A (re) Start of Santa Cruz Warhammer! We are back!

Santa Cruz Warhammer is back! After a cooling period of a couple of years, SC John and myself are inspired again to share our modeling projects with all of your and inspire each other to keep at it. We have never lost the love for the hobby and we have painted up countless models in the interim, just not really shown them off to the wider world. 

We have revamped the blog layout a bit AND created a NEW LOGO and we have plenty ideas for the foreseeable future, like a 1000 point mirrorlist project for 40K, a recreation of the original 100 space marine chapters, with 100 marines being painted up, loads of terrain and basing tips and tutorials and many many more things.

We also have been lucky to have added two really talented modelers to the group: Pezman and Mike M. Below is a little bio with some work of both of them; really creative minds with loads of skills.

Pezman

My love affair with toy soldiers began in the eighties when I was still very young.  One of my brothers came back from a sleepover at a friend's house with a box of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons figures from Grenadier. 

  The single mold, broccoli based miniatures immediately captured my imagination as they gave physical form to the heroes and creatures that had only existed as stories before. 

  As the years passed, my love of  toy soldiers wax and waned with the fads of the time. Until, in the very early 90's, a perfect storm of hobby swept me away and set me on a path which would capture my imagination forever.  A friend at school was reading a magazine in our home room class that had pictures of some orks carrying what looked to me some incredibly powerful guns.  Wait, orks with guns!? That was something I'd never seen before. The art and colors were vibrant and when I got a chance to flip through the magazine I was captivated by the incredible figurines I saw painted on those glossy pages.

  Also contained within was an advertisement for a game which blended my love of fantasy figures with my other love, American Football.  The magazine was of course White Dwarf, and the game was Blood Bowl.  I was hooked.  I was even more thrilled to find that this company was British which gave it an air of validity (Tolkien being British too… hey, I was 12), but at the same time disappointed to realize I wouldn't be seeing Blood Bowl in a local store anytime soon.  However, around that same time I was able to get my hands on a copy of Milton Bradley's Hero's Quest, and I feverishly set about learning the rules, myths, and images that surrounded these figures. 

 A year or two later I was able to get a copy of Blood Bowl which included a thin, light blue pamphlet titled "How to Paint Citadel Miniatures" (I still own it).  The instructions in that pamphlet inspired me to grab some of my mother's craft paints to see if I could imitate what I had seen in White Dwarf and the Hero's Quest box. 25 years later, I have multiple armies of painted figures painted for multiple game systems, and still get just as inspired by an amazing miniature sculpture of a hero or villain as I ever have.

  Over the years, I've had the good fortune to be inspired by some amazing hobbyists, and learned a lot of techniques; but at the heart of it I'm still trying to give life to the little toy soldiers which captured my imagination so long ago.

Mike M (cornumortem)

 

My exposure to this hobby started with a copy of rogue trader. At the time my adolescent brain did not have the patience necessary to wade through that mess of a game, but I knew that I had discovered something special.

 After scraping together a collection of miniatures and several failed attempts at painting them, I put it all aside to pursue other (equally-dorky) hobbies; all the while continuing to consume 40k through less obtuse routes, like the novels and video games. 

Years later Al Gore invented the internet, and through exposure to hobby blogs and youtube tutorials I decided to give it another shot. It's been a rewarding hobby so far, though a busy schedule means that I'm able to sneak a few hours of painting in far more often than the time it takes to get actual tabletop games in. 

There you have it! John and I are super stoked to have added to really talented painters to the SCWH mix and all four of us are excited to inspire each other and you readers!

SC Mike