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I was really looking forward to write this post, yet so many things have been going on that I never managed to give it the attention and time it deserved. But now here it is, finally meeting you again and casting some more light on what we have been doing for the last months and what the whole thing with Mixed Dimensions is all about.

New team-up: Mixed Dimensions

As some of you may already know, we got involved in a new and exciting project, in which technology meets art and our hobby. We were unable to tell much about it for some time, but now I can tell a bit more about the whole thing.

The partner we’ve teamed-up with is Mixed Dimensions, a company that combines 3d-printing technologies with painting and traditional modeling in order to create various kinds of collectibles. So while they provided the technological part, we brought the painting and modeling. 🙂

Where did it take us? Oh, first of all we got to work with models in totally new sizes, like 7″ or even 12″ scale. Pretty impressive, I must say, even if they hardly compare to what we usually do.

It’s big, it’s heavy, and you surely don’t have enough space free in your collection. 😉

We’ve taken some of these models to some miniature painting and modeling events, and we still may carry them with us to show you, fellow hobbyists, painters and collectors, that figures can be more than just miniatures! 🙂

9″ pin-up model prepared for Mixed Dimensions the Collection

12″ Blood Demon from Mixed Dimensions the Collection

Our involvement with Mixed Dimensions allowed us to collaborate with as interesting partners and projects as DAZ 3D, Ubisoft or Cryptic Studios, and there’s still more interesting stuff to come, more that we finally may be sharing.

Painting a Star Trek Online model for a Mixed Dimensions customer.

Painting Bella, a model for Mixed Dimensions

If you were following Kacpero’s or Ana’s instagram profiles, you may have noticed some works we’ve prepared in the meantime, but we may be finally revealing them here as well. Well, let’s see before we promise something we cannot fulfill…

Changes, changes, changes…

With the basic work with preparing the team for the new projects, training new artists and preparing for all the new subjects already mostly done, we could finally return to the community and take a look at the website.

We visited a few events and exhibitions, met some old friends and were happy to see that we still enjoyed that part of the miniatures hobby. We decided we will return to visiting and participating in various events, so let’s meet at some events! Don’t hesitate to come and say hi if we meet, the fun is so much better when shared!

We decided to close the forum, as announced in July. As sad as it was, we had to admit we wouldn’t have enough time to make it active enough to justify the amount of work required to keep it updated and maintained. So we re-activated this Chest of Colors facebook group for all of you, who still want to be a part of the community and chat with your fellow hobbyists the way we used to do in the forums. Yes, silly chatter is totally allowed there, as long as it is not (too) offensive for others. 😉

We still need to take proper care about our Facebook fanpage and our other profiles, but there’s only so much one can do, and we have more interesting things to do first.

Cool things to come!

Now that we could finaly reveal the cooperation, we may officially do some cool things together, which is good, because our time for projects which are exclusively Chest of Colors related is more limited now that we need to take care of both them and those which are related to Mixed Dimensions.

One small thing I can spill some beans about is that we may have a contest soon. We are still working on the formula, subject and rules, but one thing is sure – the prizes will be nothing short of cool. 🙂

So who can howl louder? Do you recognize the vampire? And the werewolf?

We will also be posting some more information about various interesting projects we have been working on in the “lost months”. And believe me, there’s much to talk about!

Painting service? Why not!

Having sorted out more urgent matters, which have been keeping us busy, allows us to offer our painting service some more attention again.

We have been noticing an increasing number of inquiries about availability for commissions and special projects, so we would like to make sure they can be answered and taken care of. We should be posting some pictures of our recent paintjobds soon, so please stay tuned.

Commission, result of collaboration with Mixed Dimensions and Daz 3D

I will also make a separate post about all the new options that we’ve prepared with our painting service in mind, but for now it’s just great to share that now we have access to a larger and more versatile team, that can handle really diverse projects – from miniatures to dioramas, from single high-quality models to huge armies, from 3d printing and modeling to painting. But please give us some time to tell you more. 🙂

You all probably know these guys, don’t you?

So, as you can see, we’re not gone, and happy to be finally allowed to show what we’ve been doing for the past months. Keep your fingers crossed for us and wish us luck, as there’s so much great stuff to come! 🙂

Updates

Time to say goodbye

July 15, 2019 mahon Leave a comment

It is not easy to say what I have to say, but the time has come to make the decision. We decided to close the forum.

Closing the chapter

It has been an important part of the website for so many years. I mean since early 2005, which means in 2020 it could be celebrating its 15th anniversary. It had its better times and worse times, it’s ups and downs, but in its glory time it was a thriving hobby community and a common ground for Polish hobbyists, who could learn, exchange experiences and comments, and just enjoy their hobby together there.

2006, the first meeting of our community members

Why?

