Wayne England

I was saddened to hear today that the artist Wayne England has died.

When I talk of the "good old days" of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K Wayne's art was part of that world and continued to be right up until the present day. The White Dwarf covers below perfectly encapsulate the feel of Warhammer 40K in the late 80's.

Space Marines - White Dwarf 110 (1989)

Terminator Badge - White Dwarf 112 (1989)

As well as Games Workshop products he was also well known for his work on many other ranges, including Magic the Gathering, D&D, Avatars of War and Fantasy Flight Games.

The Demise of White Dwarf (and the Games Workshop?)

There’s been a fair bit of talk recently about the Games Workshop’s decision to cease publishing its monthly magazine, White Dwarf. This comes not long after the magazine recently underwent a dramatic change in format and content, a change which it appears hadn’t had the desired effect.

A lot of criticism seems to revolve around the magazine basically being nothing more than a catalog for new releases and sadly I feel this is the case. The content of hobby related articles certainly has certainly declined, somethig I touched on here when I wrote about their painting guides.

I first came across White Dwarf at a time when I was playing more and more Games Workshop games. I’d started out with MB Games Heroquest and Space Crusade before moving on to Advanced Heroquest and Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Naturally I wanted to read more and so I picked up my first ever copy of White Dwarf, issue 132, promptly followed by plenty of back issues.

Issue 132 - December 1990

This magazine was read from cover to cover. It featured experimental rules, modelling projects, scenery projects (a dwarf mine, which I did try and build) and of course articles showcasing painting. Back then it had a true hobby feel, it engaged the reader, much like many of the scale modelling magazines of today.

Sadly today the thought of the Games Workshop publishing an article on building something not using products they sell is unthinkable and maybe there’s a general reluctance to even publish anything that not Games Workshop corporate standard. I feel the spirit of those days is missing now. Back then the company was build and run by people who were the age I am now. People who could write, who could create an evocative living world, one which I think no other company has come close to doing since. 

As far as miniature companies are concerned Games Workshop are unique in their longevity and I think this is a real difficulty for them. They have new younger followers, and they have older followers like me who both want differing things from the hobby. As a result they are having real trouble identifying their target audience. Do you sell vast amount of kits to kids who will play with them until they move onto something else, or do you cater to mature modellers who have more specialist needs? Which it is will decide on your magazine content and recently they’ve been going for the sale brochure content and it hasn’t worked.

So what will the future bring? There will be a new monthly magazine called Warhammer : Visions and a weekly White Dwarf magazine. I had a quick conversation with the guys from my local store and they weren’t a 100% sure what the content would be but suggested that the monthly magazine will be more hobby based, the weekly magazine more gaming based. I really hope this is the case and I’m approaching this change positively, if the monthly magazine is hobby based then it certainly looks like good move from my point of view.

One final thing I will say is that the Games Workshop would do well not to neglect their older followers. I’ve left the both the miniatures hobby and the scale model hobby and then come back to them both. It is people like me that will pass the hobby on to our children. As things stand at the moment and despite the Games Workshop being a key part of my formative years, I imagine in the future I would most likely be teaching my children to build that other great British institution, the Airfix kit, long before I introduced them to the current Games Workshop range.

Review - How to Paint Citadel Miniatures (for iPad)

RRP - From £1.99 to £17.99 (although I received a free promotional offer)

Having found the miniatures I mentioned in my previous post I decided that before I started painting them I'd take a quick at a few painting guides to refresh my memory a bit. Naturally my first stop was the Games Workshop website which I knew had a wealth of resources, except it didn't...

After searching in vain and almost convinced that'd I'd somehow losing the ability to search the internet I realised that all the painting guides and all the conversion articles had been removed. Now I suspect the official reason will be that the conversion guides have been removed because they no longer sell components, and the painting guides, they'd have gone because all the names of the paints have changed.

Anyway whatever the reason my search eventually led to the iTunes store where, to no surprise, I found that you can buy painting guides. I opted to try a free guide to Space Marines for the iPad before deciding if I should buy one of the others.

First impressions are that it looks very good on the screen, bold high resolution pictures and plenty of content. These painting guides are fully up-to-date, featuring the newest range of Citadel paints which saves me having to use a conversion colour chart, (although in reality I'm using a mix of old and new paints). After a very short introduction to a few hobby basics it takes you straight into the guide for painting the first type of Space Marine.

There's another 70 pages of this

The typical painting guide page consists of list of paints, a large interactive picture which shows you each painting stage. This is then repeated for each part of the model, the armour, weapons, faces etc. And that's it, a few pages in and it allow seems a little empty. Words are kept to a minimum, advice on technique or mixes is non-existent. You finish the section on blue Space Marines and then it's on to the white ones, black ones, yellow ones and so on. It's just (on average) four colours per stage, which is great if you want to paint models to the Games Workshop's "standard". Want to do anything creative, then it seems you're not exactly going to find much help in the world of "How to paint Citadel Miniatures."

Until recently the guides in the White Dwarf magazine and on the website helped aspiring painters by showing such a wide and varied range of topics and painting styles. Inspiring they most certainly were, you'd pick up a brush really wanting to try to emulate what you saw on the pages of the magazine.

How it used to be

I remember the the old painting guides from the 1980's, the unique work of John Blanche, (a painter and artist that inspired me so much), the helpful step by step guides of more recent years and I can't help but wonder where it's all gone.

So where do aspiring painters go. Thankfully there is the internet and there are thousands of guides, websites and blogs ran by people who love their hobby and are more than willing to share that advice with others.

Overall, technologically a good tool, the content however is shallow and basic, much improvement is needed before it'll appeal to anyone other than beginner painters and even then it offers little in technical guidance.