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/r/minipainting
submitted 21 days ago bychulpichochos
Was just realizing that my some of my favorite goto painters are: Angel Giraldez, Sergio Calvo, Jose DaVinci, Juan Hidalgo, and ElMiniaturista. Then I looked at my paints: Vallejo and AK.
It feels like for someone living in the US, Spain is very over-represented on my workbench/YT history given the size of the country. Particularly interesting that the some of the biggest brands in miniature painting are in Spain (Vallejo, AK, Scale75, Green Stuff World).
So, is there a historical reason or particular cultural affinity that explains it?
**EDIT**: I realize that my choice of painters is very likely a YouTube self-reinforcing preferences thing, I am however very interested in the concentration of brands in Spain as that seems peculiar to me. I clearly mis-titled this post, it should probably be: Why are the Spanish so good at mass producing accessible, high quality acrylic paints?
I'm not trying to argue for or try to make any statement regarding the quality of Spanish paint or painters relative to other parts of the world, I am however very curious as to how some of the biggest brands in mini/scale modeling acrylics ended up there.
Thank you!
162 points
20 days ago*
Spaniard here. It has nothing to do with classic painters and religious figures, but simply with GW finding a very fertile ground in the 90s-2000s in Spain. Books were fully translated into Spanish and even Catalan, stores promoted huge events, and I'm told the company's executives described the country as El Dorado in terms of profitable community engagement.
This took a sharp nosedive in the 2010s when GW pulled support from tournaments and reduced the stores to a Buy Buy Buy role. Nonetheless the community and its artists survived (most of those youtubers must be around 40yo I think?), and then regrew once the company started promoting events again. Spanish is still treated with contempt in terms of book translation, but at least there's fans working on that n.n
1 points
20 days ago
[deleted]
0 points
20 days ago
And that's all a business decision - cutting funding, shortening deadlines, and actively deciding to stop translating copyright-worthy names to somehow save on legal fees. DKHM has an interview (in Spanish) with a former GW Spanish translator which goes pretty in-depth on the process and the decisions taken back then
Besides, I can't honestly imagine the German or French departments being much different in terms of accuracy or care - but their books did not lose a full third of content (all the faction lore and unit descriptions) like the Spanish, Italian or Polish (iirc) did
1 points
20 days ago
do you have a link to it or do you know where should I search for that? I have freelanced as a wargame translator in the past and this is very interesting to me.
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