Pictures from the Warhammer 40,000 Design Studio Open Day
This Saturday just gone saw Warhammer World play host to the Warhammer 40,000 Design Studio Open Day. Hobbyists from across the world travelled to Nottingham to take part in the events, chat to the Studio personalities and generally have an awesome day immersed in the hobby. Of course, where there are hobby shenanigans going on I am never far away and throughout the day I ran around, camera in hand, snapping pictures of unsuspecting customers and staff. Here are a few of my favourite pics of the day, loosely bundled into galleries:
The two Studio painting teams were out in force with the 'Eavy Metal team running a speed-painting contest and giving out painting advice, while the Hobby Team ran painting workshops and showed people how to paint miniatures quickly and effectively. In the gallery you can see Duncan Rhodes painting a Space Marine in front of a room full of people all eager to improve their skills with Shades and learn more about applying highlights.
Between the two bands of painters sat the Studio artists including John Blanche and Kevin Chin, both of whom were more than willing to chat to people about their work. Some of the artists were even drawing on the day, showing us how they go about composing a new piece.
A veritable army of sculptors took up the centre of the Warhammer World hall, where they happily talked about sculpting Citadel miniatures. Darren Latham was busy showing people how sculpt heads with Green Stuff, while Jes Goodwin talked about the process of designing the Dark Eldar. Meanwhile, Trish Carden showed us how digital sculpting worked. There were also a large number of 3-up models on display (that's a model that's three times the size of normal) so that you can see how the models are sculpted.
The conversion table was a hotbed of activity throughout the day. In the centre of a sea of plastic components sits Colin Grayson's Ork super-mega-cannon, which took him almost a year to build and paint - I will endeavour to get more pictures of it! There were also tables where you could help build terrain for the Cataclysm event the following day.
The mega-battle featured a large number of aircraft painted by the Studio team. As you can see, there's a lot of planes on this board and many of them (especially the Ork ones) had been heavily converted. Games Developers Simon Grant and Jeremy Vetock - two of the most excitable and boisterous members of the Studio - were running the games, which were loud, frantic, and very entertaining all round. Next time my Ork pilot might actually hit something...
The Black Library and Forge World were there in force. I actually saw someone buy the latest Heresy book Fear to Tread (which was available early on the day), and then run into Bugman's Bar to read it over a drink and a packet of crisps. They were still deeply engrossed almost an hour later!
And lastly there were several Studio seminars, which covered such subjects as creating army books and Codexes, designing miniatures and writing rules. It was, for many people that I spoke to, the highlight of the day, as they got to hear from the sculptors, writers and games developers themselves how they go about their job. In the pictures above you can see Phil Kelly and Jes Goodwin as they talk about how they re-designed the Dark Eldar in 2010 and Mat Ward gives a group of excited hobbyists a solo on his air saxaphone.
To see more pictures of the day, check out the Warhammer World Facebook page where the guys from the events team (they're the ones in the insanely bright yellow shirts) took even more pictures of the day. Make sure you check back later because we'll have a few pictures of the extra stuff that's been going on here, including pictures of the newly-renovated Bugman's Bar, which now includes new shields, banners and other exciting Warhammer paraphernalia.
