 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby-cheating video, and today is going to be a slightly unusual one. Today we're going to talk about Golden Demon. This video is releasing the same weekend as Adepticon. Now I'm filming this in advance, obviously, because I'm currently at Adepticon, currently participating in Golden Demon. I've been lucky enough in my life to win two Golden Demons in previous challenges, and obviously there's a lot of excitement around this year's Golden Demon in the US, as not only will it likely be the only one in 2022, or it's the only one scheduled this year so far, but it's the first one since 2019. You might have heard there had been some things going on in the world that caused some delays. So I was actually at the Warhammer Fest in 2019 when they announced that the Golden Demon was coming back to the US the next year. That was in May of 2019. I immediately went home and started working on things, and I've been working on things ever since. So I now have eight entries ready to go for Golden Demon, and what we're going to do in this video is we're going to start just talking a little bit about the competition and the nature of it, and then we're going to look at my entries, but I'm not just showing you the stuff that I have, I mean, fine, I painted some things, yay. Instead, we're going to critique my work. So I'm going to look at it and show you how, these are all finished pieces finished, but how I look at them in advance of Golden Demon to then go through, clean them up, fix them up, find the flaws, and let's make some predictions. I'll give you what I think the pieces chances are of bringing home any hardware. So this one should be some fun. All right, first I want to talk about Golden Demon itself. Golden Demon is an interesting painting competition. Many painting competitions around the world have moved to what we call the open system. In other words, there's any number of golds, silvers and bronzes, they're set by a sort of objective standard or whatever the best piece is, and if you paint to that level, you receive that award. These competitions sometimes have a first or best in category as well, but they tend to be very large, broad categories, large scales, single miniature or something like that, and invite a wide range of different manufacturers and miniatures into the competition. That's how most things have gone now. That is not however how Golden Demon operates. Golden Demon operates with a single first, single second, and a single third, gold, silver, bronze, and it uses a lot more categories. It's maintained this because I think of a historical continuity to how it's always been. It reflects more of how painting competitions used to operate, frankly. Golden Demon is an interesting painting competition because it is very different than most other painting competitions, not just in how it's organized, but also in how it's evaluated. The judges work very quickly, look through a lot of pieces, and technical precision is much more highly valued than other elements. That's not to say that things like creativity, art, and the general creation of what you've made there, that is to say the je ne sais quoi or I don't know of the piece isn't important. It certainly is. Statistic interpretation, telling a story, all of those kinds of things still matter, but technical cleanliness and the precise application of paint usually ranks above all else. Golden Demon tends to be what I think of as more of a subtractive competition than anything else, i.e. because there are so many pieces and they need to evaluate them so quickly, they often will look for flaws to reduce things out. And so you want to try to paint as close to a quote-unquote perfect piece as you can. The other interesting thing about Golden Demon is that obviously it's only Games Workshop's piece, duh, it's their miniatures competition, so of course everything has to be Games Workshop, not too surprising. They also like things to be in lore in their IP. They very, very clearly will tell you that they want your pieces to operate in their world. So a good example of something that wouldn't fly, take the recent sort of rat cast army that I worked on or my converted cities of Sigmar models with the sort of high technical 40k pieces integrated into Age of Sigmar, those wouldn't fly in Golden Demon because they're not actually in the lore of the world, in the IP, in the sort of nature of the universe as is. So when you paint a thing, if you're trying to make a blood angel or something, you want it to look roughly like a blood angel it should have, the appropriate markings and places and different things on the right shoulder pads and the right battle markings in the right places and so on and so forth, those things matter. Being immersed into the IP and telling a story with their models in their world is a very key factor to success. So you certainly can still be creative, but you have to be creative within a set of sort of the restrictions of their narrative, their world. Golden Demon because of these two things is very challenging. Now a lot of people will tell you they only value the heavy metal paint style, something like that, that's not true. They've certainly expanded and will end, I've seen lots of different types of pieces be awarded. People will tell you you have to use the newest or hottest thing, that's not true. I've seen people win with very old things that are still painted to a high level and certainly it just means that oftentimes newer things win because newer things have people excited and there tends to be multiples of them and a lot of really good painters get excited and so submit them. Correlation, not causation. So that's sort of the rules we're operating under as we look toward Golden Demon. We need things to be clean. We need things to be in the IP. We want to avoid any sort of technical flaws or challenges that might be there. And so with that being