Round Five: Farewell to Abstracity

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Five times now the readers of TMP have voted. This round, Minidragon was eliminated. One of the privileges of being "voted out" is the chance to make an exit speech. I also invited him to share more pictures of his work, and to predict who the contest winner will be.

Here is Minidragon 's farewell:

Alrighty, exit speech time!

I'm sure you are all tired of hearing it, but I'd like to first thank i-Kore/Urban Mammoth for being willing to sponsor the contest in the first place, and then continuing that support through their time of upheaval. Of course, Bill deserves some appreciation for the work he's put into this whole thing as well...pat him on the back for me when you see him, please!

I've gotten some nifty ideas from the other entrants over the course of my run in this promo, and I thank them all for being willing to share their thoughts and ideas. It's always nice to hear from others in the community about what they are thinking, where those ideas came from, and how they intend to implement them. Inspiring stuff! I tip my hat to each of you.

I've learned even more from those voters bold enough, or bored enough, to explain why/how they vote the way they do. I've filed all these little tidbits away in my secret file of "things people like to see in miniatures" and I thank each of you for those contributions!

On my last entry I debated going with a very bright, very busy color scheme (something not so far from what Rob did actually), but in the end I decided against it because that's not really my style. I also debated (only momentarily, though) following the fluff...I threw that out pretty quick though as I didn't like it at all. Finally, I made a conscious choice not to include much of anything in my writeup about the (horribly awful, IMO) rider figure since I felt

1. people would be more interested in the way the mount was painted, and
2. the mount was the focus of the piece

All of those things seem to have hurt me, though given the choice, I'd do it all again the same way ;)

So, lesson to the remaining painters:

Make it loud, follow the fluff, and be excruciatingly exhaustive in your write-up (even if you think people couldn't care less)!!!

Ok. Now I have to predict who's gonna win. I'm fairly well convinced that Dread Pirate Garness will take the prize because people like an underdog (let's face it...Rob Jedi is pretty well known and has a horde of Golden Demons), and like it that Garness has shown a big improvement (IMO, anyway) in painting skill.

If it rested purely on painting skill, I'd pick Rob with no hesitation...in my mind he's clearly the better painter (better than me, for sure - Garness has a great eye for detail and accentuation, but Rob's got a leg up on technique), but I don't think that's how it works... I think Garness will get the prize.

Cheers!