It is an Emperor's Children aspiring champion that I've yet to post about here. It is pretty representative of my work. It's my typical black, gold and silver. It's my first shot at pink and the green on the sword in kind of phoned in. It's about average quality for me. It's an interesting conversion what with me mixing parts from 3 kits, but only an average paint job (for me).
Currently it has a rating of 5.7 which I think is a little low. Their rating system says that a 5 is "tabletop quality." Maybe there are a lot of people out there that over rate their skills and call what is a mediocre paint job "table top" quality. It's a term that gets tossed around a lot along with "Pro-painted." Those have become red flags for crappy paint jobs in my book.
I feel that it is worth a solid 6. I feel that I paint to a higher than table top quality. Every color on there is shaded and highlighted at least once. It wasn't dipped or hastily painted. Ok, so the basing leaves a little to be desired (just paint, sand then grass) but it is an intentional laziness.
I try not to take this as a slight on my painting skills. Anyone that sees my minis in person can't shut up about them. I'm surely an above average painter (and don't call you Shirley). I feel more that it is a function of my neophyte photographing skills. The model look more orange than it is, there is detail missing, it is grainy, it is cropped poorly, etc.
In looking at other people's pictures, I'm noticing that the less you show, the better you get rated. There are some crappy paint jobs where the pictures are not cropped and the model is a tiny speck in the background. These, I feel, get rated better than they are. Also pictures that are of a group tend to get rated higher.
I'm going to work on the photography skills and use this model (and hopefully others) as test subjects. My plan is to use the same model and try to get better photographs and thus higher rating. In my next photo, I'll try to get colors that better reflect my paint job, change the cropping and make the picture a little less awkward to view. I'll see what that does to the rating. After that, I'll see what mixing the champion with the rest of his squad does.
EDIT: After some thought, I think I am mostly OK with the 5.7 rating. I think I did a damn good job on the mini but that is a damn good job only compared to the local kids and most of the pics out there. Next to some of the work on CMON, it is mediocre but not as bad as it looks in that picture. I think it'll jump up to a 6.5 or more if I can get some better pics.
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