This was written in 2007 for the IPMS Edmonton newsletter. Today I read a scathing diatribe about Euro Militaire on Brian Balkwill's The Flame blog (which I agreed with) and it inspired me to post this here, where it belongs.
A disclaimer: This is a work of satire. Any descriptions of events or of persons living, dead or otherwise, whilst not intentionally defamatory, may nonetheless be accidentally accurate, and if so, I convey my deepest regrets. My intent is not to wound, but to entertain and--- hopefully ---to instruct
OK. You’re a competent builder. You know how to paint, polish, or weather a model to perfection. Attractive women’s eyes don’t glaze over when you show them your handiwork, in fact they coo over them, pick them up and… aahh… break stuff. You’ve arrived. You know you’re good… and what’s more important—I know you are. Just look at that Bf109G-6. All of that Aires resin and Extratech PE glows as if dipped in radium. It’s a masterpiece in quarter scale and c’mon--- you and I both know it.
So why didn’t it get a medal?
What—no award for best German Aircraft? It’s not the plane’s fault. The plane was great---- but you have to understand what a model contest really is. It’s a party. It’s a fashion show. It’s a political convention. It’s all these things and more. It really can’t help it—human beings attend them. I know…. confidentially, I’ve been to a lot. They remind me of art gallery openings, except without booze and the people you need the booze to inoculate against (on the other hand, maybe an open bar at our next meet would be a good idea). If you don’t know what I mean count yourself lucky… but I digress. And why are you there? Don’t lie to me and don’t lie to yourself. You’re not there to hang with your friends, to see the sights and to bask in the convivial atmosphere of genial competition. You’re there to win a prize of course-- unless you didn’t finish your piece on time or threw it against the wall for some reason best left unexplained-- or unless you’re one of those snooty types who merely display their work. To be fair though, some of those ‘snooty types’ have retired from competition--- locally, regionally, internationally or whatever-- because their entering skews the averages and they at least (I hope) understand there needs to be light for the saplings to grow tall. Them, I respect. The rest are mainly poseurs. The difference between you and the poseurs who display their work- minus their connections -is a better reference library and a Waldron punch and die set. So if you walk away from that contest without an award for your Messerschmitt, someone might have the temerity to say “Don’t worry about it. Don’t get upset, it’s just a hobby”. Don’t listen to them--- they’re either liars with shelves of awards they’ve won at your expense, or they’re horribly, criminally deluded. I would imagine that such a lost soul might’ve entered a contest way out of their league once (perhaps an IPMS National) without due consultation from someone like me and was suitably burned and humiliated beyond such recognition they rarely finished a kit again let alone entered one in a contest--- a very sad state of affairs indeed, a regrettable waste of untapped talent. Hopefully they found other, more rewarding pursuits in which to indulge their fragile egos. Competing in a model contest is not a hobby—it’s a subtle form of warfare, a game much like croquet. One knock—and your ball rolls into the weeds behind a tree. The trick, at least most of the time, is not to be an easy target. Oh… and unlike Hitler, have more than one ball. The first thing you have to realize is that the organizers and judges of any model contest—from our own in-house jobbies to Euro-Militaire and beyond are (no matter what they might think of themselves) not ubermenschen. They’re your peers. Some of them might seem to have grown too big for their lederhosen but they still put them on one bulbous leg at a time. And as such, like you-- and I suppose occasionally me-- they’re fallible. They often have strong anti-social tendencies and few ‘people skills’. Some have strange, mystical notions about the nature of their materials, and their techniques. Many don’t know what impartiality is because they’ve never experienced it. And they’re often ignorant of what they’re looking at unless they watched you build it. Of course, ‘no one knows everything’ (but it never hurts to try—except when it hurts someone else) so don’t blame them. And most are jaded. While they’d never openly admit it, they think they’ve seen it all within their narrow ranges of interest—or at least that they’ve seen enough. The trick is to show them otherwise. The rules of the game aren’t something I’ve made up. I’ve observed them in action, and I’ve broken many of them to my chagrin. Here are a few.
I fear for your attention’s sake that I must be brief.
NO SHERMANS AND NO GERMANS.
