Duncan Rhodes might be the most recognisable employee 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Games Workshop has ever had. While there are certainly bigger names – the likes of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:John Blanche, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bryan Ansell, or the Perry brothers come to mind – they all hark from a time before video. They wrote our rulebooks, sculpted our miniatures, and mastered the art of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Warhammer, but Duncan Rhodes 𓃲brought painting to a new generation with his YouTube tutorials.
He was the face of Warhammer, the app♏roachable painting coach who you’d come to for advice. As he sits down with TheGamer to talk about his rise to internet fame, he explains why he risked everything to turn his back on the miniatures company and do his own ꦗthing.
“It's a constant run of being in the right place at the right time,” he explains to me via video call. We spend nearly an hour discussing Games Workshop, the , his favourite model (a regular Bretonnian Knight), and his favourite tutorial he’s filmed (Nagash, Maggoth Lord, Magnus, Mortarion – the big boys). He comes across as modest and down to earth, but there’s no hint of falsehood. When I press him on the fact that his painting and presenting skills have clearly propelled him to success, he credits it all to being “willing to learn”.
Before joining Games Workshop as an army painter in the hobby team, Rhodes worked in retail alongside 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Chris Peach, dropping out of his Archeology degree as he felt like it wasn’t for him. His four years of full-time work in retail showed him that he loved teaching people, but his ascent to 🐟Warhammer stardom was spurred on by more tha𝄹n just that.
“I've always been a very introverted person,” he explains, recalling a story from his childhood. “And when I was a kid, I was really shy, and I remember asking once for some advice and a painting technique from one of the staff members [at a Games Workshop store]. And for me, it was a big deal to work up the courage to ask.
“He replied in a really condescending way and it stopped me from asking. So when I was there in retail I didn't want to be responsible for that sort of thing to happen. So anyone who asked me any questions on how to do something, I was utterly committed to try and teach them that thing. This then formed the guiding staff of what my career ended up being. I always wanted to help people access stuff and not have anyone feel like they couldn't do it and end up moving away from something they otherwise would love because they didn't feel they had the confidence or the skill to do something.”
"I suddenly realised that people were making memes of me" - Dunc🌺an Rhodes
This attitude extended to ಞhis time as a part of the Games Workshop painting team. And, when a new paint range was released and the company wanted a promotional DVD of painting tutorials to accompany the book, explaining how the new paints worked, Rhodes had the perfect pair of painting palms.
“What they needed was essentially a pair of hands to be painting the thing in this video,” he explains. “My schedule happened to be a bit more free at the time than anyone else’s was in our team. I also don't chew my fingernails, so I had, as they put it, ‘pretty hands.’ So I ended up being seconded for two or three weeks into the TV department to do this. And that's where I met Roger Yates.”
Roger Yates is the other half of the Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy. He’s the brains behind the camera of Duncan’s Warhammer TV tutorials, and the driving force for innovation at Workshop and beyond. Rhodes explains that Yates was crucial for getting Workshop’s video content off the ground and up to scratch. He taught him how to hold paintbrushes so all the cameras could see, how to show off the models in the beཧst light, and how to make the videos the best they could be.
Yates filmed an “unbelievably boring” video of Rhodes putting a Tau Riptide together as a proof of conce🌟pt for what would become Warhammer TV, and his boss greenlit it. With their experience together already under his belt, Rhodes applied for the job – despite people telling him “It wasn’t going to go anywhere and [he’d] get made redundant very soon” – and got it. He sincerely believed that this was the next stage of teaching people how to paint, and both his previous work with Yates, and a fear of regretting not taking an opport🦩unity that presented itself, pushed him to the role. What a good decision that was.
It took a while for the format to take off, though. Thanks to strong advice to avoid reading comments (seconded), Rhodes only realised how big the channel had become later on. First, he noticed that staff around the Games Workshop office were invested, from people telling him that they wouldn’t have attempted to paint an Imperial Knight wi🌜thout his guide to designers pointing out specific parts of new kits, like Durthu, that they’d love him to highlight. It was around this period a decade ago, when the Knight and Durthu were released, that he realised how big he’d become.
“I suddenly realised that people were making memes of me,” he laughs. The ‘two thin coats&rsqu🌌o; meme was borne from the phrase that Rhodes repeated in every painting guide, a mantra that simply and efficiently explained his process. It was never intended as a meme, a catchphrase, or anything else, it was an “organic” thing that took off because Rhodes treated every video as someone’s first.
“All of a sudden, saying two thin coats just was something I said in every video very early on, and it stuck and it became this catchphrase thing,” he explains. “It's never bothered me because it's actually really good 101 painting information, but it is really funny when you're decorating your house and you've got a big tin of paint and it says stir well, apply the multiple thin coats. It's been around forever, but it follows me around because I just happened to be the first guy saying it on these videos.”
