Adepticon 2016 Recap

Hey all, long time no post, kids work house blah blah blah.  Anyways, even though everyone else covered their Adepticon trip a a few weeks ago, I wanted to get my annual post up here.

This year I headed to Adepticon with Funderhammer & Bill - I had just formally met Bill a couple of weeks earlier despite seeing him around our FLGS, but Funderhammer assured me that he probably wouldn't axe-murder me in my sleep, so we were good to go.  (Just kidding - Bill was a great guy & about as nice a guy as you'd ever meet.  For a 9th Age player, anyway)).

Thursday

We wanted to get to the hotel ASAP, since they were sending emails offering convention goers a $50 credit if you gave up your room - apparently they massively overbooked the hotel.  After a last-minute revision of babysitting/work plans, we got on the road Thursday morning and had a rather uneventful drive.  Funderhammer got us upgraded to a suite, and I have to admit I've had worse rooms:

After getting checked in & picking up our badges and swag bags, we headed over to a Chicago institution, Portillo's, for some dinner:

When we got back, Funderhammer & I headed to our first class, Army Speed Painting 101 with Aaron Lovejoy.  I've taken classes with Aaron at GenCon before, but usually they were geared towards competition painting or basing, not speed painting.  Aaron actually has a pretty interesting approach - were I'd consider working on a squad and doing stuff like "just paint the pants on each miniature, then just paing the boots, etc" as "speed painting" Aaron gets WAY more granular - like "just paint the front left toe of the boot" then move on to the next model in the squad.  Basically, if you're spending more than a few seconds on each "section", then you're not breaking it down far enough.  To demonstrate, Aaron assigned everyone in class a TINY fraction of a model, then started shoving identical minis into our "assembly line":

...the point being, while they weren't going to win any contests, they were definitely of passable "tabletop" quality. Later, due to the copious amounts of coffee I needed to consume to make it through the con, I converted my mini:

Friday

The next day, we headed to the dealer hall and the shopping began in earnest.  One of my first stops was the Secret Weapon Miniatures booth, were I chatted with Justin for a few minutes and picked up some weathering powders & a few of the new paints to try:

Next I stopped by the Ironheart Artisans booth to pick up a custom order that Alex was gracious enough to let me pick up at the con.  I also picked up a new set of brushes to try out:

I had also been thinking about painting a bust, and he had a pretty cool one on sale:

One of the coupons in our swag bags was a postcard to fill out with your email address that said "Bring this to the Privateer Press booth for a prize!" I was expecting a sticker or a cheap trinket, but they were giving out faction books!

(Granted, know we know that they were offloading old stock in preparation for Mk3, but it was still a nice surprise).

Next I stopped by the Battlefront booth and picked up a container of MDF blanks (I'll be doing a write-up using these soon):

Funderhammer was chatting with the guys at the CMON booth, and lamented while he'd like to try Wrath of Kings (VIG's got a starter box in their swag bags), he didn't have anyone to play the game with.  They passed along another starter box for me!

While trying to identify what the "new hotness" would be at Adepticon this year, it quickly became apparent that it was skirmish game Arena Rex.  We all bought a starter and will be trying it out more in depth in the not-too-distant future:

I made so, so many trips to the Reaper booth for paints this year - I don't think this is even close to all of the ones I picked up:

Found a guy tucked away in the corner of the concourse selling homemade chapter banners & purity seals - while I haven't thought about Space Marines in a loooong time, these were too cool to pass up:

That night, Funderhammer & I had a couple of classes, the first of which was Painting Smoother Blends with Rhonda Bender.  This was one of those types of classes that I take every year, swear that I'm going to incorporate it into my painting, then get home and remember that I'm lazy.  But no, it was great info and Rhonda really broke it down into easily understandable steps, and I was fairly pleased with my results.

From here, we went to our next class, Painting Realistic Faces with David Powell.  David had some amazing examples of his work on hand:

Despite being hampered by several, um, "beverages" I made before we left the room, I was pretty pleased with my progress:

Saturday

The next day, my first class was Basic Technique in Finishing, Including Airbrush Technique with Caleb Wissenback.  I really haven;t kept up with my airbrushing, and have resolved to do better in the coming year.  Caleb had a lot of good advice & tips.

My next class was Airbrush 102, Airbrush Cleaning & Maintenance with Ken Schlotfeldt, the president of Badger Airbrush.  I was pleased to learn that I was doing everything (mostly) correct, and afterwards I picked up one of these cool airbrush maintenance kits from the Badger booth:

After my classes were over for the day, Funderhammer, Bill & I headed to the Privateer Press Iron Arena to get some games in:

Oooh, swanky new focus tokens!

After we were done, we realized it was our last night in town to get a "fancy" dinner, so we headed over to the Weber Grill restaurant.  When we got back to the room, Bill broke out a copy of Gloom, which was a lot of fun:

Sunday

Sunday we packed up the car and made a few trips around the convention center, where we bumped into Robe Guy:

...and while waiting for the raffle drawing, we checked out the Crystal Brush entries:

After the drawing (none of us won anything), we headed out, another Adepticon in the bag!

