The Lead Painters' League - Season Three

[Captain Blood]

Thanks to the Prof for entrusting me with Season 3 of the LPL.

I’ll do my best to live up to his high standards of impartiality, wisdom, sense of fair play and Teutonic efficiency 

The rules are the same as seasons one and two, with the following two adjustments:

1.   Entries to any round must be received by 07.00 GMT on the Sunday before the next round opens on Monday morning. This is because I’m an IT dummy, so I’d really appreciate each Sunday to sort everything out ready for the Monday.

2.   We’re introducing a ‘pixel-limit’ – this was actually in the rules already, but I think a lot of people ignored it! Sadly, there won’t always be time to resize lots of entries in photoshop, so it would be really helpful if all competitors can resize their own images before submitting them. This means they can be uploaded straight into the competition pages without any work in photoshop. For season 3 of the LPL, the maximum image size will therefore be 800 pixels high x 800 pixels wide, which is just about right for a web page image.
Your images can be smaller than this if you like - but not bigger.

(If anyone is unsure how to resize an image, I’ll post a quick tutorial on how to do this using a common programme like Microsoft Digital Image).

Apart from that, all you have to do is paint a team with at least five figures, take a picture of it, and email it to me at lpleague3@yahoo.co.uk

All other rules remain as shown at:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=2399

Please do take the time to read or re-read this thread and make sure you are familiar with the rules...



Bonus Points

Once again, bonus points will be scored for newly-painted teams - which means previously unpublished ones.
(In other words, groups of figures which have not been shown before, either here or on other forums).

You can enter old teams if you like - but if they’ve been pictured online or in print before - no bonus points.

Please tell me when you send me your entry if it’s a ‘new’ team or an ‘old’ one.
 
Please also clearly state the name of your team / entry.



Bonus Rounds

Once again there will be super-bonus rounds in Round 1, Round 5 and Round 10.

The bonus themes will be:

Round 1 – Germans

Yes, in honour of the homeland of the LAF, paint some Germans and get 10 extra bonus points. From Teutobergerwald to Frederick the Great. The Franco-Prussian War, German East Africa, and World Wars One and Two. Not forgetting of course, weird, zombie or undead Germans. In short, there are a whole lot of Germans to choose from!

(Just to be on the safe side though, may I ask anyone thinking of entering a team from the Nazi era, to please bear in mind this forum's rules on the use of symbols prohibited under German law. See http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=7650.0)

Round 5 – Saddle up!

We don’t see too many horses around here, so bonus points in round 5 will be awarded to teams with five or more mounted figures. They don’t have to be regular cavalry – they can be tribesmen, cowboys, reivers or rough riders. Or any type of uniformed cavalry.
If you really can't bring yourself to attempt horses, then other real and fantasy animal mounts will be permitted - so wargs, camels, and so on.
And because we all know painting cavalry is quite an undertaking, there are 15 bonus points riding on this round.

Round 10 – the Lost World…

Paint a team of five or more Neanderthals, Homo Erectus, aboriginals, skraelings, tribals, pygmies, or other primitive inhabitants of a lost world and get 10 big hairy bonus points.
Paint a team of newly discovered primitives or prehistoric survivals and a team of five or more Lost World explorers and adventurers and get 20 bonus points.
Paint a team with at least five of each (primitives and adventurers) and add a large dinosaur, woolly mammoth, giant ape, or similar prehistoric leviathan, and get a monster 30 bonus points!



Registration and Deadlines

The first round of season 3 will start on Monday, April 20, 2009.
This gives everyone plenty of time to get painting! 

All participants for round 1 must have entered their picture(s) prior to that date; all pictures received after 07:00 GMT on Sunday 19 April will enter play in the second round.

Round Durations for season 3 will be:

Round 1 (League Start) April 20 – April 26 (Bonus)
Round 2 April 27 – May 3
Round 3 May 4 – May 10
Round 4 May 11 – May 17
Round 5 May 18 – May 24 * (Bonus)
Round 6 May 25 – May 31 
Round 7 June 1 – June 7
Round 8 June 8 – June 14
Round 9 June 15 – June 21
Round 10 (Season 3 Finals) June 22 – June 28 (Bonus)

*= Final registration for Season 3. New participants may enter Season 3 until the end of Round 5, the deadline being 07:00 on Sunday May 24th. Any entries from new challengers after that date will have to wait for the start of the next season.


And finally, I humbly offer one piece of advice to would-be contenders…

My experience here and in other painting competitions is that your choice of subject, how you shoot and present that subject, and the clarity of your photography, are all as important as the paint job itself.

