and had to remake the lot!
Bob Naismith was the master of Milliput, I watched him hang rods of it from his lamp and then when dry he would cut tubular sections for arms and legs as well as body and drill through them before inserting on the wire dolly. He would then come back after lunch, animate the bodes and finish the detail and head with putty- pure genius!

I learnt a lot from Bob and he was older and more experienced so he would tackle anything and gave me confidence.
Bryan Ansell taught me most of what I know now, he showed me a lot when I worked at the Foundry. I still don't use wire in arms after he revealed a more flexible way using putty and superglue. I was shown all sorts of tricks and I still use those techniques and have a lot to thank him for.

When I worked at Enfield Chambers there was more creative freedom so a lot of things I made were straight out of my head. The snotling pump wagon springs to mind but John Blanche was a huge influence on me back then and so was Tony Ackland and I have always loved the Perry Twins' models for their realism and dynamics.

Jes was a big influence too and I remember buying all of his Asgard orcs and dwarfs as soon as I saw them and was amazed at the sharp detail.

Concepts became more common at Castle Boulevard but I've always had total freedom with the faces!

RoC80s: What tools do you use to sculpt miniatures? I am assuming you don't use the broken end of a cocktail stick?

KA: All of my tools are dental tools now apart from one that hass got a needle inside a thin bit of brass tube, the other end is cut like a syringe and is useful for C shaped cuts. I have a brass rod too that I roll putty with its pointed one end and rounded the other.

Though, when I started making toy soldiers I would use sanded cocktail sticks!

RoC80s: Incredibly characterful faces have long been evident in your work. Was it always a specialty?

KA: I've always liked making faces on models, its where a lot of the feeling comes from in a model. Back in the mid eighties I had all these duplicate models lying around so I wanted to have different models and that is how I started making faces.

My lamp at Castle Boulevard was covered in orc and goblin heads from pressed models. Goblins are my favourite because of the element of mischief but I enjoy orcs and anything nasty looking and love to put as much anger and venom into them as I can.

Recently, I've started to make humans and am still learning and like to put as much expression into the faces as I can too. Females are a new challenge and something I would like to master but its still early days.

RoC80s: How did your famous nickname come about? Who named you the 'Goblin Master?'

KA: I haven't got a clue who started calling me the Goblinmaster, perhaps it was Bryan or it could have been John Blanche. I believe it may have come about when I made those war machines back at Enfield Chambers - its a loose trade mark really when I think about it .

Its a name I find silly and embarrassing to be honest but if it sells models for people it can't be a bad thing. I'm not the slightest bit interested in fame and just love making models for a living and consider myself fortunate to have been part of the most exciting part of Games Workshops history .

My heart is still with the early fantasy tribes look and Warhammer, that period is in my blood and I still love it.


RoC80s: You moved on from Citadel in the in the nineties. Where did your travels take you then?

KA: After working for GW I made a range of dwarfs and goblins for Harlequin and a few models for Alternative Armies. I then joined Heartbreaker and made several ranges including orcs, goblins and dwarfs and then I made Warzone models. I also made some large lizards and orcs in resin for Fantasy Forge.

The next two years were spent at Harlequin and I made quite a few ranges from Tony Ackland's concepts which were expertly moulded by Pete Brown. After Harlequin, I spent two years working for Fasa on their Maelstrom game, most of the models were quite large and monstrous.
I then spent two years working for Foundry and made lots of orcs and orclings, and was taught my first lessons in making human models by Bryan. For the last fourteen years I've worked freelance and made models for Renegade, Otherworld , Hasslefree ,Black Hat, Urban Mammoth ,4A, Midlam and recently Mike Burns with the Egyptian range.

My favourite models are still goblins and I've made a sizeable range for Crooked Claw.

RoC80s: Andy Craig once told us about a miniature you made based on him pulling a funny face. We assume this model never made it to production. Where there any other model's hat didn't make it that you can recall?

KA: There is only one model that wasn't released that I can remember and that was the first set of Jolly Japes, one of the managers took exception to its rudeness so I had to change it to sitting on the helmet.The original had a jobby coming out of its rear end and curling into the helmet, there's only a few of the original in existence now.

I knew Andy well so its possible but such an orc would have had hair and the GW ones were bald but I've got some in my painted collection with hair and one of those could be him. I used to do conversions of existing models and paint them and I've given a lot of them away over the years. Because of this, its quite possible I might have made on based on him as we got on well.

RoC80s: You are well known as a prankster. Have you any amusing anecdotes to share about your antics during the 'Good Old days'?

KA: I played loads of pranks at GW! Here is one! It was the only night I went out with a GW artist and he ended up coming back to my house and I gave him a choice of where to sleep; the settee or front bedroom. He didn't know it, but the front bedroom was home to my many cats and it wasn't long before he was calling me.