Then the time of Facebook came, Facebook groups took place of many internet communities, and despite being less informative they were much more accessible. Popularity of internet forums faded and we knew it but still didn’t want to close the forum. We decided to keep it going as long as there were people interested in using it.

Unfortunately time we could offer to the forum was shrinking, more and more people moved to their serious adult lives, having less and less time for socializing online. Having less and less hobby time, many had to choose between spending it online or actually painting or converting miniatures…

We discussed the future of the forum and we knew one day we would have to say goodbye to it. It would be when the effort to keep it alive, to clean it from spam and to oversee it will be more than the return we were getting – no matter if it’s positive feedback, rewarding hobby time, or just plain participation in the community. With little life going on there and much maintenance required to keep it spam free and enjoyable to use, we thought it was the time to pull the plug.

How?

I thought it’s no use taking it offline, it would serve no purpose. The whole collection of information, feedback, advice or guidance would be lost. Instead we decided to keep it online. Inactive but still online, so anyone interested could take a trip into the past of the hobby, into the past of one of the very active miniature painting communities of the early 21st century.

All the good things about the community we used to have here were a result of a common effort of the people who participated in discussions and events there. For some it was almost like a second home. They considered the place theirs. Some of them did it even without being members of our team, some joined us. Some came, others left. The community lived on.

Thank you all, and you too!

After so many years it’s difficult to name all the great discussions and events that took place there, but definitely there are some people who deserve to be thanked for everything they did in our forum. They breathed life into it, they made it what it was. So taking advantage of the opportunity I have now, let me thank at least these people, who will always be a part of our forum community for me: Nameless, Demi_morgana, Skrit, Slawol, ToMaZ, sea.man, Hellspawn, Maru, Ana, arctica, NAVARRO, Corvus, Pandadosmares, kacpero, IRKUCK, Marta, Trovarion, Gildor, LadyEyes, Szary, Illusionrip, przemosz., quidamcorvus, przemo, Galharen, endrem, dead, Flameon, Rentall, szczurek_, Le6n, Cyberpaddy66, MiSiU and JerzyK.
Thank you for being with us and building the community together!
I will always be grateful for the time we spent discussing the hobby we shared!

Me and Nameless in 2016. Two ~~spammers~~ frequenters of the forum. 😉

As it was already said, the forum will stay where it was, it will just be inactive. Let it be a museum, a library, a sentimental trip to the hobby as it was when we had time to spend hours discussing it.

UPDATE: As some people contacted us and asked about a replacement for the forum, we re-activated our Facebook group, so if anybody wants to join and discuss, feel welcome there. 🙂

We aren’t leaving!

We’re not quitting the hobby. One does not simply give up miniatures. 😉

So, well, see you elsewhere…

See you in different parts of the internet. See you at various hobby events. See you at exhibitions. See you at figure painting competitions.
See you on our website, see you on our facebook page! Stay in touch, just because the hobby is much better when enjoyed together! 🙂

Updates

Tale of Gamers – Pirate Orks by Arctica

February 8, 2013 Sea.Man Leave a comment

Now don’t you think that Chest of Colors is only a painters community! We game and we love pictures of painted units doing their best on table tops. Here at our forum we’ve got a special section called Tale of Gamers, and our friend Arctica posted his Pirate Orks there for us all to see.

Tale of Gamers – what is it about?

In this part of forum any member (if brave enough 😉 ) can start his own tale. Every thread is devoted to one miniature project. There are no deadlines, no gaming system restrictions and everyone sets his own point goal. As an example it can be:

2250 points Ultramarines army for Warhammer 40000
200 points Lost war band for Hell Dorado
45 points Khador battle group for Warmachine
any Malifaux or Freebooter’s Fate skirmish band
Space Hulk, Dreadfleet or maybe Super Dungeon Explore… own point goal

And yeah – you can start as many tales as you wish 🙂 The point of a Tale of Gamers is to motivate each other to paint and finish collections of models.

To show you an example of such a Tale, let’s take a look at Arctica‘s Pirate orks, and read what he said about this project:

Pirate Orks by Arctica

So I first came up with the idea of ork pirates when my friends started playing Necromunda, they wanted me to get involved and join in. So I looked through the current range of models and actually I was not really a fan of any of the gangs so I decided to make a customized gang.

Since I’ve always liked orks but knew there were too many for me to do a sensible force this seemed a good opportunity and the release of the conversion bits for ork pirate heads seemed liked a good time to try this project.

Tale of Gamers - Pirate Orks by Arctica (2) — Pirate orks assembled

Plans and preparations

I put the models together and primed them and decided to go for a slightly different approach to the models to break up my usual state of painting. So going for a white primer rather than a black one was to challenge myself and see why other painters took this route.

