Golden Demon Gamesday opinion poll

[HarlequinZero]

I have always wanted a GD because to me it is more of a "I finally made it" feeling.

I think being one of the top 10 artists on coolminiornot would be even better.

I don't know. I used to think being upper tier on coolminiornot would be a point of pride, but it just seems way too clique heavy. If you're in the clique you can expect your scores to average much higher than an equally skilled painter who doesn't have name recognition. Don't get me wrong, some of those guys are amazing, but I also scratch my head over quite a few models that get panned.

[GMMStudios]

Oh lordy yes.

Back in the day when I followed that site, there was this guy, think he was admin or something, Dragon something or other. He was getting 9.2s and 9.1s on things that if someone random uploaded them they would probably struggle to hit 7.5.

Great site for inspiration, but I stopped posting stuff there, way too cliquey and snooty. People think their stuff should be in the Louve how they dissect it and I think thats corny too.

[Ironhide]

After reading those two posts, I went back and looked, and yes it does seem a bit of a clique. I remember when it first came out though, it was all about the best. I guess over the years it's become about brown-nosing. Of course, in art circles that's about how it goes. It isn't about how good you are, but more about where you got your degree and who you know.

[GMMStudios]

Its more about how much you can talk about art.

I went to art school and I couldn't stand 90% of my classmates when it came to classwork and discussion.

[psiekier]

I know that Joseph Orteza is an amazing painter/sculpter, and is such because he has all the time in the world to do this. (I guess his wife works full time).

If I remember right he doesn't really play at all....just sculpts and paints and is an art teacher.

I don't know how current your information is - he may be "retired" by now - but I personally faced Joe Orteza and his Black Templars Space Marine army at the Dallas Grand Tournament in 2001. He scored a minor victory over my Blood Angels before the time ran out, but had it gone one more turn, I don't think I would've had a single model left on the board to fight. The best I could do was bonk his Land Raider with a power fist, but was unable to stop the rampaging terminator squad that disembarked.

What's more, he had more models with him than the ones that were on his army list for the tournament. For the game, his army was centered around a spectacularly-painted Land Raider Crusader along with a big squad of Terminators and a bunch of squadboyz in Rhinos (this was under the Codex: Armageddon rules where Black Templars had no devastator squads), but he had also sculpted some unusual-looking dreadnoughts and some "counts as" bike squadrons of Space Marines riding robot horses.

He won all kinds of GD's over the years and for awhile was almost guarenteed one.

I do also feel that over the years I have seen judges score people like Orteza lower in competitions after they have won them for so long.

Heck He was winning them so much that I didn't think anyone would beat him....until one year it seemed like the judges tastes changed and he only got like a bronze.

His style didn't change, but the overall style did change from a highly sculpted modeled figure to a figure that had almost nothing changed but was just painted "as is"

Joe's work is awesome, but I could see where there could be an element of acquired taste to some of his later pieces.

The sculpting on his Black Templars was top-notch, with nothing except maybe the dreadnoughts being over the top. Some of his later stuff I saw in White Dwarf was almost cartoonish, though, and I wondered how much of the model was Kneadatite (or whatever he uses - we didn't talk about that) and how much was GW parts.

The painting looks nothing short of fantastic at a distance. Up close, it's much like Monet or Seurat - you can appreciate that all the strongly contrasting highlights make for the illusion of something that would be realistic to scale. This is similar to the effect achieved with Non-Metallic Metal (NMM) painting style, where you add articificial highlights to yellow or gray areas to make them take on the appearance of shining gold or silver when viewed from certain angles.

[psiekier]

Forgive me for bringing up what should be a long-dead post. With any luck it will better than that mess Brad Pitt is involved in. I'm sure the book will turn out to be better.

Anyway, I was cleaning off my desk today and re-discovered a handful of photographs I took back in 2001. I had a crappy point-and-shoot 35mm camera, no tripod, and no lighting, but here are the pieces of Joe's army that I was able to photograph:


Here's the whole army on a custom display base. You can see the Crusader, lots of squadboyz, several Rhino transports, and a Razorback. This was what was actually in his army, but he brought other stuff, too. Some of the Rhinos were made extra-wide by adding to the hull. Joe didn't think that 10 Space Marines could actually ride in the dinky little models available at the time.


Part of the GT requirements were that you have a "baggage train" consisting of three vehicles that might or might not get used in certain scenarios. These are his.


Lots of squadboyz, with lots of flowing tabards and those crazy comic-book highlights! They look better in person, really.

[MagickalMemories]

Okay... that's seriously threadomantastic.

If we're going to be bringing up old discussion topics, I might as well move them to the appropriate forum.

::moved::

Eric

[jul]

Interesting...

I would follow Brandon on that as unless it is an official business with taxes and the likes, you are not a professional painter. i'm fortunate enough to know a lot of good painters that have won several GD and other painting contests, so even do freelance work for well known companies or had their miniatures company. Few of them will define themselves as "professional painters" but more as artists, most of them have a day job as well.

Of course the quality is a different story as you can purchase professionally painted models that are under standard table top (White Dwarf quality). Calling oneself "pro" doesn't imply a high quality, it merely describes one source of income... and inversely, a very well painted miniature is not necessary the work of a "pro". then i laugh 99.9% i see pro painted closed to poorly dry-brushed model on ebay....

The thing that people tends to forget is that a winning piece at a GD or like is generally 50+ hours of work, Magmatrax (GD canada 2004 slayer sword was more than 100 hours of work), so in a business perspective, there is few incentive for a studio pro to participate in those event. Add that GW doesn't offer the same kind of prize support as the Crystal Brush...

One thing i remember and i do not know if it is still in place but GW staff and affiliates needed to enter in Open, i did that during the old Conflicts events.
And i think that Mark Bedford won his GD's within that category.

On the point of presenting a model that is not yours, it happened in the past, it will happen again. the problem is that the high end painters know the work of each others and once the photos are published (Spanish team or CMon forums), someone will recognize the models and GW will be contacted within hours...

J.

[psiekier]

I heard from Joe Orteza today. He's selling some of his unpainted vintage Space Marines on eBay.

Hello Pete! Yes, its been a while since Dallas and the last GT for me. That was the golden age of GT's back then. Never will it be the same. I miss those Templars. I however still own the display base! I'm going to start playing again, hoping to slowly but surely get a 40k and a small 30k army together. Both Salamanders. It's been well over a decade since I've rolled dice. I figure its time. If you ever make it to the Midwest and go to Adepticon. I teach greenstuff classes during the con. Thank you for that bit of nostalgia. I hope you win all you bid on my friend!

Best regards,
Joe

So, if it has been ten (or more) years since he "rolled the dice", then I suppose he would have been retired when I joined this particular discussion in 2009. I wonder what brought him back?

[bluemeenie]

Last year I was hanging out after adepticon and just happened to meet up with Jessie, Joe O. and David Pawels and brought up the fact that I was thinking of entering the crystal brush this year and that they were kind of my insperation on that. In the early days of the Games Day Chicago's back in 2000-2004 I always entered and never came close.

I showed them my piece and started talking about the fantasy tourney and CB and I know David kinda got excited was was talking with Jessie or Joe about getting back into it. (I know they do a lot of classes at adepticon as it is).

I thought I had a lot of pictures of those guys models (35mm also) but I coudln't find them anymore...just one of David holding his GD from 2002 and a whole set of pictures from the 2000 40k Tourney.


I know a lot of us stopped doing the Games Day after 2004 when they moved to a Thursday/to Saturday morning format....just killed it for anyone with a regular job. I'll see if I can find the pics again and scan and post them.