Catchy, huh? What I mean is to avoid ‘obvious’ subjects. What would those be? Well, before I tell you why don’t you sit down and let me explain why you shouldn’t do these. It’s because everyone’s done them before. EVERYONE. And as such, there’s always someone out there who knows more about your subject than you do. Or worse, thinks they do.Avoid these subjects like the plague, unless you want to show every filthy nook and cranny: In Armour; Most WWII German tank subjects. Especially avoid heavy armour such as Tigers and Panthers and their Panzerjaeger variants, although you could get away with one-offs and prototypes. I’m afraid the entire genre, with its bewildering array of kits and aftermarket, has been done to death. If you must do German stuff, I’d recommend grey over dark yellow-based tricolor or ambush camo, and whitewash well done trumps all three. Early war and Afrika Korps are always better. Open tracked is better than closed, and open wheeled is better than both. When I said Sherman, I meant it. If this subject were a dead horse it would be beaten back to life again by now. Best to swear off it entirely. Now I know some of you are upset with me at this point and have your hearts set, so if you can’t part with your M4s why don’t you camouflage them or paint them pink or cover them with so much stuff and netting they can’t be recognized instead of painting them greeeeen-- then quarrelling over the shade? There are other tanks out there—what about a T-26E3? Otherwise the same advice as the Germans. Soft vehicles rule. With Soviet Armour, mainly earlier is better. Eschew T-34s. Multicoloured schemes here are good. For Modern Armour, avoid Iraq and the Middle East over the last thirty years unless it’s an Arab. The war-- if you hadn’t noticed-- isn’t going so well. I believe the further back into our glorious Cold War past the better off you’ll be, especially if no IEDs were involved. Avoid all M1 Abrams, M-60s and perhaps modern German pieces. Warsaw Pact is better. Small armies are better still, including China and India. Vietnam and Korean war subjects are fine. For WWI Subjects half of success is simply showing up. For Aircraft: WWII German- Please, for the love of God, no more Me109s. No Fw190s. No Stukas. No Ju-88s. I could go on, but why bother? WWII US- No P-51s. No P-40s. No P-47s. No P-38s. No Corsairs. No Avengers. WWII British- No Spitfires. No Hurricanes. No Typhoons, No Mosquitos….. well…. okay. WWII Japanese- No Zeros. You might notice a pattern here. Single-engine aircraft, while generally faster builds depending on the scale tend to attract less notice than multiengine types, especially in smaller scales. Avoid bare metal unless you’re good at it. Modern aircraft: Avoid overall grey or other dark colours. They’re not esthetically pleasing on the white paper on which you’ll be forced to put them. All of your superb weathering will be for naught. I won’t recommend avoiding US subjects, but they tend to do less well than others. The ‘hated’ French always get noticed--- try them instead. Gaudiness (Tiger Meet schemes for example) doesn’t always do as well as you might think, but Dayglo does… go figure. Pre-WWII Aircraft- This is becoming more popular again in all scales, but due to the general laziness of many contest organizers usually lumped into one category. Avoid any of Manfred von Richtofen’s planes. Generally the more well-done rigging there is the better, so avoid Fokker DR Is and D. VIIs without lozenge camo. Ships—if the contest is landlocked, success is virtually guaranteed. Otherwise, do your rigging, even if you avoid the railings. You can probably build the Titanic again if you want. Cars- I’m a bit green here, but I suspect musclecars --especially street ready MOPARs-- and post-80 NASCARs are subjects to avoid. Open wheel subjects are great. Figures- Avoid Napoleonics and Waffen SS figures. Knights and Samurai are fine, but you’d better be good. Now, while you’re choking on your Tim Horton’s Boston Crème need I remind you I’m not saying “don’t build these subjects”? They’re great subjects. I’ve done many of them. I’m saying don’t take them to a contest if you expect a medal.
OH, POOH TO THE SHINY AND NEW.