After painting the first miniature I found it super fun and I was really excited to actually move onto the next model. The encouragement of the painting community here on Chest of Colors miniature painting forum and my own eagerness pushed me through the whole gang very very quickly. My original intention was to use the ork gang to break up any monotonous army painting but I quickly found that the orks were much more interesting than anything else and so I focused everything on them.

In many ways I would say that having 1-2 projects on the go is a good thing but I think for those exceptional projects you never need more than that one. And I kept posting my work up and getting group shots of the whole lot being completed one at a time made me really feel good about a project so I kept rolling with all that drive and motivation and pushed the project to completion very rapidly.

I always have plans for many things, but for now I have plenty of Warmachine models I want to finish so that I can compete at tournaments etc. I have another gang idea floating about but I need to work a few things out first.

If you would like to see Arctica’s tale or even comment it, here is the link to it.

Watch the progress

The most interesting part in having a tale is to watch the progress of an growing army. Here is an example how Arctica did it.

End of the Tale

Enjoy the photos of each member of pirate crew.

Tale of Gamers - Pirate Orks by Arctica (8) — Pirate orks warband ready for gaming!

Join us – start your own tale!

Did you know that painted miniatures do on table top battlefields much better? And for sure they look better on the shelf. 🙂

So are you a gamer? Does the possibility to play with painted miniatures motivates you to paint? Join other painters that try to turn metal piles of lead soldiers into battle ready killing machines. We help, comment and discuss about our armies and the most important we motivate each other.

Remember, there are no rules or strict schedules here. This forum section is always open for anyone who wants to challenge himself with any army/war band/ battle group. It is just simple fun helping to win one big prize – your own fully painted army.

And finally: what do you think about this kind of projects? Are they interesting to you? Are they motivating and encouraging? Why don’t you leave a comment to tell us if you want to read about our other tales and share your other suggestions with us. Thank you!

— sea.man

Events

6th Chest of Colors Miniature Exchange is here

December 24, 2012 CofC Admin 2 Comments

As you surely remember, Miniature Exchanges became our community’s tradition. We can enjoy them thanks to the coordinator of Chest of Colors Miniature Exchanges, Nameless, who prepared something for our faithful readers again!

He says that you know something was well done when people come back for more. As his PM box got full of requests for another Mini Exchange, he knew it was the time to keep the promises he had made. 🙂

Yes, we have yet another Miniature Exchange. We invited our users to take part in the 6th Chest of Colors Mini Exchange. If you received an invitation from us, this means you meet this edition’s requirements. And if you didn’t, well, nothing is lost. There can always be another chance, so read the rules, check this editions requirements and you will be prepared for the kind of conditions you will have to meet to qualify for our future Chest of Colors Miniature Exchanges.

So let’s move on to the rules…

Rules of the 6th Chest of Colors Mini Exchange

If you want to participate, send the following data to Nameless’ e-mail address (PMs, e-mails sent to other addresses, phones etc. won’t be accepted – Nameless doesn’t care if he has your address already; send the above data as requested and Nameless will reply to confirm receipt of your application) by the 23rd of December:
- Chest of Colors nick
- first and last name
- post address
You need to meet at least one of the following requirements at the announcement date if you want to participate (We have the database, so you don’t need to check this information by yourself ;)):
- membership in the Chest of Colors group or the Chest of Colors Painting Studio
- at least 30 posts since the 5th Miniature Exchange
- at least 25 “thanks” received since the 5th Miniature Exchange
Nameless will randomly choose a recipient for each of the participants by the 30th of December. You will only receive an e-mail including data concerning your recipient. This means that you will know who you are painting for (of course), but you will not know who is painting for you.
You have ca. 2 months to paint a single 25-35mm mini on foot. Mini needs to be sent on the 4th of March 2013 (Monday) at latest. Please send me an e-mail to the aforementioned address to confirm shipping and receipt of a mini. Avoid delays if possible. We all know that life can get in your way and shit happens all the time. That’s why we are giving you 2 months for painting. It’s more than enough. If you have some true problems to finish your mini, please let me know in due time. Do not run away from us, we’ll find a way to resolve such situation. Please, take your time now and think about your commitments for next few months. Are you sure you can paint a mini in 2 months?
It’s up to you what mini you choose for your recipient. Nobody expects you to paint to a contest-winner standard, but a bit of effort is of course welcome. It’s about having fun, surprise and sending gifts to fellow painters and members of Chest of Colors.
We like the element of surprise in our Mini Exchanges. Do not let your recipient know that you are painting for him/her and/or what you are painting for him/her.
Take a photo of a mini you painted. We’ll have a special thread opened for posting ME pics. Do not comment on minis there, it will only serve for showcase purposes. You are of course allowed to post pics in your own thread to have some discussion about your paintjob.
Minis need to be shipped as registered letters/packages. Please leave your receipt for future reference.

Want to participate?

