Friday - January 11, 2008
Coolminiornot.com
For a while, i've known about a neat site called Cool Mini or Not. It's a large community of miniatures from all genres and skill levels, some straight out of the box, some converted. The site operates by showing you a random image, and allowing the end user to simply click on a simple 1-10 rating. Once clicked, the image cycles to the next one. It's not entirely random, as there is a reasonably comprehensive search engine that will allow you to filter the thousands of images for quality rating, manufacturer, genre, artist, and keywords. So, if you only want to search for "Necron" miniatures of greater than 6.0 quality, you can.
I usually use this site for inspiration. I set the search filter to brutally high levels - 8.0 - and look at many of the amazing paint jobs and conversions that are posted up there. The type of work it takes to get an 8 is astounding, and if you earn an 8, you should be entering Golden Demon competitions. I'm usually blown away by the things I find there.
Not usually, however, in the "Necron" category. Wow, I've never seen less creative miniatures in my life. Most people are content - as I'm sure I've stated before - to slap a coat of Chainmail Silver on these guys and call'm done. There's very little innovation, and the few conversions that get done are usually putting Tomb Spyder legs on a Destroyer Lord's body to form a sort of scorpion-looking thing. It's never been one of my favorite conversions, and it only annoys me more that that's usually the only one you'll see.
So, I took it upon myself to hand-craft my own Necron Lords. I have ONE out of the box Necron Lord. My other two are full conversions, both fully painted. I also put them on 40mm bases instead of the 25mm base they're supposed to come on ; they are, after all, the centerpieces of my army, and 25mm is way too small to give them an appropriate pedestal to stand on.
After putting them together and painting them, my first impulse was to post them here on my blog. However, as I got my second Necron Lord painted, my thoughts drifted back to that public venue. How often had I thought, "Wow. I could do SO much better than this"? Well, in my humble opinion, I just had. So, I bit the bullet, reassured myself that this place gets rated pretty brutally, and that if I break the 7.0 mark I should consider doing this semi-professionally... and I posted some miniatures.
On the side bar of this page, you'll see in "The Others" section, links to my miniatures and their ratings currently (dynamically linked in from their site). You can click on them to see pictures, and rate them yourself.