Talking Therapy: Mindfulness and Miniature Painting With Owen Moxey

Transcript

Nobody give me sin for thee That’s reason why I try both If all is cold I can see a thousand times all day Out against mental illness Okay welcome back everyone, it’s been a while I think, several weeks But I’m back with another Talking Therapy episode where I invite someone to come and talk to me about creativity and mental health and whatever else they feel like talking about And here today I have Owen who I’m going to let introduce himself but as a bit of a background we know each other via the crew charity that I’m involved with which is linked to the cinema that I live next door to And so we’ve met via that and Owen does some interesting stuff which we’ll get into but I’ll let him do a quick intro. Over to you Owen Hi I’m Owen, as Alex has said I’m part of the crew charity, I host Warhammer and Miniatures painting group and yeah it’s gone hobby, gone bigger so yeah And so we’re going to get into Warhammer and tabletop gaming, you live here in Scotland with me so what’s your history and background, what do you do when you’re not hosting gaming stuff So when I’m not hosting gaming stuff and painting stuff I’m probably at home doing painting stuff I have multiple different neurodivergent and other kind of illnesses that kind of prevent me from doing regular day to day work as it were So yeah it’s one of those things that and again we’ll probably get into this a bit more later on but it kind of becomes my outlet and my ability to just kind of stop the brain worms making noise So yeah it’s a great outlet for me Amazing, yeah so I mean we can do the neurodiversity bingo if you want, what are we starting with autism? Yeah we’ve got a touch of the tism ADHD? ADHD, yeah Dyslexia? Undiagnosed but slightly Yeah, yeah same with me Anything else to add to the list? Less neurodivergent more It’s called functional neurological disorder, it’s not a very well known condition But it’s kind of along the vein of symptoms similar to MS but without the body kind of attacking its own nervous system kind of thing So it could be excessive fatigue, it could be muscle pain, spasms, tremors, there’s migraines and whole lot of other symptoms that go along with it But yeah that’s the main one that kind of stops me from doing average work as it were And then the ADHD and the tism are kind of the brain worms that make things day to day life just awkward Challenging, challenging So the other thing you said and I don’t even remember it, it already had a completely useless name It’s one of those ones that’s like bad stuff syndrome Invisible bad stuff syndrome Pretty much I’m not in any way diminishing it, I’m just saying they give them weird names because they don’t know how to describe it They give it some weird sort of meaningless name And then it sort of gets stuck with it like ADHD which is just so not correct And it probably does more harm than good But at least when you say it people generally know what you’re alluding to We’re here because myself and others use creativity as an outlet, as a way of regulating, as a way of managing mental health issues I’ve got a few extra to throw into the mix myself but if anyone wants to know about that I’ve got something like 49 episodes of this I talk about myself a lot so let’s not do that Let’s talk about you, so right now let’s do some definitions You said some stuff that people may or may not know With regards to what the broader, am I right to say that the broader set of things that we are going to be referring to is tabletop gaming And you specifically referred to stuff like Warhammer and Dungeons and Dragons Yeah they’re the main ones that that and board game miniatures and stuff are the main ones that are done up at the group But outside of that tabletop gaming kind of spans everything from Napoleonic style warfare through to high fantasy And everything in between, you can have space battles, you can have naval battles and all sorts of different things But also like chess and cluedo and Scrabble, I mean it’s all part of the same family I think the people who play Scrabble or Monopoly once a year at Christmas might not be aware of the rich and ridiculously diverse tabletop gaming arena I mean I’ve sort of I’ve peered into it from time to time I have a real pathological fear of losing, I’m a terrible, terrible loser I’m also a terrible, terrible winner right, so I can’t play games because I always end up either pissing myself off or everyone else or both right So I stopped really doing it, but I did sort of get into the tabletop gaming a little bit and it’s a little bit like oh okay So this is you know Monopoly, Cluedo and stuff but extra and then you start to look into it and you go oh no wait What the fuck, what the fuck, there’s so much of it You think that the rules for board games like Monopoly are convoluted, just start looking at Warhammer and those kind of rule sets They’re pretty heavy Well and new ones all the time right, you got Monopoly and I don’t think that’s changed in a very long time And yeah it can be quite convoluted but like Warhammer has like Bible sized manuals and then there’s a new one because there’s a new set of rules or some new other version of the game I think it’s about every three years on average that they change an edition with Warhammer So we’re currently in 10th about to go into 11th edition and 10th edition was the biggest change to the rule set that they’ve had in quite a number of editions They said that they did it to make it more accessible to new players and I think new players probably got on better than seasoned players because there were such dramatic changes And I think I was fortunate enough that I came in just as 10th was starting to come in Because I hadn’t played probably since maybe 6th edition which was back in the early 2000s So yeah it’s one of those things that the rules change frequently Within those rule sets if you play in the competitive scene then they change every three months They’ll do what they call a data slate and it kind of updates the rules to make it a bit more balanced so that one army is not far exceeding that of another army and things like that It’s very much an active constantly evolving rule set Right, yeah and it really hurt my head So but let’s be clear here right so and I’m going to break this down Owen sorry I’m going to sound like a real dunce but I need to sort of set the scene here for anyone who’s never encountered this So monopoly is not a bad place to start because you’ve got little dudes on the board right or is it like a shoe or whatever I don’t even remember any more car or something right So you’ve got miniatures in that right so starting point we’re in the same arena here but when we start to ratchet it up some of these board games come with hundreds of pieces of things like tokens and little miniatures maybe