2-12-2023
Leonardo Hotel
1 Park Place
Cardiff
CF10 3UD
2nd December
Our Goal
The only painting competition in the United Kingdom that is combining elements of both open and category based competition with cash prizes for best of show display and single entry.
We aim to embrace, support and encourage the creative aspects of our hobby on a foundation of technical painting skills. We celebrate, and we promote the differences in what we each do, rather than one particular style.
The Competition
The competition will be taking a tabled display based approach. Entrants will be asked to place there entries on one of the tables in the competition space and given sticks to mark out their area. Entrants are welcome to display their pieces in any manner they wish but we kindly request that people be respectful of other entrants.
The Open Division
To be eligible for the open category, your display must consist of at least 5 pieces.
We are taking a slightly different approach to Open style judging.
Rather than having a set standard that needs to be met to reach a certain level of award, we will take a top-down approach. The top 10% of entrants will receive a gold award, the next 10% will receive a silver award, and the following 10% will receive a bronze award. As a result the top 30% of displays will receive some sort of commendation.
This approach was decided upon to try and keep the standard high enough that winning feels valuable, and that you were one of the best there that day!
The Category based judging
We want to reward every version of the hobby that we each enjoy.
It was very difficult to find a way to balance this against the open style competition, so it will be accredited completely separately. As such a single piece will be awarded a “Best of _____” for its relevant category.
A full display or an award in the Open Division is not required to be considered for a category award.
Both elements of the competition will have a final award.
For the open division, it will be an award for the best display and for the category-based judging it will be for the best piece of the show.
The winner of these two awards will each receive a £100 cash prize each!
The Best Of Categories
Science Fiction
For entries based in futuristic imagined universes
Best Gaming Scale Science Fiction Miniature
Best Painting Scale Science Fiction Miniature
Best Science Fiction Unit/Group
Best Science Fiction Bust
Fantasy
For entries based in magical imagined realms
Best Gaming Scale Fantasy Miniature
Best Painting Scale Fantasy Miniature
Best Fantasy Unit/Group
Best Fantasy Bust
Modern Era
For entries from a realistic setting, whether current or historical.
Best Modern Era Single figure
Best Modern Era Bust
Best Science fiction or fantasy monster or vehicle
Best Scene/Diorama/Vigenette/duel
The Judges
Albert Moreto Font
Alberts experience as a both a painter and judge is aspirational to many in the hobby. He has a string of incredible achievements in the hobby, including most recently incredible pieces for the World model expo and Golden Demon competitions, even winning the slayer sword. This experience will be brought to the judging table to help decide the winners on the day!
Liam Hearne
Liam is a full time miniature painting tutor and streamer with almost two decades of experience in the hobby. He will be bringing his incredible analytical eye to the competition.
David Roberts
I will be the third string of the day. Leaving the heavy lifting of the judging to Albert and Liam. I will be present to guide the judging in the direction I want the competition to go and mediate any difference of opinion about entrants.
The Judges
Albert Moreto Font
Alberts experience as a both a painter and judge is aspirational to many in the hobby. He has a string of incredible achievements in the hobby, including most recently incredible pieces for the World model expo and Golden Demon competitions, even winning the slayer sword. This experience will be brought to the judging table to help decide the winners on the day!
Liam Hearne
Liam is a full time miniature painting tutor and streamer with almost two decades of experience in the hobby. He will be bringing his incredible analytical eye to the competition.
David Roberts
I will be the third string of the day. Leaving the heavy lifting of the judging to Albert and Liam. I will be present to guide the judging in the direction I want the competition to go and mediate any difference of opinion about entrants.
Example Displays
If purchased prior to the event, a small signage for your display will be Included in the entry price for the painting competition. These will Include your name, your online username and a QR code to either a personal website or a social media account. This is because it is so common at competitions for us to see beautiful work but be unfamiliar with its creators. With these signages, we hope it will allow us to connect with the painters whose work we love!
Judging Criteria
Technical Painting
The most fundamental category in miniature painting. How well is it painted. However, we will not be falling into the trap of how smooth is it? We will be looking at how well your painting represents the end goal.
If it is meant to be smooth , we will be checking the smoothness.
If there is meant to be texture we will be looking for texture.
Does the skin look like skin? does the metal look like metal? does the fabric look like fabric? and so on and so forth
Creativity and Story telling
An artistic category that is very difficult to both define and judge and will be applied across the board to all entrants. With this category we are looking for things to draw us into the piece. How well does the piece tell a story or are we left trying to come up with our own. We will be looking for answers to the most basic questions;
Who, What, Where, When and Why?
We will also be celebrating creativity of novel or unusual ideas.
These two areas will form the crux of our judging. If you excel in one of these, it may be sufficient to make up for a deficiency in the other, but for the best chance both elements will be needed!
Basing
Basing is a weird part of the hobby. For some it is an unpleasant necessity, for other it is as big, if not a bigger part of the process as the miniatures.
We feel like those that chose to put the extra time and effort into creating an interesting frame for their miniatures to be presented on should be rewarded for it.
This can also work to the detriment of the participant if the base is overly large or small without it adding to the piece.
Style
This is the probably the hardest factor to measure and consider as judges due to it being the most artistic measure we will be looking at. It will be mainly focused on the Open Competition but will not be ignored with the other categories.
The most common place that we see is what we could consider “Box art Style”. In this Criteria we are looking for differences from that. Examples could be :
With this we are looking to promote and encourage people to develop their own styles!
Sketch
Eavy’ Metal
Grimdark
Realistic
Cellshaded
Super saturated
Variety
This category is Just for Open Division displays. The simple aim is to encourage people to try different things.
A display consisting of 10 of the same style and size of model, even if well painted is not the most exciting to look at.
We want to encourage people to bring a wide range of work, with different styles, scales, genres and manufacturers. Not only is this more interesting to view, but it shows your range of skills as artists.
Size and Scale
This is hopefully our only controversial category but is one that was decided to be important. Efforts to manage scale have been put in place with the gaming and painting scale categories, however it is not a surprise to have gaming pieces vary from 15mm to 50mm tall and painting pieces to go from 54mm to 150mm+! Similar things can be seen with busts where there is a huge variation in pieces, ranging from 1:24 scale down to 1:6 scale and larger.
As such default scales/sizes have been set for each category with significantly larger or smaller models being just more harshly or leniently respectively. The default scales are:
Gaming scale - 32mm
Painting scale - 75mm
Busts - 1/12 scale
Additional information and exclusions
Open Division Judging will be based upon the standard of a whole display, not an individual best piece
The Best overall piece will be picked from those awarded with the Best of categories
The best Open Division and Best Overall Piece Trophies and subsequent prizes will not be given to the same individual.
Individual pieces that the judges are aware have won awards at other shows may be exempted from the final judging round of the category awards. This is to try share the love a bit and promote participants pieces that may not have been publicly recognised previously. This will not apply to pieces that have achieved awards in open competition.
For example, if there are two Fantasy unit both to a similarly high standard but one has won a golden demon, we will try to award the entry that has not received such a high accolade.