Yeah, like that was a contest. I skip the run - I'll take care of it later in the day. I get to the painting area a little later than planned, since I actually ate breakfast and loaded up the car. I like to sit to the far left; I'm left-handed, and it's annoying to both me (and the person on my left) when we keep smacking elbows together.
The figure this time is a Man O'War. Great. I have been wanting to try out my paint scheme on the khador mini-jacks (okay, I know they are not technically jacks. So what.) I look at the paints. Crap. The only green is bright. Almost neon. Iosan green, IIRC. Yeah, that's not going to work.
I lose most of the first fifteen minutes messing around, trying one thing after another, and getting increasingly frustrated. Fortunately, we get a full hour. Finally, I manage to cobble together a fairly decent approximation of the Vallejo Russian Green, and get to work. I base the entire model, then begin trying to get the white-wash effect to work.
Not a Man O'War, but this is the effect that I am trying to get.
It's kind of time-consuming, which is not a good idea during, I don't know, a SPEED PAINTING competition. It wasn't my brightest idea, but I figured that I could pull it off. I am working faster and faster, the clock is ticking down, and, while I do not finish, I actually manage to get something close to what I wanted.
A bit messy, but hey, it was speed painted, right?
With custom-mixed colors, thankyouverymuch.
I obviously did not win. I wasn't expecting to, either - but I did learn some things from the experience. Things about having a more definite plan, about keeping things simple, and, from the guy who won the event - "Paint a base coat, paint the base, and then free-hand the fuck out of it."
Which he did.
I zip over to the consignment store, where I collect the rest of what I was owed. I had picked up some of it on Saturday, and took my hand truck in case I needed to pick up stuff that didn't sell, but everything sold, so I did not need it. Back to the hotel to check out, and then back to the exhibitors hall. I got stopped by the balloon dragon. The dragon got started on Wednesday, and finished sometime on Saturday. A charity auction determined who would get to pop it, and a huge crowd had gathered to view the "slaying."
Unfortunately, I did not check the camera settings before the slaying began, so all of those pics turned out pretty blurry. I did not even get to catch the final slaying, when the children in the front got to come up and help kill the remnants of the dragon. Not to worry - Tim Thurmond (the artist who put it together) was asking everyone to send him pics or video of anything from start to finish, and he is hoping to create a pseudo time-lapse photography of the entire creative, and subsequent destructive, process.
Once the dragon was truly dead (although keen-eyed observers would see children carrying around half-inflated "souvenirs" for the rest of the day), I went into the hall to see if I could play a demo for a game that I had already purchased the day before.
I wonder what game this could be.
I knew that it mostly used the Wings of War mechanics, and though I had not played it, I was vaguely familiar with the idea. (My favorite aerial combat game is probably Blue Max, which is, AFAIK, long OOP.) Plus, it was Star Wars. So, I took the part of the loyalists, and tried my best to shot the Rebel scum who were seeking to overthrow the peaceful government of the Empire. Or something like that.
See Luke Skywalker.
See Luke Skywalker shoot a turret.
See lots of TIE fighters shoot Luke Skywalker.
The Death Star demo board was incredibly kewl, and I feel the need to build one now. The scenario was very difficult to the Rebellion to win - they had to either kill all the TIE fighters or four of the towers. But four TIE are (roughly) equal to the two X-wings, and, when you abandon your wing-man, you die. The empire did not lose a single TIE, and only two towers. A dark day for the Rebellion indeed. A lot of fun, and my only regret is that I did not ignore the (fairly) high price point for each additional fighter and buy up some extras - now I have to wait a month or so before I can pick some up.
I wandered the hall for some time - looking in on a demo of MERCS, chatting with some people, and general killing time until the raffle drawing at the DP9 booth. They were raffling off some seriously nice prizes. Which I did not win. Once the raffle was done, it was back to the car, and a long drive home.
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