This was a busy weekend with two model events back to back. OrangeCon which is a yearly event in early October works as a good primer for SCGMC the following month; and new this year is Robotoyfest which we attended earlier in the year to judge their gundam model competition.
At OrangeCon, Mike Wine’s Officer Down took the 1st place in the Sci-Fi diorama category, but didn’t stop there; and ended up getting Best Diorama out of the 3 diorama categories. A huge feat, since there were so many diorama entries. Dan also won 2 first place awards with this 1/72 scale BF-109 as well as his Scopedog in the Sci-Fi Gundam/Mech category. I got a 3rd place for my Yukari.
IPMS Orange County’s Orangecon is one of the biggest model competitions in Southern California. A great deal of how we run our own SCGMC competition is based off what we’ve learned from going to this contest for the past 12 years. It is a pretty wide range of model genres. This year they had to split the sci-fi vehicles category since there were so many Star Wars kits. Here is just a quick sample of some of the kits; I took over 400 pictures at the event.
Another note is that they needed to expand the sci-fi diorama table to fit all our kits. There’s a modeler from San Jose that came down and brought a Zaku Thunderbolt diorama in a city setting; and he didn’t know about out SCGMC show or our 1/144 city diorama theme. Angel pounced on him and hopefully he’ll make his way down here next month. The guy knows the folks at Tatsu hobby as well.
Click here for the full gallery for this year’s OrangeCon.
The next day was RobotoyFest. We were invited to judge their Gundam Model competition; which is a great opportunity to get word out about SCGMC and possibly sell some of our shirts to folks that may not know about our event. We started out building our kits at the table since it was a pretty slow morning with the rain and such. But people started coming in and we ended up with 4 entries. The last time we did this competition, we had about 10 entries. So hopefully some of the folks that came to this contest will make an appearance at SCGMC next month. Below are the entries.
These events are great opportunities to chat with fellow modelers and get folks interested in our own event. Orangecon also reminds us that SCGMC is only 5 weeks away. For some, 5 weeks can produce several kits; for others – it may not be enough time to do a tenth of a project. Regardless of anything, all levels of model building is welcome to SCGMC!
Hi Clem,
Great to meet up with you at OrangeCon after 5+ years! I still have the Brutish Dog kit you convinced me to buy but haven’t built yet! Still caught up with motorsport models and haven’t mastered them yet–takes a lifetime.
To make a long story short, I will try to get back to So. California for your show, but no promises. It was good to see you again–I still love the models, somehow I have to work in one of those. Would I be considered a beginner since I’ve never built one of those?
All the best–Bob