It’s not every day that you pick up a new hobby, and even then it’s rare that you actually enjoy it enough to go “all-in” and not sell everything on Facebook Marketplace 3 months later.
Most recently, a friend of mine got me hooked on miniature painting. I’d been eyeing it out for a while, but without someone to do it with I just wasn’t able to set myself to it. For me, this goes to show how important a community is when you take on a new hobby. The people make the hobby just that much more… moreish.
A few months into the hobby, I stumbled across a local painting competition and with a small amount of motivation from a few pals on Twitter, I entered. I was also inspired to help spread this competition in an attempt to try and show others out there how cool my new hobby was. Through this, I landed up interviewing and “meeting” Richard from Wildstorm Studios. Little did I know that he’s been building up the miniature painting community in SA for years.
Here’s how that interview went:
Cody “Interviewer with a blocked nose” Nery Thomson: “Hey Richard! Let’s start with a quick introduction for those who don’t know who you are. Please tell us about Wildstorm Studios and how your passion for miniature painting came to be.”
Richard “Painted before YouTube tutorials were a thing” Cordeiro: “First off, I will say a massive thank you to NAG for the opportunity to do this interview. I have this nostalgic connection to NAG, and I’ll prove it because I have the disc from the last NAG magazine I purchased on my desk right here.” (As we all should). “My name is Richard; I am the owner and host of Wildstorm Studios. I am a full-time miniature artist, which is crazy to hear for some. It started as a hobby, but my kids were quite young, and I’ve always been an insomniac, so I needed something to keep me busy at night. I came across a set of Space Marines, as we all do, and painted them up – dismally in my eyes – but that 18-year-old paint job is part of the journey. From there, I fell in love with the hobby and started reading up as much as I could. Back then, there wasn’t all this YouTube madness, so it was a lot of reading blogs and finding PDFs online to grow the skillset. I moved down to Cape Town and met a few other folks, and created a small network. We set up a workshop at a local store, which inspired the creation of a WhatsApp group. The WhatsApp group grew a bit too large, and it was getting a little out of hand with all the messages coming in all day long. Albert, a member of the community, then approached me to look at starting a Discord. Knowing too that I was a struggling artist, he also suggested using the Discord server to provide an opportunity to create crowd-funding through Patreon. So Wildstorm Studios, as it currently stands, is a community hub. It’s about community first and not about myself and my artwork…”
Richard then began to explain Thunderbrush, a community event similar to that of Golden Demon that came about because of the kinship and bond of the members in the miniature painting, model building, sculpting, you-name-it community:
“Thunderbrush was this dream I had when I started this hobby. You’d see these massive contests like Golden Demon overseas, where you would see all the people and all the talent, and I’d think to myself, damn, I wish we could have something like that here and that’s what spurred on the idea of Thunderbrush, an international format painting competition.”
Richard told me that those two years we had to pause life helped build the community even more. Wildstorm was able to connect with companies like Pandemonium Games which wanted to create an even better Thunderbrush than before, for the community.
“We had Roman Lappat at Thunderbrush 2023; for those of you in the know, he needs no explanation, but for those who aren’t, he’s probably one of the top 5 artists from the miniature art realm in the world. He’s my mentor in this art form. I’ve been following him since 2008 and his phenomenal, no-rules, expressive approach to painting.”
Richard elaborates on how Thunderbrush 2023 allowed community members who had only been able to chat with each other online via discord or through a few low-quality streams were now finally able to meet in person, see each other’s faces and express their love for the art form. It’s pretty evident when Richard is telling this whole story that his passion lies not necessarily in the hobby itself but in the community that he’s creating around it.
I knew exactly how this felt as my small wargaming club only days after Thunderbrush hosted a small competition where I got to meet a good bunch of the guys for the first time, and, funnily enough, one of them had won a trophy at Thunderbrush 2023. Go team!
Thunderbrush is hosted in Cape Town, where Richard resides, and as someone who was only able to enter the online division (2nd place finisher, might I add), I had to sneakily ask if Richard planned to bring Thunderbrush closer to me, I mean, closer to some of the other community members in Johannesburg.
Richard “Takes two weeks to recover” Cordeiro joked: “I’ve had that question asked by pretty much every member who stays up in Johannesburg. I would love to, but I don’t have any illusions of grandeur. For me, it’s community first. For our long-term goal, we would love to have it where it floats around to the different main hubs throughout the country over a yearly period so that every city gets an opportunity to host. There are a lot of resources and logistics involved in the background. I myself handled Thunderbrush as a one-man show, and I was devastated for about two weeks afterwards, exhausted, finished, and only now getting back into the rhythm of things leading up to the next big thing.”
“From the Thunderbrush traction, there have already been talks of getting workshops set up around the country due to the amazing workshop Roman hosted for us at Thunderbrush 2023.”
Richard and I then got slightly distracted talking about how, just for a few hours, this hobby that we’re involved in allows us to escape the world — bringing to life a fantasy world that we have growing inside our imaginations. We chatted about how I have always been eyeing miniature art and tabletop gaming, and it was through a friend I was motivated to give it a shot and get really involved in the hobby. Again pointing out how much of a role the community and the comradery play. Thanks, Denzel.
We also agreed that no matter your skill level, you should always keep your first painted model. It will show how much skill you’ve gained through the therapeutic hours spent painting more and more.
I remembered then that Richard had brought up “the next big thing” and tried to get a little more information out of him on the topic.
“We’ve been reached out to by the guys from Comic Con. We are going to be hosting at Comic Con Cape Town on the 29th of April and we’re going to be doing a little thing we’re calling Speed Brush. Now Speed Brush is not necessarily a speed painting contest per se” (Speed painting is where you paint with speed, obviously, but because you’ve only been allotted a short amount of time) “but what it is, is a painting contest open to everyone.”. “You’ll have a choice of miniatures to choose from, the tools, the paints, all you need to do is rock up, sit down and get painting. You can paint it in 15 minutes, you can paint it in an hour, or you could spend the whole day there if you’d like, but we call it Speed Brush because you can sit down, paint it quickly there and carry on viewing everything else Comic Con has to offer. At the end of the day, the paintings will be judged by Julio, one of the Thunderbrush 2023 winners and Jesse, from the South Africanist. The winner will receive a R1,000 voucher from the Deckle Edge, one of the biggest art stores down in Cape Town.”
Richard also explained how they hope to have a couple of workshops streamed during the event to show different levels, from beginner to Roman, and try and explain a few tips and tricks to those of us out there looking to improve our painting technique.
Personally, I think the “sit down and paint” style of the event happening at Comic Con Cape Town is just downright awesome. If I had to have seen something like that happening at another event, I would have for sure gotten involved in a miniature painting way before I did.
Richard and I then chatted for another 20 or so minutes about all the different kinds of entry levels for the hobby, from canvas painting to dioramas. Again, Richard was just enveloped with passion for the whole thing.
So I want to say to you, Richard, me and the community thank you. We know that you aren’t doing it for the recognition but to help the hobby become as big and as significant in South Africa as it is elsewhere in the world.
Be sure to pop past the Wildstorm Studios stand at Comic Con Cape Town this weekend. Who knows, you might get roped into one of the coolest hobbies out there. Perhaps someone’s amazing art will inspire you and perhaps it might just be Richard himself.
Take a gander at their Facebook page to learn more about what the community is up to.