ReaperCon 2014 - Day 3

Saturday is a pretty busy day for me at ReaperCon. There wasn't really time to take a lot of pictures. I had one vendor coming in today that had to be setup and had to arrange for some demo tables in the vendor room as well. I'm not fond of stuff getting thrown at me at the last minute. I also spend a good portion of the day judging miniatures as well. The Saturday entries had to be judged (although there weren't that many) as well as decisions about Best Display, Best Theme, Judges Choice (for something that was really cool in our opinion), Reaper Sophies (Gold, Silver and Bronze) for single miniature, diorama and open (these had to be or constructed exclusively from Reaper Miniatures). 

The Artists banquet was Saturday night and I shared a table with Pixel (Heidi J), Gene Van Horne, Anne Foerster, Bob Ridolfi, and Julie Guthrie. After that it was out to the main room for the awards ceremony. I think the only pictures I have from Saturday are from the ceremony.

If it wasn't for this set of screens in the main room I would never know what is going on. The entries into the painting competition were shown all weekend on these screens. This time though we had a slide show prepared. 

Ron making a view annoucements

Anne getting up her nerve

A quick huddle away from the microphone. That's Rhonda Bender on the left, Ali Bailey in the back, Jessica Rich (In the Tardis dress) and, of course, Ann Foerster.

Anne thanking the painting crew. Some how I got demoted and Rhonda Bender was the 2nd in command (as it were). Next year she can do all the extra work!
I believe she said that we gave out 258 awards at this show. I'll have to find out what the breakdown was. I know that we had to cast more silver medals earlier in the day.

Who wants to go first?

Lined up and ready to hand out boxes of medals.

My Last Flight for Work

One last prepared post before I get back to my ReaperCon posts.

I had a tough interview last week with a new company and I thought I had blown it. I just felt that I didn't give them the answers that they were looking for. I was shocked when I had an offer the next day. The drawback is that its a six month to hire gig so I'll be hourly not salaried till November at which point, hopefully, they will bring me on as a salaried employee.

So my flight to Baltimore this week is kind of special so I figured I would post the pictures going to the east and maybe do a part two heading back to the west, although most of that flight will be in the dark.

Dawn at DIA, Concourse C

The rising sun at 39,000 Feet

Clouds catching the morning sun

Midway Airport. I have never been to this airport, so I got to check another one off my list. There are a lot of airports that I haven't been to, so the list is long.

As we circled to land at Midway I spotted a number of railroad classification yards. Fascinating to see these from the air.

Based on the grade, I think this is a hump yard.

Midway terminal, apparently they don't believe in windows, I had to change planes at Midway.

It is called Midway so its only fitting that they have an SBD Douglas Dauntless on display. I found this on my way to the most isolated gate at the airport, A4B (well and A4A). It feels like an after thought its basically a hallway.

A random river on the way to Baltimore

Building the Boards for Calamity - Part 2

A short break from ReaperCon posts. Its still busy here so I need a little time to collect my thoughts. So on with something that I wrote earlier for exactly this circumstance.

This is a quick update. I found some Cellfoam at Hobby Lobby in 1/8" thickness. This is perfect for Calamity, although 1/4" would have worked as well. I can purchase blue or pink foam for the actual boards in 1" and 2" thicknesses so this fits my scale model quite nicely.  Unfortunately it doesn't shave down quite the way I wanted it to, but I think I can get it to work in creating the slope, or I'll just resort to clay again.

Again the model has shown me that I need to go 2" deeper if I want to have the special features that I was contemplating.

A single panel ready to drop in. This represents a piece of foam board 1" thick.

And a perfect fit, a second panel will fill up the space

The second panel in place. On the left you can see that the top is flush with the plywood edge.

Here on the right side you can see that the top piece of foam is fully exposed. I need to shave this down to form a gentle slope. I tried to cut it with a knife but just ripped up the foam. I'll try sanding it down on the next piece.

Once I have the foam fitted and sanded then I'll start cutting in the streets, tracks and building locations.

ReaperCon 2014 - Day 2

Day 2 was quite the busy day for me. I spend a considerable amount of time putting competition medals in little red boxes. Not very exciting. There was a banquet in the evening to induct a couple of new people into the Reaper Hall of Fame. This year it was Werner Klocke and Derek Schubert. After that it was straight in to start judging the competition miniatures. There were a lot of entries, 401 when we started. We work in teams of 3 for the scoring and we split the work between 3 teams. We finished in about 2 hours. Lots of fantastic entries this year and some pretty difficult decisions on scoring them. I couldn't get a good picture of my entry yesterday so I'll see what I can do when I get home. Here are a few pictures of the day, mostly focused on my favorite entries in the painting competition.

Bin of Bronze Medals

Box of presentation boxes

Boxes, that in theory, now have bronze medals in them

Dan Clark

Michael Proctor
That rabbit has a serious stash of loot under the snow

Mary Profitt

Mary Profitt

Rhonda Bender

John Bowery

Michelle Blastenbrei

Aaron Lovejoy

Anne Cooper

Angela Imrie
Artemis by Hasslefree, one of my favorite minis by them.

Mary Profitt

Tonya Lynn

Unknown

Tish Wolter

Aaron Lovejoy

Jessica Rich

Michael Proctor

Rhonda Bender

Heidi Jugovic

Glen Phillips

Ian Markon
(This was Best in Show at Genghis Con XXXV)

Michelle Blastenbrei

Meg Maples

Erin Hartwell
This one is my favorite piece in the shoe and one of the best dioramas if have seen in a long time. It shouts Old West and its fitting that it racked up its fair share of awards; silver medal in dioramas, a silver Sophie for dioramas and Best Theme. I managed to be one of the judges for this piece all three times, I really wanted to score it gold but it has a few issues, but its on the razor edge and wouldn't take much to get it over the top. Watch those mold lines Erin!