In addition to serving as a community for gamers, the NOVA Open brings some of the best artists in the world to teach classes and contribute their award-winning work to the Nova Open Charitable Foundation (NOCF) raffles.
Stiff Neck Studios has been one of the leaders in both organizations, teaching their famous speed painting class and contributing incredible armies and models to the
NOVA Open Charitable Foundation since 2012. The NOVA Open had a chance to catch up with
Wes Cogdal (WC), the studio’s owner and project lead, at NOVA Open 2018. We discussed the studio’s latest NOCF armies, its award-winning pieces in the 2018 Capital Palette, and thoughts about painting metal.
NO: How was NOVA Open 2018 for Stiff Neck Studios?
WC: Bigger and better than ever. I couldn't be happier with the turnout and the amount of money that we're definitely going to be raising, which will be released after the award ceremony. It’s definitely our largest contribution to date as far as the Chapter of Hope army is concerned. We had our hands in a lot of things this year.
We did the Yu Jing Infinity army and then we did five or six different infantry units inside of the Chapter of Hope. Primarily, we also did the Deathwatch army. We did two painting seminars, and we ran the Stiff Neck Studio booth. One of the more important things to me: we had four artists take bronze, silver, and gold in the Capital Palette, which is a very tough competition when it comes to painting.
NO: Focusing on what your guys did for the NOCF this year, walk us through the paint scheme for the armies.
WC: With the Infinity army, we just wanted to do something that was not mainstream. We didn’t want to copy any of the box art. We wanted to do a really bright color that would pop like a pinkish orange color on the infinity army. And then we just wanted to have all the units as options, so you could have a really big force to play with - you can even split into a couple of different forces and play against a friend.
On the Deathwatch, they're popular . . . so we're like, “Okay, we’ll knock some of them out.” We had some extra models laying around, so why not use them? And then the Chapter of Hope, which was all Alex Good. He was one of our artists who was leading that project, and he asked if Stiff Neck Studio could take on a lion's share of the work to help speed up the process because it's almost 5,000 points of Primaris Marines and Forge World Vehicles. It was a pretty big undertaking, but we took it on and we're proud of the work.
NO: Did you use your speed painting techniques for that army?
WC: Yes. We use our speed painting techniques on everything! There's never going to be of time that we're not using speed painting techniques unless it’s on an individual model. Case in point: our entries in the Capital Palette. We don't use speed painting on those, that's a very deliberate professional competition quality painting. But for the Chapter of Hope, Deathwatch, and Infinity, it was all using the speed painting techniques we teach.
NO: Stiff Neck Studio's artists did really well in the Capital Palette. What were the entries and what were you thinking with them?
WC: I entered a 75 millimeter cast, an Abyssal Warlord from Scale 75 Miniatures. I just did some conversion work on it to make it look a little more Chaos-y and then mounted it on a swamp lake view. Alex Good, one of our other artists, did the Nagash piece, which was massive; the Nagash plastic kit is already a beautiful model without the amazing paint job he did on it. It’s very striking. He also did a Mortarion diorama attacking some marines, like a “Last Man Standing” type of a diorama.
We also had the ever-so-famous Mr. Toot which came out of Stiff Neck Studio, which is the Great Unclean One converted to hold bagpipes. Unfortunately, we couldn't do it down here in this case, but that model is lit up and does have dry ice capability to look like smoke is coming out of the bagpipes, so it’s a pretty amazing model. It was nice to see that one take Gold in the Journeyman category. And, then, we had a Blood Angels Dreadnought in the Journeyman category that took a bronze. And, yes, my piece took a bronze in Master Class.
NO:
What does the studio have planned for the next NOVA Open?
WC: We're going to continue to provide painting classes at NOVA Open. We're also going to move into more like Advanced Techniques that we can't necessarily fit into two hours when you're trying to paint an entire model. We're talking about advanced weathering techniques and advanced air brushing techniques to really take your miniature painting up a notch.
NO:
We’ve been talking to other artists about painting metals. What are your tips for painting metal?
WC: There's two houses when it comes to painting metals. You can either do true metallic metals, which are going to be your Games Workshop paints ~ and Scale 75 paints are amazing as well. The other side of the house are people who do non-metallic metals, which is where they're using gray, brown, and yellow acrylics to represent your silvers and golds - and you get a much richer color than you're going to get with your true metallics. It's just personal preference.
With non-metallic metals, it's a very time-consuming process. If you want to do one model, sure do non-metallic metals and really put a lot of effort into it . . . get that wet blending down and make it look really sharp. You're not going to do that to 50 Space Marines, six tanks, a flyer, and three characters. You'll never finish your army. It's like I’ve said with any technique, it's just a tool.
The NOVA Open would like to thank Wes Cogdal and the rest of the Stiff Neck Studio team for supporting the NOVA Open and NOVA Open Charity Foundation.
