Well I coulda sworn the rules were up on the web for this year, but certainly can\'t find them now. Perhaps it was all just a dream... but why the hell would I be dreaming about Golden Daemon rules? Scary!
I agree, Golden Daemon is a painting competition, but it\'s also a major showcase for painted GW miniatures. Looking at the winners of the single categories for French GD as an example - it certainly was a spectacular showcase of sculpting, and indeed painting, but I just had this little niggle inside of me that it wasn’t a showcase of their skills at painting GW\'s miniatures.
It’s difficult to word this so that it makes sense, but using a full sculpt almost seems like a way of giving yourself the upper hand, because you can tailor it to suit your style and skills, whereas painting up an existing miniature and getting the best out of it is really more of a challenge from a painting point of view.
I’ve seen enough other work from the winners to know that they are all damned good painters, and I’d really like it if Golden Daemon meant I could see them paint up some truly inspirational Games Workshop miniatures themselves, not go out and make their own because they feel they can achieve better.
For me the Valten paintmaster winner was by far my favourite entry at French GD because it showed, with no conversion whatsoever, just how good a GW miniature can look and how much work I’ve got to do to try and match that ridiculous standard. I’d like to feel inspired that way by other categories too. I also want to see and be inspired by full sculpts, and think that there could be categories created that encourage and showcase them to cover the expanding interest, but I couldn’t say if that’s on the horizon.
I also agree that the very top quality full scuplts we see here at CMON and at Golden Daemon are above the average standard that GW produces, but you\'ve got to expect that with the deadlines and creative and casting constraints GW sculptors have put upon them. This doesn\'t mean there aren\'t fantastic, stand out GW sculpts avaliable though.
There are also many miniatures produced by GW that are just as good as anything else in the world as far as I’m concerned (and I think they are getting better too. The new Wood Elves are pretty much all awesome and I despise Elves in general, so impressing me is a real achievement!) but nobody can maintain that standard all of the time (can they?).
Then again, I also think that GW staff only being allowed to enter the Open Category isn’t right either. For me only current and former GW sculptors and ‘Eavy Metal painters should be restricted, and I’m not even sure they should. In all honesty I think that the standard outside of GW is high enough that the staff would be hard pressed to place in any category, so it’s slightly annoying that it’s restricted. Staff only categories (like the US run) don’t seem like that fair an alternative, because you end up with miniatures that would struggle to make the final cut in a standard category winning trophies.
Well that’s my opinion anyway, sorry for the ramble!