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This summer the topic was: Centerpiece. Have a project in mind as the capstone of an army? The big guy in charge with all his crazy detail? A fortress for them to call home? Or some other massive project that you know you could never get done in one of our normal monthly competitions? Now is the time to go big. Your entry should be a stand out focal point. Champions, monsters or gods. Strategic battlefields or objectives to control. Earth-shaking war machines or powerful beasts. When your eye scans the room, it lands here. Physical size is not required. If you want to spend all summer free-handing Michelangelo on a 6mm command tank, that’s fine. But so is building a hab-spire for your necromuna gangs to fight in.

As always, you're free to hand out as many votes as you like, and for any entry you feel deserves recognition, based on anything from technical proficiency or model choice, a neat conversion or a cool take on the theme, or anything else! You're also very welcome to leave some feedback here for the entrants, and many of the images click through to the Dakka gallery if you'd like to give out a vote or two there as well.

There are some NSFW pics under spoilers. You have been warned.


Ezki --Belladonna of House Escher


Daia T'Nara - Lily II, the Keeper of Mysteries


youwashock – Wraithknights


Leopold Helveine - Gore palette Glottkin


Llamahead - The Shenanigan


Straken619 -- Carnosaur


halfling84 - Colossus crane


Captain Brown - Classic Necromunda Centerpiece.


Nevelon – The Honored Fallen




Poll will run for 5 days. Let me know if anything is wrong.

Considering there weren't that many contenders I can write something for everyone this time (except for myself -_- other than that I really squeezed my metaphorical layering-sponge out on this project returning to areas previously done because I felt like some lighter drybrushed areas looked more like unfinished or unsaturated sections than the intended blending, and the detail put into it was also a long process, did you guys notice all the eyes painted onto some of the portruding red bulbs? Those were a work in their own regard)
-


Ezki --Belladonna of House Escher
For sure golden demon level work, the entire thing looks like a comic book pencil drawn piece of art, I would send in the pics to WD if I were you. , Awesome nmm too.. and the enviroment vibes realistic textures. Cool touch on the grafitti.

Daia T'Nara - Lily II, the Keeper of Mysteries
There's clearly something in that purplegold dust to make everything that walks around in it lose their clothing isn't there. I don't even want to know whats under the censor bars x_x
Anyway, crispy white clothing, ahh.

youwashock – Wraithknights
Those are big wraith constructs, I know cause I got one of my own in the bookcase, doing 2 is a pretty big undertaking. I like the wraithbone hue approach, the spot color feels a bit disjointed on the blue and its faces (I think it would've looked cooler without the faces personally) but that's my own preferences, the turquoise freehanding looks nice on the bone hue though. I don't recognice the neck-armor but it looks really cool.

Llamahead - The Shenanigan
Was this made out of a supersoaker? (And if so can you still shoot it?), its a nice set piece for a skirmish I recon.

Straken619 -- Carnosaur
Nice drybrush finish, looks very natural and the planting of the basing helps it. You made the non-scaled bits of the saur look very fleshy contrasted against the sunscorched scales.

halfling84 - Colossus crane
The weathering and dirting stands out and I like that you kept it to a single color its shades, making it easy on the eyes.

Captain Brown - Classic Necromunda Centerpiece.
The rectangular (most right piece in the last image) section stands out the most for me as I really like the rusted over scrap. I can imagine this terrain will set the tone for some games.

Nevelon – The Honored Fallen
So I know you couldn't finish the entire piece, but perhaps this moment of the sculpt invites an incremental entourage and is at the point of time where the saints tour has literally just started. Mechanical skull babies are kindof terrifying though. Anyway I like the wetlook parchment, perhaps not intended. Also like the sister in front's metalwork, looks practically real.

My actual votes went to Straken, Halfling and Ezki'

Excellent work, everyone! This was a fun change of pace.

It was a fun change of pace, but not without issues.

I probably would not have started my project without the kick in the pants to get me moving. But also I found myself phoning in or falling short of the normal monthly challenge to try to make room for this. Is it worth canabalizing participation in the regular programing for a summer special? It might just be a false impression, but it also seems like the percent of people who started but dropped was higher then normal.

The overhead of running 2 comps at the same time was not horrible, but it did make for a little extra crunch time at the start/stop, due to the double load.

As a motivational tool I think it might be worth repeating. instead of big centerpieces it might be worth doing a “spearhead summer” where we take 3 months to get a spearhead/combat patrol up and running. Or mirroring GW’s new year, new army, where we start something from scratch and work it into a fleshed out army over the year.

 Nevelon wrote:
It was a fun change of pace, but not without issues.