Avoid trendiness. We’ve all done it, but modeling is much like making wine. The first Beaujoulais of the season is flash and might be worthy of notice, but it doesn’t hurt to put the kit down for a year or two before you build or show it. A gal would understand this—it’s like showing up to a party where two or three others are wearing the same designer dress. Let the Paris Hilton of the crowd do it, then pour a drink down it with your own entry. Avoid ‘mainstream’ company releases (Tamiya, Hasegawa, Dragon, Revell, Italeri) if you can. A few years back, seeing an Italeri 1:35 AB41 on the table three months after its release was annoying, not interesting. It was showboating. It reminded me I hadn’t finished mine yet, and it might’ve reminded some judges they couldn’t even build theirs. Remember, you want to inspire wonder, not envy. Limited run companies as well as resin kits don’t count. You can do them. Trendiness can extend to techniques as well. In Armour-- first it was ‘The Verlinden Way’. Then there was ‘paint chipping (ghastly and usually inaccurate)’. Now it’s ‘The MIG Technique’ (nothing’s THAT filthy, except maybe your two-year-old rolling head-first down a Barcelona gravel pit while passing the big empanada). What the heck are ‘filters’ anyway (they sound a bit effeminate to me)? For Aircraft—avoid the dreaded ‘preshading’. Here’s a piece of advice: instead of trying to copy someone else badly do your own thing (yesss.. I know that’s what you say you’re doing… try again). Well, OK…I’ll give you this one. Steal from the best if you must-- or steal from me if you have to, but ultimately, make it yours. Understand your process, then run with it. I once examined a few entries by one fellow that were so weathered and finished off the beaten track they were almost unrecognizable. But they were good. In fact, they were art, but none of the dolts judging his entries realized it. Despite that, he still garnered a few awards.
PLAY TO THE HOME TEAM.
Newsflash! Here in Canada Canadian subjects do well! It’s hard to believe I know, but it’s true. I checked out an IPMS Greece contest once and …. you guessed it. Among the Iron Crosses, many blue and white roundels. The odds are that even a moderately competent national subject will do OK. I wonder who’ll do the first Leopard C2A6?
C’mon car guys… where are those Edsel Rangers?
SWEAT THE DETAILS.
Given the choice between … oh… say the 1/35 Tamiya M1 Abrams you can build in your sleep and the New Improved Dragon kit with 9000 parts built and weathered equally well which one gets the medal? You guessed it--- the Tamiya kit. Why? Remember what I said—‘equally well’. It takes more than sleepwalking to improve the Tamiya kit to the level of the Dragon kit. Much more. I’m sure you’ve heard the sneering “it’s not what was attempted--- it’s what was accomplished’. That’s a LIE, except perhaps for AMPS style contests, then even they throw you a point for effort. So build the Shermans and the Germans if you wish, but put a lot into them. If you must build that Tiger II an adequately researched interior and engine compartment is a fine idea—especially in 1/48 or 1/72.
WHAT WOMEN FIBBED ABOUT.
Sorry pal, bigger is always better. Most Best Of Show and People’s Choice entries are gigantic. I recall once seeing a mediocre 1/25 Jagdtiger winning an undeserved Bronze medal simply because it was bigger than its shrimpy 1/35 brethren (more categoric laziness on the part of contest organizers—but this time it worked to someone’s advantage). Put simply, if it’s three feet long, you win. 1:32 and 1:24 aircraft of all types are included. However, nearly microscopic can do well too, especially if there’s lots of scratchbuilding.
BE SELF-RELIANT.
Don’t wait around for the perfect kit or aftermarket set. Just build it anyway. Metal parts? Learn to solder. Meh! It’s not hard. Scratchbuilding isn’t some arcane art—anyone can do it. Need a hundred identical parts? Learn to cast them. Need photoetch? It’s easier than you think—if that guy over there in the Czech Republic trying to figure out which end of the bottle squirts the mustard can do it, so can you. Acetate instrument dials? Easier than PE. Decals? The same. Sure, it takes money and some equipment. But more importantly, it takes character.
KNOW THE ENEMY.
I guess it helps if you have a vocational background which involves observing human nature but let’s keep this simple. If the majority of the organizers are Ectothermic (that is, they look like Daleks minus the fancy armour and particle weapons (ie they’re skinny and fussy), but the mantra ‘ex-ter-min-ate’ is the same) it’s not going to be a fun contest, because although the prizes are vast it’ll be all themes they like and nothing you want to do. Fortunately, such abominations are rare and if you enter them it’s your own fault. If the majority look like Pilates instructors you’ll have a good time. The contest will be relatively fair, well organized and the energy will be contagious—you may even lose a few pounds that day. If, however, the majority of the organizers mostly look like seed potatoes in dungarees with beards….… well, expect the rules and categories to be arbitrary, loose and flabby too. Expect these to change EVERY YEAR with the only exception being those rules get progressively simpler and chaotic, until the day comes when some old codger shambles up in front of thirty-six immaculate MOPARS or fifteen dusty German tanks with two ten-sided dice. The three highest scores get the medals. Not that any of these scenarios --even the first-- are ‘bad’ things. Not at all. It’s just… well… expect them. Isn’t it lucky there’s generally a ‘healthy mix’ of these extremes?
