GD US 2013 - Part I

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Ben and myself totally incognito - to boldly stop on tracks
that no nerd has stopped on before! (pic by HopeRiver)

Part 1- Y'all come back now, 

you hear?

WOW - 845 pictures and vids needed to be sorted and edited, your paintingbuddha.com orders needed to be packed and labled, a data export to DHL had to be programmed and 250 emails needed answering... 

*PHEW*

But I DID promise that the first post in a mini-series of articles about Games Day 2013 in Memphis, Tennessee will be online tonight and by gosh, IT WILL BE DONE! :D

Games Day US 2013 - Golden Demon

Of course you are all waiting for our pictures and the report from the Golden Demon painting competition - and you shall have them! In this first post about the GD we will focus entirely on the entries of this awesome event. 

Professional red-shirts at work.

I will write an additional report about the whole event, but let me just say this: The organization of the Golden Demon part of the event was nothing short of exemplary. 

The red-shirts handled all miniatures very carefully, even marking them as 'fragile' if it was needed - so that the judges don't accidentally break them during judging. Handing in the entries was fast, painless and the GW staff was absolutely professional, friendly and generally in a really good mood about the whole thing.

Even though 'only 1000' tickets were sold, the display cases filled very quickly. What I liked was that during receiving the miniatures, the GW staff already made a pre-selection of 'first cut' and 'not quite, guys'. Well, maybe I liked it, because all of my three entries made it over that first hurdle :D

The gloves came off, but the
glasses were on for judging!

Level of competition

A lot of people tend to say that the US Golden Demon was 'the little one' in the group of worldwide painting competitions, with a level that is not nearly as high as that at other events. 

Well, I can't speak for years past, but I would say that the level at the 2013 GD was as good as any other Games Day I have seen. The ratio between awesome and not-quite-nearly-so-awesome minis was the same as at any Games Day event I have seen. 

Aaron Lovejoy's outstanding
masterpiece was our favorite
for the Slayer Sword

The top entries, however, could have won anywhere. And this is not only because of some established European painters such as "Hope River" (Nadja) from Russia, Spanish Team Member Octavia Fernandez or even our own Ben "White Rabbit" Komets. No. It was not even because of the smooth entries of US super-star Marike Reimer who I was delighted to meet for the first time. 

We have seen awesome entries from US-painters who most of us Europeans have never heard of. Aaron Lovejoy. Randall Sizemore. Brice Cocanour - or even the sword slayer Tom Ales, among many other US demon winners. All of these guys paint to a very high standard. And they all have some refreshingly new ideas for their works. It was a pleasure and privilege competing with these guys. 

Of course, we (meaning Ben and myself) hoped Ben's traumatizingly terrific Tau-Titan diorama would win (an in-depth report about this, including WIP pics coming soon!). But honestly we had someone else on the radar for the Slayer Sword...

Ben's scratch-built Tau-Titan diorama was so popular that
tons of people tried to buy the Titan from Forge World :D

Aaron Lovejoy's Slaanesh Huntress entry "Road to Mordheim" was our favorite entry at this year's Golden Demon. awesome composition, great base, dynamic pose, perfect execution. 

I was particularly thrilled to meet Aaron at the pre-GD barbeque - which GW has invited all attendees of the GD to - as he was among the first people ever to order a paintingbuddha.com supporter box. 

He said that watching Ben's older videos has helped him with his painting. Maybe someone should take our Season 1 DVD set away from him - or he may well become unstoppable! :D

Brice Cocanour's 40k single
entry was my favorite for that
category. It took home silver. 

BTW: Aaron is a professional commission painter (from this day on, I refuse to label him as army painter :D). And I am sure his market value just went up by at least 42%!

We will cover Ben's diorama in a separate, in-depth post and video in which we will reveal all the little details that Ben has put in that diorama. About four months of full-time work went into this piece and Ben was proud to take home Gold in the diorama category. And we were happy that we got it 'there and back again' undamaged - after all, we travelled 15.000 miles for this ^^.

Demon & Slayer Sword Winners

The award ceremony was a little delayed as pictures of the winning entries 'could not be found' in time to put them on the big screen. After a few minutes and with one or two missing pictures, the award ceremony proceed without a glitch though. 

Slayer Sword entry by Tom Ales

Big winners of this year's Games Day were Hope River (Nadja) and Octavio Fernandez with four demons each. Tom Ales took the sword and 'Best-of-Forge-World' with his Gorky-Morky Orky Idol. To be honest, it was not on our radar for the longest time - maybe because it was put on the lowest shelf in the display - a fate shared with Ben's Tau Titan diorama. Tom put a lot of extra conversion work into this piece and it was in deed very well done. 

I hear there is a lot of controversy about this Slayer Sword - but seriously - when has there been no controversy about a Slayer Sword decision? :D Let's move on and fight it out again at the next controversial Games Day! ^^

Oh, and most importantly (not): yours truly went home with three out of three finalist medals - and apparently placed 4th in two categories :D More than what I could have hoped for given that I had close to no time ^^. And those new medals are at least 42x better than the old pins!

Upcoming Spotlights & Reports

Some of the artists of this year's Golden Demon US have agreed to do a little 'spotlight' with us - this means we will have awesome pictures of their entries and cool little interviews with them. 

Also, we are far from finished with our Games Day US reports! 
Next one will come in tomorrow morning! 
Follow us on our Facebook Page so you don't miss out!

So: Stay tuned and - maybe, just maybe - subscribe? 

Pics, pics, pics - or it didn't happen

Picasa images for all!

And here is what you all waited for. My Picasa-Webalbum : 

>> Part 1: Golden Demon entries. <<

The first 219 pictures from this year's GD US. And there's tons of more to come. 

Feel free to use the images, copy them, distribute them, print them out, drool on them! 

And if you like, please provide a link to masterminis.net - but that's voluntary - you don't have to. 

Basically, you can do whatever you want with the images, as long as you SHARE & ENJOY!

Stack'o'Swag Sweepstakes

We are in our 14 days of Celebration. Every time you SHARE & ENJOY one of our facebook posts from July 21st until August 4th with your friends on Facebook or Google+ you receive a 'ticket' for the Stack'o'Swag Sweepstakes! 

So far we got three paintingbuddha Supporter T-Shirts, the 2013 Games Day Limited Miniature and the Happy Monk in the Stack'o'Swag Sweepstakes. 

With this post we put a MYSTERIOUS Games Workshop SWAG BAG onto the Stack'o'Swag! This bag was only available to visitors of the US Games Day and is filled with hoopy GW stuff! Today I will only reveal to you that a) it is blue and b) you will never again be thirsty (if you use this magical bag right!) More on this soon™. :D

With EVERY upcoming Games Day US 2013 post we will add at least one item to the stack! 

Also, don't forget that we are still giving away a limited Games Day 2013 T-Shirt in your size! And YES we got some! They were sold out within 15 minutes! ;) 

All winners of both giveaways will be announced on Monday August 5th! 

Chances of winning are like totally awesome, doods and doodesses! 

Ah, yes... Can we haz subscribez pleaze?

SHARE & ENJOY!