or different configurations of boards and stuff but where things get really really interesting is where you’ve got more what we would call perhaps role playing games that have miniatures with them they might come with a set of miniatures that are not constructed and you might have say two armies or two groups of stuff and then you can think of it like chess I guess at that point So you’ve got chess figures but like you had to create your own chess figures and they were these really gnarly monsters or something and we’re in the realm now where you can start to think about a little bit more like chess It’s like chess on steroids but you don’t just have to build the figures you have to well you don’t have to do any of it I guess you could just buy them but I guess someone else would do it but you build the figures and that’s a bit like airfix what I would think of airfix in some way Yeah they kind of come out on what they call a sprue which is a plastic frame it’s all made of the same material that the models are made of and you clip the bits out and glue them all together you get your instructions and depending on what it is you’re building there’ll be different configurations for different loadouts or say the unit that you’re building for warhammer or if you’re building a dungeons and dragons character there might be a couple of different options which it’s not as detrimental on how you build a dungeons and dragons character because that’s just representing the character that you’ve designed within the game With wargaming and stuff like that a lot of the time they go by a what you see is what you get type rule where a certain unit may be allowed to carry certain weapons and special weapons and stuff like that so how you build it will be represented in the unit that you’re putting forward So in terms of looking at it in the chess aspect if you take say a knight a knight might be a unit of five models and they may be a specialty unit whereas your pawn units might be like just regular tactical infantry and then you play them on a much bigger tabletop rather than on a sort of sectioned out board and everything has movement distance that it can do and shooting range and stuff like that so it is very much that strategic element of what chess would be and trying to figure out like trying to be two or three steps ahead of your opponent Yeah risk is another one that springs to mind and effectively and also I’m just thinking about watching Game of Thrones or something like that where they’ve got that big terrain table with all the terrain on it and they’re like moving armies around and stuff Yeah and they actually have a tabletop game of Game of Thrones as well where you can get all the different armies It does not surprise me in the least and so and so the figures themselves are miniatures some of them might be almost like almost like your pawns with almost like two bits you stick together in a base like they can be quite simple Yeah and then and then right up to some big vehicle or some big mad dragon thing that are super complex how many bits are you putting together in one of those complicated ones like hundreds? Yeah normally for things like tanks or for what they would call walkers which are like your big mobile mech suits and stuff like that you’re you’re easy talking into the hundreds of pieces and it may not look like there’s hundreds of pieces when it’s fully built But there are a lot of the parts you will have to put like two halves together and they’ll still count as individual pieces but they build like a more constructed piece and there’s extra bits that go in and on to those that create extra details or things like that So yeah you’re easily talking into the hundreds of pieces for some of those pieces a little itty bitty tiny pieces and you might lose them or whatever or you you mangle them when you’re taking them out of the frame thingy Oh my god so I did some of this right so I think it was probably I know there was a bit of a war hammer craze over Covid for all the obvious reasons I can’t remember when I was doing it but I just I was trying to see if my other son was interested he’d sort of seen Games Workshop in the window the Games Workshop which is the retail arm of the company that sells the the ball hammer and various other tabletop gaming similar things And I got into it for a little bit because let’s be clear that those those you know setups I have the in the window of a Games Workshop and I mean it just looks so cool right and I’ve been aware of this since I was a kid I was never into it but I always loved the visuals and also the art that goes with it And so I tried it tried it for a bit and we were trying it with you know in the context of trying to of playing the game and and I quite we quite enjoyed making the miniatures and I did a half decent job of it because you know I know my way around paint and a paint brush and stuff yeah and I could put them together and then playing playing the game was just like oh my god this is so frustrating I don’t know what’s going on I don’t know if we’re doing it right and then like I don’t know and and then I you know remember I don’t like playing games and so I’ve still I’ve still got the miniatures around someone I keep on progressively damaging them So I just want to zoom out for a second here because you know I’m like your classic entry level right and there are some people here that are basically probably professionals so you’ve got and just to sort of place you know the work that you’re doing next door so you’ve got the game itself which is incredibly varied let’s let’s stick with Warhammer for the moment I know yeah yeah you’ve got the game itself which is not static it’s not just a square board there’s not a very defined set of rules that it’s it’s a it’s based a lot on randomness as dice involved you can you can set up your own terrain you can you know there are rules around things like the setup and the board or the play area whatever you’re calling it there it can be there’s like an infinite a different amount of games you could play but you’ve got the gaming you’ve got the active coming together with people and and and competing with your friends or you know perhaps a professional level to to win wars between groups of pieces on a very big board and so you’ve got the competitive gaming the social side and then you’ve got the more hobby looking side of it which has taken every bit of seriously you put your pieces together you’re painting them up there’s there’s competition around who’s looks the best and and perhaps you’ve got a tank and someone else has got the same tank or how have you done it differently and so on and and then you’re a different army you know I mean yeah and and so on you’ve got all these different armies and stuff and it’s incredibly rich like it’s dauntingly rich and diverse but that that’s the whole thing