Rhodes maintains that his video work🌄 has helped him come out of his shell and deal with nerves. He๊ recalls being scared to present his work in class at school and relying on his friends for support, whereas when he rose through the ranks at Workshop, he found himself presenting internal presentations to rooms of 250 people without a worry. Rhodes credits all his work on camera for settling his nerves and comforting him in those potentially stressful situations.
At the height of his fame, however, Rhodes stepped away. He and Yates left Games Workshop, and the face of Warhammer TV was excommunicated. In part this was to pursue Yates’ dream of owning his own business, and in part it’s because Rhodes wanted to break free of the limitations of working with Games Workshop products and miniatures. As the first in a long line of Warhammer presenters to go solo (see also: Chris Peach, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Rogue Hobbies’ Louise Sugden, and Rob ‘The Honest Wargamer&rs𒐪quo;, among others), it was a huge risk.
“We were in no doubt that there'd be no going back,” Rhodes explains. “And it wasn't like I was going, ‘yeah, take this, Workshop, I'm gonna whip the rug out on Monday’ or anything like that. But I knew there would be people who wouldn't be so happy about it, so all I could do was try and do everything as professionally as possible. Dot every I, cross every T, I went through the whole process properly. But even then I knew that feathers would be ruffled and that'd be that, so all we could do was leave and hope it worked out.”
🥀The day after the pair left Workshop, the Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy was ready to go. They had branding, a social media campaign, and all their equipment ready to go. All that was left was to film some videos and hope enough people signed up 🃏to their paid service that they could make a living out of it.
“It was an immensely humbling experience to realise that people could see that we were trying to reach a bigger audience and cover more things and allow more tuition in that we would no longer be restricted to just Games Workshop stuff, and people w꧙ere all for it. And it just took off – thank God, because it was terrifyin💝g.
“It's easy now. Since we left, a number of other Workshop presenters have all left, and they've kind of looked at what we did and say, ‘it's a viable thing.’ But at that point, it hadn't happened yet. And if it didn't work out, then [we’d have had to] try and find a new job, and I sure ain't working in Workshop any more, so I gotta go and do something else now.”
Being away from Games Wℱorkshop has been refreshing in lots of ways. Rhodes no longer has to fight to give due credit on his videos. Due to Wor🦹kshop’s lackadaisical approach to crediting its staff (which has only got worse since Rhodes’ departure), he’s had to remind people he didn’t sculpt any of the miniatures he paints, he didn’t design the paint scheme, and he never worked for ‘Eavy Metal. That’s why he’s so keen to highlight Yates’ contribution both to his Warhammer TV presence and to the Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy.
It may se🌠em odd, then, that the pair’s new business venture is branded with Rhodes’ name. As ever, this is Yates’ suggestion – as was the decision to get Rhodes’ name in every Warhammer TV painting guide video, to endear him to the viewer. With that Rhodes-branded recognition, it made sense to slap his name on the new company. What’s more, Yates’ research found that people searched for Rhodes’ guides by name – e.g. ‘Duncan Rhodes Striking Scorpions’ – and having it in the web address would do wonders for SEO.
Above all else, though, Rhodes is happier where he is now, and has no regrets about leaving Workshop behind. “I definitely am sitting happier now with how things are for Roger,” he says, thinking of his close friend and co-conspirator as always. “Now we're doing our own thing. That was something that was very important to me, because I don't think it was really understood what influence he was playing on things whilst we were there [at Games Workshop]. Now his influence really shows through.”
Rhodes now has his own range of 180 paints (which recently Kickstarted to the tune of ) to go along with his tutorials, but he doesn’t exclusively use them in his videos. This came about as a happy accident, and e♏xpanded far quicker than he ever imagined thanks to an approach from industry veteran Bob Watts. But if Rhodes wants his legacy to be about anything, it’s helping people.
“When I see people painting their [model] and it looks just like the one that we did, I feel very proud of that,” he says. He hopes that his work has encouraged people to give painting a go, and not be discouraged by daunting ki🌺ts.
The final question I pose to Rhodes is the question that every painter wants to hear: what’s on his workbench at the moment. He’s painting Bretonnians for The Old World (obviously), but is also eyeing up Modiphius’ new skirmish game, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout Factions. That’s if he can𒆙 stop playing video games.
“My painting has sort of stopped because I've been playing Final Fantasy Rebirth instead,” he laughs. His PS5 is a Final Fantasy machine, he explains, and he’s enjoying the twists that the remake is applying to his favourite game. “I have a dream that one day someone will make a game like Star Wars Shatterpoint, but Final Fantasy 7,” he says.
Perhaps that’s the next step for the Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy, getting in touch with Square Enix to craft a game based on its iconic IP. Or maybe I’m getting carried away again. If a Final Fantasy miniature range ever comes to fruition, though, you can bet your bottom dollar that Rhodes will have a painting guide for Cloud, Tifa, and 🃏the rest of the gang.