Worth thinking about… 

Good luck, viel gluck, bonne chance and buena suerte!

Richard / Captain Blood

[Mancha]

As I've expressed before, joy that it's taking place.  Thanks for your participation.  Joy, as well, that the first round is some way off.     I wonder if I have any Germans?  This might be exactly the excuse I need to order those zepellin trupen from Pulp Figures.

[Plynkes]

800x800? I suppose it depends on your monitor settings, but pics that big don't fit on the forum pages when viewed on my PC. 600 wide is about the biggest I can get away with.

[Captain Blood]

800x800? I suppose it depends on your monitor settings, but pics that big don't fit on the forum pages when viewed on my PC. 600 wide is about the biggest I can get away with.

Hmmm. Interesting...

My pic below is 800 pixels wide x 550 pixels high.
Can a few people let me know if they can see all of it okay, or whether they get a scroll bar?
I don't think height is too much of a problem as we're all used to scrolling up and down - it's side to side that's not so good...

As you say, Plynkes, presumably monitor screen size makes a difference...

But if 800 proves too wide, we can reconsider the width limit 

[Mad Doc Morris]

Damn it, I just have some "Germans" on the painting desk. But I don't think I can hold them back until April as soon as they are finished.
Regarding the pic: I'm fine with that - both wideness and content. 

[Ray Rivers]

Bloody Excellent!

Great choice of bonus rounds as far as I'm concerned.

Though you might consider 0600 GMT on Sunday so the Yanks have all of Saturday to finish and submit their entry.  Pixel limit is also fine for me.

Anyway, whatever... Thanks Captain, for taking on a darn difficult task.

Looking forward to Season Three!

[Plynkes]

That doesn't fit on my screen, Captain. I have to go up a few resolution levels to get it to, and now all the text looks weird and I'm sure will give me a headache. 

What resolutions do other folks use? Mine is set at 1024x768, and as I said before, I need to restrict pics to about 600 pixels in width (more like 610 actually) for them to appear on the LAF without a scroll bar. Am I stuck in the Dark Ages of screen resolutions? If so then don't worry about the 800x800 thing! 

[Mancha]

Though you might consider 0600 GMT on Sunday so the Yanks have all of Saturday to finish and submit their entry.  

This is a good idea, and it probably wouldn't change the amount of time actually spent working on pictures either.  In either case, when you wake up in the morning, the pictures are waiting for you.

And I can see the image just fine.

[Plynkes]

By the way, great to see this up and running again. I can't wait for it to start.

[Westfalia Chris]

That doesn't fit on my screen, Captain. I have to go up a few resolution levels to get it to, and now all the text looks weird and I'm sure will give me a headache. 

What resolutions do other folks use? Mine is set at 1024x768, and as I said before, I need to restrict pics to about 600 pixels in width (more like 610 actually) for them to appear on the LAF without a scroll bar. Am I stuck in the Dark Ages of screen resolutions? If so then don't worry about the 800x800 thing! 

I never thought I´d be able to say this but "nya nya, my screen´s bigger than yours!" Seriously, I *think* that during the last two years or so, the "standard" screen resolution has slowly increased to 1280x800 pixels. Of course, my old desktop PC still uses 1024x768, too.

I´d support the 800 maximum, too. On the larger-resolution screens, 600s/640s get bit tiny. Or we are all just spoiled IT brats.

[Plynkes]

That would explain it. This PC has been running about five years (and the monitor is nine years old and still going strong!). I'm not one of those types who replaces their computer at the drop of a hat. I wait until it doesn't work any more, or smoke starts coming out of the back. 

[Svennn]

800 is fine for me either way but do you have the user info displayed down the left margin? may make a difference?

[vikotnik]

Captain, thank You very much for setting up this competition!

I hope I will be able to enter this time, really looking forward to it even if I would not take part in it.

I am doing everything on a laptop anyway, so I am quite used to scrollbars. Thus, pictures with the size of 800 pixels are completely OK for me.
Plus: A bigger pic offers more to see, does it not?

Look at the photo the Captain has posted. Three Horses! I do not even have one painted horse miniature!
Seriously, brilliant pic and wonderful paint jobs as usual, Captain.

[Hammers]

I can see the full image, just, on my lap top.

...

Germans, eh? Looks like I have to order a box of Deamons of Nurgle...

[Calimero]

... I'm not one of those types who replaces their computer at the drop of a hat. I wait until it doesn't work any more, or smoke starts coming out of the back. 

That’s what happened to my monitor lately. Now I have a brand new (wide) flat screen plugged to my 5 years old Pentium… which is making more and more strange noises when running... 

Anyhow the 800 pixels wide work fine for me too.