Worse than not painted at all?

[Lurch]

Wow.. a post from last year comes to haunt me.... lol
In all seriousness, this does not bother me at all now.
This was my feelings about scoring at the time based upon the voting guide:

Voting Guide: Pretend you\'re a Golden Demon judge. Painting skill, imagination and style are key!
10 is amazing, 8 is a great job, 5 is tabletop quality.

in my opinion a non-painted mini did not fit this guide, and using the same guide, still doesn\'t.
However, IMHOThis web site has outgrown the voting guide and has become more of a community of artists sharing their work and comments.
My feelings about the rating system can be found in the forum for rating wierdness, where I actually mention this thread. [url] http://www.coolminiornot.com/forums/viewthread.php?tid=967 [\\url]
It basically comes down to this:

If you like my stuff.. great. :D
If you dont... thats fine too :moon:
:P

[barkel]

When I say the votes on this forum cannot be skewed I mean that in a philosophical/statistical sense.

Why do you post your mini to coolminiornot.com? To see what the general population thinks of it, right? Not to see what one person thinks.

If Joe hates NMM so he automatically gives all NMM models a -1 on their score, that\'s his opinion, and is, therefore, correct. He\'d be wrong if he didn\'t put his opinion.
If Joe hates the way GW goblins look then he\'d be wrong to give the mini a high score.

Now, that being said, I supposed that in reality there are some things that can skew an individual rating. Joe could be a petty person and say, \"Barkel gave me a 4 on my last mini so I\'m giving him a 3!\" Or he could say, \"I hate Warhammer so I\'m not giving any Warhammer models higher than a 6.\" That\'s not judging the model. But if he counts off because he does not like the style of painting or how the model is converted, or based, then he\'s perfectly right to do it.

And statistically it doesn\'t make much difference if one person\'s vote is skewed. Once you have 100 votes on a mini then one person\'s single vote is pretty meaningless. The general population of rational voters has compensated for any idiots out there. After 100 votes, the average score is indicative of what the average person on this forum thinks of your mini, good or bad.

[Lurch]

For those that don\'t want to go to the other thread to see what I had to say...

I\'ve been coming here almost every day since July, 2002 to vote and to get ideas on how to paint. I have since found out a few things about this place which are universal.

• At least once a month, someone will complain about the voting system and how \"fair\" it actually is. I myself have started a few of these, the last being around December on my scarecrow. :innocent:
• Your mini, is being rated on not just the paint job, but also on the sculpt, manufacturer, importance in game play, age, the photography, how well the photo is edited and cleaned up in the editor, the description, etc. Its the complete package your getting voted on.
• Minis will be voted on by manufacturer by multiple people of the fanboy mentality. (ex. GW fanboys vote on GW minis exclusively or will skew them higher than minis from another manufacturer... Same for the Rackham fans , Reaper, etc.) :|~
• DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR MINI if you have thin skin and cannot live without at least one of your favorite minis being a 5. It WILL happen. (Even Haley has a 5.8) :~(
• Your mini, no matter well photographed, ALWAYS looks better in real life. :mad:
• There are a few painters here who have a reputation for being great and that skews their votes higher than most.. sometimes it\'s even warranted. Try not to dwell on that fact. :(

AND MOST IMPORTANT

• The actual vote on your mini means absolutely squat. Someone could give your mini a 5 and the same pic 3 months later a 7. It\'s all relative. :rolleyes:Pay more attention to the remarks that people who take the time to give say. That is usually more straight on then anything else.

The only person you can control is yourself. Do what you think is right and the rest will work itself out.
Ohh, and quit taking this site so seriously.. it\'ll save you some ulcers... lol
:P

I think I\'m going to save this and repost every time someone puts up a forum thread on the fairness of the rating system :]

[Spanky]

One one hand I\'m really chuffed to have a score like that on the books, but on the other hand it feels like a bit of an insult to my painting (damning with faint praise...)