right the whole thing around these these types of tabletop gaming is the it’s the culture right yeah it’s everything from the the playing with your mates right through to competing on the world stage with the most amazing things you’ve built yourself yeah it’s it’s very very and I mean even just to go back into it there’s you’ve got the tabletop side of things where you can compete and do the the gaming side of things but there’s quite a large scene for the competitive side of things. For the competitive side in painting as well and and and that’s actually something that I do take part in as well every now and again is is doing the the more competitive side of painting and there’s the the the typical games workshop one or Warhammer one which is Golden Demon and that’s often seen as like the highest accolade in terms of painting miniatures within that kind of community that you can get and there’s a lot more of the less Warhammer more bust painting or there’s the even just using the Warhammer models it takes there’s a massive broad spectrum globally of different events that people can go and participate in and it gets graded from different events do different grading so there’s the Golden Demon you will have like your your commended level and then there will be your gold silver bronze for the ones that the judges have deemed to be the best and there’s only one gold silver bronze for each category that they do. Whereas the other ones like MPO that gets held down in Bristol and it’s it’s more graded in terms of the level that they see your your painting at so instead of there being one gold silver and bronze it’s like the gold silver and bronze is kind of like a bracket. So if you’re exceptionally good then you’ll be awarded a gold the same as maybe 1520 50 other people that have also got a gold for any of their work so it’s less competitive on the MPO side than on the Golden Demon side it becomes more of like an acknowledgement of your skill level I guess in in certain aspects. But the hobby itself you can get into the hobby and never play the game and just enjoy building and painting the models and that’s kind of the joy of it is that you can come in at whatever aspect you want to do. If you want to play the game you can do a really basic paint job on your models and do it really quickly and get an army built and painted and on the tabletop in like no time. Or you can meticulously sit there and paint every single detail and rivet and little tiny minute detail on the model and take your time with it and and get to a level that you decide you know what I could probably take part in these competitive painting competitions or I could start doing commission work in the same way that you know an artist can make money from putting paint on canvas or sculpting or anything like that you can not probably quite as profitable as doing your traditional outlets of art but you can make very good money from from doing painting of miniatures so it’s a very very broad spectrum in terms of what the hobby is. Right it is and I think that many people could go you know through their life at the moment not knowing any of this exists right which suggests oh this is little you know edge case you know only a few people are doing it but but it that’s not the case. Tabletop gaming is huge right and and and and the king of the tabletop games well once you sort of scrape away the the top lot your chest is in your monopolies and stuff the king of the tabletop RPGs is well I don’t know is it is it warhammer or is it still D&D? So in terms of if you want to look at it in terms of your strategy RPGs where you’re putting an army on the table then games workshop are up there they are the the pinnacle of tabletop war gaming and that I think that’s the main difference is that when you look at things like warhammer it’s war gaming and then when you look at Dungeons and Dragons it’s far more attuned to the RPG side of it. The RPG side of things where you’re actually role-playing a character and you have a small party of people that are going out there and it’s the storytelling aspect of Dungeons and Dragons so. So Lord of the Rings you’ve got one bit where you’ve got Frodo and stuff those guys wandering around as a group just seeing stuff and encountering elves and things and that’s more like your Dungeons and Dragons. And then you’ve got the full-on war stuff at Helm’s Deep that’s your full-on warhammer stuff right? Yeah so I think in terms of the war gaming side of things warhammer is the most profitable company out there games workshop is the most profitable company out there in terms of that they are as far as I know now a billion pound company and on the stock market and everything. They went from in the 80s being two guys living in a van just to be able to afford to be able to create this game working out of a backroom somewhere just to create this fantasy game that nobody else had ever done and that went beyond what D&D was and did that whole high fantasy war game side of it where you built armies. And it was just to try and diverse that tabletop kind of market and it kind of pushed the whole the evolving kind of and for lack of a better term nerd scene that was out there with with Dungeons and Dragons and they were just trying to filter into that into something different and it’s been massively successful to them almost to a fault now. There are competitors that are coming out now people who are really big in that Dungeons and Dragons scene have thrown their own hat in the ring and and as always with these big companies there’s always some sort of capitalist drama that’s there that people get upset with them because they stop looking at the people who are playing the game and more look at profits and that’s when other people come in and like we can give you something that was far closer to the game. But it’s it’s very very hard to get into that scene and not be drowned out by the big hitters like Games Workshop. Yeah, yeah. Welcome to late stage capitalism. Yeah, I think everything gets poisoned. But okay, so so I think here like that this is not this is not a little, you know, niche hobby that is this is mainstream it’s really big. I’m not surprised Games Workshop making so much money when you look at how much their models cast. Yeah. And also they’ve got like, so many books, so many books written about it, like novels that relate to the Warhammer universe and magazines and all sorts of things and the lore within the hobby is insane. And it is something that I do very much enjoy sitting there and reading about the army that I’m building and the lore behind them and the stories that are built upon the the characters within the game. And it’s it’s very, very deep. But again, you can get into the hobby and play the game and not read a single word of it and still get on fine. Yeah, it’s great. And I think, you know, I want to I