Interlude: Diagnosis…..terror!

On 1 June 2011 – one day after my first wedding anniversary, I visited my local hospital about a bit of a lump I’d had where there oughtn’t be a lump. No fears however as my GP told me that at 39 I was “too old for what young men get, too young for what old men get”. What he failed to tell me (or I suspect to know) was that I was entirely, totally, precisely the right age to get just what I had – a malignant tumour on my left testicle. I’m not going to be flip about the trauma and upset, the plain fear and angst this caused nor am I going to try to get across a bigger message. I will say simply that I was and am one of the lucky ones but that I have seen those who are not and, simply, trust yourself, check it out and if you are not happy or are just plain unlucky, own that and persevere: it is your life and no one can or should value it like you do.

Anyhow, thankfully, one abdominal surgery later and the traitorous teste was offski. I however was left pretty darn sore, comfy only when sat bolt upright. To fend off boredom during convalescence I resolved to finish a Tyranid monster I had been busily converting from a toy dinosaur.

As you’ll spot he is pretty tumorous himself and I thought completing him would be my catharsis. In matter of fact he never has been finished, being put to one side as, instead, for reasons I will never know I decided that “no”, I needed to have a go at sculpting a Martian Overlord – a six inch tall tripod in the style of HG Wells’ machine and its occupant combined.

And it worked!

Some flower arranging wire, a lump of Milliput, a tonne of greenstuff later and voila I had my Martian!

Between recuperation from the surgery and then laying low after a blast of radioactive platinum came the Martian Warriors, inspired by the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs downloaded en masse to my Kindle whilst I was grumpy, drugged and sore.

Not amazing I admit, but I was happy. In a moment of stroooong pain-killer inspiration I fired some photos of these chaps to PSD, Briogenese and Robert with the very basic question “should I make and sell these?”

No, wait, that’s a lie. I sent them an email in among my then-regular codeine-induced madness which said “I’ve tried sculpting and it’s gone really well – I think I may make them and try to sell them” They came back, properly supportive of their drug-addled chum but as quietly suspicious as they should have been so I didn’t go too nuts and send them off to GW or Wyrd with a demand-with-menaces! Then I sent them photos. And the response I got was hugely supportive (albeit much of the credit went to my new prosthetic testicle rather than me – an assertion I will forever refute). Having spent most of my time off sculpting in my attic, the name of the business felt like an obvious gift from the fates. And so, I guess, Attica was conceived.

Cancerous Interruptus?

Looking back now it would have been dead easy for this all to have been just another scheme or idea (we all have them, in my case at a pretty steady rate of about three per annum: In Brian’s case three an hour). Once it had run its course I could have simply headed back to work, life and DIY (and in many ways I have had to of course – the bills insist) particularly when I overlay the “tail” that my adventure into illness will have of check-ups, scans and all that malarkey. For whatever reason though it did not all go away. I have largely left to one side for now my initial ideas for a game based in the gladiatorial arenas of Mars and the races which would and might yet populate it, but only to replace it with Shiver – a range which has grown out of my love of TV and movies of a certain type. Think Sapphire and Steel, think Dr Who, think The Blob or Quatermass or Lost Boys. Modern horror minus the chainsaws, sci-fi minus the gunships.

That’s the Attica idea: quality, fun figures in the classic sci-fi/horror style, quirky not gimmicky. And before very long (once PSD has been suitably cajoled, bribed and shamed into full-scale production or whatever it is writers do) a tabletop skirmish game to match.

It’ll make a million or it’ll give me an ulcer. I will become a better sculptor as I go, or go blind as I sculpt, but either or any way, Attica is here to stay!

 

 

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…yeah, but sculpting?

Like most folks, I have done a wee bit of modelling and sculpting pretty much from the get-go, graduating perhaps a decade ago to greenstuff and truly complex scratch-builds (with individual 28mm figures creeping upwards to 40, 50 and even 60 pieces). For a long time I had liked the idea of converting figures to play characters, teams or armies more than buying the official released figures and increasingly that is just what I did.

And things would probably have toddled along in that vein – real life, work and renovating our fixer-upper home left little time for thinking of minis as any more than a hobby. And then (like in a bad pot-boiler novel) everything change.

In the beginning…

So, here goes:

In the beginning…

…Miniatures

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in miniature figures of one sort or another – whether it was my Play People Knights of the Round Table, my very first Star Wars figures (bizarrely Obi Wan and Princess Leia), 18mm Desert Rats and Vikings – just about anything. It was on holiday to Morecambe about age 11 that I first came across “proper” metal minis – very early Dungeons and Dragons figures and from there, wherever Glasgow’s pretty limited metal figures shopping opportunities and White Dwarf’s sometimes-bizarre mail order options permitted I hoovered up just about everything I came across – metals, plastics and a little resin from just about any scale and genre. God bless Citadel Miniatures, Grenadier, Prince August (and some early attempts at home smeltry) and Ral Partha. I still do to some extent – I am still as likely to pick up a Marvel Heroclick as a Night Elf thief as a Space Marine, although the scale has pretty much settled at 25-35mm.

…Gaming

My gaming life has had three or four big phases. First aged 14-16ish there was the D&D phase (though in fact we played using GW’s Warhammer 1st Edition – a truly lovely mash up of roleplay and wargame). Then, if it can be described as a phase there was the “no gaming at all” phase between 16 and maybe 35, although during that whole time I never truly lost interest, still picking up the odd rule or source book, magazine or scenario. Then came the 40k phase, as PSD and I re-discovered a love for things that went “dakka dakka dakka”.

In time PSD’s chum Briogenese joined us and our gaming interest widened a smidgeon. In particular, Bri awoke in me an interest not in roleplay per se, but certainly in narrative skirmish games: from this, came Throne Agent, my first skirmish game and from there Dr Who The Game, a narrative minis game written for my daughter Molly (who was then nine) and which focusses on story and character over shooting and punching – we still play and I still love writing scenarios (we are now up to about Episode 20, so it has some staying power!).

Finally, Robert (Attica’s TechnoR!ab) joined our wee gaming group and his interest in card and boardgames as well as more rules-driven gaming (a la Malifaux) added probably the final element to our gaming sessions. Robert and PSD have since become ‘Faux-ists extraordinaire. I am yet to see the light.

Attica. Who, what, where, why?

I’m Gary Bogan, lead (currently only) sculptor and proprietor of Attica Games www.atticagames.co.uk . The last year or so has been crammed full of minis-based activity, from learning to sculpt to planning a range, finding a caster to setting up a back-office, from website design to dealing with the tax man all culminating in the launch on 1 September 2012 of Attica Games, a pewter miniatures manufacturer and seller (and soon, I hope, games company too).

Now I’ll confess, I am a far from a comfortable entrant to the blogosphere, but my best chum and best man David McGuire (Pulitzer Super Dave) himself a super-keen gamer, terrain designer, part-time writer for Wyrd Games’ Malifaux and regular blogger www.incunabulum.co.uk/blog suggested that as well as a good way to drum up some interest/recognition for Attica, this stuff might actually be of interest to gamers, modellers or sculptors as a sort of fly-on-the-wall look at the development and launch of a miniatures company.

In addition, I have come to realise that this is about the only way, whether Attica sinks or swims, that I will have a contemporary record of this period – or at least this part – of my life.

I am going to use this blog to report on progress with the launch of Attica and work on our future ranges and also to reflect, on the off-chance it may be any use to anyone, on the experience of creating and launching a miniatures range and a minis business.