Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Well another year has gone by. As we March into the next with another round of Space Marines, I thought I’d look back at the past year, and encourage all my fellow participants from last year’s Unofficial Challenges to do the same. Together we have made a lot of progress, let’s see it!



(By way of comparison, here is the previous year’s)

Overall, not a massive amount of progress. From an execution POV, I think my first and last entries are fairly comparable. But if I’ve not made much forward advancement, I do think I’ve done a lot of lateral work. New techniques, better efficiency, diverse subjects. Lest time in my comfort zone, and more experimenting.

A lot of the stuff I do is just building and painting stock guys. Take a box, build and prime it. I think I’ve gotten a little better at the assembly stage. The chapter champ and the master of signal were a lot of fun to build.

I continue to use and learn new techniques. Or just get my lazy self to actually practice them. Edge highlighting being a big one I’m doing more of. A lot of experimenting with the new soulstone paints. Particularly proud of how the librarian’s force axe came out. But I also used them on the old captain’s sword, MoS’s targeter, and to make blue/black chiton equipment for the zoat. Long Drong Slayer was an experiment with the new washes. Nulan Oil flows and tints completely different then my old black wash. Baseing is getting a bit better

I’ve gotten a lot faster at the bench as well. Multiple months of multiple models. I think the Fire Prism broke all sorts of records for going from box to table. The MoS was also banged out in no time flat.

Overall, I think my favorite models is the librarian. Love the axe, fond of how the demon head was done with washes and turned out nice. Just a fun retro model, painted with a bunch of new tricks. LDS is also very well done IMHO, but I get why they call The Oil “liquid talent”. He might be technically a better model, but I’m not as proud of him. I think the mini that got the most votes was the zoat, but I think that’s the nostalgia talking, and not necessarily the paint.

For the most part, vote-wise, I think I hovered around the bottom of the chart, I might have floated to above the halfway point once. Still, I enjoy doing these comps and painting beside everyone. It’s fun to see what everyone’s up do and bounce ideas around. And paint things I’d not normally do. At least 2 of my entries would never have seen the light of day if not for this.

Big thanks to Para, and everyone else who’s helped organize this. As well as to my fellow challengers. Looking forward to another great year. Hope I can make it 36/36 months entered. I might not win, but at least I’m persistent!

Ah, you've beaten me to the punch! I was going to wait until after the vote, but since the thread is here, might as well use it!


My entries for the year, with a little commentary on each.

March 2016:


April 2016:


May 2016:


June 2016:


July 2016:


August 2016:


September 2016:


October 2016:


November 2016:


December 2016:


January 2017:


February 2017:




So yeah, definitely a mixed bag over the last 12 months! But I am definitely happy with the majority of it, and the fact I managed to get an entry in 12 months running, it was a bit tight a couple of times but I managed it. Learned a lot, particularly in the photography department, and while I'm still yet to get above a 3rd place, I managed that twice which is once more than the first year. Onwards and upwards!

I've only been here since May, so I missed the first two months of this year...and I couldn't figure out an entry for October either...but 9 out of 12 isn't too bad

...man, it has been quite a year for me hobby-wise, now that I think about it...did a lot of new things, and improved with a lot of other things, and it's resulted in easily some of my best models so far, in my opinion



















...quite the motley crew altogether...all a lot of fun to paint, and I'm generally fairly pleased with how they all turned out....hopefully I can manage to enter every month this year - who knows what on earth I'll have to show this time next year...if this year was anything to go by!

I started this competition not long ago and I gotta say I really like it. It gets me motivated plus I learned
quite a bit on the way. It's a damn good idea!

October: Bloodreaver champion was my first entry. I went with a wicked scheme for the skin. Overall I'm quite happy with him.



November: Mishima meka was my first ever painted vehicle/walker. I believe I could do better. It's a bit blunt but a that time I just
didn't have the courage to do some weathering. I was pretty sure I would ruin it.



December: To me this is my best painted mini to date. I used a few new techniques on him which turned out fine.



January: This little diorama got me high on the competition. Was really happy about it.



February: For me vehicles are quite hard to paint. I'm fond of clean, smooth finishes. Painting a smooth large surface
with a brush is not that easy. Also doing blends on a flat area is a nightmare. I so wanted to paint some shadows
on the piranha but I ran out of time.


I can't wait to do another monthly competition. Bye and out.

Rather than redoing my retrospective from my P&M blog, I thought I'd just drop a link to it here. It's pretty cool to look back at everyone's entries. Kind of tells the story of how we've all improved as painters, amirite?

@Modock - huh...I'd actually forgotten about that Mishima meka you did for November...but looking at it now, I think I was pretty clearly inspired by it! ...I went for a verrry similar style and colour scheme for my little Infinity remotes for my February entry

Big thanks to Para for putting so much effort into keeping this challenge going and to everyone that's entered or commented on the different months, it really is rather fun.

