What's a good scoring benchmark?

[Jegriff]

Hello,

Next year I plan on creating myself a bit of a challenge and aiming to paint a certain amount of miniatures before 2011 is up. Not quite sure how many yet, but getting into three figures for sure.

In the past I've been OK at doing most of the painting, but rubbish at letting go, doing the final touches on a mini and saying 'sod it, I'm done!'

A goal that's going to stretch me a bit and increase my mini turnover seems like a plan.

At the same time, I want to make sure the quality is good. There'd be no point painting 5,000 models if I just dunked them in a pot of Chaos Black, dabbed some red eyes on and tried to justify it by declaring they were night fighting monsters!

I know scoring's not everything, but what do folks think is a good benchmark to aim for to ensure my minis are at a good standard?

I'm currently thinking anything 8 or more for single miniatures is going to be fair. Squads and units are a bit more difficult. Somewhere between 7 and 7.5 perhaps?

 

[Torn blue sky]

I'd say second base is pretty good for a first date but if you manage to... Oh wait, Stop the bus!

Mini wise the benchmarks constantly slipping down really. 8 used to be a great job, now it's down to 7 seemingly. 9s and 10s are hard to attain these days due to the amount of talent out there and the progression of things generally in the hobby. Going by scores is never something to really use as a bench mark anyway tbh, there's a lot of variables. People will mark it down for the photo quality or maybe just because they don't like the fact you paint better than them...List of reasons as long as your arm. You can see really good jobs marked down to 6 or below in the galleries.

My advice to you, is just to have fun doing what you're doing. Forget about scores. Post WIPs and in the submissions galleries and just interact generally. End of the day, none of us got into this hobby to have a grade stamped on our work. Self satisfaction should be it's own reward really.

 

[Aulbath]

I am with torn blue sky on this one, from my own experience, anything 7.0 here is basically overkill compared to what people "not into painting" put on the table. In my area, that are a lot of people.

 

[Jegriff]

Yeah, I realise it's a difficult one to pin down. One man's 10 is another man's 6. The fact that Golgotha's the top scoring model here and I'd struggle to give it anything more than a 7 due to how horribly over the top and tacky I think it looks is testamant to that!

I guess from what I've seen here, 7-8 is certainly decent for the most part. 8-9 really good. I won't be ashamed to get anything around there!

 

[freakinacage]

i would aim for 'good' whatever you describe that to be!

 

[Gearhead]

I agree completely that the scoring's slipping, and that things are being under rated across the board, with a few exceptions. A solid tabletop job, what should theoretically be a 5 or 6, seems to get you at most a 4.5 these days. I'd be very proud of getting a 6 now!

 

[Torn blue sky]

On the flipside, it'd be interesting to see just what would be worthy of a 10 as a fresh submission these days. It's all been done before seemingly. There just doesn't seem to be any new ground to break.

 

[Dragonsreach]

What's a good scoring benchmark?

First off ignore the score, instead select a painter who's work you like and think you can emulate and then work towards matching their level of painting.
Concentrating on scores is a good way to waste time and effort, because of the factors mentioned in several of the previous posts.