I jumped back into building about two years ago and now after an injury and age catching up with me (18 years of playing at least 24 matches per year) I need something competetive to keep me going.
I have been happy for the most part with many of my most recent builds and was wondering when will it be time to step up and try to compete?
Any suggestions?
First of all a few question if I may be so bold.
Why do you think you need to compete?
What are your expectations from a competition?
Do you think competing will enhance your skills?
Now here is my view on competitions and some will crucify me for it. [:)]
Each competition has a certain target audience and rules/judging criteria, if you want to win you have to exceed those expectations and proove better than the other guys trying to do the same.
I have seen the same kits get ripped off in some compeititions and take gold in others.
So, if your goal is winning a competition than you need to build towards that end(rules, judges and audience).
If you simply want to see how your kits measure up you can either enter them or simply see what has been entered into any given competition.
The comparison can be don regardless if you place first or last.
HTH.
Zen’s question is very pertinent. Why do you need to compete indeed? The problem with this approach is that you’ll end up building models against what other people think is ‘cool’. In fact, you’re building for their pleasure. Not yours. And that’s where the problem lies!
I’ve been entering competitions for over 25 years and as Zen said, one model can be 1st in a particuale show that week and not even reach 3rd the next week in a show 20 miles away.
Enter your models at shows and competitions for the pleasure of having your model looked at, to show off your skills, your interests and your techniques. The awards are just an added bonus (trophies can be re-used for bases for instance!).
Although the two esteemed gentlemen above have offered some good points to think about, I believe the simplest answer is this:
Q: “…when will it be time to step up and try to compete?”
A: When you want to!
I really think it’s just that simple.
Hey, Zen_Builder, welcome to FSM!
Or should I say…welcome back? [;)]
I disagree that competition will always enhance skills or sharpen talent. if bettering yourself or your skills can only be achieved through competition, well…nuff said about that.
As for when, man, just do it whenever you want to. You’ll learn something from it I’m sure.
Enter a contest when you feel like entering. IMO, if you are asking about when is the right time, you must be thinking about a contest. Go ahead and enter, at the very worst all you will lose is the entrance fee.
When you want to is the best time but…
Personally I don’t build for contests with the rare exception of a “theme” entry. I build for me or in some cases large amounts of money can induce me to build for someone else. If I enter and win, it’s just icing on an already complete cake for me. So long as modellers in the same genre show interest and make nice noises I’m happy.
There are two basic types of competition: the IPMS 1st, 2nd, 3rd everything else loses or the AMPS type where there are classes based on your skill then gold, silver, bronze based on how many points your model accumulates against set criteria.
AMPS rewards accuracy, level of difficulty, originality and artistry, IPMS is “supposed” to be straight technique. That said IPMS has it’s collective head up and locked tight where armor goes…they tend to regard dirt and mud as ways to hide defects and they like all vehicles to have dark washes in recesses…even desert vehicles where if anything you’d have light colored dust in the recesses. Just for giggles I’ve entered models that won gold at AMPS and entered them in IPMS regional contests…the most common comments overheard were “too much dirt and mud, he’s trying to hide a defect” and “too much stowage on the vehicle, either he’s hiding something or he just slapped stuff on”…in the latter case the stowage was if anything a little on the light side based on photos of the vehicle modelled, at least it wasn’t the typical “Verlinden magnetic gear” with no visible means to keep it in place.
IPMS also tends to favor the more faddish aircraft weathering methods except on airshow birds, airliners and WWI planes. 20 years ago over done airbrushed exhaust and gun stains ruled, then it was the “sugar frosted” drybrush method, now it’s extreme panel popping washes and preshading. All those methods can look fantastic, IF and ONLY IF done with extreme subtlety…unfortunately they’re usually done by a 600 pound gorilla with poor color vision, wearing WWII German arctic mittens with a 9" paint roller…
Now that I’ve ranted, it’s your model, do it how you like but don’t expect it to be to everyone’s taste or to be competitive in every system.