said, let's take a look at what I've prepared and let's destroy these pieces. We're going to pick them apart, figure out where I went wrong, what I need to go back and fix before the competition starts and kind of give them an overall what are their chances. Let's get into it. Let's begin this journey with Cragnos, the end of Empires. This is my AOS monster. I wanted to redo the base on the sky, so that's different. I got rid of his chest armor and had to re-sculpt his chest, so there are some minor conversions. When I look at this guy, I'm rather happy with how he came out. If you want to see how I painted the skin, you can check out the link up in the corner. But overall, I think this guy is nice. The challenges I see with him are he probably doesn't have anything special going on. There's nothing that unique or interesting about him. His face needs to be highlighted more. There's not enough contrast drawing your attention up there. The red to orange on all of his fur probably also needs another layer of getting popped up because it's just not as exciting as it could be. As far as any other technical items, I think I did a pretty decent job of making sure that there were no outstanding technical issues with him, so I feel pretty good about that. But yeah, this guy needs more attention. I think with Golden Demon you want to make something that will stand out. I know other people are painting this figure, and frankly, I just don't think mine will be on the level. Overall chances of bringing home a trophy, 0 out of 10. That is my guess on Cragnose. So though I'm happy with the figure and happy to put it in the case, I suspect his journey will end in a finalist pin at best. But I am going to still go back, put in the time, put in some more highlights on the face, smooth out a little bit on the horns, and pop up the highlights on the hair. Next up, my AOS single figure. This is a Blight King. Yes, that's right. It's a Nergal Mini from me. I really like this guy. I'm very happy with how he came out. I like the colors. I like where he sort of ended. He's not converted in any way. It's pretty much just a standard Blight King. But all Blight Kings are converted a little because you can assemble them in so many different ways. I love the weathering that I got to get into on this guy. The tiny streaks, the little bits of blood drops, the vertigris and the rust. It's just really fun to play with that. Overall, I actually really like where this guy is at. I already got a lot of feedback on him. I painted him during Vinicon 2022 when I had everybody up here. So I did get to get a lot of live feedback during the process. I might take a look at some of that wood on the axe and see if maybe that can be fixed up a little bit. I think maybe that is the weakest part of the miniature. Single figure is the toughest category. There's always going to be hundreds of entries in single figure. And so to stand out in that area is just really, really tough. Overall chance of bringing something home on the Blight King, two out of ten, I would say probably. I like him, but there will be better in the case. Next up is my AOS unit. This is my updated take on Hero's Quest or Warhammer Quest, or whatever you want to say, with the Elf, the Dwarf, the Wizard and the Barbarian, using all new figures basically. Again, I really do like how this one came out. I tried to repaint their bases to be colored like the game board. Chances are with this one, each of these people needs some kind of touch up. I don't even know that I have anything super specific on them, honestly. It's more just that, you know, looking over it, there's probably a pass I need to do in general like the stippling on the back of the Chaos Cloak probably needs punched up a little, you know, they have different materials. I wanted to make each material that they're wearing slightly different to more suit what they are. So I tried to really tell a good story. I think I'm happiest with the Dark Oath Chieftain and probably unhappiest with the KO guy. So maybe that's where I'll put the majority of my attention. But I like how they ultimately came out. They are all fun figures. And I think it's a neat piece to put in the cabinet if nothing else. Overall chance of bringing something home, one out of ten. Forty K single. This is a Rogue Trader. I love Rogue Traders. They're one of my favorite parts of the whole Forty K world. I just think it's such a cool look for them. This was painted during a previous Vinicon. I'm pretty happy with this one overall. Things that need improvement on this one are mostly smoothness. Way too many of these blends are still horrendously rough. The blue on the cloak, the non-metallic on the sword, some of the gold places, it's way, way, way, way too rough. I need to spend several hours just doing smoothness passes with glazes and get this girl into a position where she's much, much, much more refined than she currently is. As I was looking at this piece, I had a completely different memory of it. And I was like, oh boy. Again, single figures, one of the hardest categories. Overall chances, I think it's a cool mini, cool setting. Two out of ten. All right, next up, Void Dragon. This was the... This is a Void Dragon, obviously, from 40K. This is my 40K large. There are two different big categories in 40K, vehicle and large. This one was fun because I painted it in quite a different color scheme than I think the standard Void Dragon is pictured with the pink lightning and the teal body. I really leaned into my favorite colors. I'm pretty happy with how the musculature on this came out. I do need to take another pass at the lightning. I think that looks way too rough. Some of that is not near as smooth as it should be. I probably do need to do another pass on smoothing out some of the skin as well. Overall, I don't know if the color differentiation will sort of hurt me on this because it is sort of outside the normal lore of what