Why!?!?! Your sculpt is great, you should be proud of that. Your highest paintjob (the avatar right now) is great too. Beam on with pride. When something is posted here as a sculpt or conversion, it is because the owner wants to showcase/ get feedback/ get comments on the mini at that stage of its work. Sculpts can be just as challenging as paintjobs, and once you cover them with paint no one can
really see the amount of work you did.:(
As far as Lurch\'s original post, don\'t compare your paintjob to someones conversion. Yes, they are both minis, but remember, apples and oranges are both fruit.

[Soothand]

Now don\'t forget Lurch, that some people find it amusing to simply come to this site and hit all of the new figs with scores of 1.
Yes it\'s immature. Yes it\'s childish but it\'s also part of the nature of this site. You can\'t keep people out. Someone gave me some good advice once when they said \"don\'t look at the overall score, look at the feedback. Those are the people that give a damn about your skill and in helping you get better.\" And it\'s true.
Paint for yourself and for the joy of accomplishing something on your own. Come here to ask questions about technique (among other things:D) but don\'t worry about what someone else may or may not think of your mini. In the end, you are the final judge of your own work.
Soothand.
P.S. good job on the scarecrow by the way...

[Chronique]

Some people here I have noticed are taking their votes WAY too seriously. I’m glad that Lurch is getting the picture, but some people aren’t. The average guy who posts about this topic to complain seems to not want to grow as an artist, and rather have people rate their minis higher than others simply out of pity. Well, sorry. No one is going to. I don’t like finding minis on here that have the same rating or higher than mine that suck, because I know mine to be better, but hey. I don’t care. It’s a crapshoot as to how many people see your mini and what mood they’re in at the time.

I’ve seen people’s comments posted under minis where people look at Bobby Wong’s work and give it an 8, and then complain about how much they didn’t like it, (I can only assume out of jealousy, as they look absolute 10’s to me.)

I’ve seen someone post 10’s to a mediocre mini, and say things like “I dare anyone to give this less than a 10” and “OMG, It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen!” (I can only assume out of ignorance of truly great works.)

I’ve seen people deduct points, and site as the reason for said deduction that NMM looks like crap, and real metallics look better (Again, out of ignorance of the amount of skill involved)

AND, I’ve seen jerks saying that they go around posting 10’s or 1’s, just to try and manipulate the score, to bring, and I quote, a sense of “Justice to the piece” because they wanted to make everyone else’s average score reflect THEIR OWN OPINION. (Instead of posting a score that is fair and unbiased for the piece.)

I’ve also seen people talking about why they deducted scores based upon a pre-conceived notion that they had about “How a painting technique was SUPPOSED to be done” when the technique was actually performed just right, and the person ignorance was what was at fault, not the mini. Or about light sourcing, where the person was too stupid to realize where the light source was, when in fact, their lack of vision was attributed to the person being a lousy artist incapable of reading the piece appropriately, NOT the fault artist who painted the piece doing anything wrong.

In short, this is what happens when a bunch of idiots pose as artists and judge artwork as though they were the end-all-be-all of art critiquing. It’s a shame, but I think that you’ll find that if you were able to see the names of those who gave you low scores, and look at their minis, you’d find out that they suck, and have no clue about what they were talking about, and you’d have a good laugh at their minis. (It might also keep people a bit more humble and honest about how they score other minis)

The best way to deal is to get opinions from people who matter. Too bad there’s no panel of “expert judges” here to get an opinion from. Till then, don\'t judge your own worth based on the opinions here, rather tell everyone to kiss your ass, like I do. :moon:

[Sturmhalo]

Kiss my rosey red ass too Chronique :moon: lol

But seriously, you make some good points in your blood vessel busting rant. The whole voting thing is a total mystery to most of us I think. It\'s just so subjective. So many little factors affect the way people vote that have nothing to do with the skill of the painter (brand of model, sculpting of model, photo quality, or perhaps Dave-a-Painter doesn\'t like the colour of some insignificant detail on your mini and he\'s gonna give you a 1 because of it!). Personally I\'m quite happy with the ratings of my minis. Obviously I\'d love it if everyone voted my work as 10\'s, but that ain\'t gonna happen! I think the best way to see what people really think of your work is to check out the comments that are left and see how those folks voted.

