Gen Con Painting Contest Ideas

With registration for Gencon set it’s time to start reviewing options for the painting competition. Privateer held their first painting competition at GenCon last year and I’m expecting that to be repeated. Plus there is GenCon’s general painting competition. I’m looking to partake in both of these with a single submission each. Quite a few companies have piggybacked on the Gen Con open painting competition in the past. Assessing and ranking miniatures they have produced. It does not seem that privateer did that, they held a separate event. I’ve been following the big painting competitions fairly well and there are a few things clear to me. Stunning quality paint job is only about 66% of the winning formula. In addition the miniature needs to have some of the following: custom sculpting, stunning basing, significant freehand, or object light sourcing. Conversions and sculpting are not my forte so I will be avoiding that realm as much as possible. That leaves good basing, freehand painting, and/or object light sourcing. I’m going to blog my progress on these from initial fig consideration, basing considerations, and then final products once I get back from Gen Con. They have not released the entry rules for this year but typically the final product should not be publicly available prior to the competition, so don’t count on too many pics until the official rules get released

Expectations: That I will walk away empty handed. The best, realistic, outcome is an honorable mention, but I have no delusions of winning. And yes I’m aware I’ve got all kinds of other delusions (like I’ll finish all the pieces to my liking). Today I’m going to lay out my initial plans and considerations, along with some links.

Privateer Press painting competition: Currently I’ve got the IKRPG Exiled Vinter King of Cygnar taking central stage in my mind. As much as I like the Privateer range it does not always lend itself to easy painting. However I really like this figure. If I had significant delusions I would like to see him seated on a Skorne Throne with dead skorne piled up around him and Morghoul lurking in the back ground. Luckily I’m not that deluded, and I want this to stay out of the diorama category. To handle the basing I’m thinking the Epic Caine’s custom Cygnus base with a fallen Cygnar Stormblade model at his feet would work well. However I only have a small warmachine base to work with so it will probably be a single helmet, arm, or weapon lying on the base. Order will be going in for these parts sometime next week.


General Completion: I’m thinking of taking a Confrontation Cynwall Vasrym0 (the leaping one) and mount them on a broken Roman Pillar from Armorcast. It should appear that she is leaping off the broken pillar ready to strike. I think this offers some of the WOW factor but with minimal sculpting effort on my part. Actually the Vasyrm would likely still be difficult. The feet don’t touch the base and there is little metal that makes up the cloak trail to the ground. I’ll probably have to drill a hole through the cloak and attach a length of rod on the interior of one of the curves and then use green stuff or another epoxy to hide the support rod. I will also need to re-sculpt the bottom of the cape so that it flows around the roman pillar convincingly and does not look forced. Finally I’ll mount the pillar onto a small – medium Warmachine base, either providing a bit of terrain to the surrounding broken pillar (Medium Base) or to simply provide greater stability to the figure. I've got all the parts for this one already so no ordering needed.