CoolMiniOrNot

So after browsing the TMP forum someday ago I was reminded about the existence of CoolMiniOrNot. The weird thing is that I had bought stuff from the CMoN shop but totally blanked out the major deal with that site - uploading and voting on painted miniatures.

I remembered that I had an old account from 2009, checked it out and it was still active so I uploaded some 40 pictures - and man - did I have problems getting things to work. I could neither get my pictures to work and show up by linking from my photobucket or by uploading them straight from my harddrive. I learned later from a moderator that there had been something wrong during the weekend and the site had not registered uploads correctly.

Nice, so I had wasted a couple of hours uploading and tagging pictures...

Tried a 3rd time and it seemed to be working now. I noted a couple of things though, that had changed since my last visit. The first being that they had divided up the votes between logged in registered users, and visitors for some reason. I honestly don't know what that is supposed to mean or why anyone think one type of votes is "better" or "worth more" than the other.

The other thing was that the scores seem to be much more restricted nowadays - I could see that in the stark contrast between my uploaded work from 2009 which had a higher score than new stuff from 2011 which imo is better painted and still got lower numbers (funnier still the difference in score between new stuff that is better painted and new stuff that I know is not fully as good is just odd - it all seems quite random). Not that I think there was a masterclass level on the things I uploaded, but I think most of the stuff at least deserved a 6.0 which is the starting score for all uploads. It would seem that in my 2 year absence the road to a score beyond 7 seems pretty hard to reach. I mean, there are pictures of fantastic paintjobs and you look at the score and they have like 7.4/10 ?! WTF?

Another thing that struck me now is how GW oriented the content on the site is. Maybe I didn't notice that fully before when I was still fresh from my break with GW gaming. Just take a look on the top artists and top 10 list of painted models. An overwhelming majority is Games Workshop stuff. I myself am bored out of my skull when I watch another GW Space Marine no matter how well painted it is. But I guess the score on models made by that manufacturer speaks for itself, at least for the people voting on the site. But it is baffling that so many talented people waste away their energy on that stuff...

Anyways, my point with this post was to tell that I updated my gallery with some recent work which has been posted here on the blog over the last year as I thought it would be nice to gather a slice of my work in one gallery for easy browsing. So you guys can check it out if you like. Not asking for pity votes or rallying support for a greater score. If you’re going to vote make give an honest and realistic score.  Keep in mind that by their standards today you have to be Michelangelo reincarnated to get beyond 7.0.

In the end I think CMoN is a way of seeing what's trendy at the moment in terms of painting style. Airbrushed miniatures, Non Metallic Metal and Wet Blending are all ranked very high. I guess exposing yourself to the CMoN community can work in some way to make yourself improve your painting, just as posting pictures of your painted work on the regular internet forums and blogs. I also added the link to my CMoN gallery under the "Links of Interest".

Here's the link to my gallery: http://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/Anatoli?browseid=5771631