I know we shouldn\'t moan when we see someone\'s crappy paint job getting a score almost as good as our own best pieces or as good as the top painters out there, but we can\'t help it. It\'s only human to think \'christ, how did that hunk of crap get rated so highly!?\'.

[Infidel Castro]

I\'m quickly becoming a fan of your no nonsense approach to the forums. Why if I wasn\'t married to a beautiful woman I\'d probably marry you! Unless you\'re a bloke that is.

The problem with any community like this on-line is that you have a certain amount of freedom of speech and expression. People will abuse that and I\'ve done it myself (looking through your list of gripes I noticed that I\'d put my own prejudices ahead of what I was scoring). But then I though WTF am I doing getting too deep on a website? It\'s the first website I look at each day and it was getting a bit silly timewise so I thought to hell with all the worry, just have a laugh! Score the minis you want to score, comment when you feel like commenting and just enjoy the ride!

But on the subject of having a panel of expert painting judges...there might just be something in that. Still, on a free website you can\'t really expect the moderators to be able to aford the services of said people, though you could have them pick out 20 a week and say why they are regarded as worthy of that honour. But that makes elitist behaviour and then more groups and more crap like all of the stuff you said. Maybe.

But then, who cares! It\'s all for fun and we should thank Chern Ann for allowing us to sit in his on-line living room and lounge around on his no doubt ultra modern Singaporean sofas and browse his impressive drinks cabinet. WE LOVE YOU CHERN ANN!

Phil

[Chronique]

Rant? Not really. I’m pretty high strung. You should hear some of the stuff that I actually DO rant about. Oh man, you’d either laugh your ass off, or want to kill me. Most of the people I rant to fall into one of the two categories, with little room for a third option. But you’re right, I don’t beat around the bush, and it comes off as brutality.

As far as my minis… Well, I don’t really mind getting a lower score. I don’t want everyone to rate my stuff a 10, because I’m big enough to know from a third person perspective that it’s really not. My covetous nature rather than wanting the high scores, is actually to own the talent to garner those 10’s. (This drives me to paint better.) Not that my aspirations of excellence and domination extend merely into the aesthetic arts, but I’d settle for a talent like Bobby Wong’s, Matt Verzani’s, or Bryan Shaw’s. …If I can’t be a kick ass ninja-pirate-sorcerer-evil-overlord-world-emperor, that is.

As to Reverend’s comments, the elitist attitude you speak of is really hard to escape, especially in the higher ranks of painting society. When I was at Gamesday in Baltimore this year, I noticed the nail-biting crowd, that hovered over the judges, waiting for confirmation of their manhood. They won’t even talk to you unless you can show them your trophy. It’s a sad little club, and most aren’t very nice. I did get to talk to Bobby Wong and Victor Hardy, and they were cool, though. Anyway, my whole point is really to tell people what asses they are being, even to my own detriment. Not any of you specifically, but there are way too many people here acting like children with the voting thing. On both ends, one being rude with their votes, and being too sensitive about what feedback they get. 1) If you don’t know what you’re talking about, or can’t post something constructive and un-abusive, don’t post 2) If you can’t take non-inflammatory feedback, maybe you shouldn’t post your minis to a site where your minis are scrutinized. It’s a fun site. It rules. Don’t mess it up for everyone. :cool:

[Chronique]

Thanks, Reverend. It\'s good to know that someone is actually appreciating my ideas rather than yelling at me for them. (However abrasive they may seem) :D

[vincegamer]

Chronique, your first post here confuses me. You say everyone should chill about scores and blow them off, then you go on about annoying voting practices. Seems inconsistent to me.

