Fighting Fantasy Fest 6
On September 5th, Fighting Fantasy Fest was held once again at the University of West London. It’s a brilliant convention (held every two years) celebrating the classic gamebooks and is always well attended with a lovely atmosphere. This year, the guests of honour included Sir Ian Livingstone and Karl Kopinski, who were signing autographs and giving talks during the course of the day.
This was the third time I had been invited to come and paint a newly released Blue Giant Studios figure, and this time it was a 75mm figure of Grizzle the Goblin, based on the excellent Karl Kopinski cover painting for Ian Livingstone’s newest book, The Tomb of the Golden Skull!
In the run-up to the Fest, Ian Livingstone had emailed me to ask if I could paint the latest three figures and bring them with me, so I painted the Manticore (from Iain McCaig’s B&W illustration in Deathtrap Dungeon), the Howling Demon (from Iain McCaig’s cover painting for The Dungeon on Blood Island), and a bust of Zagor (based on Karl Kopinski’s cover painting for the collector’s edition of the Warlock of Firetop Mountain).
The evening beforehand was a Fighting Fantasy themed pub quiz at the Forester in Ealing, raising money for Guide Dogs. It was a fun (and fiendishly tricky) quiz, and my team came second with only one point between us and the winning team – I can’t claim credit very much as I really had a team of experts, but I didn’t do badly.
It’s a pretty early start to set up, as the first attendees come in from 9am, so we were there a little after 7am which gave everyone a chance to organise their stands and catch up with each other a bit. I’ve got packing for events down to a bit of a fine art now – gone are the days of wheeling everything around in a massive suitcase; I managed to fit all my painting gear into my Frontier Hobbies box and a backpack.
My lovely neighbours for the day were QAtlas, who produce fantastic illustrated maps of the Fighting Fantasy books, and Blue Giant Studios, with Dan teaming up with Anjuli (MyMiniFactory) to sell a selection of the official Fighting Fantasy miniatures, most of which are now in 3d print format, with a few specials like Grizzle the Goblin and the Slime Eater in cast resin.
I decided to get cracking with painting at about 8.30am, as I knew that I would need to create a glowing effect on the goblin’s Warhammer to emulate the cover art, and I didn’t want to feel rushed with it. I thought if I could crack the majority of painting by lunchtime then I could be quite relaxed about the OSL (Object Source Lighting).
Of course, half the point of being there was to chat with all the attendees, many of whom I have become friends with over the years, and it was lovely to catch up with folks, chat about painting, and arrange a few commissions!
As it turned out I’d managed the time well and finished painting an hour earlier than I predicted, even allowing for breaks (which I made sure to take, as I’ve been pretty bad at that when painting at other recent events!) During my breaks I wandered the halls to catch up with folks like Rene at the Lone Wolf stand who introduced me to James aka Fables of Sable, who was painting the figures from the forthcoming game.
When I was finished it was a lovely surprise for Karl Kopinski to pop over to see what I’d been doing and we got a photo together (you can see we are giggling a lot – this was because it was my third try getting the selfie - I was rubbish!).
At the end of the day (after the auction), Ian came to collect his figures, including Grizzle, and take them home to join the other figures I’ve painted for him.
It was a fantastic day, ending with a meal and a few pints at the Castle pub opposite the University. Hopefully I’ll be there again in two years’ time! In the meantime it looks like I might be painting at Dragonmeet at the end of November, so more on that later… A big thank you to Jonathan Green and family, Ian Livingstone and family, Karl Kopinski, Dan Jack, Anjuli Smith, Malcolm Barter, Scott Lewis, Julian and Lyndsey Sparrow and family, Neil Adams , Em Owen, James Aukett, all the City Guard volunteers, all my friends who attended and looked after me, and the staff at the University of West London. Lastly, I intend to make a painting article about Grizzle the Goblin, so look out for that in the future :)
