The first leg of this year’s Golden Demon painting competition just took place at AdeptiCon – and hundreds of hobbyists submitted their masterworks, vying to win the coveted Slayer Sword.
You can find pictures of all the winners here on Warhammer Community, but what’s it like to actually lift one of the trophies?
It turns out that one of our very own painters once lifted a trophy himself. You’ll have seen Ollie on our painting tutorial videos, and we caught up with him to reminisce about his Golden Demon experience in the far-off, misty days of 2017.
Warhammer Community: What drove you to enter Golden Demon?
Ollie: I was 15 at the time, so I fell into the Youngbloods category. I had stumbled upon the Warhammer World Open Day in 2017 while browsing online for events, which hosted the UK leg of Golden Demon, and seeing as I was already challenging myself to convert an Ork-looted Redemptor Dreadnought at the time, the two just went hand in hand. It felt like a no-brainer to use Golden Demon as a deadline, beyond anything else!
WarCom: What was your experience like at the event itself?
Ollie: The Open Day was amazing! At the time, I had only attended a couple of gaming events at Warhammer World so I was nervous going into it, but both the staff and all the attendees were lovely! Everyone was sharing their excitement, painting ideas, and overall were just having a blast.
Painting can often be perceived as quite an isolated part of our hobby, but this event showed me that it’s actually one of the most social elements of Warhammer. Everyone comes together at events like this to talk about each other's models and have fun, so it was awesome to experience that in my early days as part of the Warhammer community.
WarCom: If you were to enter Golden Demon today, what would you paint?
Ollie: It's been on my mind for a while. I've spoken to the other presenters about it quite recently and I'm not sure when I'll enter the Open category – the only one Games Workshop employees can enter – but eventually I definitely will.
My Youngbloods entry was quite a large and heavily converted model. So if I enter Golden Demon again, I want to enter something super small like a Necron Plasmacyte and really push myself to paint it as best I can! So yes, I do have plans, but I'm not sure when I'll put them into action. Keep an eye out for Necron Plasmacytes, I guess…
WarCom: What is your advice for painters looking to enter Golden Demon for the first time?
Ollie: Something I see lots of painters do – even the great ones – is get bogged down comparing themselves to their competition. They look at all the truly phenomenal entries and winners of previous years and think "I'll never beat that". The best advice I can give is to only compete against yourself. Enter something you're really proud of and go in with a mindset to learn and improve, as Golden Demon events are a fantastic place to talk to your fellow painters and pick up all kinds of tips and tricks. Rather than thinking of it as a pure competition, if you always enter something you've worked really hard on and are happy with, you'll constantly improve and will have a great time doing it!
Cheers Ollie! We’ll have plenty to come from Golden Demon, including an interview with last weekend’s Slayer Sword winner.