In the details: you imply that an 8 is a low score (since you give it as your only example of someone underscoring a mini besides giving 1s blindly).
To me, an 8 is damn near a work of high art. A 9 IS a work of high art.
Lastly, if someone dings a mini because they hate NMM, that is to me a perfectly valid reason for knocking a score. It\'s a question of coolness, not artist skill. I don\'t happen to like NMM, but if it\'s done well I score it higher. If it\'s done badly I don\'t dis it just because I dislike NMM, but because it\'s done badly. I HAVE knocked a mini for using both techniques together for representing metals, which I think looks awful.

[Chronique]

Actually Vince, I cited examples of poor voting practices, AND THEN I went on to explain that those votes in particular should be ignored based upon that very idea. Sounds pretty consistent to me. :rolleyes:

And I didn’t imply that an 8 is a low score. You inferred as much. However, I did flat out SAY that an 8 is a low score for Bobby Wong’s work. I happen to have seen his minis in real life, not just on here, and it’s immaculate. I have yet to see someone even come close to painting space marines the way he does.

And voting on a work art, such as is the idea here, is not a question of “coolness.” Maybe you feel it should be, but it’s really supposed to be about the artist’s skill. The very voting scale over every picture cites as a guideline “Pretend you’re a golden demon judge.” So, I try to adhere to those guidelines, so my personal idea of “coolness” doesn’t impede the procedure. I’d like to point out that all of the top artists in the Golden demon area use both NMM and metallics, often together. The last three Baltimore Slayer sword winners all had both, as a matter of fact.

[vincegamer]

Hey, here\'s in line with the original gripe:
These are not converted, not greens, and only half-painted, but still rated better than half the stuff I\'ve got posted here!

I\'m all for encouragement, but would you honestly trade this for one of your own 7 rated minis and consider it a fair trade? Some folks apparently would.

[finn17]

This is a problem that exists in the whole art world, not just our little corner. People spend years at their trade, building their skills and see the plaudits going to \'art\' which consists of a pickled sheep or an unmade bed complete with stains and fag ends. In England a bloke was recently paid a small fortune to kick a can down a street because some t***t considered it \'art\' and worthy of a grant.
I started off painting military miniatures for my local model shop but got totally disillusioned because of the \'beardiness\' exhibited by certain punters. e.g. a guy actually picked up one of my tanks and said that the mud I had painted underneath was the wrong colour for the campaign associated with the tank\'s markings etc. How screwy is that? Many years later I got into fantasy minis \'cos I thought aha! no one can tell me what colours these should be painted. WRONG!
I take some consolation from the fact that when I see a mini that really impresses me and I want to leave a comment, all the people who have commented previously are \'the same old crowd\' i.e. people who, in the three or four weeks I have been accessing this site I feel I have almost come to know and whose opinions I would value. Just as an exercise, I went hunting for some potentially \'beardy\' miniatures likely to attract the fanboys of whatever genre. You know the sort of thing, \"Grand undivided corny champion with mullet and pumpkinspike\" :bouncy: and guess what? IMO inflated scores and loads of comments by people whose names I have never even seen before. Thing is, it\'s as much their site as anyone elses. As it says in the title, horses for courses.

[idahoan]

1- Unpainted (exception: unpainted conversions are rated subjectively higher)

2- Paint has been applied but \"way outside the lines\', obscuring any detail and often ruining a good mini

3- Paint has been applied with some regard to the sculpt of the miniature. Some paint outside the \'lines\'.

4- All paint applied in a responsible manner so as to appropriately color the mini. All anatomy is recognizable.

5- Some highliting/shading/inking has been used. Often messy, but shows an effort toward advancing techniques.

6- Hilighting and shading neatness. Neatly defined features such as eyes and fingers. Finished base.

7- Entering a subjective area. No significant errors, but still room to improve levels of shading and neatness in the very fine details. Smooth transitions between shades, but some brushstrokes may remain.

8- No significant errors, extremely clean, nicely finished base, perhaps some extra detail added to the existing sculpt such as banner work or patterns in cloth. Fingernails, gems, hair strands, etc have been picked out individually with careful strokes. Complexity and size of the model may begin to add percentage points.

