ABOUT ME
My Nerdy Addiction Starts, All The Way Back In 2008...
Wearing my favorite Lord of the rings "Definitely Legitimate Merchandise" Frodo Cape (that I begged my parents for at the local Junee show).
I would trudge to the family shed looking for cool shit from my dads past that he had kept in storage from when he was in a teenager.
and in my multiple attempts at digging up cool items from my dads past I'd found Mad Magazine comics, an old case for a bb rifle, in which the bb gun itself had mysteriously disappeared, various questionable adult magazines.
But I finally found something exciting.
Miniatures,
Plastic goblins, dwarves and elves, small rats, rat miniatures too. I don't know what it was about my brain but something just stuck.
Video games were cool, but this. this was dope. I remember running back up stairs with old boxes of blood bowl teams, and an old hero quest box.
Demanding my dad to tell me why he had kept these cool fucking toys from me for my entire 12 year old lifespan thus far!
I can still remember watching the nostalgia wash over his face as he picked up these old miniatures and began explaining, without prompting the background story of the "Norse Bloodbowl Team" and how they were the coolest in the game.
(They're just vikings, not as cool as freaking LIZARDMEN. But anyway)
Fast forward a year or too, I finally sniffed out a local store where people ACTUALLY did the Nerdy shit I'd dreamed about, Painting Little Plastic Figures.
A little spot named "Logical Choice" here in wagga wagga, they had a dingy little 6 seater table at the back of the store, and I mean the back, back.
Like legitimately out of sight line from the entirety of the rest of the store.
And for some reason 14 year old me was like, Yes I want to hang out with these 18 year olds, and paint miniature goblins and shit.
So my mum and dad would drop me off every Tuesday before my sisters netball training, and to be honest
The stigma was real.
Everyone was awkward, there was a dude with blue hair who didn't smell good at all! but he had a gazillion paints and let me try everything, jamming my fat 14 year old hands in his paint pots without a care in the world, I DIDN'T thin my paints like, EVER.
Life was bliss, Until he came along.
Lets call him Greg.
(Not actually Greg, But Same Vibe)
Greg was a piece of work.
I remember Greg came a long, he was like miniature painting royalty. everyone else had already told me about Greg and his fantastic blends, his smooth highlights, his perfect dainty eyeballs on every miniature.
I laid low, at the back of the table like Frodo hiding from Nazgul's, then it happened. Greg turns to me as places his contingency of perfectly blended stupid sexy Chaos warriors on the table.
And scoffs,
"Why'd you give him denim jeans, where would an ogre get denim jeans from"
Not knowing how to respond to the literal witch king of miniature painting I froze, face turning bright red like the fire of mount doom.
"Uhh, Cause it looks Cool I guess?"
What he did next crushed me, he proceeded to pick up my poor little ogre boy in front of the entire miniature painting group and proceeded to lambast me for my choice in colors, my attempt at kit-bashing, the choice of a purple mohawk.
The berating seemed to go on and on, almost as long as the entirety of the Lord of the rings trilogy.
As he finished his battle of helms deep sized barrage on my poor mini, he limply placed my colorful metrosexual Ogre back in front of me, I then packed up my shit, put on my cape and left.
when I told my dad what had happened, he said perhaps the me the most refreshing words of wisdom about my crack head, denim jeans wearing, purple mohawk having ogre that I needed to hear in that moment.
"maybe your ogre just likes to dress that way, Maybe he likes to dress like that."
"maybe he couldn't find the right dyes and that's all he could find"
"maybe he stole those clothes from somebody else"
As my dad was trying to find every trick in the book to stop me crying about a stupid ogre shaped chunk of plastic, that's when it hit me.
There are no rules on how to paint, this is Art.
the paintjob tells a story.
Fuck Greg.
I never returned to Logical Choice, I painted by myself on and off throughout high school and university and thankfully discovered more like minded folk as I got older and became the president of nerd club at university called "CSU Game Geeks"
A weekly meetup where we'd play Board games, and RPGS like Dungeons and Dragons and TCG's like magic the gathering and Video Games in a fun, safe space.
And the best part was, NO GREG's ALLOWED
So in essence I think that's been my whole mantra thus far, I don't enjoy the stigma of this hobby and in turn hope to be one of the small changing factors that takes this small tight nit community to promote it further to more people, and try my best attempts to put an end to this Gate Keeping attitude.
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I started this business about a year ago back in 2020 in the hopes to share my passion for this Hobby with others so the Gary's of the Hobby stop scaring people away.
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I've been professionally commission painting for a year now and have enjoyed every second of it. with every commission I've taken I have made every effort to make the customer feel included with the project as I am (even if I'm doing something completely out of my depth)
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(Me with my biggest Commission yet! 160 Models, I haven't even finished my own army! Thanks again for the trust Darryl!)
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In my time in the past year I've also slowly branched out into commission 3D printing in the hopes to share the wide variety of cool ass models the world has to offer by the 1000's of independent sculptors. with the same mindset as me, making cool shit!
The next leg of our business journey is this online store, the plan is to market hand picked sculpts from various artists who offer something unique, and in all honesty just sculpts that I think are amazing.
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The next step in the pipeline is to branch out into custom dice, and nerdy themed loot with the help of my lovely supportive wife, Emily.
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Painting Miniatures and printing miniatures is Awesome, but sharing it with others is what keeps me coming back.
If there's a moral to this story that I can pass on in life, Don't be a Greg.
Because chances are you'll make a 14 year old wearing a Frodo Cape have an existential crisis over an ogre he painted.
Specific I know, but the best advice always is ;)