Thanks for putting the thread up Nev.

I'll put a compilation photo together shortly and a separate post to comment on peoples entries.

From my own entries I think my best painted model is Junes entry - Grimgor Ironhide - annoyed I over exposed the photo on that 1.
My favourite for the year is close between the flyers but as cheesy as it is the Ork X-Wing wins just because of how it came out.

Snotling Plasma Cannon - February


Ork Star Wars X-Wing - January


Ork Santa - December


Ork Heavy Metal Guitarist - November


Ork Genestealers - October


Ork Weirdboy - September


Ork Red Baron - August


Ork Stegadon AA Gun - July


Black Ork Grimgor Ironhide - June


Ork Captain Baseball Bat Boy - May


Ork Indian Jones - April


Grot Marine - March


P.S. Is TP^DC still around and willing to do the League table updates?

 ZoBo wrote:

@Modock - huh...I'd actually forgotten about that Mishima meka you did for November...but looking at it now, I think I was pretty clearly
inspired by it! ...I went for a verrry similar style and colour scheme for my little Infinity remotes for my February entry

I'm glad to hear that. I'm a sucker for orange ! I just bought 4 Nomad kits from Infinity. I'm pretty sure one color is gonna be orange!
I found a sick color scheme for them on the net. Orange, baby blue and white I just love it.

The Dakka challenge has been a great way to keep motivated, as it gives me a deadline to finish stuff. I've spent all my prestige levels in "procrastinate", so... every little bit of prodding helps! I missed a bunch of months due to real life. :(

March: Space Marine: Marine in Green


April: The Relic: Khador Warjack: Drago


May: Everyday Hero: Enforcer Barbaretta, 54mm =][=


June: Mighty Heroes and Nefarious Villains, Lord Carver Farrow Warlock


September: Its a Kind of Magic, Reaper Pathfinder Iconic Oracle


October: Something Wicked this Way Comes, Count Meleth


November: Heavy Metal, Torch, Khador Warjack


February: We have the Technology, Zoe, Bakunin Clockmaker


Thanks to Para for organizing. Here's to a fruitful and constructive new year.

Though I only joined in the last few months of the year, I thought I'd post here and hopefully keep things moving!! Going to aim to enter every month this year! Here's to a great 2017/18 guys!

I was determined this year to enter every month however I was too late uploading my piccies for December to get into the voting. Ah well, I was had surgery done on my painting shoulder at the start of the month so I guess that's a valid excuse =) I hope to do better next year!

I managed to get 8 entries in this year which is pretty good for me, especially considering I spent one month getting a board and my army ready for Armies on Parade. Highlights for me were completing a tankbustas squad (which added some badly-needed diversity to my mostly boyz army) and trying my hand at sculpting for the first time.
February '17 "We Have the Technology"


January '17 "Rogues and Scoundrels"


December '16 (Open Theme)


November '16 "Heavy Metal"


July '16 "Unleash the Beast"


June '16 "Mighty Heroes and Nefarious Villains"


May '16 "Everyday Hero"


April '16 "The Relic"


Thanks to Paradigm for running the challenge, I'm looking forward to another year of entries!

Well, I didn't conveniently name mine or anything, so hopefully I'll have all these correct -

SM March 2016
- - -

The Relic April 2016


Everyday Hero May 2016



Mighty Heroes June 2016


Unleash the Beast July 2016


Death from the Skies August 2016


September 2016/October 2016

This month I was really just working on other projects, especially my Swamp Board which took up all my time.


Heavy Metal November 2016


Open December 2016


Jan 2017
Really was just sick at tail end of Dec/beginning of January so didn't do any painting at all this month, for anything.

We have the Tech Feb 2017

Great work everyone. It's great to see how many people this comp has helped - including me. Motivation being the biggest help.

Thanks as ever to Para for organising the whole thing each month (and ZoBo for stepping in, and TP^DC for the league, and Nev for this thread!).

My year was hit and miss. March last year was my first entry, but I only actually managed 7 entries for the year. My Stark Crusaders are my ongoing project and this comp is a good way of moving them forwards, but it does mean a lot of my entries are a bit samey. This really shows when my HeroQuest characters and Santa Cron were the stand-out winners votes-wise for me. But suck it up - more Starks to come

March 2016 - RT Dreadnoughts

May 2016 - RT Assault marine with flamer

June 2016 - HeroQuest Characters

July 2016 - RT Rhino (with lights!)

November 2016 - RT Land Raider

December 2016 - Santa Cron

February 2017 - RT Land Speeder

Here's my entries from last year! This competition has been so much fun for me and I hope to enter every month of the new year.

(By the way, did we get the final scores posted up? I think Januine won but I want to see how close I got )

I've not heard back from TP^DC about the League. Anyone else willing to volunteer to tot up all the numbers? If not, I can do it myself, but it won't be for some time due to how busy I am at the moment.

 Paradigm wrote:
I've not heard back from TP^DC about the League. Anyone else willing to volunteer to tot up all the numbers? If not, I can do it myself, but it won't be for some time due to how busy I am at the moment.

It sounds like a momentous task. It was hard enough for me to go back through the threads just to see where I placed each month. Building an entire spreadsheet to tot up all the votes from scratch.... maybe we should just crown Jan as the winner, he was top at the final update if I remember rightly

Thanks to some very speedy efforts from Vejut, the League results are now available! I'll list the top 5 places here, and leave a link to the full spreadsheet of results below. As a reminder, the scoring was done based on percentage of the vote each month. 1%=1 point! And so...

In 5th place, with 60 Points over 7 entries, Januine!
In 4th with 62 points over 12 entries, Paradigm (thanks!)
In 3rd, with 63 points over 10 entries, Feltmonkey!
In 2nd, with 67 points over 7 entries, Bottle!

And taking the win with a clear lead of 87 points over 11 entries, Midget Gems!

Congratulations to everyone who took part over the course of the year, the full results can be found here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/k9pms3jiwdg8ah5/Correctly%20Sorted%20Dakka%20Paint%20Challenge%202016.xls?dl=0

haha...that is a filthy score there Midget Gems!...nice!

Wow can't say I'm surprised by the winners - so many beautiful pieces

Wow! 2nd? I am pretty happy with that.

Congrats Midget Gems!!

Hrm... My cunning plan of “just show up every month” only got me to 13th this year. I think it got me 10th last year. I’ll just have to show up even harder next year!

Grats to the winners, excellent work all around.

Hey, got me to 29th, despite never getting more than 1% of the vote. Consistency helps.

Congrats winners. Well deserved all 5 of you =)

Ooh cool I've 17 points =D

Does this mean I'm 17? Again?

That was a good year

Will have to try harder this year and see what doing every entry would actually net me

Well done to the winners. Very well deserved.

In fact, we done to everyone. It can be hard to get something finished to a deadline, so great job to everyone who finished at least one challenge!

I might have scored low (11, and 32nd place overall), but my first 5 entries got 1 point each, and my last two entries got 2 and 4, so hopefully that's showing improvement!

I'd love to enter every month this time round, but with a baby appearing in 6 months that seems unlikely!

Well this is a nice surprise and feels a bit weird, I go away for a few days and come back to . I'm defiantly not the best painter here but seems to have won due to entering every month and doing some interesting things. I'm very happy with the result of course. Thanks to everyone that has voted for one of my models, hopefully its inspired people to try a few conversions themselves. I do love the challenge of taking a topic and and idea and trying to join the 2 together to create a model that no one else will have.

Massive thanks to Para and people that step in to help run this series of challenges and to everyone that's entered/voted. Again, thank you all for a very entertaining year.

From the people that have posted here these are my favourites out of your entries.

Nev - Jan 17 - The Long Drong Pirate Slayer. You have some good colours on him and a have a soft spot from those models.
Para - October 16 - SM Terminator - Fantastic pose, great base, Beautifully painted.
Zobo - September 16 - Ork Goff Rockers - Just brilliant in every way. It was really had to choose from your Ork entries a lot of good stuff there.
Modock - January 17 - 2 great models making an even better diorama.
Zerg - June 16 - Bloodthirster - I think your best painted model yet. Always impressed that your not afraid to tackle the big or hard stuff.
Keezus - June 16 - Lord Carver Farrow Warlock - Great model, excellent colours
NathanD298 - The Witch hunter/Steampunk Female Warrior. Really cool model with good painted detail.
Mootlet - March 17 - Ork BattleWagon - Really hard to choose from yours, the Priest was a very narrow 2nd, The backstory with the battlewagon sealed it as your best entry to me.
Gulgog TufToof - February 17 - dual wielding Grot. Love the pose and character in the model.
Guildenstern - December 16 - Ork Goliath Rockgrinder - Everything on that model comes together so well. Bravo and well deserving in appearing on the GW website.
Whittlesey40k - Decemember 16 - Santa Cron - Who doesn't like a Nercon with a Santa beard and hat?
Bottle - October 16 - Genestealer Abberants - Just wonderfully painted, The skins tones and veins are my favourite part.

It's great to see all these entries together. There have been some fantastic paint-jobs and conversions entered in these challenges over the year.

