Here at The Army Painter, we strive to provide you with the best hobby products possible, and that starts with having the best people working on them behind the scenes. Last year, we had a new addition to our team, who you may have already seen in several of our videos - Ian Huxley.
Ian joined us as our new CMO, or Chief Marketing Officer, in charge of the entirety of our marketing and product development departments, which is split over two teams in Denmark and the United States. He’s had a hand in many of the products you’ve seen on your local shelves recently, but the first one he’s seen from beginning to end is soon to take the painting world by storm, the John Blanche Masterclass Paint Set!
With that in mind, we asked Ian to tell you a bit about himself, such as his hobby bonafides, his favourite shade of red for Space Marines, and a little sneak peek at what’s to come.
Ian: Though I may have just started at The Army Painter last year, I first met Bo, who founded the company, back when we both worked together at Games Workshop in the mid-2000s. We were working in the Northern Europe division and spent plenty of time travelling around Scandinavia and playing games of 40k and Warhammer Fantasy, amongst many others.
After twenty or so great years at Games Workshop, I decided to move with my family to Denmark, reconnecting with Bo and continuing the extraordinary journey The Army Painter has been on. The challenge of bringing this fantastic product range to a broader audience was too good to pass up!
While I was working at Games Workshop, I created my own chapter of Space Marines for Warhammer 40,000 called the Blood Lords. Initially, it was a simple colour scheme (think Flesh Tearers, but reversed) to get back into the swing of painting after becoming a father. However, it quickly grew into a way to paint other chapter-specific Space Marine models, such as Space Wolves or Dark Angels, whilst not having to repaint core units like Rhinos and Land Raiders. It then became more of a challenge as I was able to kitbash across the whole Space Marine range with relative abonnement whilst keeping with the original colour scheme to maintain cohesion.
My first plan after we had settled in Denmark was to convert my Blood Lords colour scheme from Citadel paints to Warpaints Fanatic. If you've built a large collection or army, you'll know that changing paints after so many years can be fraught as you try and match the colours and style from whatever you have used before. Thankfully, the broadness of the Warpaints Fanatic range made that a relatively simple and pleasant task. After a couple of test models (the red was the hardest to match), I finally settled on the new colour scheme and then when the motivation bites, all you want to do is paint. I brought with me some models from the new edition of 40k and was soon delivering a unit or two a week, increasing my motivation even further.
On the plus side of this change, I realised the red I had chosen, Warpaints Fanatic Resplendent Red, was brighter and better for the colour scheme than what I was using previously!
As we all know, variety can be the spice of life, so while I was busy painting my Blood Lords in their updated colour scheme, the new Tyranid models kept grabbing my attention. A perfect canvas for Speedpaint, I thought, and with it the XL Wargamers Palette, which I'd promised myself for Christmas. So, now I have two armies to work on, both with very different colour schemes and applications.
One of the best parts of working in an industry that is also your hobby is that you are always daydreaming of products that you think would be cool to bring to market. Sometimes this is a group effort. So, during an afternoon of daydreaming with Bo, we agreed a paint set personally curated by a titan of the industry would be something we would both buy, and we both (at the same time) only wrote one name down, and that name was John Blanche...
That afternoon was very productive in more ways than one. We looked at everything The Army Painter currently makes and the almost infinite possibilities of what we could do. The future has just begun, but maybe we'll look back into the past for the inspiration for the Summer release. Watch this space...