THEY’RE ‘JUDGING’, NOT BEING IMPARTIAL.
For the most part, model contests are rife with partisanry, nepotism, and outright bigotry. Don’t get upset, the organizers are human beings, remember? What did you expect? A choir of seraphim descending from heaven with golden scrolls? The worst are the so-called ‘open’ competitions. These festivals of shame are licenses to shower awards upon one’s cronies, toadies, and sycophants (and vice versa), and to scorn those who don’t toe the party line. Unpleasant… but the game is still a game. The best are AMPS-style contests where the model is panel judged on its own merits. While there is still some room for abuse this type of system tends by its nature to be much fairer than any other. Of course all of this equitability comes with a price in labor-intensiveness. Unfortunately these contests are generally limited to military vehicles, figures, perhaps helicopters, and dioramas of such, but there’s nothing stopping other ‘disciplines’ from entering the groove, apart from inertia. In between are most others, generally the ‘Olympic’ first/second/third type which is fine if there are three entries in a category, but not so great if there are thirty-eight with tyros and intermediates with their Mig-pasteled wonders up against advanced modelers who’ve forgotten more than the former know. In that case, the ‘big shots’ get the medals, and for three bucks an entry the rest of us get sharp pointy sticks with instructions where to insert them. In this sort of meet the best bet is to examine the categories and hit the light ones.
THINK INSIDE THE BOX.
If a contest has this category then it’s a contest with some class. Enter Straight From the Box—it’s an elegantly vicious leveling of the playing field between you and the AMS junkies. But follow the rules to the letter—don’t expect something qualifies because it’s ‘almost straight from the box’ despite it’s practically rebuilt with panel lines rescribed to where they ‘should’ be. That’s just stupid. The SFB category isn’t so much a building exercise (although neat building is certainly taken into account) as a painting and finishing exercise. Remember—finesse, not brute force. And you can always add the seatbelts later.
GO HARD OR GO HOME.
Conversely, outside the Straight From the Box category the fate of lightly modified subjects in highly populated categories increasingly resembles the fate of the dodo, or more appropriately of lightly armed battleships, i.e. they’re the first to get sunk. One colleague of mine quipped “Is it just me or is the bar rising every year?” Yup, it sure is. Every… Single...Year. In my ‘first’ model contest in 1994 I entered a Dragon IS-2m Stalin. Despite the upside-down lift hooks and ejection pin marks on the tracks, the sponsons were filled and it placed third in a field of 17. Today in most contests it would place dead last, were I sufficiently naïve to enter it. Hand in hand with the increasing quality of kits we build, we’ve all improved, including the beginners. In 2005 I entered a Tamiya T-55 with reasonable improvements in two contests; in the first it got a gold medal and a plaque, in the second it scored a Bronze. In 2006 it got nothing. Why? It wasn’t because it was a progressively worse model, but because the locals had seen it more than twice. And the bar rises-- the Closed Top Post-War Armour categories however way they’re sliced are murderously competitive in the Olympic System. But more than that, remember what I said about the judging—they pick what they like and with what they’re tantalized by rather than the good. Or else the three best entries are obvious because you’re competing against advanced modelers and masters. Don’t be disappointed. Keep trying. Hit other contests with your entry as well as other types of contests, in different provinces and states.
GO BEYOND THE PALE.
Tsk.. tsk.. that poor old G-6. Yeah, I know Hartmann was cool, but why didn’t you do a Swiss one? Or an Italian one? Or a Croatian one? Better yet, why not be creative? Throw the history book away and do a Paraguayan one. Need I mention the ‘Pub Fighter’? One other infamous example many of you in our club might remember was a yellow-tailed bare-metal Mustang IV with German, Japanese and American kill markings. It had Donald Duck nose art and the call letters were the modeler’s nickname. Beautifully executed and completely fictitious, it won several well-deserved awards. So do an Argentine Firefly Vc (they did have them) or a Syrian Panzer IV. I don’t have to explain this rule to the Car or Sci-Fi guys, they know it instinctively. Twist the game to your advantage. Have your diorama tell an interesting story, instead of populating it with figures pointing off into nowhere or standing around doing nothing.
