Well with a move to a new flat, and the subsequent lack of broadband for the first few weeks, I’ve finally finished writing about my experience at Fighting Fantasy Fest. So I hope you enjoy my blog!

Saturday 7th September was the fifth Fighting Fantasy Fest, a brilliant day celebrating 40 years of the publication of Deathtrap Dungeon, with Guests of Honour Sir Ian Livingstone and Iain McCaig.

The last Fest was in 2022 and marked the 40th anniversary of the publication of the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.

That was also the first year I became involved with the Fest, having been invited to paint the commemorative 75mm figure of Zagor the Warlock himself.

This was on the strength of the commissioned work I had completed for Sir Ian Livingstone over the previous year, painting the full set of Blue Giant Studios’ (formerly Atlantis Miniatures) Fighting Fantasy Legends figures.

So I was absolutely delighted to be invited back, this time to paint the brand new 75mm figure of the Shapechanger from the front cover of The Forest of Doom!

This time I went along to the (now traditional) charity pub quiz, ‘You are the Beer-o’, the night before FFF5 at the Forester pub in Ealing, which was a lot of fun but I had to retire early as all the travel plus moving to a new flat the week before meant I was quite tired and I wanted to make sure I had enough energy for the main event.

Those who know me are aware that I’ve had long covid, and while I am a great deal better, there are some situations which still make me more worn out than I’d like. Still, after a good sleep I was ready to go, and made my way to set up my table in the hall at the University of West London.

The setup was very similar to the previous Fest, and I was seated next to Dan from Blue Giant Studios, just along from where Ian Livingstone and Iain McCaig would be signing books for the day. Dan was great company as ever and seemed to be doing a roaring trade!

Opposite us were artists who had created some of the wonderful cover and internal art for the gamebooks, including Tony Hough and Malcom Barter, with whom I had a lovely chat at various points in the day.

This event was my first since buying my three main equipment investments of the summer: my Daylight Company USB rechargeable lamp, my Pro Acryl paints, and my Frontier Wargaming Paint Case 2.0. I will take a bit of an aside at a later point to offer a potted review of these, which I’ve certainly been enjoying making use of at home, but the lamp and paint case in particular were bought with events like this in mind.

Dan had sent me the Shapechanger miniature in the week, giving me a chance to clean up any mould lines (barely any as it turned out), wash and prime it, and insert pins into the feet ready to be attached to my painting handle.

My first impressions were that it is a very faithful sculpt, more accurately matching the pose on the book cover than did the excellent original miniature. Once I have painted my own copy of the 75mm figure, my intention is to create a painting guide in a similar vein to the one I produced on Zagor last year.

So having set up my stand and said hello to Sir Ian, Jon Green, Dan and others, by 9am I was ready to start painting just as the first stream of attendees arrived, starting with the skin of the face, hands and tail.

Almost straight away I was seeing familiar faces, and I had lovely catchups with folks I had met at the previous Fest, as well as friends I knew locally, such as Neil, for whom I do a good deal of commission work.

People seemed interested in all aspects of what I was doing, including my choice of paint brands and brushes, and a few folks were showing and telling me about current or recent painting projects of theirs.

I’m quite careful to take breaks after each hour of painting to have a stretch and move around, so I had a bit of a chance to look around the rest of the stands over in the trade hall and have a chat to people who were promoting and selling their own gamebooks and board games – but mostly I was painting! I did get a chance to chat with a lot of folks as I worked though, and it was great to catch up with Julian (Babel Seventeen) and Jordan Sorcery (who was at the Fest for the first time), among others.

I mainly used Pro Acryl paints on the day, and I was pleased to have the skin of the Shapechanger fully rendered in the first couple of hours, using Dark Plum as a first coat to create a deep level of shade, and progressing from Dark Camo Green through to a mix of Dark Yellow-Green and Ivory for the final highlights, creating a lizard-like texture using fine lines.

The paints blend beautifully, and dry to a consistent matte finish. I’ve tried to explain to people exactly what I like about them, but it seems to boil down to them behaving the way I think paints ought to behave, with a consistent smooth texture and excellent flow. They are thinner out of the bottle than a lot of other brands, so I find for general painting they don’t really require further thinning. I have found my style is gradually changing as I use this brand, and I am more inclined towards playing with texture and layering to create more visual interest.

My Daylight Company lamp proved to be an excellent investment. Exhibitors did not have access to power sockets on the day (presumably to help keep running costs down), so I found last time I was not having an easy time painting with only the ambient light from the high ceilings. So investing in a wireless USB chargeable lamp when I was at UK Games Expo this summer has solved that problem. I had given the lamp a full charge beforehand, and I had a full morning’s use of a little over 3 hrs before it was registering low power – I might still have got another hour. I then plugged in my USB battery powerpack, which powered if through the rest of the day, and charged it while not in use during my breaks. The head of the lamp has a bank of LEDs and gives excellent illumination. I use it day-to-day in my studio too, and it has entirely replaced the pair of lamps I was using previously. It’s also super portable, folding down to a unit the size of my hand and storing away in its own little carry case. So I am really pleased with it and I look forward to taking it with me to the shows I’m painting at next year!

My Frontier Wargaming paint case was a more recent investment and has also proved itself very handy. Last time I wasn’t really geared up for painting in public, I must admit, and my storage was really ad-hoc across several boxes and crates, which took quite a lot of reorganising when I got to the venue and I was quite self-conscious that my table looked quite cluttered. However, now I have all my paints, brushes and tools in one case, all neatly stored in drawers so that I don’t need to spend any time unpacking or sorting through.

The only thing I needed to do was put some of the pots upright again, but that was because the case was sideways in my suitcase, and it’s designed to be carried upright. So I think to mitigate that next time I might pad the gaps with bubble wrap to stop any jiggling around.  I use the paint case as my standard desk organiser in my studio as well, and it’s vastly improved my layout – and if I fancy doing some painting at my gaming club, Bristol Independent Gaming, I can just shut the front flap and carry it with the shoulder strap. As if that wasn’t enough, Frontier did a beautiful job engraving my logo on the lid, so it looks really smart.

I’d predicted that I would take around six hours to complete the Shapechanger, and this was spot-on, so at the end of the day I was able to firstly show the finished figure to Iain McCaig, the painter of the original cover art for The Forest of Doom (who was very excited to see it!).

I could then present it to Sir Ian who was really pleased with it, so it now joins his collection!

Overall, a lovely day, and I was very pleased to be able to chat with so many people without it feeling like I was in any rush with painting the figure. I have now bought my own 75mm Shapechanger ready for my planned diorama, and I have some commissioned Fighting Fantasy figures to paint in the coming month or two!