Yesterday I received the very sad news of the passing of Ian Smith. A real shock as last time I was in contact with him was just a couple of months ago in January and he seemed fine. He was only the same age as me.
Some may recall here that Ian was my partner in a little venture to create some bespoke 40mm Napoleonic RHA crew a few years back and he persuaded me to go down the digital render 3D resin print rout. The result was some fantastic and unique figures.
Ian's collection of 40mm Napoleonics and ACW's won him the Best in Show game at SELWG and Partisan twice and his Sharpe inspired game was featured in an article in Wargames Illustrated (see link below, it's quite a visual treat).
I know that Ian had been working towards a final display game based on the Hornblower TV series for which he had numerous 3D French and British sailors and ships guns crews made, special terrain pieces such as a magnificent French coastal fort commissioned and two stunning fully rigged waterline ship models all to 40mm scale. I sincerely hope that this game will still be put on as a tribute to his dedication to the scale.
My thoughts are with his family at this time.
Partisan 2017. A Sharp(e) looking game.
Ian's beautiful fully rigged British frigate to 40mm scale. It's a tribute to his dedication to the display game that he actually cut the bottom off this model to make to make it a waterline model that sat on specially commissioned sea terrain boards!
This is dreadful news and cant believe it. I only saw Ian at York back in February he looked really well.
ReplyDeleteIt is shocking news. It was just a few days ago that I learned Ian was in hospital with stage 4 cancer. Hard to come to terms with.
DeleteLee,
ReplyDeleteBoth shocking and terrible. Whilst I mainly knew Ian through his friendship with Shaun Bryant I did get to know him better through the 40 mm resin project. I think we were ahead of the game in doing them as no one else was printing resin gaming figures at the time. He will be missed.
Those resin prints were a revelation to me, I had no idea of the technology then. Did you ever get to add the RHA crews to those spare guns?
DeleteSorry for your loss, that fully rigged frigate is phenomenal!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
Thanks Iain. Beautiful Frigate I agree. Ian took a band saw to it to make it a waterline model, took him a good while to pluck up the resolve to do it!
Delete