I had just got out of the shower and put my head around the bathroom door to see him doing this funny dance on the landing. I pissed myself laughing, it was so funny, he was covered in cat fleas and itching all over with flea bites! I should have warned him but decided not to. I did give him a choice where to crash for the night and the silly sod chose the wrong room! LOL!

Here is another funny story that I have just remembered! Our sink in the Studio was near the Fire Exit and you could look right down three floors and see the enclosed area behind the Broad Marsh Shopping Centre and there were two men fixing a generator. If they looked up, the sun was in their eyes.

So I got a spoon and kept flicking wet teabags at them and there was a big pile on the sink so I was having a whale of a time. This man would hear SPLAT, and then look round and this went on for a while and everybody in the Design Studio was pissing themselves watching me wind this worker up as wet teabags were flying past his head and landing on the generator!

He went ballistic in the end because he couldn't see where they were coming from but he shouted up; "I will fething throw you off the balcony!" I kept it up until he gave up and went back in his door! If I had seen him coming I could have easily hid so I had him there. The whole thing stopped everybody from working for a good twenty minutes because it was so amusing.

But that's what goblins do

Kev

You guys get such cool stuff in the UK.

1,000,000 page views, more than that now you are reading this post, deserves some sort of recognition. And what better than a second chat with the man behind it all, Bryan Ansell, the visionary responsible for Citadel's early days and owner of the Wargames Foundry and Stoke Hall.

Unless you are new to this blog, you will know that I have been carrying out a series of interviews with many of the creative minds behind the massive success of Warhammer in the 1980s. Artists such as Gary Chalk, Tony Ackland and Tony Hough have discussed their work and influences, we have heard from members of the 'Eavy Metal team via Andy Craig and the man who ran them, Phil Lewis. Design Studio stalwarts Rick Priestley, Mike Brunton, Andy Chambers, Tim Pollard, Paul Cockburn, Phil Gallagher and Graeme Davis have provided us with the behind the scenes detail that many of us find so fascinating. Kev 'Goblinmaster' Adams shared his stories about life as a miniature sculptor during the period, Jamie Sims spoke to us about the Asgard Days while Guy Carpenter provided us with lots of insight to life in the retail part of the business.

Its been quite a journey... are you ready to go on one more?

I have been lucky enough to meet Bryan a few times, and I have been luckier still to get a bit of a guided tour of his stately home - including the enormous cabinets of his miniature collection and the incredible room with the painted Wayne England murals. To walk through those corridors and gaze in wonderment at objects you have studied for over twenty-five years is a peculiar experience I can tell you. Last summer, I had the opportunity to speak to Bryan again in detail about his time running Games Workshop and this interview is the result of those discussions.

I have been saving it for a special occasion!

RoC80s: For many, many years one of the more infamous things associated with your tenure in charge was the 'SOD OFF BRYAN ANSELL' in White Dwarf issue 77. Care to share your side of the story?

BA: When I took over running games workshop all those years ago, the first priority was to close down the London office. All they did was publish White Dwarf, distribute imported American products and complain that Warhammer was puerile. We had taken over all other publishing duties at Citadel some time earlier. Space was expensive in London and Games Workshop was extraordinarily overstaffed. However, things were moving along nicely in Eastwood and at the Nottingham Studio and we felt that we would be able to find useful work in Nottinghamshire for any or all of the London staff who wanted to move.

In the event: ten or so of the London staff came to us.

The White Dwarf staff didn’t move up. This wasn’t entirely a surprise, as they had savagely resisted our attempts to put Warhammer material into WD. Despite the quite obvious fact that the only thing keeping Games Workshop rolling was our awful fantasy battle game. I suppose that “sod off ” is the sophisticated London gamers equivalent of “thanks very much for the offer: but we’re going to have to pass this time.”

Unfortunately, we did have to fire a number of the ex-London staff for stealing not long after they joined us. Mac Coxhead was in charge of one half of the factory shop floor at the time, and would randomly check departing staff for hidden lead with his metal detector. However, we did gain the services of Jervis Johnson and Lindsey to de la Doux Paton: both of whom were to contribute greatly to Games Workshop’s future.

Lindsey is now married to Rick Priestley of course.

RoC80s: Your miniature collection has become rightfully rather famous in recent years, did you spend much time with the 'Eavy Metal team during your days as Managing Director?

BA: I’m afraid that I didn’t have a great deal of contact with the figure painters. I probably didn’t go into their room more than ten times. Phil Lewis took the figure painting (and the photography) in hand and worked with Alan Merret to make sure that all went well.

Alan was the man who held things together at the studio.

He’s still filling a senior role at GW.


RoC80s: The development of plastic miniatures was something you worked long and hard on in the 1980s. How did you go about moving from a metal casting process to a plastic one?

