The adventure of organizing a miniature painting contest

Today I want to talk to you briefly about the experience of organizing a miniature painting contest of relevance.

As you know, Madrid hosted this weekend the wargaming and boardgaming event called Freak Wars. I already told you when we announced Fallen Angel on the website how this initiative of becoming part of the organization came to be.

The experience has been both terrifying and rewarding, no doubt. But it has also been fun, instructive and satisfactory. When the contest ended on Sunday we had a feeling of relief because everything went well. Of course, lots of errors and things to improve, but nothing really catastrophic happened. And I say this without considering the incredible heat we had to endure in the venue, something that was not in our hands unfortunately. In general, it has been a great weekend, with a lot of work involved and also some very good moments.

The lesson learned is one that I already knew when I decided to enter the task of organizing an event like this. There has to be a lot of organization, a great deal of it. Good project management is essential, with proper planning, scheduling and preliminary preparation, and all of this with time, a great deal of it. In this occasion, and as I feared, we had little of it all. But we had a lot of motivation and passion. I was reluctant to the initiative, precisely because of the lack of sufficient time to prepare. But the opportunity came like that, without expecting it. We decided it was better to make it happen this year, do our best, and gain muscle, learn and experiment first hand what is needed to organize a proper contest. Everything went well and I regret nothing. As we planned, we learned a lot. We already have a list of lessons learned that is far longer than the number or miniatures participating this year.

What does this mean? Fallen Angel is already a reality, and starting now we are already working to prepare the next edition. With a whole year ahead, with the experience of this project beginning, and with a lot of motivated people behind, I am sure that the next time everything will be perfect (or pretty close at least).

We want to hear what you have to say, we want to know what you thought about this first edition. We want to be able to perform all the changes that are necessary so that next time everything is up to your expectations. For this, I have prepared a survey you can fill up if you have something to say, and it is completely anonymous. Here is the link (survey in Spanish).

We will need your help for the next edition for sure. When the plan progresses, and we clarify the tasks that we will have to undertake, we will keep you informed so that everyone who wants to collaborate can do so. We want this new event to be a celebration of how much we like art and the miniature world and make you feel this event as yours as much as ours. So please share this as much as you can and let everyone interested know about it. We are going to be more, and we are going to be better.

On to the next!

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts to everyone of you that made this edition possible: the organization of the Freak Wars, companies and brands that collaborated; Acrílicos Vallejo, Corvus Belli, AMMO by MIG Jimenez, Hera Models, Scale75, BigChild Creatives, FeR Miniatures, Midnight Miniatures, Draconia/Ares Mythologic, Aradia Miniatures, Beyond Miniatures, Fantastic Miniatures, Quimera, Bandua, MOM Miniaturas, Pinceles Feldherr; for the demos on Sunday, Alfonso Giraldes, Diego Esteban, José Luis “Porta”; to all participants and atendess of the event, and of course, to our partners May and Bea, without them nothing could have happened!