GD Germany – Duel Entry

by | Aug 14, 2013

So I posted last week that I was going to enter something into this years Germany GD, and gosh darnit I did!


What started out as an insane idea from Arne over at Brushbrothers, turned into a full on mini project. Complete with pitfalls, wrong information, and overspending on materials :)

You might remember that it looked like this last week when I posted about it:


You can see that it has slightly changed.. OK actually it went through a complete overhaul actually.

Turns out that it was required to be on a 40 or 50 mm base.. to which my current one is only on a 30mm one. So a simple idea is just to expand it, and call it a day right? Which I do.. but on a round 50mm base. To which I then find out it needs to be on a 40/50 mm slotta square base. Insert massive swearing at this point considering it was already 2 days into the base with the updates on the round base. It now sits on the "future projects" pile at the moment.

So with that information in hand, I started out to make another one.

While working on it at home I was thinking it was quite finished and far along. However this turned out not to be the case once I made it to Michael's place in Berlin. Having his input and those of his company look it over. And who might one of those be?

Well none other than Mr Ben Komets! Working on one of his own projects for the GD!

He began to just give me 1-2 sentence tips on what I could do to improve it. Such as..

Add foliage.. add paint chipping to the wood.. make the beam rusty.. and add some paper under the grots foot to remove the gap that existed there.

Actually that is quite a bit more than 1-2 sentences, but you get the idea. :)

And off I go.. adding paint chips, rust, and throwing some paper into the mix. In the end, I finished the duel to a level that I was really happy with and was able to enter it into the GD..

Some of the tips that he gave were really interesting. Such as mixing the baking soda along with the white glue to make the rusty sections. Instead of using the Vallejo Putty that I have used in the past ( which was a tip from another painter whom I spoke of in my last post, Roman! ). But being in their place, I gave it a shot, and liked the results!

I think I made the paper a bit too worn or weathered, but the way it began to work on the base gave the illusion of wind. As if they were standing high up on a work site or something. Dunno if that is how others see it, but that is how I saw it after placing the paper! Giving me another new inspiration and ideas for future projects!

One of the last things we did with it though was to add the display plinth. Although there is a socket inside the base itself ( again using the 30mm square as a foundation ), Michael suggested that we add something more to it. Making it easier to handle, and giving it a bit more class. So off to Battlefield Berlin to pick up this plinth from Andrea Miniatures. It is a bit large sitting at just over 40mm square, but it was the only one that came close to fitting so. Of course, I didn't stop at just the plinth, but that is a post for another time perhaps :)

Now with all the work on the entry done, and after handing it into the contest I thought I could relax for a while. Not thinking that we would get any information on anything ( what with it being my first GD ). But wouldn't you know.. at about 1 in the afternoon I was told by Siggi from 5th Dimension to go and check my entry. It had a new sticker on it..


Blurry photo but you can see that it was nominated as a finalist in the Duels! I honestly cannot say how giddy and happy I was to hear such a thing! Mostly considering that I spent less than a week on it, did it only on a "why not" mentality, and still got this high? Hells yeh! So it did much better than I was expecting to get, and in the end received a finalist medal! Not bad for my first time out here ;)


That's right.. a Finalist Medal to go with the GD comp pins that every entry gets. But of course, what is the one thing I could work on further.. MORE CONTRAST! Thankfully a button from PaintingBuddha will help remind me of that point now.

More shots of the model below, but for my first time entering with a real entry ( sorta ) I am really happy with the results! Oh and the second entry pin.. I will share that soon. But it was really last minute and can use a lot of updates on it!







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