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Now that was a stunning contest!

First of all, I want to thank DakkaDakka for the prize and the contest in general. I'm sure they worked hard to get CB support and in return you've had one hell of a contest. Congratulation guys!

About my Saladin... the base is the part of it that i'm less proud of. It's a scenic desert base from Micro Art Studio with some colour gradient and pigments to make it look like sand. I know I coul've done much more, but it was the last part of the miniature and I was too tired to try something different... at least I decided to paint a freehand with Saladin's logo on the base so that it could somehow catch the eye of the viewer

I would like to comment, at least, the other 4 finalists.

LeoPelo's Tokusetsu: I really love it. Can't think of any way to make it better. Subtle OSL, clean an smooth gradients, nice base... just perfect.

Heartserenade's Securitate: Really nice composition. By adding the demolished wall you got to fix the weird pose on this mini. Nice colour choice even though I would have added some more not-so-reddish colours apart from the blue details.

Zoddozoddo's Speculo Killer: I can see the quality of the technique (clean transitions etc) but, as some other people commented, i'm not feeling the colours. The red OSL you tried on the face does not work either since it looks like she's wearing a mask or sth... I do like the purple-cyan base, but it needs massive highlighting. In such small miniatures you need to outline every joint, armor plate or whatever with a clearer colour to define part by part the whole miniature, otherwise it will look blurry.

Junex's Oniwaban: I really love the scheme. Nice technique, nice colours, simple but cool base... Love it!

Seeing all of the entries, you can see that there's almost no repetition in the models... and even though they're all stunning. That's part of the Infinity beauty. Every single miniature, from cheerleaders to TAGs are astonishing... that's why I love it!

Thanks a lot again. See you in the next contest!!

Congratulations to everyone who entered and particularly to the top 5 wonderful entries!

bou wrote:
Zoddozoddo's Speculo Killer: I can see the quality of the technique (clean transitions etc) but, as some other people commented, i'm not feeling the colours. The red OSL you tried on the face does not work either since it looks like she's wearing a mask or sth... I do like the purple-cyan base, but it needs massive highlighting. In such small miniatures you need to outline every joint, armor plate or whatever with a clearer colour to define part by part the whole miniature, otherwise it will look blurry.

thanks for the comment

to be onest, the red-orange part is not a Osl, but a flesh part. I meant something similar to an insect (or similiar to a Quake 2 's strogg). So a flesh creature with a carapace.
Tried something different but failed.

I agree with the massive highlights but wanted to do something more soft and light. Didn't want to use the "Heavy Metal" highlights with an highlight with brigh color but i tried to "smooth" the color in lighter way.
Hope to do better next time :>>

Huge congrats guys! Even if you weren't in the top three there was some amazing entries out there. Can't stress enough not to feel bad about your painting because all of the entries up there probably look better then most people's models on the tabletop.

Well here's a few angles of my entry. The fact is I didn't intent to participate until the last minute so I only really put about 6 hours of work on this at the most. I concentrated mostly on the face,hair and tartan, which I honestly think looked better before I added the stripes. Contrary to one comment, there are a number of levels of highlighting done on the hair. The one thing I didn't have too much time to address was the sword, which I would have preferred to airbrush a nice gradient onto. I'll be doing that soon. Thanks for those that voted for it and for the positive comments made by the users who wrote there breakdowns.

So a question for those who have never played Infinity but entered the painting competition.

Are you more interested in the game now or just like the figs?

Congratulations to every single one of you. Thanks for such great participation, and sportsmanship. You should all be proud of your entries.

Jason.

CDK wrote:So a question for those who have never played Infinity but entered the painting competition.

Are you more interested in the game now or just like the figs?

I'm definitely more interested in the game now. The sheer variety of it alone must make for quite a diverse game, although it does get a little tough deciphering the descriptions of the units, takes a few reads to realize what your looking at.

Congratulations to everyone who entered, and especially to the top 5. I hope some of the people in the top 5 do some more posting on Dakka (maybe some painting tutorials )

I think we definately need to get some Dakka Infinity meets organised if we can expect to play against such well painted forces

Okay, first off: all my guesses are wrong except for heavybolter's entry. I recognized the background and how the highlights worked. And all my guesses were wrong on the top 5, but seeing that most of them don't have Dakka galleries to compare their works to, I think I can be excused for guessing wrong on those entries.

