Golden Demon 2024 Winners

[darkhorse0607]

9 minutes ago, Orion said:

I have no idea what it was competing against, just that the Open category has had notably more interesting entries in past Demons.

 

True, but this is the first time (I believe they enacted the rule post-adepticon but I could be mistaken) that you couldn't hire a 3rd party to sculpt/digital sculpt/convert your model for you, you had to do any conversion or sculpting yourself

 

I'm not saying it's cause/effect, more a possible correlation

[Kenzaburo]

My memories of Open Category entries are a bit vague because there were so many awesome minis to look at when I was there on saturday. But I don't remember Open Category to be lacking of entries and great ones to boost. I also remember seeing that one Intercessor that was the embodiment of Eavy Metal painting and went "Huh, that's interesting that someone would enter that...". But as I said, it's creator didn't expect it to go anywhere either. Maybe that "Huh" that I felt also caught the judges and they felt that such a 1:1 copy of Eavy Metal painting (not meant as a slight, it's reeeeeaaaally hard to do) was more than just notable.

 

About that whole Richard Gray thing: I saw that on his insta, too. To be honest, I can't remember seeing that Warp Spider exarch. Either because it is so subtle (yet stunning, once you look closer) or rather more likely because the entry had beein taken away for judging, which happened a lot over the day. It was near impossible to see ALL entries.

 

There's some critique towards the event in general, though: 

First of all including GD into SPIEL is entirely nuts. SPIEL is the biggest board game convention world wide. It's crowded as hell. And you usually don't have the time to spend much time at any one booth if you want to at least a glimpse at most of what's offered there. There was 50k people there every day from thursday to sunday. While having GD there is a brilliant thing marketing wise, getting lots of people not part of the hobby seeing these lovely little works of art, it's insane for any hobbyist that is not just there for the otherwise rather lacklustre showing of GW at SPIEL. You don't really get to spend much time there and enjoy it, also there's not much enjoyment to be had while getting buffed by the crowds milling past the cabinets with varying degrees of interest. If you want GD to be a celebration of miniature painting than SPIEL is not it. Tabletop in general is just a very minor part of the overall event. To put it into a better perspective: The two booths for Battletech at SPIEL combined are at least 2/3 of GWs booth space. That's not even close to a real world representation of both companies / IPs. That's also no dig at Battletech, love the game, got back into it last year.

 

And one more thing: The display cabinets go from floor level to about 2 metres high. And GW uses the floor level display shelf as well as the one above it to also display entries. Considering what I said about the size of the crowds alone that is just crazy. You don't actually get to look at those entries, there's just no room. And it's not like the top shelves had been too crowded by minis that you had to use the lower shelves, either. What's more: Once a cabinet was done being judged, commended, notable and finalist entries ended up in the top shelves while the ones with no recognition were put on the floor and slightly above floor level. I felt (and this is my subjective view of this) this as quite a slight towards all of the painters who didn't place in the tiers. I mean, come on, these painters usually put their heart and soul into their entries, at least let people get a proper look at them. This way of handling was still not due to space constraints. And thus it felt kinda petty. It really bugged me.

 

Sorry for the longer rant. I just feel there's room to improve.

Edited October 10 by Kenzaburo