BA: I worked with John Thornthwaite on the plastics. John had been in charge of plastics at Matchbox. At the end of Matchbox, John was left single-handedly holding the company together. This was the time of the Falklands War. Matchbox had moulds for the very same jump jet, helicopter and warship that were getting a terrific amount of publicity in the news media . John had his remaining staff working round the clock and they had filled the Matchbox loading bay with enough kits to keep the company rolling; however it turned out that the business had been somehow split into a number of separate independent parts. Apparently the part that should have funded the shipping had run out of money and john’s kits never left the loading bay!

I think that Matchboxes metal cars survived in a new guise and provided a livelihood for ex Matchbox staff, but the plastic kits end went down. I ran into John at a Military modelling event. He had started making his own military vehicle kits. He came to work with us.

This was when we were still in Newark. I was only running Citadel then. Steve and Ian were keen to do a game using our new plastic capability that could be sold into the toy market. I think that they designed the game themselves, it was a dungeon adventure in about 60mm scale. Mostly they were sold in the Games Workshop shops and Beatties.

This was our first experience with plastics.

RoC80s: The iconic plastic kit of the time were the RTB01 Plastic Space Marines. Were these an easy process to develop for plastics or something that took time to perfect?

BA: When John delivered the first of those plastic models I was very disappointed. The models had visible blocks of unnecessary plastic all over the place. John explained that they were there so that the models would come out of the metal mould without taking damage from undercuts.

We had a fairly heated debate.

I felt that if our metal models could be made to roll their way out of our quite hard rubber moulds without greatly imparing the sculpt, then these quite hard plastic models should be equally capable of rolling out of his metal moulds without resort to ugly filling. Some of you will probably remember the small sprues: Drastic Plastic etc. that we produced in our first experiments with plastic undercuts while sorting matters out.

I think that we produced our first plastic shields and perhaps bases while we were still in Newark. Our first proper plastics were that first box of Space Marines though. My direct involvement with the detail of plastics manufacture ended with their arrival. I think that we were all completely astonished that we had pulled it off. We had not put the studio together that long before and we all felt that we had put something special together with the miniatures, the content of the Rogue Trader book and that remarkable edition of White Dwarf.

I expect that the project (perhaps alongside Space Hulk) was a highlight of a good number of the participants working lives.

Also, it brought us mighty Wayne England: who on reading the Rogue Trader White Dwarf, gave up his career in the packaging design industry to come and work with us.


Where Bob Naismith and Alan Merrett came in was in pulling the processes together. We would sculpt a miniature just as we normally would. Then we would photograph it and blow it up in size (I think it might have been to eight times its size) and that image was used as a template for making a huge clay model. We would then make a resin negative of the huge clay model, which would go away to one of John’s former colleagues from Matchbox, who would use a pantograph in the resin negative block, to guide him while he chiselled away a cavity in a steel block that would then be actually be used to manufacture the plastic version.

I think that another one of John’s colleagues from Matchbox ended up with their plastic machinery. It was him who would actually inject the plastic and produce our finished sprues.

It was a long process making the big clay models. The clay/wax mix (the same as used for making full size models of new motor cars) was hard and uncooperative. Available sculptors and other volunteers would sit around a big table passing the wax models round. Alan and Bob would participate. However, Alan’s role was within the studio: where he had many other responsibilities with regard to sculptors, miniatures, publications and artwork. Bob’s responsibilities were outside the studio to a significant amount and involved dealing with the overall communication, pantography and the steel moulds.

RoC80s: We have been discussing the famous plastics that helped launch Rogue Trader: Warhammer 40,000 but what of the game itself? Did you have a feeling it would be the success it grew to be during the game's development?


We all had high expectations of Rogue Trader, we already felt that it would always be with us. We were keen to push on.

We were confident that Space hulk would also do well: both because of its close association with 40K and because we had confidence in our overall plans for the game, I saw it as a very important complimentary product . Richard Halliwell was in the country at the time [back from Africa I think] and we brought him in to do the heavy lifting. We already knew that we wanted the corridor cards and the alien monsters. Hal got stuck right in and did a very fine job . We were also very fortunate to have Wayne England to do the floorplans and the artwork. Wayne was taken by the concept and the game system. Soon he was producing 'Large Numbers Of' extra corridors and organizing the studio staff to play lunchtime games every day of the week. The extra corridors ended up in White Dwarf.

By then we could tell that Games Workshop was going to continue to move steadily forward and we felt that we were in a position to do almost anything we liked (within the limits of hobby game industry of course). The weight of our attention was falling on 40K, but I don't think that that was greatly at the expense of Fantasy Battle or our other projects.

Roc80s: One of the last things you worked on before leaving were some of the ork books and these are very fondly remembered by fans. Would there have been more if you stayed on?


BA: I thought that the Ork books were a marvellous creation. If I had stuck around we would have produced similar books for all the 40K and Warhammer races (not necessarily with that many volumes though) and kept them 'Permanently in Print as Paperbacks'. The Warhammer world could have developed into a splendidly textured alternative reality for gamers to explore. All they would have to do would be to pick up a book and walk right in.