Titanium Dropship Painting Competition - 2nd Place!

I recently entered the Titanium Dropship painting competition run by the guys over at the excellent Dropship Horizon (a regular lurking zone of mine). The competition had three categories, one for a squad of miniatures, one for a vehicle and one for a piece or small collection of terrain pieces.

I placed an entry in each of the three categories, a set of scratch built colony domes, a GZG Crusty heavy weapons squad made up of the mortars and arc cannons, and a GZG Crusty light walker. Each entry was allowed three pictures, and the pictures I entered are all below.

I'm really pleased to say that the colony domes came second in their category, behind a really excellent diorama of the walker suit from District 9 in the shanty town (the same walker I entered in the vehicle category, in fact). You can see the first place, second place and third place entries at the Dropship Horizon blog, and all the other entries can be seen here.

I was particularly impressed by the conversions done to make some proxies for 15mm GW Terminators and really liked the colour schemes for the NVL troops in this entry. The ACAV combat car really impressed me with the simple but effective colour scheme and a few additions that made it look really lived in, likewise the tank from Paul at Mini Metal Mayhem. He also entered a really great set of Red Shadows that I am not totally jealous of at all.

The colony domes were plaster casts from the blister packaging  of some old Androidz toys that I picked up at the bargain bin at Toys R Us. I made four castings out of the blister packs that I had salvaged, but removing the castings wrecked the blisters, so I'm unlikely to be able to use them again. I've been making quite a few plaster casts recently, and I'm considering in investing in a few of the Hirst Arts plaster moulds to add some scifi greeblies.

I really enjoyed choosing which minis to enter for each category, and it's really prompted me to up my game for next year. Seeing the other entrants was really interesting and has given me lots of inspiration for new techniques and paint schemes to try out.

One suggestion I would make would possibly to have separate categories for professional painters and amateurs. I've no idea if this is common or not - I've never entered a painting competition before so it may be that it's common for the armature and professional painters to be competing alongside each other.