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Thursday, April 18, 2013

Crystal Brush Weekend

Morning, y'all! 

Two more days and a few hours until Adepticon and the Crystal Brush painting competition. 

The Crystal Brush is next to the Spring Angel the painting event with the highest prize money. 10,000$ will be handed to the lucky winner of the event. 

Last year's deserved winner was Jose Palomares with his mind-blowing scratch build 'Gea', followed by works of Diego Esteban and Sebastian Archer. 

This year, we helped talented Spanish painter Emuse to be able to go to the Crystal Brush. He had started quite a unique indiegogo campaign that ultimately allowed him to go to Chicago to enter his art in the competition. 

The Crystal Brush is not without criticism. Even though coolminiornot and the sponsors of the event throw a lot of money at the winners, the participation of absolute top painters has been somewhat sparse. The total amount of entries has also been very low - many privately organized shows here in Europe (both on- as well as offline events) have way more entries and  display an overall higher standard, some claim. The winning entries, of course, are absolutely stunning pieces of art - and definitely worthy of winning any event. 

The second criticism is the voting mode. Half the votes come from the judges at the event (this year Roman Lappat of the Massive Voodoo Crew will be the head judge, so I know that a fair result is literally guaranteed), but the other half come from the online community. And this is where the problem for many critics lies: Pictures of miniatures are not the same as seeing the miniature. Some  critics fear that artists that can 'activate' their fans have a better chance of winning. 

The charm of online voting, of course, is that many fans and people interested in miniature painting become part of the process, thus furthering the interest in miniature painting. 

Be that as it may, the Crystal Brush is one of THE big events of the miniature competition year. For all of you who would like to vote on the entries, the CB Gallery opens in a few days and you can vote on your favorites.

What are your views about the Crystal Brush 2013? We would love to hear your comments below :) 

I am personally looking forward to the amazing level of art that we are about to witness.

May the best mini win :) 

Zaphod



2 comments:

  1. I liked the contest in the past because there is some true art to be seen! Sure, voting system is not "perfect" but with such a great head judge it´s gonna be fair.

    I wish the best of luck to all participants, and like you, i am looking forward to some really mindblowing stuff there. :)

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  2. I really like the online-voting approach.

    Is it potentially open to misuse? Yes. But so are tight methods using small circles of judges.

    And while seeing a miniature "in the flesh" as a judge would is likely better than seeing a good shot of it online, seeing a good shot of it online is probably still better than being shoved by the crowd past miniatures behind dull, finger-print-smeared display windows as one is on .. say .. Games Day.

    And CoolMiniOrNot is, at its core, a place where people vote on miniatures online. That's where they are coming from.

    It's the inclusion of judge, I believe, that is a nod to the "tradition".

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