9,10-IMO perfect. The difference between a 9 and 10 is a matter of taste to me.


I place most of my minis in the 7,8 categories.

My 6 year old daughter\'s 3,4

All of the listed criteria assume that the photo is of a quality that allow fair judgement. Indeed, a poor pic can bring down a score. However, I usually refrain from voting if I can\'t tell if the paint job is good or not from the pic.

[paint me]

I think that after a hundred or so votes your score will be pretty accurate. The occasional random \"too high\" or \"too low\" votes will barely affect the average. If you think you deserve a better score, then learn better techniques. Be a better painter. Be a better photographer.
Even an average Joe can tell a 10 from a 5. Do you really care if your mini is a 6.5 or 7.0? I don\'t. Most of us would like to paint at the 8+ level, but most of us don\'t because we haven\'t painted enough miniatures and honed our technique. Let\'s all be real here...the score your mini has after 100+ votes is pretty darn close to reality. We are supposed to be \"pretending\" to be Gold Demon judges, right? I would think a 10, and possibly a 9, would be Gold Demon winners. If you haven\'t won a Gold, then don\'t expect 9\'s or 10\'s.

[smokey]

Originally posted by blackscribe
Your scarecrow isn\'t GW or Rackham, so there wasn\'t much point in posting it if you were going for a high rating.

I personally model almost exclusively GW minis (although I haven\'t posted any pics. again, I too am waiting for a camera.) I understand where you\'re coming from, blackscribe, but I just wanted to point out that a mini should be based on the mini, not the manufacturer. It makes no sense to me to say that just \'cuz a model was made by WOTC that it\'s a bad mini.

But hey, that\'s just how it looks from the peanut gallery.

Smokey

[KatieG]

I think he was commenting on the fact that GW and Rackham minis seem to score better than others even if the painting is the same level. There certainly seems to be a bias this way, although I haven\'t tested it out by putting up a Rackham mini just yet... still, my 2 Warhammer models are two of the three of my highest rated though.
--Katie G.

[halon]

I\'m going to give my usual sphiel here. This is Cool Mini Pictures not really Cool Mini. We don\'t have the figure in front of us so we\'re really only judging the picture. My best example of this is the leading Grom figure for the Cool Mini painting contest. The pictures are amazing, but what\'s it like in real life? Sitting on a table at arms length you won\'t likely be able to see most of what has given it a high rating. So I suspect that in a head to head competition with the figures present it may not fair as well.
Having said said this you need to keep that in mind when presenting your material here on the site. Intense light is not your friend. It causes glare and a glossy appearance. Extreme closeups aren\'t your friend either. All miniatures have surface irregulaties and all paintjobs have minor flaws that come out looking like huge blotches when the figure is magnified. So Anytime you see an absolutely straight line or a completely smooth surface in a close up the picture has likely been touched up. Now look at the picture of your piece before you post it. Are you seeing flaws in the paint job or the picture that you can correct before you post it? I often take 20-25 pictures of the same piece before I settle on one I like. And the pictures have helped me see flaws in the paint job that I hadn\'t noticed before.
Now as for your figure in specific. I agree with some of what has been said in the comments section. If you want a smoother looking blend on things like the cloak and the boots try doing a very thin wash of a mid scale green or brown (where appropriate) over the current paint. It will smooth out the transistions between the light and dark. Also IMO normal metallics don\'t photograph as well as NMM because they come out looking grainy. Your scyth suffers from this. I might suggest looking at the tutorials for NMM and use the principles to paint the thing using metallics. If you blend using black and white mixed into the metal paint you can get a more realistic looking steel. Or better yet see if you can locate some of the old RalPartha waxes and use them in conjunction with the metallic paint and the black/white blending. The results are pretty appealing.

[Lurch]

Also IMO normal metallics don\'t photograph as well as NMM because they come out looking grainy. Your scyth suffers from this. I might suggest looking at the tutorials for NMM and use the principles to paint the thing using metallics.

Its supposed to look grainy.. It\'s called rust. :duh: