About Us
The Beginning
What up, mini family member? My name is Scott Walter. I started painting miniatures when I was 10 years old.
In a hole in the ground...
I started painting Lord of the Rings miniatures from Games Workshop. I even still have some of the miniatures!
I loved painting miniatures. It engaged me creatively like no other hobby had in my short 10 years on planet earth.
The plastic crack addiction grows
I kept painting all the way until high school; a span of about 6 years. I started to paint miniatures from Games Workshop’s other ranges like Space Orks and Necrons from Warhammer 40,000 and Empire, Vampire Counts, and Wood Elves from Warhammer Fantasy.
The beginning of the end
I then made a friend whose name was also Scott. We bonded over video games, and all sorts of general nerd-like things. It turns out he also had a history with miniatures but recently fell out of engagement with it because he wasn’t the most confident painter. He employed me to paint his Blood Angel army and as the army grew larger and larger my motivation to paint it continued to wane until I had no motivation left. By this point I was a full time college student and had a full time job. The last thing I wanted to do in my free time was paint someone else’s army, so...I didn’t. It followed me around every time I moved to new apartments and it was a weight on my shoulders. Every time I wanted to paint I’d think about those minis and I’d just not paint.
You’re probably curious about how this is related to my YouTube channel and the status of my hobby right now. Well, at some point I realized that motivation was not going to get these Blood Angels done. I fell upon this quote:
“Fuck motivation. It’s a fickle and and unreliable little dickfuck and it isn’t worth your time. It's better to cultivate discipline than to rely on motivation; force yourself to do things. Force yourself to get up out of bed and practice. Force yourself to work. Motivation is fleeting and it’s easy to rely on because it requires no concentrated effort to get. Motivation comes to you, and you don’t have to chase after it. Discipline is reliable, motivation is fleeting. The question isn’t how to keep yourself motivated. It’s how to train yourself to work without it.”
Goliath slain
I don’t know who said this, but I loved the utter honesty of this quote. I figured I needed a way to create a routine around painting the Blood Angels. If you’re trying to do something you don’t want to do, often pairing it with something else you routinely do, or want to do, can help develop the habit. This is where the YouTube channel comes in. I uploaded my first video on January 1st of 2016. My plan was to create a video every single week and have the Blood Angels be the subject of the topics, and you know what? It worked.
Now what?
It felt SO good to be free. I could now paint whatever the heck I wanted to paint and take my YouTube channel anywhere I wanted to go, and that’s exactly what I did. My channel is called “Miniac” which is a portmanteau between the words miniature and maniac because that’s what I am. I love everything about this hobby and I want to make videos about everything. I want to talk about technique, the process of painting, the tools surrounding it, the culture surrounding it and everything. My videos aren’t just about painting, they’re about everything that involves the miniature community and my love for it, and that where’s I am today. Thank you for taking the time to read my story and I hope you stick around for more. PAINT MORE MINIS!