Prizes

The top 3 placers for each category will each receive the Crystal Brush trophy in the appropriate color tip (gold, silver and bronze), made of cut lead crystal.

The top 3 overall winners will each receive a cash prize of $10,000, $2,000 and $1,000 respectively, making this the most valuable competition in the miniature painting world today!

Diamond Sponsors

CoolMiniOrNot is the Internet’s largest gallery of painted miniatures, with over 100,000 painted miniatures submitted from all over the world.  CoolMiniOrNot also publishes, manufactures and distributes several miniature brands under license.

For the past 30 years, the hobby games industry is a global business of non-digital published products, including table top strategy games featuring model miniatures that participants in this hobby collect and model to varying degrees. With an estimated global market of over 500 million dollars, the hobby games market is a strong product category with an obsessive following across many market segments and age brackets.

Miniature painting has been a long developing art form for participants in this hobby. Featuring a dizzying array of tools, techniques, and personalities, painters from all over the globe continue to expand the level of quality and artistry that goes into the rendering of their miniatures, from large dioramas, to the smallest toy soldiers no larger than 5mm in height. Cool Mini or Not, along with the Adepticon games convention want to make the Crystal Brush contest a global arena for the world’s best artists to compete and display their talent.

We currently have main sponsor and co-sponsor slots available, please drop an email to [email protected] for details.

One of Cool Mini or Not’s strongest game licenses and miniature lines, Dark Age: Apocalypse is a best-seller with nothing but greatness on the road ahead. To celebrate the exciting new things coming in 2013 and beyond, Dark Age is using its Diamond-level sponsorship to set up a special category award of its own – Best Dark Age Miniature.

Blue Table Painting is one of the leading professional-grade painters-for-hire service in the industry, giving a fantastic array of online tutorials, news videos and general miniature hobby resources through their own website and other internet-based outlets. For 2013’s Crystal Brush, the guys and gals out at Blue Table Painting have chosen to leap into supporting our competition with both feet – as one of the coveted Diamond-level sponsors!

Not only does this mean they will have a partner-level relationship with us at the judging tables, but they have also decided to create their own special competition category… the “Paint it Blue” Award! Details for this fantastic new element to Crystal Brush can be found in the Sponsor’s Categories section, but we look forward to seeing what the public can do… with shades of blue!

Creators of the amazing Battle Foam transport systems used worldwide for all manner of games, personalized for numerous individual game companies and systems, the guys out at Battle Foam are forerunners in this, the Golden Age of miniature gaming happening all around us. They help gamers everywhere protect their beautiful works of art as they travel from home to shop, shop to events, and back again. Last year, Battle Foam wow’d us all with their unique “Best Miniature Effects and Story Told Through Miniature” category, but this year they are stepping up the competition with a new category of their own design – the 2013 “Best Self-Sculpted and Painted Miniature!” For details, see Our Sponsor’s Contest Categories tab!

One of Cool Mini or Not’s stronger partners in the Crystal Brush family, Wyrd Games have been producing amazingly fantastic miniatures for their unique game lines, the striking Malifaux and their creepily childlike Puppet Wars. Using their Diamond-level sponsorship, the folks at Wyrd have chosen to create the second annual competition category of Best Wyrd Miniature.

Emerald Level Sponsors

Some of our greatest individual partners in the Crystal Brush process, each of our Emerald-level sponsors brings something special to the competition individual to their product lines or personal desires to award. They are the leaders of the pack, and we are so glad to have them on board!

Whether it is bits made special for conversion, chunks of terrain-enhancing parts, or individual miniatures of their own design, Secret Weapon Miniatures are good comrades to have and we a glad to have them here with us at the Crystal Brush.

With their added influence in the industry and our growing relationship, the guys out at Secret Weapon Miniatures have stepped up their sponsorship level and have even added their own special category…Best Weathering! Judged by Secret Weapon’s own Justin McCoy, this special category is going to look at models showcasing one of Secret Weapon’s finest types of products – Weathering Powders, Pigments and the like! So, “weather up” your best model and show Justin what you’ve got!

Cool Mini or Not and Soda Pop Miniatures have gone hand-in-hand for a long time now, with their beautiful anime-stylings of the Relic Knights miniatures and game system to their fantastically successful Super Dungeon Explore! boardgame…there are so many amazing things to come from these guys, being part of Crystal Brush was a no brainer!

Ruby Level Sponsors

The following sponsors, our Ruby-level friends and allies in this journey toward the Crystal Brush, may not be heading up their own categories or individual prizes, but they are nonetheless instrumental in the creation and execution of this amazing miniature industry event.

Carrying the rising resurgence of Confrontation:Phoenix Edition miniatures for us at Cool Mini or Not, Legacy Miniatures has a very bright future ahead of them; being on board at Crystal Brush is just the beginning.

Coming out of the minds and talents of some of the industry’s most well-noted names, Mike and Allison McVey, as well as their compatriots, Studio McVey’s big gaming release – Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster made Kickstarter history and is going to make one hell of a splash in the industry. Already a happy member of the Cool Mini family, Studio McVey is headed down an amazing path that we gladly will join them upon.