I probably would not have started my project without the kick in the pants to get me moving. But also I found myself phoning in or falling short of the normal monthly challenge to try to make room for this. Is it worth canabalizing participation in the regular programing for a summer special? It might just be a false impression, but it also seems like the percent of people who started but dropped was higher then normal.

The overhead of running 2 comps at the same time was not horrible, but it did make for a little extra crunch time at the start/stop, due to the double load.

As a motivational tool I think it might be worth repeating. instead of big centerpieces it might be worth doing a “spearhead summer” where we take 3 months to get a spearhead/combat patrol up and running. Or mirroring GW’s new year, new army, where we start something from scratch and work it into a fleshed out army over the year.

Though I didn't finish my entry, I think the general concept of a summer 'big project' done over several months is a good one. I prioritized the main monthly comp, though, hence the reason I didn't finish my Avatar. You're probably always going to get fewer entrants for something like this, and even fewer final pieces, but perhaps an idea to avoid two comps crunching at the same time would be to move the summer comp to start and end in the middle of the month rather than the end? Or maybe have it follow the official dates for the beginning and ending of summer? In the UK, this is the 20th of June to the 22nd of September, though I don't know what it would be elsewhere and this is obviously only in the northern hemisphere, too...

I really like all the entries, though, and would love to have another go at getting something finished in future.

I gave everyone a vote, you all really went big with this one and should be proud of what you accomplished! Great stuff all around!

 Nevelon wrote:
It was a fun change of pace, but not without issues.

I probably would not have started my project without the kick in the pants to get me moving. But also I found myself phoning in or falling short of the normal monthly challenge to try to make room for this. Is it worth canabalizing participation in the regular programing for a summer special? It might just be a false impression, but it also seems like the percent of people who started but dropped was higher then normal.

The overhead of running 2 comps at the same time was not horrible, but it did make for a little extra crunch time at the start/stop, due to the double load.

As a motivational tool I think it might be worth repeating. instead of big centerpieces it might be worth doing a “spearhead summer” where we take 3 months to get a spearhead/combat patrol up and running. Or mirroring GW’s new year, new army, where we start something from scratch and work it into a fleshed out army over the year.

I agree with toning down the three month challenge into something different/less competing with the other challenges because that was indeed the crux to the hardship; having to work on two seperate pieces at once. It almost made me have to cancel the beepboop entry (which I did in the last 2 days of the month -_-) due to also being swamped in work during Aug.

It was ..fun to finally complete such a giga-piece .. but maybe not do it again.
How about shortening the summer challenge to two months and simply not do other challenges during (so letting it replace two monthly challenges)?

I voted for everyone (except myself, Slaanesh would totally do that but I can't bring myself to), so that's not a lot of use in determining rankings... never mind.

For future big contests, I like this format - 'new year new army' would be a pass for me since I don't have the funds or space to collect more than one army, and even combat patrol would be unlikely, the current CSM box isn't a great buy for me since I've got everything in it already; only the Legionaries are really appealing as bulk-buys and even then I already have enough finished, and a fresh box of ten waiting just in case, that I don't really foresee myself needing any more. And even setting practicality aside, I feel like what lured me into the contest this time was the notion of finishing something I'd likely never get around to otherwise - signing up for a bunch of regular miniatures as a major contest would just be setting myself up to get sick of having to do 'these' miniatures rather than whatever else has caught my attention, and even if I powered through, I'd still just have a bunch of miniatures no different to the ones I turn out in my own time. These past three months were a big of a slog (although, despite griping a bit about painting the bulk of Lily at the same time as the sizeable Castellan for Beep Boop at the same time, I don't feel like it hurt my quality, just my ability to finish miniatures that weren't contest entries - unpainted minis have been piling up, and there's a lot of half-painted ones who've been waiting their turn longer than normal), but I've got a friggin Keeper of Secrets to show for it.

So for my part, I'd say keep the blockbuster as open as possible - maybe something like 'that's a whole lot of plastic', folks can enter a whole bunch of miniatures if they want, or just one sizeable one - but give it time to rest before launching another one. Maybe other folks would like sooner and that's fine, but for me, I'd be happy doing this again same time next year.

Cheers everybody for the votes. Sorry Leopold you can't shoot the off brand water gun my spacecraft it was made off. For me the Searhead/Combat Patrol thing is far too GW focussed for me at the moment a skirmish force or band of brothers might work.

Also congratulations to everyone. I mostly liked Daia's Keeper of secrets, Captain Brown's terrain (lots of work not only with painting but also building it from scratch) and I think Ezki's painting skills are level above all the other entries.

First of all, thank you for Nevelon for running this thing. Double thank you for running it alongside with the regular monthly comp.
Congratulations for everyone on submitting big works. Stellar work.

Leopold Helveine wrote:
Ezki --Belladonna of House Escher
For sure golden demon level work, the entire thing looks like a comic book pencil drawn piece of art, I would send in the pics to WD if I were you. , Awesome nmm too.. and the enviroment vibes realistic textures. Cool touch on the grafitti.

Thank you so much. These words mean a lot to me.

halfling84 wrote:Also congratulations to everyone. I mostly liked Daia's Keeper of secrets, Captain Brown's terrain (lots of work not only with painting but also building it from scratch) and I think Ezki's painting skills are level above all the other entries.

Thank you, truly!


If I'm being totally honest, I was actually considering taking part in the Golden Demon Necromunda category with this model.
Long story short, I had made plans during the spring to travel to Germany and take part in Golden Demon in October. When the weeks passed, I started to feel way too stressed as I did not have any Warhammer related projects going on. After finishing this model however, very much thanks to this very challenge, I could have attended after all. Unfortunately I could not make up my mind and at this point it's way too expensive to make late reservations for the trip..But there's always next year!



It's late, but I'm going to try and give some comments for everyone:

Daia T'Nara: Great work on the white clothing. It creates a nice contrast with the purple and the gold. The "sparkling" effect on the base works wonders too.

youwashock: Two Wraithknights. Madness. But I love it. The freehand work is brilliant, especially on the faces. The subtle weathering brings nice variation to the large surfaces.

Leopold Helveine: So so many details, but you managed to make them read very well. Great work on finishing a model that big!

Llamahead: An interesting piece and you can definitely see that there was a vision behind this!

Straken619: Oh I loved this! The red on the rider and the green on the mount work very well, being opposite colors and all. The water effect is a very nice touch. This piece was maybe my favorite this time around.

halfling84: Like said earlier, I really like the weathering. There's so many small details on this and the yellow looks so crisp and believable.

Captain Brown: A big centerpiece terrain, that any Necromunda player would be jealous of! the classic hazard stripes together with the weathering really fit the underhive aesthetic.

Nevelon: There's so much going on with the original "The Triumph of Saint Catherine" that it's a great deed getting most of it finished! I think this scene looks quite interesting as is. Sort of like a "one woman crusade", the only survivor carrying the body of the martyr together with her weird angels. Anyway, great work on the white armor and all the different elements!


I think this format is great for the summer time. Being able to take your time with a piece offers a great opportunity to jump outside of one's comfort zone and try new things in a different level.
Like others have mentioned, "new year new army" style might be a bit too rough, but a 2-3 month long summer competition definitely gets a thumbs up from me. I really liked seeing all the entries.

Thanks, Ezki!

Looks like the underhive is where things were happening this summer!

In 3rd place with 17 votes Captain Brown's Classic Necromunda Centerpiece. Both main floors and some scatter terrain to battle upon.








But for a heist this big, you are going to need some heavy gear to move the loot. halfling84 has you covered with the Colossus crane and 20 votes.









But who would have the audacity to pull something like this off? Belladonna of House Escher of course! Taking the prize for Ezki with 23 votes.



--

Great work everyone! All the entries were great, and extra congrats on getting big things out of the PoS.

If there is interest we could make this a yearly thing. Big multi-month summer side project. Or winter I guess for those on the flip side. I was just spitballing earlier on ideas with the CP/Spearhead, as that’s something that I thought people might need motivation to push through, and accomplishable in a 3 month timeframe. Certainly open to other ideas. I’ll try to remember to get the conversation going again in the year end roundup thread at the end of Feb. I don’t think we need to do a formal poll with choices, but input is a good idea. It would be good to have something that is terrain friendly so the LoERs can get some rivets down.

Wow, thanks for all the votes I never had such a high place before. And congratulations to the other winners, it was well deserved.

Yeah, I have a big terrain project in my queue that would be perfect for another of these contests.

Congratulations to the winners and everyone who finished!

I mean I do still have a MorkaGorkanaut and a wazbomJet box unopened but I rather procrastinate until after I'm dead to start on those things, the Glottkin was crazy enough. August is really not the month for me to work on anything but actual work so it was a miracle I found some time to finish the damn thing.
I even finished the base a whole month before the Glottkin itself heh.

Anyway, Ezki could've just entered the head of Belladonna and still deserve the #1, its really impressive and should have a bigger audience.

Sorry for the delay on updating the tables, I've had a lot going on in RL.

I've added an extra heading to the first post for this extra challenge so while the points don't count towards the yearly score your name will still be in lights (of sorts) if you get top 3

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/732117.page#9481149