AND DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT! IT’S JUST A HOBBY!
A disclaimer: This is a work of satire. Any descriptions of events or of persons living, dead or otherwise, whilst not intentionally defamatory, may nonetheless be accidentally accurate, and if so, I convey my deepest regrets. My intent is not to wound, but to entertain and--- hopefully ---to instruct
OK. You’re a competent builder. You know how to paint, polish, or weather a model to perfection. Attractive women’s eyes don’t glaze over when you show them your handiwork, in fact they coo over them, pick them up and… aahh… break stuff. You’ve arrived. You know you’re good… and what’s more important—I know you are. Just look at that Bf109G-6. All of that Aires resin and Extratech PE glows as if dipped in radium. It’s a masterpiece in quarter scale and c’mon--- you and I both know it.
So why didn’t it get a medal?
What—no award for best German Aircraft? It’s not the plane’s fault. The plane was great---- but you have to understand what a model contest really is. It’s a party. It’s a fashion show. It’s a political convention. It’s all these things and more. It really can’t help it—human beings attend them. I know…. confidentially, I’ve been to a lot. They remind me of art gallery openings, except without booze and the people you need the booze to inoculate against (on the other hand, maybe an open bar at our next meet would be a good idea). If you don’t know what I mean count yourself lucky… but I digress. And why are you there? Don’t lie to me and don’t lie to yourself. You’re not there to hang with your friends, to see the sights and to bask in the convivial atmosphere of genial competition. You’re there to win a prize of course-- unless you didn’t finish your piece on time or threw it against the wall for some reason best left unexplained-- or unless you’re one of those snooty types who merely display their work. To be fair though, some of those ‘snooty types’ have retired from competition--- locally, regionally, internationally or whatever-- because their entering skews the averages and they at least (I hope) understand there needs to be light for the saplings to grow tall. Them, I respect. The rest are mainly poseurs. The difference between you and the poseurs who display their work- minus their connections -is a better reference library and a Waldron punch and die set. So if you walk away from that contest without an award for your Messerschmitt, someone might have the temerity to say “Don’t worry about it. Don’t get upset, it’s just a hobby”. Don’t listen to them--- they’re either liars with shelves of awards they’ve won at your expense, or they’re horribly, criminally deluded. I would imagine that such a lost soul might’ve entered a contest way out of their league once (perhaps an IPMS National) without due consultation from someone like me and was suitably burned and humiliated beyond such recognition they rarely finished a kit again let alone entered one in a contest--- a very sad state of affairs indeed, a regrettable waste of untapped talent. Hopefully they found other, more rewarding pursuits in which to indulge their fragile egos. Competing in a model contest is not a hobby—it’s a subtle form of warfare, a game much like croquet. One knock—and your ball rolls into the weeds behind a tree. The trick, at least most of the time, is not to be an easy target. Oh… and unlike Hitler, have more than one ball. The first thing you have to realize is that the organizers and judges of any model contest—from our own in-house jobbies to Euro-Militaire and beyond are (no matter what they might think of themselves) not ubermenschen. They’re your peers. Some of them might seem to have grown too big for their lederhosen but they still put them on one bulbous leg at a time. And as such, like you-- and I suppose occasionally me-- they’re fallible. They often have strong anti-social tendencies and few ‘people skills’. Some have strange, mystical notions about the nature of their materials, and their techniques. Many don’t know what impartiality is because they’ve never experienced it. And they’re often ignorant of what they’re looking at unless they watched you build it. Of course, ‘no one knows everything’ (but it never hurts to try—except when it hurts someone else) so don’t blame them. And most are jaded. While they’d never openly admit it, they think they’ve seen it all within their narrow ranges of interest—or at least that they’ve seen enough. The trick is to show them otherwise. The rules of the game aren’t something I’ve made up. I’ve observed them in action, and I’ve broken many of them to my chagrin. Here are a few.
I fear for your attention’s sake that I must be brief.
NO SHERMANS AND NO GERMANS.
