I was not able to attend last year’s Scale Model Challenge, but the 2017 edition was marked in my calendar well up front. Since I’m still knee-deep in several tabletop quality painting projects I did not participate in the painting competition. But a show like SMC is very exciting even without the thrill of competing.
The two major factors to add to this excitement are probable the show’s size: over 6.500 square meters, more than 3000 visitors, 120 traders, 50 clubs and the overall quality (and also size with 2000 entries) of its painting competition. The entire show spans two days, but I only visited on Sunday, arriving around 11h. I went straight to the painting competition area to start taking pictures, assuming it would be calmer in the morning instead of in the afternoon. Afterwards it seemed the afternoon was calmer, but anyway I managed to get good pictures of most of it. I had plenty of time so I just went with the flow of the crowd. What I didn’t like was a guy from the organization shouting at me to remove my shoulder bag (which I took with me because I know backpacks are prohibited in the contest area), instead of politely asking. Overall the crowd was very respectful towards the pieces on display so this kind of behaviour is not necessary in my opinion. Anyway my photo tour took me about 1.5 hour. You can see the results in one of the image galleries linked below or some highlights further in this post.
After lunch I decided to see the rest of the show and having a chat with my painting friends & acquaintance, some of which I did not see since my previous visit to SMC, two years earlier. Only then did I began to grasp how immensly the event has grown. I forgot to mention that the painting competition is now hosted in a separate hall, but the other areas have spilled into neighbouring rooms and halls as well. More or less the same traders were present in the dedicated hall, but the main room had a mix of clubs, traders and exposition, which really resulted in a nice buys atmosphere with lots of variation. On the far side of this hall there were more tables for clubs lined up, maybe this was a bit too far away from the main action because it was quieter there.
Some of the eye-catchers (for me at least) include Kimera Models, Figone, Scenery Workshop and Michael Kontraros. It was also nice to meet Tim again, the guy behind Orobourous Miniatures, I think I last saw him 10 years ago 🙂
So the afternoon was mainly taken up by a lot of nice conversations. I went to the contest area again to have another again. Somebody told me “everytime you go there you see something new”, this is definitely true! Around 16h the prize ceremony started. As usual it was fun, but very long, I didn’t manage to catch the end since I had to leave at 17h15.
I went home with a very satisfied feeling. Although I did not compete in the competition this time I had a great day. Did it inspire me enough to enter the competition next time? Maybe, when my current projects are finished it would be great to take part in this huge event again.
I hope to see some of you at Crisis 2017 next week, or else at Scale Model Challenge 2018!
The full image gallery can be seen on:
I also compiled this video:
A selection of pictures:
