From average joes to contenders

From average joes to contenders

     So how do the average joes compete with professionals like gmm at a venue such as adepticon? This is the biggest hurdle that I ask myself about before approaching a design for a display. Our team does not have one person that is a professional artist, none of has gone to school for art or even taken any classes. I personally am a nurse by trade(a murse lol) and do not interact with anything in my professional career that would assist me with a display.  But no excuses here, what that means is that I need to dedicate more time and effort into a project than an average artist because my skills are not as natural as the others. This was a lesson hard learned when building my first display for team bad decisions.
      The display was for the awesomely converted eldar army. People may remember it for the Nagash  wraitknight.  But I built the arc of the covenant.  I tried to incorporate ideas from my previous winning displays, you know make it a collapsible transport case that opens into a bigger display.  While this Great for a 2k army that has only one model type (deathwing) it is not so great for a 4k army that is being built in georgia(we live in Michigan). I built around the previous concepts but the arc displayed sort of flat and did not interact well with the models.

This is how it opened with the models on it. It looks good but did not knock it out of the park. It was also extremely heavy and difficult to transport.


     I learned a lot from this project. The negatives I learned from was first start the build prior to January, this will allow for more time with trial and error and it will also allow me to make adjustments based on marcus' great model builds. I started the coffin I may. Next, if you are going to build huge include transportation in the design. The arc ripped the ceiling of my vehicle and was damn heavy to lug around . Finally ditch the army carry g case plus display idea and just stick to display it added so many problems with very little gains.
      The positives I learned were always include an easy way to recognize it, my displays are remembered as the crate, the arc, and the coffin. This is a great way to book mark it in people's memories. Next, have models interact with the display. Some of the best pieces of this display are like the two spots that the models either fly over the display or interact in the water fall. Finally share everything with the team. My team has a million great ideas and each teammate has a grossly different way of looking at the project. With the coffin some of the best ideas started from teammate's challenge to push further.