Catchy, huh? What I mean is to avoid ‘obvious’ subjects. What would those be? Well, before I tell you why don’t you sit down and let me explain why you shouldn’t do these. It’s because everyone’s done them before. EVERYONE. And as such, there’s always someone out there who knows more about your subject than you do. Or worse, thinks they do.Avoid these subjects like the plague, unless you want to show every filthy nook and cranny: In Armour; Most WWII German tank subjects. Especially avoid heavy armour such as Tigers and Panthers and their Panzerjaeger variants, although you could get away with one-offs and prototypes. I’m afraid the entire genre, with its bewildering array of kits and aftermarket, has been done to death. If you must do German stuff, I’d recommend grey over dark yellow-based tricolor or ambush camo, and whitewash well done trumps all three. Early war and Afrika Korps are always better. Open tracked is better than closed, and open wheeled is better than both. When I said Sherman, I meant it. If this subject were a dead horse it would be beaten back to life again by now. Best to swear off it entirely. Now I know some of you are upset with me at this point and have your hearts set, so if you can’t part with your M4s why don’t you camouflage them or paint them pink or cover them with so much stuff and netting they can’t be recognized instead of painting them greeeeen-- then quarrelling over the shade? There are other tanks out there—what about a T-26E3? Otherwise the same advice as the Germans. Soft vehicles rule. With Soviet Armour, mainly earlier is better. Eschew T-34s. Multicoloured schemes here are good. For Modern Armour, avoid Iraq and the Middle East over the last thirty years unless it’s an Arab. The war-- if you hadn’t noticed-- isn’t going so well. I believe the further back into our glorious Cold War past the better off you’ll be, especially if no IEDs were involved. Avoid all M1 Abrams, M-60s and perhaps modern German pieces. Warsaw Pact is better. Small armies are better still, including China and India. Vietnam and Korean war subjects are fine. For WWI Subjects half of success is simply showing up. For Aircraft: WWII German- Please, for the love of God, no more Me109s. No Fw190s. No Stukas. No Ju-88s. I could go on, but why bother? WWII US- No P-51s. No P-40s. No P-47s. No P-38s. No Corsairs. No Avengers. WWII British- No Spitfires. No Hurricanes. No Typhoons, No Mosquitos….. well…. okay. WWII Japanese- No Zeros. You might notice a pattern here. Single-engine aircraft, while generally faster builds depending on the scale tend to attract less notice than multiengine types, especially in smaller scales. Avoid bare metal unless you’re good at it. Modern aircraft: Avoid overall grey or other dark colours. They’re not esthetically pleasing on the white paper on which you’ll be forced to put them. All of your superb weathering will be for naught. I won’t recommend avoiding US subjects, but they tend to do less well than others. The ‘hated’ French always get noticed--- try them instead. Gaudiness (Tiger Meet schemes for example) doesn’t always do as well as you might think, but Dayglo does… go figure. Pre-WWII Aircraft- This is becoming more popular again in all scales, but due to the general laziness of many contest organizers usually lumped into one category. Avoid any of Manfred von Richtofen’s planes. Generally the more well-done rigging there is the better, so avoid Fokker DR Is and D. VIIs without lozenge camo. Ships—if the contest is landlocked, success is virtually guaranteed. Otherwise, do your rigging, even if you avoid the railings. You can probably build the Titanic again if you want. Cars- I’m a bit green here, but I suspect musclecars --especially street ready MOPARs-- and post-80 NASCARs are subjects to avoid. Open wheel subjects are great. Figures- Avoid Napoleonics and Waffen SS figures. Knights and Samurai are fine, but you’d better be good. Now, while you’re choking on your Tim Horton’s Boston Crème need I remind you I’m not saying “don’t build these subjects”? They’re great subjects. I’ve done many of them. I’m saying don’t take them to a contest if you expect a medal.
OH, POOH TO THE SHINY AND NEW.