. I do agree with the criticism that my entry has a very busy base: the story behind that is that I don't own any Infinity models and I borrowed my friend's Nomad minis. Halfway through painting the Securitate, i realized that her pose looks really off without some terrain for her hand to rest on, not to mention she has a very masculine face (and yes, I hated the model too, but I think I made her work. Thanks to girly makeup contouring and highlighting tutorials). If I just let the model stand without a handrest or a way to soften her up and make her more feminine I won't stand a chance. Another thing worth mentioning is that I'm not a fan of a model just standing there doing nothing: I like my models, even single ones, to tell a story. It just doesn't feel right for me to paint them just posing. So when I saw that I can make elaborate bases according to the rules, something clicked in my mind. I wanted it to look like the model is lost in some part of Yu Jing, and I even made the extra effort of making futuristic fake Chinese posters and newspapers that required me to bug my Chinese friends to make sure that the letters are correct. If you will notice the base is made mostly of cool colors while the model is mostly in hues of red to make it stand out, but in hindsight though I could've ket the main elements of the base without making it too busy.

And let me be clear: I am in no way criticizing the judges decisions on the final placing of the Top 5. But I need to point this out, else it'll bug me. I think junex's entry should have taken my top 3 spot (and even the rating on the galleries seem to agree with me). It's hard to pull off a clean, matte black like that and even with a simple color scheme he made it work. Sorry man, if I had Infinity models I would gladly give you my winnings since I feel you deserve it, but I have zero Infinity miniatures and my winnings would help me start with playing the game. Once I have a decent army, though... let's talk about that when the time comes.

Of course, thanks for everyone who voted for me, the judges who thought I was worthy of 3rd place, and Corvus Belli for making such wonderful miniatures.


@Arakasi - We'll meet in round 3, my friend. I won't let my guard down, so be warned!

Time for a new background

This was my entry (#2, Nomad Prowler):


If I could do things differently? A larger picture of the model in the middle with less of the diorama/terrain.

I have to admit that when I originally set the picture up and assembled the montage, I was really happy with it, but having seen the other entries when the contest was posted, I thought "oh, oh!" - the central picture was just so much smaller when the image was posted on the forum that I think I really suffered for it, even though (I feel), it still looks reasonably good when viewed in the gallery.

So, if I were to do it again, I'd use a larger central picture. Maybe just of the model, or maybe a diorama style display (probably using a background image next time rather than plain white just to make it look better).

In terms of painting? Well, I suck at painting, so who knows

Congrats to everyone, especially the winners! I thought Iron Janissary would have captured more people's imagination, but regardless I had such a fun time painting it. Not looking forward to games with him though - my best painted figure is surely going to attract a lot of fire!

SilverMK2 wrote:In terms of painting? Well, I suck at painting, so who knows

Far from it.

Anyway, I'm posting my pic in this thread as well. I'd like some criticism. I want to find out why it bombed so hard.

Wow.. I really don't know, it's beautiful and way, way better than anything I could produce. Maybe because there were a lot of fans of Knight's Order guys?

As others have speculated, it might be because you were lower down the list (the Ariadna mini with tartan I think got an unfairly small number of votes, and that was also at the bottom).

The only criticism I can really think of is perhaps the photo? It looks brilliantly painted, but perhaps could benefit from some filter-setting changes on photoshop just to make it a bit brighter?

Inanimate wrote:Anyway, I'm posting my pic in this thread as well. I'd like some criticism. I want to find out why it bombed so hard.

Likely part position, part stiffness of competition. I don't know how everyone else voted, but I decided to limit my votes to my top five models, as I felt that simply selecting everything above a certain standard wouldn't sufficiently distinguish the "best" from the "very good" (and there were so many gorgeous models that I couldn't vote for less than five ). If others did likewise and you weren't in their top [number] models, the votes would reflect how many wanted you to win, not how many thought you painted well. I honestly can't find much of anything to fault with your model, either in composition or execution. I can definitely say that, in your case, the votes seriously misrepresent the quality.

oadie wrote:

Inanimate wrote:Anyway, I'm posting my pic in this thread as well. I'd like some criticism. I want to find out why it bombed so hard.

Likely part position, part stiffness of competition. I don't know how everyone else voted, but I decided to limit my votes to my top five models, as I felt that simply selecting everything above a certain standard wouldn't sufficiently distinguish the "best" from the "very good" (and there were so many gorgeous models that I couldn't vote for less than five ). If others did likewise and you weren't in their top [number] models, the votes would reflect how many wanted you to win, not how many thought you painted well. I honestly can't find much of anything to fault with your model, either in composition or execution. I can definitely say that, in your case, the votes seriously misrepresent the quality.