I never thought I built good enough to compete. One of my club members remembered a kit I brought in to a meeting. He asked me if I was going to enter it in an upcoming show. Of course, my response was, “I don’t build good enough to compete.”
He talked me into bringing that kit, and it placed 2nd. The next show I brought several more kits and they won awards as well. While not every kit I bring wins awards, I’ve always won something from a show that I’ve entered, local and regional.
I still don’t think I build good enough to compete, but I keep bring kits.
The bottom line is that if no one brought any kits to the show, there’d be no show.
And everyone builds good enough to compete.
Although I’ve never competed in modeling shows-my graphic design work has won regional and national awards. The problem is: I’ve won for what I thought was my best work and worst work (no-I never entered anything myself). I think you’ll put yourself at the mercy of judges and not get a true measure of your craft. My feeling is-enjoy the hobby-don’t make it a contest. The ideal of showing your work sounds fun-but why does is have to be competitive?
Interesting topic. I’ll take the liberty of jumping in with two observations, the second of which may bring some interesting responses. One - if you, personally want to enter a contest, the time to do it is now. Two - in my own, personal opinion, the time to enter a contest is - never.
I’ve been building models for 49 years, and I’ve taken part in quite a few contests - local IPMS ones (dating back to the late sixties, when the IPMS was a new organization), regional events, and international ones. I’ve also served as a judge quite a few times - including the 1990 International Scale Ship Model Competition at the Mariners’ Museum, where I used to work. On the basis of that experience I’m convinced that model contests do at least as much harm as they do good.
In the first place, winning an award in a contest, by definition, merely establishes that in the opinion of the judges your model was superior to whatever other models happened to show up. The above post from Mr. Smith is a good indication of how the personal opinions of judges, frequently influenced by some odd sort of “group think,” can influence the outcome. In my own favorite field, ship modeling, there’s an influential European organization that goes even farther than Mr. Smith’s examples: it bans weathering. In my opinion that sort of behavior doesn’t encourage better modeling; it stifles individuality and creativity. At my age I have better things to do than build a model according to somebody else’s standards, just for the sake of winning a ribbon or a trophy. I don’t need somebody to tell me whether my model is better than somebody else’s; I’m perfectly capable of figuring that out for myself. And if I think Model A is better than Model B, and somebody else thinks the opposite is the case - well, does that really make any difference?
Secondly, model contests have a way of bringing out the worst in people. Some of the most ludicrous exhibitions of infantile, bratty behavior I’ve ever seen have been put on by alleged adults who didn’t like the outcomes of model contests. (On more than one occasion I’ve been guilty of saying some stupid, regretable things myself at contests. That’s another reason I don’t enter them any more.) I’ve known people to drop out of model clubs because of contest results, and though I’ve never actually seen a pair of modelers lay into each other with their fists, I’ve heard that it’s happened. One of the losers in that 1990 Mariners’ Museum competition spent several months afterward bombarding the organizers with sour-grapes letters, eventually threatening to report the judges to the authorities. (His balloon got popped when he discovered that there are no such authorities.)
Some years ago Mystic Seaport Maritime Museum staged a “juried exhibition” that I liked. The modelers brought their models to the museum, and the judges identified all the ones that came up to a certain (pretty high) standard. All those models were put on public exhibition at the museum for several months. None of them was labeled “best” or “second best”; all of them were simply identified as excellent models. In my opinion that’s as competitive as modeling needs to be.
I greatly enjoy looking at, talking about, and learning from other people’s models, but there are ways to do that without holding contests. I’m a big believer in non-competitive exhibitions. The club I currently belong to, the Carolina Maritime Modelers’ Society (meetings at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort the last Saturday of every month at 2:00; new members and visitors always welcome) holds such an event every May, in conjunction with the museum’s annual Wooden Boat Show. The club members bring in their models (the subjects of which range from RC sailboats to clipper ships to Japanese battleships) and display them in the museum auditorium. Before the show starts we set the models up in front of a plain background under photographic lights and I take pictures of them; I make the set of photos into CDs and pass them out at the next meeting. On the day of the Wooden Boat Show thousands of visitors look at the models and talk to the modelers. We operate a booth in which kids are invited, for $2.00 apiece, to build models of fishing trawlers from pre-shaped wood parts made in the museum’s boat shop. (Most enthusiastic customers: Girl Scout troops. Average construction time: 15 minutes. Typical reaction to the experience: ecstasy.) Everybody has a great time, everybody learns something, and nobody argues with anybody about anything. I’ve been in that club for about ten years, during which I’ve never heard an uncivil word spoken by anybody. Maybe that’s at least partly because we don’t have contests.