Avoid trendiness. We’ve all done it, but modeling is much like making wine. The first Beaujoulais of the season is flash and might be worthy of notice, but it doesn’t hurt to put the kit down for a year or two before you build or show it. A gal would understand this—it’s like showing up to a party where two or three others are wearing the same designer dress. Let the Paris Hilton of the crowd do it, then pour a drink down it with your own entry. Avoid ‘mainstream’ company releases (Tamiya, Hasegawa, Dragon, Revell, Italeri) if you can. A few years back, seeing an Italeri 1:35 AB41 on the table three months after its release was annoying, not interesting. It was showboating. It reminded me I hadn’t finished mine yet, and it might’ve reminded some judges they couldn’t even build theirs. Remember, you want to inspire wonder, not envy. Limited run companies as well as resin kits don’t count. You can do them. Trendiness can extend to techniques as well. In Armour-- first it was ‘The Verlinden Way’. Then there was ‘paint chipping (ghastly and usually inaccurate)’. Now it’s ‘The MIG Technique’ (nothing’s THAT filthy, except maybe your two-year-old rolling head-first down a Barcelona gravel pit while passing the big empanada). What the heck are ‘filters’ anyway (they sound a bit effeminate to me)? For Aircraft—avoid the dreaded ‘preshading’. Here’s a piece of advice: instead of trying to copy someone else badly do your own thing (yesss.. I know that’s what you say you’re doing… try again). Well, OK…I’ll give you this one. Steal from the best if you must-- or steal from me if you have to, but ultimately, make it yours. Understand your process, then run with it. I once examined a few entries by one fellow that were so weathered and finished off the beaten track they were almost unrecognizable. But they were good. In fact, they were art, but none of the dolts judging his entries realized it. Despite that, he still garnered a few awards.
PLAY TO THE HOME TEAM.
Newsflash! Here in Canada Canadian subjects do well! It’s hard to believe I know, but it’s true. I checked out an IPMS Greece contest once and …. you guessed it. Among the Iron Crosses, many blue and white roundels. The odds are that even a moderately competent national subject will do OK. I wonder who’ll do the first Leopard C2A6?
C’mon car guys… where are those Edsel Rangers?
SWEAT THE DETAILS.
Given the choice between … oh… say the 1/35 Tamiya M1 Abrams you can build in your sleep and the New Improved Dragon kit with 9000 parts built and weathered equally well which one gets the medal? You guessed it--- the Tamiya kit. Why? Remember what I said—‘equally well’. It takes more than sleepwalking to improve the Tamiya kit to the level of the Dragon kit. Much more. I’m sure you’ve heard the sneering “it’s not what was attempted--- it’s what was accomplished’. That’s a LIE, except perhaps for AMPS style contests, then even they throw you a point for effort. So build the Shermans and the Germans if you wish, but put a lot into them. If you must build that Tiger II an adequately researched interior and engine compartment is a fine idea—especially in 1/48 or 1/72.
WHAT WOMEN FIBBED ABOUT.
Sorry pal, bigger is always better. Most Best Of Show and People’s Choice entries are gigantic. I recall once seeing a mediocre 1/25 Jagdtiger winning an undeserved Bronze medal simply because it was bigger than its shrimpy 1/35 brethren (more categoric laziness on the part of contest organizers—but this time it worked to someone’s advantage). Put simply, if it’s three feet long, you win. 1:32 and 1:24 aircraft of all types are included. However, nearly microscopic can do well too, especially if there’s lots of scratchbuilding.
BE SELF-RELIANT.
Don’t wait around for the perfect kit or aftermarket set. Just build it anyway. Metal parts? Learn to solder. Meh! It’s not hard. Scratchbuilding isn’t some arcane art—anyone can do it. Need a hundred identical parts? Learn to cast them. Need photoetch? It’s easier than you think—if that guy over there in the Czech Republic trying to figure out which end of the bottle squirts the mustard can do it, so can you. Acetate instrument dials? Easier than PE. Decals? The same. Sure, it takes money and some equipment. But more importantly, it takes character.
KNOW THE ENEMY.
I guess it helps if you have a vocational background which involves observing human nature but let’s keep this simple. If the majority of the organizers are Ectothermic (that is, they look like Daleks minus the fancy armour and particle weapons (ie they’re skinny and fussy), but the mantra ‘ex-ter-min-ate’ is the same) it’s not going to be a fun contest, because although the prizes are vast it’ll be all themes they like and nothing you want to do. Fortunately, such abominations are rare and if you enter them it’s your own fault. If the majority look like Pilates instructors you’ll have a good time. The contest will be relatively fair, well organized and the energy will be contagious—you may even lose a few pounds that day. If, however, the majority of the organizers mostly look like seed potatoes in dungarees with beards….… well, expect the rules and categories to be arbitrary, loose and flabby too. Expect these to change EVERY YEAR with the only exception being those rules get progressively simpler and chaotic, until the day comes when some old codger shambles up in front of thirty-six immaculate MOPARS or fifteen dusty German tanks with two ten-sided dice. The three highest scores get the medals. Not that any of these scenarios --even the first-- are ‘bad’ things. Not at all. It’s just… well… expect them. Isn’t it lucky there’s generally a ‘healthy mix’ of these extremes?