I completely understand what you mean, and you shouldn't give away 'pity' votes just because a model is well-painted but you don't love it. I'm just looking for tips on how to improve. What was good and bad, what did your favourite do better, do I need a model with a face etc. I still believe it's just a coincidence that the highest scoring ones are bunched together in the top-half. though. A lot of great entries up top received undeservingly low scores, at least in my opinion.

Pacific wrote:Wow.. I really don't know, it's beautiful and way, way better than anything I could produce. Maybe because there were a lot of fans of Knight's Order guys?

As others have speculated, it might be because you were lower down the list (the Ariadna mini with tartan I think got an unfairly small number of votes, and that was also at the bottom).

The only criticism I can really think of is perhaps the photo? It looks brilliantly painted, but perhaps could benefit from some filter-setting changes on photoshop just to make it a bit brighter?

It was mainly the light source's fault. The ceiling lamp casts noticeable shadows because it's so harsh and shines from above. The parts that were lit up are really bright. Further brightening that would just make it look washed out.

I bet it was the guy with the Montesa Knight that started a campaign against me.

Inanimate wrote:

SilverMK2 wrote:In terms of painting? Well, I suck at painting, so who knows

Far from it.

Anyway, I'm posting my pic in this thread as well. I'd like some criticism. I want to find out why it bombed so hard.

lol I voted for it. It's great. I think it's ugly human bias lol

Currently putting together a critique of all entries, but gee it takes a long time to do 42 entries justice! Will get there eventually...

Congrats to the winners! It really was a competition and must have been hard for the judges to pick the winners. I'll be looking forward to more of these.

Mine was entry 25, the Lizard TAG

Congratulations everyone specially the winners!

I agree with heartserenade, give me the 3rd place win...just kidding! I appreciate the sentiment, man, I really do. That's really nice of you, but I wouldn't want to take anything away from you. You won fair and square. Like I said earlier, I had high hopes entering the competition but after seeing the other entries I'm extremely happy just being judged as good enough to be one of the top 5. I did my best and I believe I was beaten by better painters.

I also think that several entries deserved more votes but again sometimes it comes down to presentation and personal preference.

I do hope bou makes a tutorial on how to do freehand.

@CDK
I still just like the figs but that's not due to any fault by Infinity, I don't really play any of the games. I just like collecting and painting figs better.

Actually I have some pics of the process. The easier way is painting a big white circle, then a black one a bit smaller inside that previous circle. Then, same process with the squares, but for the details you need patience and a 00000 brush

In this pictures it was halfway even though it looks like almost finished. I ended up touching up here and there, darkening the skin tone, cleaning the lines of the freehand (it's quite easy when it is just a one colour simbol over a black surface... you just have to use black to fix that areas where you messed up the white lines)

@junex Well, let's just have a painting session someday in the future: I think I'll learn a lot from you.

bou wrote:Actually I have some pics of the process. The easier way is painting a big white circle, then a black one a bit smaller inside that previous circle. Then, same process with the squares, but for the details you need patience and a 00000 brush

In this pictures it was halfway even though it looks like almost finished. I ended up touching up here and there, darkening the skin tone, cleaning the lines of the freehand (it's quite easy when it is just a one colour simbol over a black surface... you just have to use black to fix that areas where you messed up the white lines)

I am at awe looking at your work...knowing how small the fig and its details really are.

heartserenade wrote:

and my winnings would help me start with playing the game.

See you soon at the game table bro!

@Pointblank: see you soon! I'll also be making terrain specially for Infinity, I'm just wondering where we can store it since Bunker will be closing soon.

For those who are fans of the basing I did, here's some of the details I didn't include much on my montage. Artwork on the posters were made by my friend Mark Hontucan: his work is the closest to the Infinity aesthetics from all the local artists I know personally.



Zoom in to get a good look at them!

Inanimate wrote:

SilverMK2 wrote:In terms of painting? Well, I suck at painting, so who knows

Far from it.

Anyway, I'm posting my pic in this thread as well. I'd like some criticism. I want to find out why it bombed so hard.

I'm still writing a word for all 42 entries, but I want to reply something specifically on your mini...

