Adepticon Diary - Entry #6 - Crystal Brush overall

Here are some of my pics of the Crystal Brush.  It's great to have close-ups of so many styles and techniques, which I can study as I work on future projects.

Here is what the display looked like on Saturday, when the number of entries was sparse enough that it still looked like I might have a chance at a trophy, ha, ha.

There's my piece, "Border Dispute", in the cabinet.  I'll save close-ups for a future blog entry, when I take better pictures, worthy of uploading to the Cool Mini Or Not website.  I still have hopes of earning an 8.0 so that I can make it into the CMON Annual.

Raffaele Picca's masterpiece.  Still my favorite from the whole show.  This piece was #2 in the Diorama division, which was the division I competed in.  I need to pick a different division for next year........

My white balance is off, so unfortunately there's some yellow cast.

The #1 piece in Dioramas.

The #3 piece in Dioramas.

And the #4 piece in Dioramas, the Pied Piper.  Again, one of my favorite pieces in the entire show, due to its creativity and whimsy.

The little mechanical rat automatons!

My piece came after the Pied Piper, of which I'm plenty proud.


This was a stunning piece by a Russian artist.  The Russian's have a reputation for painting very finely detailed patterns in the fabrics.

Mindblowing.

Some other trophy winners.

The next three are by Conrad Mynett, with whom I had the pleasure to meet and chat with several times.  He won 4 or 5 Crystal Brushes.

This piece by Conrad was underappreciated, I think.  It's the Colossus of Rhodes.  Those are little ships sailing under the figure.  Conrad scratchbuilt the ships, the harbor, and the village houses.  The piece as a whole is incredibly tiny, not to mention how miniscule the hand-sculped ships (and oars!) are.

Here are two pieces by Justin McCoy of Secret Weapon Miniatures.  I used to associate him with only tanks, but now I know he's damn good figure painter as well.  So good that he won two Crystal Brushes!

I really like this alien he did.  Looks very realistic and believable, almost like a movie special effect.

And here are some more entries that really grabbed my attention.  They might not have won trophies, but they certainly deserve recognition a big "thank you" for going through the effort to create them and share them with the world.

(you'll be seeing some of these Deep Wars models from me eventually...)

Another underappreciated, wonderful piece.

Adepticon Diary - Entry #5 - Other wargames

This entry showcases some of the other games going on at Adepticon.  I'm a big fan of seeing more variety of games at tabletop gaming conventions, and that direction certainly seems to be the wave of the future.

Unfortunately, I missed taking photos of the Malifaux tournament, the Kings of War tournament, the Lord of the Rings tournament, the Deep Wars demo, and the Freeblades demo, but here are a few pics of Warmachine and Wreck Age.

The Warmachine tournament room.

The #1 table.  An awesome trench board.  I want one!

The #2 table.  Bridge over a frozen river.  Fantastic attention to detail.

Here is the display case, showing studio paint-jobs.  Someone said Matt Wilson painted some of these.  I apologize for the yellow cast.  I thought my auto white balance would take care of all of that.  Nope.  I did what I could to correct it in Picasa.

Below is another pic borrowed from the Bad Dice Facebook gallery.  Those guys take better pictures than I do.  It looks like their white balance is right on.  I have no excuses.

Back to my shots, taken through an amber filter apparently.  Shows good detail, though.

My faves, the Trollkin.

This would be such an awesome model.  But I think Privateer Press has gone overboard with the multi-layered, super-filigree, spikey plate armor.  Still, I love this concept, and I always dug the cavalry riding the reindeer.

Now here's a newer post-apocalyptic game called Wreck Age.  I spoke with Matt, one of the founders, several times.  Matt has great energy and loves what he's doing and really cares about how he's running the business.  I wish him great success.

And I want these terrain boards.

But that's why I take pictures -- so that I can draw inspiration to make my own.

Matt was very kind to remove the glass so that I could take close-up pics of the models.

A great variety of characters.  So much personality and variety of kit.  Excellent basing, too.

The biker-looking dude on the right is one of my favorites.  I found out later that you got a free miniature, if you played a demo.  I had every intention to play a demo, but I got distracted all weekend.  Bummer.  I could have scored a miniature!

So Mad Max.

Nice to see a non-action pose in the mix.

The next post will explore more gaming figs for skirmish games, photographed in the vendor hall!