Modelling articles wanted: May/June challenge, Winner announced! Options

[morsla]

We're looking for new articles and reviews for WargamerAU, and will. Our first challenge is a modelling-themed article contest, in the style of Luke's Nurgle Demon Prince article.

WargamerAU Article challenges

Every two months, we'll be publishing articles within a particular theme. We'd like as many articles as possible on these themes, and will be awarding a prize for the best piece. Themes for the first three challenges are:

• May/June: Modelling madness! Painting, terrain building, conversions, and tutorials. If you can build or paint it, it belongs here. Beginner's articles are just as valuable as advanced ones - the key here is to inspire people to make or paint something they haven't tried before.
• July/August: Battle Reports! You've read them in White Dwarf and No Quarter. Think you can do better? Now's your chance. Send us your epic (or Epic) tales of glory and defeat in July and August.
• September/October: Specialist and Skirmish games! This is a showcase for games living in the GW Specialist Games and Skirmish Games subforums. If you want to get some extra attention for your favourite small game, write an article helping new players to find out how it works.

Submission guidelines:

Length: For a modelling article, aim for 500-1500 words. Try to be clear and concise. For some good examples of painting and modelling tutorials, have a look at Brushthralls or Chest of Colours. Focus on either a single project or technique in your article.

Images: Good photos can make or break an article. Try to get photos of each major stage in the process, and a "finished" shot is essential. Your images should illustrate what you're talking about, and help people to use the content of your article.

Format: Please send through the text and images as separate files - don't embed your images into a Word document!. Send in your article text in .DOC, .DOCX or .RTF format, with placeholders for each image (i.e. "Image 04 goes here"). Images should be in .JPG, .PNG or .GIF format, and no larger than 500kB each - if you are taking photos with your shiny 20-megapixel camera, please re-size them before sending them in.

Article ownership: Articles will be published here under a Creative Commons 3.0 license. We also request that you don't re-publish them elsewhere until after they have appeared on this site. The creative commons license is linked below: essentially, the work can be re-posted for non-commercial purposes, but must always retain the original author's name.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Send entries to: My email address: morsla[at]yahoo.co.uk (we may set up a proper WargamerAU address later on, but please use this one until told otherwise)

Proofreaders and editors

Obviously, with an influx of new articles, we'll need some help proofreading them before they go up. This will be a minor spelling/grammar/punctuation check, and not a structural edit - if an article needs significant work to prepare it for publication, it will be sent back to the author with some feedback. If you have (or would like) experience in proofreading articles and can volunteer some time, I'd love to hear from you.

Editors will also be credited in the article, unless they ask to remain anonymous.

What's this about prizes?

Writing good articles takes time, and so we want to encourage people to produce the best stuff they can. At the end of each challenge, a panel of the WargamerAU staff will vote for their favourite article - the winning author receives a $100 voucher from Good Games, and +100 internetz.

The article challenges are open to moderators and administrators - however, they obviously won't get to vote on a challenge they have entered.

Comments and questions are welcomed - otherwise, let the best article win. Get painting!

[Wolf Guard]

Happy to do some editing!

[Jester of Death]

i have no idea what those text formats are and have no word writing programs other than notepad... how do i enter?


JoD

[morsla]

Notepad will save documents as plain text (.TXT), That's fine! The others mostly let you add text formatting (bold, italics, etc) but a lot of that will need to be re-done for the forums anyway.

[morsla]

If you're working away on your modelling articles, don't forget to send them in by the end of this month!

The first article will be online later this week. At the moment, it's the only submission... so get writing if you want a chance to win that $100 voucher

[w00f135]

Happy to do some editing!

+1 we have a wealth of awesome in the modelling diaries, it'd be great to get some more articles up there.

[J.D.Entropy]

Got one on the boil at the moment but it might not be finished till the first week of July. Any chance of being able to submit then?

[morsla]

If possible, it would be great to get it by Saturday 30th - that would put it in the running for the current contest (alongside Disco Volante's entry), which we're hoping to judge and send out prizes for ASAP (so the winning author can use their prizes on new releases, if they choose )

We'll be broadening the topic area for the next bi-monthly call for articles though, so if you submitted it after the start of July it would still be in the running for the next batch of prizes.

[J.D.Entropy]

Ok, I will push on and have it submitted on Saturday evening.

[Wolf Guard]

likewise!

[J.D.Entropy]

Emailed in at 11.30pm 30/06/

[cmdr_roy]

Winrar?

[morsla]

The panel will decide on a winner by this Wednesday (possibly sooner, if enough of them are online early in the week) - it's a tough call, as both articles are very detailed, and cover similar subject material.

JD narrowly got his article in before the deadline. At least two others were working on articles and didn't get them finished in time, so they will be considered for the next challenge instead.

For those who haven't seen the entries yet, we have two articles on weathering techniques:

Luke's Traitor Guard article, covering both infantry and vehicles: http://wargamerau.com/articles.php?id=11

And Jael's Leman Russ article, using a whole suite of historical modelling techniques: http://wargamerau.com/articles.php?id=12

If you ever needed help weathering those tanks or warjacks, you now have two comprehensive guides to help you get started

[morsla]

...and the winner is...




*drumroll*





J.D. Entropy's "Vehicle Wathering - Entropy Style" tutorial! Congratulations Jael!

The two entries were very close, but the panel of judges (all the site Administrators and Moderators) settled on Jael's entry for its depth of explanation on each stage in the process, and his use of side-by-side "before" and "after" shots of every new technique. Restricting the tutorial subject matter to a single project let him explore the subject in detail, presenting a tutorial that the judges felt could be easily followed every step along that journey.

That's not all, though - in recognition of Disco Volante's excellent tutorial (and his support for our articles in general - producing two great articles so far and getting his entry in well before the deadline) we're also organising a runner-up prize for Luke. So everybody wins something this round

If you have an article that didn't quite make it in time for the May/June challenge (I've had emails and PMs from a few of you...) then polish those articles up and send them in for the next round. For our July/August challenge, there is no theme: anything goes, with the panel awarding a prize to the best overall article at the end of August. So, reviews, tactics articles, battle reports and tutorials are all fair game next time.

If we get enough of a response, we're also considering a "year's best" award for each of the major article types, selected from all articles received before the end of December. I'd really like to get a tradition going for some nice end-of-year prizes, to help encourage more of the kind of articles we've received so far.

Jael & Luke - I'll be in touch soon about your prizes, once vanwolfgang confirms whether they'll be handled directly through Good Games HQ, or if they can be used in person at a Good Games store.