It's something like YuanYuan photo.
Looking only at the photo it doesn't come out. I had to see it a lot of times to understand the huge work on mini, the blendings ,orange and green osl, reflexes on blue armor and white part of it (white it's difficult!), but on first (and second) look it doesn't be impressed in my mind.
After I have looked at all 42 entries... after the first quick look on every model... (I had only a hour at work, during lunch break...) some minis remained impressed in my eyes but yours....lesser than others.
I wait to see all minis some other times and after I compiled my list of votes... and I voted yours in my list... but If I had to vote after the first look only, maybe I did not vote you.

Dark background in some way steal colors, don't help (YuanYuan as the same problems and also Al Hawwa) and of course, photo is too little!! The first up it's ok but two on bottom are very little and don't help to catch particulars...
Maybe gore is a little bit flat.
It's impossible ...but I'd like to see it real in my hands.
It's a very good work but real problems are only in photo I think...

p.s. Sorry for y english, it's not simple to write what I have in my mind, translated in other language. Hope you can understand... if not , feel free to write me so I can explain better

As I have said in the previous post, it's just like art contests I joined when I was in college and my professor pointed this out: if you want to win you need to consider how you will stand out in comparison with the other entries. Yours might be the best paintjob but if it doesn't capture attention right away, you may lose some points. Like if everyone else is using pastel and/or monochromatic colors and your entry used bright colors (without sacrificing the quality of the paintjob itself), yours will stand out.

LeoPelo wrote:

Inanimate wrote:

SilverMK2 wrote:In terms of painting? Well, I suck at painting, so who knows

Far from it.

Anyway, I'm posting my pic in this thread as well. I'd like some criticism. I want to find out why it bombed so hard.

I'm still writing a word for all 42 entries, but I want to reply something specifically on your mini...

It's something like YuanYuan photo.
Looking only at the photo it doesn't come out. I had to see it a lot of times to understand the huge work on mini, the blendings ,orange and green osl, reflexes on blue armor and white part of it (white it's difficult!), but on first (and second) look it doesn't be impressed in my mind.
After I have looked at all 42 entries... after the first quick look on every model... (I had only a hour at work, during lunch break...) some minis remained impressed in my eyes but yours....lesser than others.
I wait to see all minis some other times and after I compiled my list of votes... and I voted yours in my list... but If I had to vote after the first look only, maybe I did not vote you.

Dark background in some way steal colors, don't help (YuanYuan as the same problems and also Al Hawwa) and of course, photo is too little!! The first up it's ok but two on bottom are very little and don't help to catch particulars...
Maybe gore is a little bit flat.
It's impossible ...but I'd like to see it real in my hands.
It's a very good work but real problems are only in photo I think...

p.s. Sorry for y english, it's not simple to write what I have in my mind, translated in other language. Hope you can understand... if not , feel free to write me so I can explain better

I understand what you're saying. It wasn't memorable; fair enough. I agree that many models suffered from the same problem. They were nice, but they did not catch my attention.

The gore is quite flat, I admit. I don't paint gore and blood on my minis, so it was definitely something that I didn't understand well enough. I will fix that sometime. I chose the dark background because I had so much white details on the model. I will look in to alternative backgrounds.

i like that charontid, he suffers the little photos but it was nice, Also good choice of colours.
I also think imagination is better than a copy. The risk is high, in fact i maybe chosed too much different tones of colours.
Your colours seems good

Jotun is nice painted, he suffers a lack of attractive feeling

Scottish is also nice, some parts are excellent, other parts are quite poor but he needed better photos

Japan is nice, really similar to the giraldez one but with better base

Saladin is very nice on distant range, nice on medium range and .... not too much clean on short range (the problem of the massive highlights is the zoom distance, they are horrible). Eyes are very good, difficult to do. Base is ok, focus is the model

Yuan Yuan was technically the best miniature, far beyond all 42. But choise of colours in my opinion was terrible :(

How can you judge the miniature at short range if the pictures I posted are WIPs from the middle part of the process? There were lots of things to clean and polish, so don't take that huge pictures as a reference

This kind of miniatures, with such small details need massive highlights and outlining in order to separate the different parts, otherwise it's just a bunch of details that you cannot see at first sight. This is really important for painting contests, your miniature needs to outstand over the rest. Clear backgrounds and simple bases (maybe not as simple as mine xD) are the best choice to (unless your miniature is painted with really clear colours, in which case, you may want to use a dark background)

PS: IDK guys, I do like the Yuan-Yuan. Colours work for me. I definitely want to try some cyan-ish hair