this guy is supposed to look like. It very well may. Those kinds of things do matter, as I said at the beginning. Being within the IP. But I'm happy with the piece. I'm happy to put it in the case. I think the biggest thing I want to do is actually work some more interesting colors into the shadows so I might take some light purples and glaze that into the skin shadows to really kind of bring that home and just punch up the overall visual impact of the piece. But all in all, not too bad. Chances of winning anything in the large category. The large category is a little bit easier, but still given this guy between the color and where he's at, I'm gonna give him probably a zero out of 10. Much like my AOS large, he probably ends in a finalist pin and nothing more. All right, next up, my duel. This is one of the pieces I am most proud of that I have ever made. This was a huge effort. This is about 200 hours of work into this bad boy right here. This is Shalaxie, a hellbane, Hunter of Bloodthirsters. In her backstory, she has killed hundreds of Bloodthirsters and here she is claiming one more. I have them locked in this Titanic duel on the edge of the fire with the light reflecting up into her sort of lower underneath her and stuff like that, that very soft glow. All of these metallics are actually true metallics, but I spent a lot of time very carefully working them out. Everything on this piece had just tons and tons of attention and I've gotten so much feedback on it and refined it. I am, this is probably one of my strongest pieces. So five out of 10, 50-50 shot to bring something. I feel pretty good about that. It probably could use maybe a little more refinement. I will give it a pass, but I'm very happy and proud of this one. Next up, Adeptus Titanicus. That's right, the small scale category. I painted a tiny little knight. I love knights in all shapes and sizes. This guy was, again, he's very much in the lore. I did a lot of research on this particular house, all their different symbols, got all the decals, where does everything go? Still gave it some interesting little touches with a little tiny amount of freehand here and there, where it was appropriate. And I looked at it, the lore said it was okay to fit. So I made that match. Overall, I like how this guy came out. I mean, he is the size of a space marine, actually a little bit more squat and short. So it's quite a lot of detail packed in there. Here is the problem. Look at that gun on the right side. Look at that horrible seam line. That's a loser right there. So I will be going through and giving this guy a cleanup pass, like scraping that and then repainting that. Don't ever be afraid no matter how done you are with a piece to go in and do something like a scrape and a repaint. If something's wrong, you fix it. No matter when, no matter how late, for a competition piece, you can scrape it back to plastic and repaint it. There is never a time where you accept anything less than your best effort when you're going for a competition like this. Overall chances in this category, I'm actually pretty high on him, four out of 10. All right, this is my other big piece. This is for the 40K vehicle. This is the other one I'm most proud of. This was probably 160-ish hours of work. This is my house divine chaos slinash Titan. Sorry, Renegade Knight, I think he's not actually a Titan. But all of the symbols and all of the icons and graphics are from the house. The little runes are all the appropriate chaos runes. The color pattern is as near as I can tell what house divine used. It's not, there's not a ton of information on it. He has conversions all over the place mixing of other various slinash things and slinash symbols. So the symbols are either slinash or house divine, which is a house that fell to slinash in the lore. I did a ton of research on this guy before I put him together. I am really, really super-duper proud of this piece. I just think this is everything I love about Knights. He's, this was such a fun project to do. It took a ton of time, but I really love how he came out. I wanted him to be not like most chaos Renegade Knights and look crappy and beaten down. I wanted him to be cleaner, not perfect. There's tiny bits of rust and wear here and there. You know, some weathering and things like that. But it's slinash. It's the, it's perfection. And so in this case, I took him a little bit farther. Again, I'll give myself maybe a five out of 10. Like at best I got a 50-50 shot of walking with anything, but I'm very proud of this knight. He's something I put in maximum, maximum effort on all the way through to capture everything I could about what it meant to be a slinash Renegade Knight. I'm super proud of the base of just kind of everything that I did with this. So I hope my boy here can bring it home. So there you go. That's everything that I did for Golden Demon, my eight pieces. I, by the time I'm recording this, there's really not enough time for me to do something else. So this is what we're going with. Wish me luck. I can't wait to see everybody in person at Golden Demon. I can't wait to see all the amazing pieces that are gonna be there from other artists. I expect this Golden Demon to just be a slam bang awesome affair because people like myself have been building up pieces for a lot of years. I've seen some of the stuff people are working on and boy, oh boy, is it looking like it's going to be just an amazing year. So if you're at a depth count this weekend, stop by and say hi to me. If you haven't yet participated in Golden Demon, it is a lot of fun if one happens to be near you. So check it out. It's a great thing to go do with that. I'll say thank you so much for watching. I very much appreciate it. Give this a like, subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future. We'll be back to normal tutorials next week. But as always, I thank you so much for watching this one and we'll see you next time.