want to get into the sort of the actual doing of it. But it’s worth noting that there’s a bunch of podcasts where people play D&D and other role playing games and they do it out loud as groups and these are real actors. And yeah, so I think that’s a huge kind of critical role. Critical role. Yeah. It’s what I say is the biggest one. They’ve actually they’re the main company that have well, they are now officially a company and they’ve come out with the competitor to Dungeons and Dragons, which is called Daggerheart. And that’s the first time I think that someone mainstream has turned around and been like, we’re going to make something that gives you all the joy and all the the essence of what Dungeons and Dragons is, but we’re going to make it better. Critical role are a bunch of, as they say themselves, nerdy ass voice actors. So they’re able to put all that effort into creating their characters and creating the voices for those characters and acting them out. And they’ve got animated shows around their own campaigns. They do live shows and everything. And I think the misconception is that to play Dungeons and Dragons, you have to be that expressive, outgoing person. You don’t have to put on a voice. You don’t have to get totally deep into character. Does it make it a little bit more fun and interesting? Sure. But it’s not a prerequisite of you must get into character to play Dungeons and Dragons. You can have just as much fun just sitting there rolling the dice, making the decisions that your character would make and just playing it out. It’s about, again, it’s kind of what we’re here to talk about. It’s getting together with a group of friends and just forgetting the outside world for a while and focusing on, and again with Dungeons and Dragons is very much about being involved in storytelling. That’s what it boils down to in Assassin’s is just storytelling. Well, and it’s like, you know, choose your own adventure, right? So yeah, there is a, there’s a thread, there’s a narrative thread, you have real characters, but it can go any number of places. So it’s like a collaborative novel in the making. You’re making up your own piece of narrative art, right? I think it’s amazing actually. And the fact that we’ve been talking with 20 something minutes already, the breadth of stuff that we’ve covered there. And I just know that we’ve only chipped off the very slightest bit of the top of the iceberg there. The tiniest little bit. Yeah, really, really small, but I hope, I hope that the listeners get a sense, anyone who’s not in, you know, been involved in this will get a sense of what we’re talking about. But what you just said a minute ago, I really, really like really resonates. That’s really where it brings it home for me is, is the community as it brings people together and often brings people together who are, let’s be clear, not necessarily quite as socially adept or, and of all ages, right? And so when I’ve wandered through your sessions next door, there are kids, young teenagers, tweens, right through to, you know, very mature adults, right? And, and I think there’s a certain type of person, I don’t think anyone would find that particularly controversial. But it brings people together and it gives people a reason to sort of collaborate, come out of themselves and, and derive enjoyment in a sort of safe, ordered environment where there are rules and there are ways of behaving. And certainly you and me being autistic, the autistic part of our brains going, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Safe rules. We like things to have be safe and have rules. And we like it when people just play by those rules. And it creates a very calm environment. And then, and then you’ve got the whole creativity piece, which happens during gameplay, but also, you know, with the miniatures and all the other bits that go with that. And, and I find, you know, that side of it. Because this is really when I think about what you do, it’s that, right? You facilitate bringing people together. I don’t think you’re, you don’t seem hugely wedded to, to a specific form of doing that. Because, you know, you and I think there’s someone else who runs it with you, isn’t there, that you do other board game nights as well. Yeah. So, so we’ve got the board game night that does run. In fact, it’s on tonight. And it’s looking at games like it could be anything from risk through to monopoly or whatever. But I think they tend to focus more on, again, that kind of campaign kind of board game things like Catan and risk and contagion and stuff like that, that are a bit more, I guess, role play ish, that you get a little bit more involved with it rather than just kind of playing your shoe or your car or your cat and going around a table and making as much money as your hotel. Monopoly, which was developed as a teaching tool for how bad capitalism is. And it’s probably caused more arguments among people who care about each other than any other single, you know, activity that has ever been invented. It’s so, it’s so ironic when you understand the history of monopoly. Yeah, capitalist board game going and it’s become the biggest capitalist capitalism. It’s like, you know, like, like capitalists watching Wolf of Wall Street and using it as a manual for how to behave. So we’re not going to get stuck down like you. No, you know, Red Alex and Red are in here. We’re about to go full on socialist on your asses. No, we’re not we’re not going to do that. So and so I love that you bring, but you’re bringing people together. Right. And you’re saying to them, here’s here’s a set of things that we can do. You do whichever one you want and we’re going to help you with it. Right. And it just going into the room. It just like, oh, so calm. Yeah. So nice. And I think that lends a lot to the the idea of literally what it’s like to be creative. It’s one of those where you find your outlet and you just run with it. And it’s it’s a very calming atmosphere because you’re able to have that outlet. It’s not a stressful situation. It’s putting paint on a bit of plastic. It’s it’s having conversations and in our field where the the tism can run right when you get into your your expert, your your area of expertise and vital interests that you can just sit there and you don’t realize that you’ve been talking about the lower of a certain character for the last 45 minutes and not had anyone kind of switch off. It’s been people who have a shared interest in what you’re talking about. And it’s just great to be able to be within like minded people that share such a unique hobby and be able to have these conversations. Yeah. And I think the facilitating that is I mean, there’s a certain art to that. Right. Because let’s be clear. We could all open up a room once a week and say, come play D&D and Warhammer and create a completely inappropriate environment. And, you know, it would last one session. Right. Yeah. Because they do this well at Games Workshop, because if you go to the go there in the evenings, they’ll have, you know, sessions where they where, you know, people come from the community and play. Right. Yeah. And it’s essentially similar to what you’re doing. And and and I think, you know, that that’s one of the things that the Games Workshop does. You know, it’s not it’s not because it’s a shop. It’s it’s a place where people can go and talk about the stuff that they love and and people around them have created an environment where they’re comfortable doing that. And and people know what they’re talking about, because yeah, quite frankly, and the flip side to it is if someone starts telling you about the law of their character and you have no interest or exposure to Warhammer, you are just going to glaze over. And there’s nothing wrong with that, because this shit is hardcore. Yes. And I don’t blame people for tuning out when I meander off on one of my interests. I sort of go, yeah, sorry. Right. And I’m babbling on now. And but it’s so nice to be in an environment where people just go, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, tell me more. You know, I mean, everyone has their own interests. There is such like I was saying before, there’s such a large plethora of lore out there and so so many characters and factions and races and everything else within the even just the Warhammer universe. It’s people aren’t all just sitting there talking about the same set of characters like you’ve got space elves, you’ve got dark space elves, you’ve got the the space Marines who are the bio engineered super humans in massive tactical armour. You’ve got orcs, which are kind of portrayed as these mindless brutes with a cockney accent that just if they believe it hard enough, it will happen. Like there’s so many different characters and you can you will always find something that interests you if you’re into that kind of into that hobby and if you want to get into the lore. But like, there is something for everyone. And, you know, it’s it’s not just my space army versus your space army or my bio humans versus your bio humans. Yeah, well, but my bio humans are going to kick your bio humans arses. So let’s be clear about that. I sincerely doubt that. But but so you get quite a lot of kids through. I think I think it’s something that it seemed that you can and might grow out of. I have I have no doubt that a certain amount of kids have gone into it, got some, you know, got brought into it by this amazing how it looks and how cool it is. And probably it might be too much for some people. But I think, you know, I think there’s a certain group of people that were almost in it for life. Right. Once you’re in it, this is just that it becomes your lifestyle. You know, how you work a lot with kids, what, you know, what sort of age do you see kids getting into it and how do you see them, you know, coming across this? Well, why are people walking into your sessions? So, I mean, my eight year old daughter had a spell where she would really enjoy sitting there and building and painting with me. And and just kind of enjoyed that sitting and doing things for me. She saw me sitting, painting and decided, oh, I want to have a shot at that. And she really enjoyed it. And again, she’s one of those undiagnosed kids that is most definitely both spectrum and ADHD. But it’s we get kids as young as kind of late primary school age through to secondary school. Apparently there is. What’s that for non-British listeners? So probably looking around ages 10 up and the game is recommended for like ages 14 up. But again, it’s kids will maybe see their dad playing it or building models or whatever or or their mom. There is a lot of women that do this hobby as well. But they’re mainly coming through from what I’ve gathered recently, they’re coming through from the video games. There was recently a Space Marine game that came out on console and PC and all the rest of it. And it did remarkably well. And there was a massive influx of mainly your your young to mid teens coming in off the back of that. The kids who are used to playing Call of Duty and and those kind of shooter games have found something that’s like, oh, wait, there’s more than just the video game. And then we’ve had kids that young kids coming in probably about eight or nine coming in. And it was a colleague of their mom who found out that this kid’s autistic and they sit and build and paint Warhammer. And they’re like, oh, maybe your son would like this. And they’ll give them like a couple models and some paints and brushes to set them up and get them going. And so there’s there’s a huge kind of and I guess that goes into the the whole ADHD tism side of the hobby and the benefits that it has for it is that it’s one of those hyper focuses. And it’s a very creative outlet that us as adults can turn around and suggest to kids that are maybe struggling with finding hobbies or being part of a group or aren’t very social, but they’re trying to encourage their kids to go in and take part in something. Something as simple as setting and painting a model. And that’s the other thing as well is that you don’t have to paint it in a certain color scheme. You can put a whole box of paints out and say, knock yourself out. Choose whatever colors you want. Pick up a brush and just start putting paint on the model because nine times out of 10, I will have the model prepped and ready for them to simply come in and just start painting. I feel like the building side is definitely much more of an accompanied task at the younger ages. I’d say probably about 14 up here. You’re pretty much set. It’s using things like the glue and the snips and potentially a hobby knife and stuff like that that it gets a little bit difficult for younger kids to actually take part. But having the models there ready to go, as long as the parents understand that this model is probably holding a big machine gun or a sword or a rocket launcher or something, as long as they’re okay with their kids seeing sci-fi fantasy or high fantasy or whatever, then it’s a great outlet for kids to get started in young. And going back to that kind of kids picking it up and putting it down and not really getting into it or getting in over their heads or whatever, there’s definitely been a trend. And I don’t know if this is necessarily because of COVID, but people like myself, I am not alone in the fact that I played as a teenager. And then real life hit and I was undiagnosed and it was like, right, I need to get a job. I need to start doing responsible adult things and I don’t have time for this anymore. And that seems to be the biggest reason that people put it down. And then when they realize maybe five, 10, 15 years later that they’re like, I kind of want to pick that back up again and I have adult money now and I have free time on an evening. I’m going to get back into it. And so what was that trigger? Why then? Because you could describe the experience, take the gaming side out of it and you’ve got why do I? I did it as a kid. I found it very regulating. I really enjoyed it and it really defined me right up until my early 20s and then just stopped doing it for 20 years. And then, you know, again, it’s not about if you want to know why I got back into it, I can link you to many episodes of this podcast. But what was your trigger? Why then? So I was at a point where I think it must have been around the time that I was diagnosed with the FND and the neurologist that I was speaking to was like, have you ever been tested for ADHD and things like that? And I hadn’t been diagnosed at this point, but I was kind of in that mindset of trying to kind of shift things about a little bit to kind of facilitate the potential that, you know, maybe I am ADHD, maybe I am autistic, whatever. And just decided, you know what? I need to find an interest. I need to find a hobby. And we were just walking through town and walk past the Warhammer shop and I was like, oh, I’ve not been in there in years, like since I was a kid. I just want to go in and see what like it is. And looking at the models again, and it kind of stirred up a little bit of that nostalgia for me. And I was like, you know what? I’m going to buy a model. I’m just going to buy one that I always wanted to get when I was a kid. And I’m going to build it and I’m going to try my hand at painting again. And that turned into, oh, I’m going to build a diorama. So I found like some of my old models that I had and I stripped the paint off them. And I was going to build a diorama, which then turned into me being like, hmm, maybe I should build an army and actually get into the game again. So that was, I’ll buy a box of models and well, they need friends. And I can’t just play the game with just one unit. And that builds the army and you start collecting and painting. And then I got into, I found the corner of social media that was the Warhammer community. And I met a whole bunch of people on there and they were painting while they were live streaming. And I was like, oh, that looks great fun. I want to join in on that. And it kind of just snowballed from there. And I’m now sitting at my desk looking at about a dozen projects that are in various stages of being painted sat on my desk in front of me and racks of different colored paints and brushes and basing materials and all sorts of stuff. And again, it’s, I think that I came to realize that this is very much an escape and an outlet for me where I’m not a very outgoing person. I don’t want to go and sit in a busy pub or go out clubbing or do this or do that. Like the majority of, you know, 20, 30 year olds want to go do. But I’m more than happy to sit with up to a dozen people and sit and paint a model or sit on a live stream on Twitch or whatever and paint and have people come and ask me for, you know, advice on how to paint their models or how to do certain techniques like wet blending or glazing or all sorts of different technical abilities that you have within the painting side of things. I see myself very much more painter first, player second, and it can very much be the other way around. But in terms of where I got back into it, it was definitely more of trying to get myself out of the negative headspace and just try and find something that I can switch my brain off for a couple hours and sit and do something creative and just hyper fixate on that instead of hyper fixating on all the noise that’s in my head. Well, I now lose that right and what I really like about this and actually pretty much every other conversation I’ve had is that, you know, I don’t think my approach to painting is particularly, you know, typical. You know, I do something a lot of people do, paint pictures and make pictures of stuff and it’s very easy to sort of fall into the trap of thinking, well, you want to do art, I want to be creative. Therefore, I have to write a bloody novel or make some paintings or some shit, right? But there isn’t, there’s a whole bunch of stuff out there and depending on the type of person you are, but every time I talk to someone, they say the same thing that you just said, right? Well, why do you do it? Well, there’s all these reasons that outwardly why I do it, but when it boils down to it, it’s the thing that I can do that takes me out of the world. It takes me out of my troubles and my stresses. It helps me to focus on something and it boils down to something like mindfulness. And I mean, if you want to say the core thesis of podcasts, it’s that, right? That’s the only thing that matters and I sort of couldn’t care how you do it. If you want to do that, if you get out of your head by, you know, sheep shearing, then do that, right? And that’s the thing. And I think that’s something that I learned very quickly upon my diagnosis, which must have only been something like three years, just over three years ago now. I was diagnosed very late. I’m now 35. So I was, I was in my thirties before I got my diagnosis, but it doesn’t matter what your outlet is. If you can find something that you can do that takes you out of that negative head space that just lets your brain shut off for a couple hours so that you can give yourself a little bit of peace from your own thoughts, go do it. As long as you’re not hurting anyone or causing any trouble for anyone else, go do it. Like, whether it’s sitting in painting or whether that’s sitting there playing a computer game or like you say, sheep shearing or whatever, if it brings you joy and it lets you shut your head off for a couple hours, go and do it. Fuck yes. Right. I love that. So a good wrap up by a couple of things. So firstly, just on that note, I sort of broadly, you know, I took a very broad view of creativity on this podcast. And I think I think it would be easy to look at the set of paintings or actually any aspect of this tabletop gaming and wargaming thing. And say, well, you’ve got the rules and then you’ve got these things that have been built for you and they give you the paints and they tell you how to paint it. Well, is that really creative? What would you say to that? Yeah. I mean, in terms of the tabletop side of things is a little bit more strict in terms of rules and that you have to make sure you’re following rules so that the game works. It’s the same as playing a video game. You’re bound by the constructs of what the game designers have put into the game. But in terms of the painting side of things, it’s definitely creative. It doesn’t matter whether you’re buying a rack of paints that are all different shades and colors so that you don’t have to mix a color. I’ve got a partial color blindness, but I’m now challenging myself. I got a totally different range of paints and they’re all single pigment paints and it’s forcing me to start mixing colors. But it’s very creative outlet because like I said, you don’t have to follow a strict guideline of these characters must be painted in these colors. You can paint things however you want. If you want to paint bright pink space Marines, go for it. Paint your bright pink space Marines. Just express yourself. Get creative. And it’s not just the painting. If you want to give them a really extravagant base so that it looks like they’re walking through a lava field or a forest or whatever, you get so many different scenic little bits that you can put onto their base. It’s to make it visually more interesting instead of just a painted model on a flat base. There’s a whole… The play areas, the tabletop, the game itself, it’s certainly Warhammer. There’s no rules to that, but you create the environment, right? Yeah, you create the environment and you can either follow a table set up that is already pre-designated or you can just get free with it. And if you’re playing with friends, I mean, growing up, I’ve seen us using tissue boxes and toilet roll tubes as terrain just so that we could play the game. And then learning that, you know, actually with those bits of cardboard, if we just cut them up into shapes and then spray paint them with the primer, we can have something that looks like a piece of terrain or you can get some Brillo pads and fold them in half and glue them down to a cardboard base. And there you go. You’ve got a hedge or lollipop sticks and make fences or, you know, it’s again, it’s as creative as you want it to be in terms of how you set your table up. Well, I love it. And it’s not static, right? Because you can build these things and you can create your terrain and glue everything down. But no, once you get all this created, it’s a canvas for a story. And many, many stories. And I think that’s amazing. I think you can look at it and say, well, it’s all done for you. But if you think that, then you haven’t understood what you’re looking at. It may not be for you, but, you know, it’s I think it’s I think it’s quite incredible because it really gives a conduit for creativity, right? Yeah, it says, well, you know, going to corral you in a bit to get you started. But once you understand the law and the rules and the universe that you’re in, go for your life, right? Yeah. And there’s a whole other aspect to the building side of it as well, which is called kit bashing. So you don’t have to just stick to what comes in the box. And, okay, it might get a little bit more expensive, but if you’ve built an army and you’ve got models that have like, you will always have leftover bits. We have what we call bits boxes and it’s all the leftover bits that have come off the sprue. You clip them all off and you put them in a box and you can be as organized or disorganized as you want. It could be a shoe box just full of all the bits of sprue or you could do like what I do and get the little kind of segmented boxes and one bits for heads and one bits for arms and guns and all the different weapon bits and legs and all sorts of stuff. And you can take all the different bits from different kits and kind of you can have a preset model with that’s on its sprue and be like, actually, I don’t want him to have that sword. I would rather he had this sword and this head and you can just dig through your bits box and put different bits on the model. And as long as it, if you’re looking at playing on the table, as long as either you’re A playing with friends and you’d be like, right, this is how he looks, but these are the weapons that he’s going to be running or this is his loadout or whatever. People don’t generally care. It’s only when you get into the competitive side that it’s more of the what you see is what you get. And that’s it like tournament level stuff where it has to be accurate. But kit bashing can be as either a creative outlet or just so that you can have something that’s different on your tabletop so that you’re not just playing the same model that everyone else has. Right. And so you’ve you’ve touched on something here that I think would seem to me to be one of the main barriers to getting on with this because you did say it can get quite expensive. But from my experience is it and it can write, but it really doesn’t have to be and I’ve seen you the figure painting you do you’ve got 3D printed figures that aren’t canonically games workshop, right? Yeah. And so 3D printing besides the upfront cost of, you know, getting the printer and the safety aspect of printing with resin and if you know someone that has a printer or, you know, I obviously locally I can put people into touch with a really good 3D printer. But you can you can do it a lot cheaper. It’s getting a little bit tougher to get some of the models now because games workshop being that billion pound company that they are throwing cease and desist letters out like nobody’s business at the moment. But if it’s something that can be printed, chances are you will find a file to print it and it will be considerably cheaper than buying the models off the shelf. Even if you want to if you want to practice the painting, it doesn’t have to be a ripped off canonical design. No, it could just be a design someone else has made that you and if you’re interested in painting, it doesn’t really matter where the model came from as long as it’s cool, right? Yeah, exactly. If it’s something that interests you, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Warhammer model, whether it’s something someone’s designed and put up on to cult 3D or into my many factory that someone can print for you, whether you want to paint a bust, whether you want to paint a statue of your favorite. Comic book character, it doesn’t matter if you want to sit and paint a model and have that outlet, you can just sit and paint that model. It’s there is a variety of different things out there for people to paint. It doesn’t just have to be a tabletop miniature. In front of me, I’ve got three different busts. One’s a pirate lady, one’s a dwarf with a massive mohawk and beard and the other one is something that looks like it’s out of something like Silent Hill. So if someone is just going to rock up and say, yeah, I’m in, how do I get involved? Now bear in mind, if you’re in central Scotland in the Perth Stirling area, I can recommend a great miniature painting class next door to my house. And so by all means get in touch, but like if someone is in anywhere really and wants to get involved in this, what’s the best place to start? Okay, so in terms of even just the experience of building and painting a miniature, most if not all Warhammer shops do, you can literally walk in and be like, hey, I’m interested in building and painting a miniature. I’ve never done it before. Can you show me the ropes? And you will get a free space marine or a free more, one of their high fantasy ones from what they call Age of Sigmar. And the people in the store will literally sit down with you and they will give you like a run through and they will show you how to use the snips and what bits need to come off of where and how to glue it all together. And then how to paint it. And again, as much as I would like to say, go find a local group. It’s quite hard to find a local group if you don’t know what you’re looking for, but the people within, not necessarily the staff, but the people you will meet within the Warhammer shops, nine times out of 10, they will know of a local group that you can come along to. So there are groups dotted about and there will be groups dotted about all over. It’s just about that first foot in the door. I would say if you want to get into it, go find either a hobby shop or a games workshop that sells the miniatures and sells the paints and does all the things. Games workshop, like I said, will actually run you through the process with a free model so you don’t have to go and buy anything. And if you enjoy it, you don’t have to go buy it. Yeah, of course. And the games workshop starter kits, so you happen to live in the middle of nowhere, you know when they’re anywhere that’s like to have a shop, but you can order online. They’re starter kits that will have some miniatures that you will have, the exact paints you need to paint them in, exact instructions about how to do it with brushes and all that. So you can get moving and they’re deliberately quite cheap. In terms of the likes of the starter kits and things like that, if you decided that you are in a position where you can’t get to a store and you want to order it, what we like to call the friendly local game stores generally will sell Warhammer cheaper than Warhammer does. They are able to sell it roughly between 10 and 20% cheaper than buying it in the games workshop store or ordering it from games workshop. So game stores like Element Games or Weyland Games or Travelling Man, places like that, they are really, really good if you just want it. Most of the time they will sell the paints individually. In terms of starting out, you want to get even a model, like if you can buy single character models or you can buy a unit which is like anywhere from 3 to 10 models in the box. And you can get the starter kit, like you’re saying, which comes with a bunch of paints, a set of snips, a mould line removal tool which is just a little bit of blunt metal that you can run over the seams because everything is cast moulded with the injection moulded. So there will be mould lines and stuff like that. It comes with everything you need to get started in the box. There are a couple of starter boxes that will also come with a couple of models on sprues to get you started and you want a tin of primer. Model primer is definitely better than buying your average cheap tin of primer but if that’s all you can get then it’s going to work. You just want to give yourself a layer so that the paint has something to stick to and the plastic is quite shiny. The paints are just acrylics, well not just acrylics, I’m sure they’re optimized acrylics but I have used my own, because I paint on canvases with acrylics and you can use those, certain types of those paints aren’t all going to work. So you might even have some of the kit that you need. So again it’s not the barrier to entry is relatively low, there’s probably a bit of a learning curve once you get into the actual gaming side of it. And I think it sounds to me and my experience as Ben you need to go find, if you can find some people who know how to play it, then do that rather than read the manuals yourself because it’s a brain. You will put yourself to sleep trying to read through the core rulebook. Yes, although some people like that sort of thing, I’m just not one of them. Right and really one last question, so you mentioned live streaming and you’ve mentioned to me in the past, I mean this is at the moment something you do voluntarily with the workshop. So just a bit about live streaming where people can find you and then what’s your plans? How do people follow along with your adventures and what are those adventures going to consist of in the near future? So for following me on social medias is Wasteland Crafts. Generally I’m posting mostly on TikTok and I stream on Twitch with the same handle. Normally Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday and Thursday is the more UK based time. I stream with another guy from Out in Fife on a Thursday evening. The other times I’m mainly streaming more late night UK time into US time because I’ve got friends out in the States that I paint with more regularly. TikTok, like I said, is where I will be mainly posting up my work in progress stuff and finished models that I’ve painted and stuff like that. My upcoming adventures, I’ve got a couple painting competitions lined up for end of this year into next year and again most of that will be posted up on social media. There’s more of a business type outlet that I’m currently in the process of working on and putting together which probably well into the new year now by the time I’m ready to really announce anything there too much. But yeah, there’s some exciting stuff happening and coming in the near future hopefully. If people want to find me and follow me on there then that’s where to find me. Amazing, thank you. A few years ago you walked into a games workshop and now you are actively working on a business related to that and that’s quite a trajectory. It’s quite amazing especially given your health problems and I just think it’s absolutely incredible what you do. I think that the whole aspect of it for me in terms of the business side of things was if I can’t and struggle working for someone who’s not going to be flexible enough for me to be able to work then I’ll do it myself. That’s something I have a passion for so that’s the direction I want to go in. Yeah, I’m an independent consultant for a reason. I don’t like working for people really and I like my time to be flexible and I think if you can make a living out of doing the thing that you love then you’re the luckiest person alive. Good luck and God bless you. You’re doing amazing work. I’ll definitely see you again because you spend a lot of time in the building next door to my house but thank you for your time. Honestly, we’re just clipping an hour and 10 minutes here. There was so much more. We can look on deeper. Way deeper. So maybe another day, maybe we’ll let everyone go now and try and get a semblance of their sanity back off to try to make sense for all of this. Yes, amazing. Thank you and I’ll speak to you soon and thank you for listening everybody. Thank you very much. Ask against mental illness.