AdeptiCon 2015 Part II

Saturday

On Saturday, our first class was "Six Step Eyes" with Meg Maples:

Meg showing us how it's done

In the past ten years or so, I've probably taken half a dozen classes just on how to paint eyes.  It's probably the first major hurdle of taking your painting beyond "tabletop quality" for most painters.  I've tried different methods, technical pens, etc., and it's still 90% luck for me.  This class came closer than any other to giving me the ability to actually be able to paint eyes - I think with a little practice, I'll be able to replicate it consistently.  I'll even give you the six steps so you can try it yourself:

1. -Paint entire eye socket black
2. -White oval (eyeball)
3. -Black dot (outer edge of iris)
4. -Color dot (iris)
5. -Black dot (pupil)
6. -White dot (reflection)

(Optional): Gloss coat eye so it's shiny.

That's it.  And it made sense.  Here are a few of my attempts:

...so it's not great, but this is far better than I've been able to achieve in the past.  Plus, I was having a really hard time picking out the eyes on this model - Reaper claims you don't need to prime their "Bones" models, but I find it necessary just because I can't see the details on that bright white finish they come in right from the factory.

Our next class was "Painting Sheer Fabric", again with Jessica Rich.  Man, this class was hard for a guy who mostly paints power armor 90% of the time.  And, as Jessica warned us, when you paint a model using this method, it has an extremely long "this looks like crap" phase until everything starts to pull together.  Regardless, you can see a (very) little bit of the intended effect in this WIP pic of my model:

Compare that with what Jessica is able to achieve, and it's pretty sad.  Still, it was fun to try.  lars4life & I have already been talking about where we might be able to apply the technique to our own armies.

After classes, we headed out for dinner - we usually budget for one "nice" dinner per trip to AdeptiCon, and this year we went with Weber Grill Restaurant:

...which was fantastic.  We headed back to the hotel and hung out for bit before calling it a night.  The next morning we made one last lap through the dealer room (I made a few purchases that I'll be reviewing here shortly) and headed back home, another AdeptiCon in the bag!

AdeptiCon 2015 Part I

Thursday

...so after doing little-to-no hobbying for most of the past year (for reasons, see my previous post) lars4life & I headed out for Adepticon 2015.  The big change this year was that the con moved to a bigger venue at the Renaissance Schaumberg Convention Center:

The hotel was pretty nice - pretty much on par (amenity-wise) with the former venue, but much bigger.  It was nice to have more space, but I get the feeling that the folks at the Renaissance didn't really "get" the needs of the con just yet, but hopefully that'll work itself out in the coming years.

After putting our bags away, we headed downstairs to get out badges & swag bags.  As usual, the AdeptiCon swag bag was one of the best out of any convention I attend:

...A Protectorate of Menoth battlegroup, Badger & Reaper paints, brushes from Games & Gears, minis from Palladium, Victoria Miniatures & Soda Pop Miniatures, as well as a ton of coupons for more freebies & discounts in the dealer room.  I really wish some of the other cons would take a lesson from AdeptiCon in the swag bag department.

Since the registration desk was right in the dealer's hall, we took a quick lap while we were there.  I wandered past the Forge World booth and was a bit taken aback that there wasn't a line - last year, I got my stuff after a thirty-minute wait, and that felt like a gift.  I walked up to the nearest employee and said "Can I pick up my preorder?"  He said "Sure!" and grabbed the box.  I kept if pretty small this year - I got the Caestus Assault Ram (just because I've been drooling over that model since it was released a couple of years ago), a Khorne Blood Slaughterer & some chain axes to outfit a Chaos project I've got in the works (more info coming soon!)

After that, we pretty much just wandered around the con, checked out the displays, and said hi to some friends before heading off to bed.

Friday

On Friday we had out first class - "TNA: The Art of Painting Hot Chicks" with Jessica Rich.  This class was all about the proper way to shade muscle groups on minis that are sculpted mostly (or completely) nude.  Jessica is extremely qualified to teach this, as shown by her piece that took 3rd overall in the Crystal Brush this year.  Needless to say, my attempt was a bit more rudimentary:

But, I can only accomplish so much in two hours, and the class was extremely helpful in breaking down the steps in painting anatomy.

Our next class was "Hands On With Two-Brush Blending" with Matt DiPietro, a studio painter for Privateer Press.  I had previously taken a version of this class with Meg Maples, who also used to paint for Privateer Press - this is pretty much their "signature" technique.  And, like before, I wasn't really crazy about it.  I get it, and I can do it given enough practice, but I'm just not convinced that the results are worth the effort, or at least that I can't get similar results with other methods that are more natural to me.  Sorry, it just doesn't "click" with my brain for some reason.

Our last class of the day was "Blood, Guts, Puss and Gore" with Michelle Blastenbrei.  I didn't realize it when I signed up for it, but I had actually taken this class with Michelle at GenCon a few years ago - this actually made it kind of interesting, because I was able to see how Michelle had expanded and changed the methods she teaches.  Regardless, it was a lot of fun, and Michelle gave every student a whole box of goodies to play with!

After the class, a friend of ours from out of town showed up, and we all made our way down to the open hobby area in the lobby and painted for a couple of hours while meeting new people and trading techniques.

Next: Part II!