Games Day Rumors IV, Nerdcamp and more

*Breaking News: GD Australia cancelled* 

Happy Sunday everyone! 

Pizza - the stuff of Painting Heros

I have a couple of painting friends over for a 'Nerd Camp' for the next week. This is always great fun as we don't do anything else but talk about miniatures, painting, sculpting and other nerd related stuff while watching DVD series (Game of Thrones) 

A couple of beers and brush-powering, nutricious food helps us in the exhausting scientific process that is miniature painting. 

Vitamin B and Vitamin P - don't leave home without them...

Nerdcamps are the best :) 

Some of the stuff that will be painted this week.

I have three rooms in my apartment. All of them have turned into paintingbuddha.com nerdrooms. I got room for 6-8 painters 'under my bed' (quite literally). Another room for 6 people in what other people would use as a living room. And of course we have our Hollywood-style paintingbuddha.com recording 'studio'. Who needs a sofa? I don't :D Especially not with us building models, painting or - in my case - working on our DVD set videos till 7am in the morning ;)

Matt is overjoyed with... well... joy.
REVOLUTIONARY salute to all of you.

First winner of Giveaways receives prize

Slayer Sword winner Matt "Cexwish" and his friend Adam dropped by to help us with some cool Adobe After Effects animations for our paintingbuddha DVD set. 

While Matt is a wizard with the brush, Adam is a master of After Effects. After 10 hours of fun with functions we finished some stunning overlays and animations for our first DVD set. It turned out exactly how we envisioned it - and as you know, that's always a satisfying experience.

Matt also was one of the 42 winners of our Giveaway and picked up his prize - a 'The Hobbit' rulebook from Games Workshop. Tears of joy were almost nearly streaming down his face. Almost :D

Make sure you check whether you have won something as well, there are still a lot of people who have not claimed their prizes yet. Find a list of all winners in Friday's post. 

Paintingbuddha news & release schedule

Last time you see this in
Black & White. ;)

We are expecting some final information and schedules from our printing company tomorrow regarding our newly designed packaging for our first DVD set. It feels like we have abandoned all plans to make profits on this first DVD and invested in pure awesomeness and more nerdy stuff that we have added to the DVD box.

We will give you additional information on the finalized release and shipping schedule in the next day or two. It will not be the first week of March, but we will not be that far off, either.

We will post some sneak peaks of the miniatures in the next two or three days. As soon as I can take my eyes off them ;)

Games Day Rumors IV

(Part I - Part II - Part III)

Friday was an exciting day at the rumor mill (see rumors Part III). All of a sudden an 'official' GD announcement rose to the top of the rumor list. 

For us here at masterminis.net it is almost certain that the post in question is NOT about the official Games Day. Unfortunately, neither GW HQ nor the store in Bochum that posted the rumor mill fueling post have responded yet. 

Games Day Australia CANCELED as well?

One of our painting bruddhas from Down Under, David Harper, posted the following bits of information on our masterminis.net Facebook page and gave us the green light to also post the information here. He explains the way Australian Games Day used to work (it was a different format from all other countries). 

The OZ format MIGHT be what we could be facing in all countries as a replacement for Games Day events. Please note I wrote 'might could' - this is just a personal opinion.

"Firstly the Oz Gamesday venue is booked in for September 8th. However a contract has not been signed as of yet so noone knows if it will go ahead at all.

Secondly in previous years before Gamesday made a return we still had Golden Demon competitions. These were entered in your local store and underwent three rounds of judging. Top three in each category from each store were then sent to the head store for each State of the country for a further round of judging. The top three from each state were then sent to Sydney at no cost to the competitor for final judging and awarding of demons.

This system worked reasonably well but was subject to "dodgey" judging. Most store employees can't paint for shit and have no place judging better painters work. The awards ceremonies often were lacklustre affairs with a majority of the winners not even present.

Please feel free to reproduce this on your blog to help inform the international community as to what they might expect this year."

I love to picture how a top-class miniature is sent across the country to HQ for further judging by GW staff. If you ever watched some of them pick up entries when they judge at an event you know what I mean. For me, that's not going to happen.
Read KyleM's comments in the last Rumor blog for a detailed, step-by-step walkthrough on how Australia's GD worked. Thanks Kyle!

David goes on to confirm that there will be no Games Day in Australia this year. 

"I can confirm for you though that there will NOT be an Oz Gamesday this year. Partially because the venue upped the asking price and secondly GW are in the process of reducing staffing levels to one man stores so they have to close their stores so staff can attend Gamesday. Apparently this is temporary and they hope to reintroduce Gamesday next year at a different venue. As for Golden Demon no word yet on whether it will still take place in it's old format or not.

All I can say about this is one word: SAD.

Please note that there is still no official word from GW yet - but more and more it looks like we don't need that to know whats going on.

So what is there to do but to say:
Happy Sunday! Grab a miniature and PAINT! 

Zaphod