Gareth Beverley, 40, from Southampton, found himself with very little spare time during the lockdowns.
"When you're picking a colour scheme for a model, you're in the moment and disconnected from any other concerns or problems," he said.Andy Sharp started a regular online call to continue the social aspect of gaming during the pandemic He said the calls helped people connect and forget their troubles, with people joining the call from across the country and even from Germany."Lots of people on the call are working from home who wouldn't have been otherwise."Painting the figures is described by fans as a kind of "passive relaxation""My hobby has always been a very happy place for me because life is complicated," he said.
"It's been a horrible year for so many people, so I feel slightly bad saying we've done well, but we have benefited from people staying at home and doing their hobbies," he said.He said his firm, which is a stone's throw away from the Games Workshop headquarters in Lenton, Nottingham, has "had huge amounts of people coming in new to the hobby" since the first lockdown.
"If you play a computer game, you don't have anything at the end but if you've painted an army, you've got it for the next 30 years, there's something physical to show for it," John said.Ronnie Renton and Annie Norman say their companies enjoyed a boom