All the above is, of course, highly personal opinion. I know lots of folks get a great deal of enjoyment out of model competitions, and that’s entirely their business and their choice. But give me a non-competitive exhibition any day of the week.
Reminds of the time one guy…for the third year in a row…threw a fit during the awards at a local show. Seems “Mr. Car Guy” kept losing out and he’d throw a screaming hissy fit every year in the middle of the awards about “set up”, “bribes”, “local club bias”, “they know whose models are whose and give awards to their buddies”…so I walked over mid-fit and presented the 5 plaques I had won that day saying, “Since it means sooo much to you pick one and shut the hell up!” He turned beet red, shut up, threw his models in a box and stalked out, he hasn’t been seen since. I didn’t tell him I’d been one of the car judges and had absolutely no clue who built what. It being IPMS I simply judged on what seemed built and finished best, I know squat about car models but I can look at one and see how well it’s built.
Hey Ron-sounds the people on this site who argue about post counts-which I’ve offered to sell. Oh-oh-probably caused a snit with this post! 
You want some of mine?
I’ll let you have a couple grand…cheap! [;)]
I want to pick which counts I want.
Joe
In team sports, you can always say I did my best. Someone else caused us to loose. In a model contest, it will be only you. You say you are competitive. If you loose a contest, will it ruin modeling for you? If you win, will you be unbearable?
Brian-I apologise for my poor grammar-but your are the POST GOD!
Do it for your spelling as well!! BURNED~ LOL. Just kidding dude.
Anyways this post is making me thinking twice before trying to enter that AMPS DevilCon in NJ this upcoming November. I don’t see any point now why I am rushing out a T55 and my first diorama with a kubelwagon just so I can enter them… Heck I think I am gonna take my sweet time on them and make them look awesome, and then share them with this community where no one bad-mouths anyone else. [rolls eyes] [:-^]
Ron - that’s the funniest damn thing I’ve ever heard of. Congratulations to you for coming up with a completely civil way to disarm an idiot.
For me - I go to the competitions because I like to hang out with folks who build models and I like to look at other people’s work. My schedule doesn’t allow me to commit to club meetings at a specific date and time, so when i find myself with a free weekend, I grab something off my shelf that won’t make the judges vomit, pay my five bucks and spend the day making new friends.
It’s the same reason I “play” golf. I don’t do it because I’m any good. I do it because, for some reason, if you schlep thirteen clubs on your back and periodically smack the crap out of defenseless plastic ball, you’re allowed to spend half the day walking around a beautiful park on a sunny day and drink a cold beer without having answer a phone or read an email and people don’t consider you “a lazy bum”.
The “competition” is just an excuse for me to get out of the house and meet old friends and make new ones.
I say show them when you feel ready.
I think IPMS has a list of absolute no-nos (things like visible seam lines) you can look at on their site but other than that remember that the judges opinion is just that and may be based on wrong/inaccurate/incopmplete knowledge of the particular subject (Unless the subject is a Panther and he worked at MAN in 1944).
BTW: I’ll sell posts too. 
As for IPMS rules, they try to focus on the basics (seam lines, proper alligment, smooth painting etc.) to make copmetitions more objective.
They also judge to model on it’s own merits, not in comparison to other models.
These two rules should raise the objectivity of the judging.
As for entering models, try it, it’s fun even if you don’t win. As a matter of fact, I don’t know if it is fun if you do win, because I never won anything at a modelling contest except in the tombola. [:D]