I'm surprised that I apparently ended up third overall. That can't be right, can it? I suppose that's the value of entering every month and consistently finishing about ninth. I'll post up my year's entries. I missed the first month or two, but since I discovered the forum and the challenges, I've made a point of entering something every month. I use it as a learning tool, to improve my painting over the year. I think I've learned a lot, to be honest.

My first entry was in May - Everyday Heroes



June - Mighty Heroes and Nefarious Villains



July - Unleash The Beast



August - Death From The Skies



September - It's A Kind of Magic



October - Something Wicked This Way Comes



November - Heavy Metal


December - Open Round


January - Rogues And Scoundrels


February - We Have The Technology


I'd like to say a huge thank you to Paradigm for running these challenges month after month. It must be a lot of work. It has definitely encouraged me to paint some stuff I was putting off painting out of fear, and helped me improve as a painter. I'm sure many others who enter regularly could say the same thing.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
Everyone has contributed some fantastic paintjobs over the year. It's always fun looking through them and marvelling at what people produce. Commenting on the people who have posted their retrospectives -

Nevelon - I like the way you brazenly paint something for your Ultramarine army most months, but I think you are doing yourself a disservice, and that you have improved over the year. My favorite paintjob of yours is Long Drong Slayer, for the parrot!

Paradigm - I must admit I'm a huge fan of your painting style. A Paradigm paintjob is always instantly recognisable. And always so very Grimdark! The blood and mud-splattered look you produce makes sense to me in the 40K and AOS universe. I think the only reason you don't win more months is that your style doesn't appeal to the more conservative 40K fan raised on very clean Eavy Metal paintjobs (not that there's anything wrong with a clean EM paintjob!) My favorite pieces of yours are the Salamander Centurian and particularly the doomed Terminator for Something Wicked. As I said at the time, it's fricking ART.

ZoBo - I reckon you have visibly improved over the course of the year. I'm not sure if it was the photography, the way you did the extensive weathering, or just the similarly-toned bases, but your earlier entries had a tendancy to look slightly washed-out and grey. Still really good mind, but the colours got a bit lost. A few months in, and this changed dramatically, allowing your painting to show through, and it suddenly became obvious how good you are! The rock band stage and the Stompa are my favorites.

Modock - Talking of colours... You have an eccentric approach to colour choice. I bet your stuff really pops on the table, if you use it for gaming. Your blending is always great, and the painting very clean. My favorite piece of yours is the Tau ship.

Midget - I'm so jealous of your ability to envision and then follow through on a conversion idea. This is a skill I absolutely do not have. There have been so many great entries from you, many of which must have been a lot of work. Your overall first place is definitely deserved. My favorites of yours are the X-Wing and the Red Baron.

Keezuz - You're very harsh on yourself in your commentary, because your stuff is always consistently very good. I hope you can enter a bit more in the coming year. My favorite is the Lord Carver Farrow Warlock, which is just a beautiful bit of work.

NathanD298 - I hope you do manage to enter every month, as what you've shown us so far is top quality. I particularly like Inquisitor Greyfax, but they're all great.

Moolet - Consistently great stuff, but I think you might have improved over the course of the year as well, and got a bit more ambitious. That Battlewagon last month deserved to win. Sorry about that. I like your Super Dungeon Explore stuff, as well. Your blends are always very smooth, and the details nice and sharp. My favorites are Bashful Boris and the spectacular Battlewagon.

Gulgog - Orks, orks orks all the way. I'm glad your photography has improved, because for the first few months it was hard to judge the paintjobs as they were basically silhouettes! You still probably take the photos a bit too zoomed-in, which doesn't do the paintjobs any favours, as huge zoomed-in photos make a paintjob look more untidy than they appear to the naked eye. You can see that your stuff looks good, but you do have to stand back from the screen and view it from across the room. Favorite - your entry for Heavy Metal.

Guildenstern - Good solid stuff overall, but that Goliath Trukk really stands out. That's my favorite of your entries. I'm also impressed that you built that trukk thing last month. I can't do that sort of thing at all.

Whittlesey40k - Again, good stuff generally. Solid painting and modelling. The retro Land Raider is my favorite, partly because of the absolutely seamless repair job you did on it. Impressive.

Bottle - Fantastic work month in, month out. Spot-on details, excellent edge-highlighting, bright clean colours. Consistently fantastic, but with noticable improvement over the year as well. Remember us when you're winning Golden Demons, won't you? My favorite is the Genestealer Abberants.

feltmonkey - rubbish.

Just noticed all the fantastic things you've said about everyone, felt monkey! I think I voted for you every month so I am looking forward to continuing that trend as long as you keep upping your game each month like you have been!

And there's no way I am even getting a finalist pin, let alone a trophy from a GD!

I also missed your comments you wrote about me and the others. Thanks feltmonkey for encouraging words and taking the time to do it.