Collection: Sculpted by Richard Kerr

Richard Kerr started sculpting around 1981, for a number of small manufacturers including Texas Miniatures, and his own company Gray Cat Castings.

He had a penchant for various beast-men, and rabbits in particular.  Among his creations were the Dae-Shiru, which were a mix of Otter and Feline features with Centaur bodies.

Richard joined Ral Partha around 1989, as head of a new sculpting department.  While working on various projects, he created the "Thumpers" initially as a joke played on Ral Partha CEO Chuck Crain by converting Tom Meier Orcs into giant Rabbit-Men.  Chuck liked them so much, that he invited Richard to sculpt more, and they were released as a new faction under the Fantasy Armies range.  Richard also sculpted new Dae-Shiru that were also released through the Fantasy Armies range. 

He contributed sculpts to the Monsters range, the D&D ranges, BattleTech, Mech Warrior, OGRE, Werewolf the Apocalypse, and the Space Knights ranges.  He also sculpted the Aztec portion of the 1200 A.D. range, and 20 different natural animals in 25mm scale.  During his time at Ral Partha, he also ran several Chaos Wars games at conventions, and wrote up several scenarios for games. 

After his time at Ral Partha, his "Off the Wall Armies" ranges were produced by several companies including Task Force Games, Simtac, and eventually Steve Jackson Games.  Some time around the year 2000, he went to work for Steve Jackson Games, as they purchased the rights to the OGRE miniatures from Ral Partha.

Richard was very supportive of the revived Chaos Wars project from the time of our first Kickstarter back in 2015.  At his request, we included the miniature 50-0035: Sea Elf Honor Guard with Great Sword in the first releases, as it was a favorite of his.  In fact, we re-released that figure, and sent him several copies in exchange for his agreement to convert some more Tom Meier Orcs into some magic-user types for the Thumpers.  

He answered many questions about the past miniatures industry, his inspirations, and his plans for future sculpts.  He was generous with his time, and support.  He took a lot of time photographing miniatures to share with me, and write out his ideas on various projects.  Richard had given his permission for us to include the Dae-Shiru in the Chaos Wars project, and put those miniatures back into production.  We had also been casually discussing Richard allowing us to release his Off The Wall Armies factions as part of the Chaos Wars project.  Unfortunately, we took our time in working out those details, thinking that we had time to get things ironed out eventually. 

One day, my emails went unanswered.  It was not until several months later that I received word that Richard has passed unexpectedly.  I wish that we had had more time to talk about miniatures together, and daydream future projects.  At the very least, we do have physical copies of his artwork, to remember him by.