THEY’RE ‘JUDGING’, NOT BEING IMPARTIAL.
For the most part, model contests are rife with partisanry, nepotism, and outright bigotry. Don’t get upset, the organizers are human beings, remember? What did you expect? A choir of seraphim descending from heaven with golden scrolls? The worst are the so-called ‘open’ competitions. These festivals of shame are licenses to shower awards upon one’s cronies, toadies, and sycophants (and vice versa), and to scorn those who don’t toe the party line. Unpleasant… but the game is still a game. The best are AMPS-style contests where the model is panel judged on its own merits. While there is still some room for abuse this type of system tends by its nature to be much fairer than any other. Of course all of this equitability comes with a price in labor-intensiveness. Unfortunately these contests are generally limited to military vehicles, figures, perhaps helicopters, and dioramas of such, but there’s nothing stopping other ‘disciplines’ from entering the groove, apart from inertia. In between are most others, generally the ‘Olympic’ first/second/third type which is fine if there are three entries in a category, but not so great if there are thirty-eight with tyros and intermediates with their Mig-pasteled wonders up against advanced modelers who’ve forgotten more than the former know. In that case, the ‘big shots’ get the medals, and for three bucks an entry the rest of us get sharp pointy sticks with instructions where to insert them. In this sort of meet the best bet is to examine the categories and hit the light ones.
THINK INSIDE THE BOX.
If a contest has this category then it’s a contest with some class. Enter Straight From the Box—it’s an elegantly vicious leveling of the playing field between you and the AMS junkies. But follow the rules to the letter—don’t expect something qualifies because it’s ‘almost straight from the box’ despite it’s practically rebuilt with panel lines rescribed to where they ‘should’ be. That’s just stupid. The SFB category isn’t so much a building exercise (although neat building is certainly taken into account) as a painting and finishing exercise. Remember—finesse, not brute force. And you can always add the seatbelts later.
GO HARD OR GO HOME.
Conversely, outside the Straight From the Box category the fate of lightly modified subjects in highly populated categories increasingly resembles the fate of the dodo, or more appropriately of lightly armed battleships, i.e. they’re the first to get sunk. One colleague of mine quipped “Is it just me or is the bar rising every year?” Yup, it sure is. Every… Single...Year. In my ‘first’ model contest in 1994 I entered a Dragon IS-2m Stalin. Despite the upside-down lift hooks and ejection pin marks on the tracks, the sponsons were filled and it placed third in a field of 17. Today in most contests it would place dead last, were I sufficiently naïve to enter it. Hand in hand with the increasing quality of kits we build, we’ve all improved, including the beginners. In 2005 I entered a Tamiya T-55 with reasonable improvements in two contests; in the first it got a gold medal and a plaque, in the second it scored a Bronze. In 2006 it got nothing. Why? It wasn’t because it was a progressively worse model, but because the locals had seen it more than twice. And the bar rises-- the Closed Top Post-War Armour categories however way they’re sliced are murderously competitive in the Olympic System. But more than that, remember what I said about the judging—they pick what they like and with what they’re tantalized by rather than the good. Or else the three best entries are obvious because you’re competing against advanced modelers and masters. Don’t be disappointed. Keep trying. Hit other contests with your entry as well as other types of contests, in different provinces and states.
GO BEYOND THE PALE.
Tsk.. tsk.. that poor old G-6. Yeah, I know Hartmann was cool, but why didn’t you do a Swiss one? Or an Italian one? Or a Croatian one? Better yet, why not be creative? Throw the history book away and do a Paraguayan one. Need I mention the ‘Pub Fighter’? One other infamous example many of you in our club might remember was a yellow-tailed bare-metal Mustang IV with German, Japanese and American kill markings. It had Donald Duck nose art and the call letters were the modeler’s nickname. Beautifully executed and completely fictitious, it won several well-deserved awards. So do an Argentine Firefly Vc (they did have them) or a Syrian Panzer IV. I don’t have to explain this rule to the Car or Sci-Fi guys, they know it instinctively. Twist the game to your advantage. Have your diorama tell an interesting story, instead of populating it with figures pointing off into nowhere or standing around doing nothing.
AND DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT! IT’S JUST A HOBBY!