Now the 6th Chest of Colors Miniature Exchange became a fact. The deadline for sending your applications has passed and if you want to participate in a Miniature Exchange here, stay tuned for the announcement (it’s best to follow our miniature painting forum for this purpose) and prepare to meet the conditions of participation. And in the meantime why don’t you check the galleries of our previous Miniature Exchanges.

If you have any questions or doubts, feel free to ask them in comments or in the forum.

Thank you for your time. Good luck and all the best for the holiday season!

Events, Miniature of the Month

Miniature of the month: December 2011

January 22, 2012 Sea.Man 11 Comments

Blame it on our sea.man a.k.a. czlowiek.morze! It was his idea to start this whole Miniature of the Month event and to make it a monthly regular attraction for our miniature painting community. But it would be unfair to pretend we don’t enjoy it…

Now we’re stepping out and inviting you to join the fun!
But let me explain to you what the whole thing is all about…

How it all started

It was in August 2011 that czlowiek.morze proposed a nice pastime for our miniature painting forum members: He would collect all the new paintjobs presented on the forum by its members during the previous month, and we would vote for one of them.

We collect all the new paintjobs presented on the forum by its members during the previous month and vote for the favorite one.

Initially we played with the idea of choosing our favorite miniature of all, including the ones we found elsewhere, like on CoolMiniOrNot or other internet galleries or forums, but eventually we decided to limit it to the works created and posted by our forum members. Also it was them who was allowed to vote for their favorite. Of course comments would be encouraged, because they would explain why one chose a particular miniature.

The first edition featured miniatures posted in July, and then we kept voting for the next few months. We were very curious how different results would be achieved if voting was open to public. We knew they would be different, and so we wanted to see the difference. This is how we reached the point where we are now:

After tinkering with technical issues, we’re ready for the first public voting for the Miniature of the Month here! Why don’t you join the fun and post your vote and comment? 🙂

Miniature of the Month – rules

As you can see, the rules are very few:

You can only vote for one miniature. Choose the one which deserves to be the miniature of the month in your opinion. You can choose one of the miniatures collected by the coordinator, sea.man. He collects the miniatures posted by the members of our miniature painting community on our forum and creates a list of candidates to the title. In case there is more than one work from the same person, sea.man chooses one of them, but if the author prefers to enter a different one – it suffices to contact sea.man (czlowiek.morze) on our forum and he will make the adjustment.

We don’t say the voting is for “the best painted miniature of the month” because it doesn’t have to be the best painted one. It just has to be the one that in your opinion deserves the title the most of them all.

Bear in mind we don’t say the voting is for “the best painted miniature of the month” because it doesn’t have to be the best painted one. It just has to be the one that in your opinion deserves the title the most of them all. Maybe because it’s the best paintjob, maybe because the overall effect is so impressive despite some technical shortcomings, maybe because the author did something revolutionary for him, or maybe because the painter made the largest progress of them all during that month.

It’s really up to you, as long as you believe your voting is fair and can explain it. That is why commenting is an important part of the whole fun. Those words of explanation are not only showing the reasons for which you chose that particular model, but often also are a great encouragement and motivation to the author of the model of your choice. So please be so kind to write those few words and explain your choice. It’s not required but always appreciated!

When the voting is over, the winner is announced and receives an award: a honorary badge (or a medal to be more precise) displayed in their profile on our forum. Even if it’s not much, it allows others to see that the person won such a poll already. And well, it’s shiny 😀

UPDATE: Starting with miniature of February 2012 the rules have been changed. Please check the information about the changes to know what changed.

Wanna join?

If you would like to participate to the fullest, why don’t you post your works on our miniature painting forum? The whole event is coordinated by sea.man (czlowiek.morze), who will surely notice your works and submit them to the poll for that month. And before your works can be voted for, you can take a look at the miniatures posted to our forum in December.

There were 25 painters who posted new works to the Chest of Colors forum. Here you can see the painted miniatures they posted in December 2011:

If you are a member of our miniature painting community and visit our forum, you may be familiar with most of these painters. You surely have your opinion which miniature deserves the title of the Miniature of the Month for December 2011 the most. And if you don’t, why don’t you spend some time on the forum, getting to know the people there and watching their works. And we hope you’re going to leave your vote in the poll below.

Voting has ended.

We will allow the poll to run a bit longer than we did before, because we are publishing it a bit later, too. We give you two weeks for voting, which means the poll will be closed on February 5th, 2012.

We hope that it’s enough time for you to submit your votes and to leave some comments for our readers and for the authors of entered works. And maybe we will see your works in the poll for January 2012? The next editions will still be coordinated by czlowiek.morze (sea.man), so if you have any questions or suggestions regarding our event – feel free to share them on the forum or in the comments below. Thank you!

So it is all for now. Enjoy the pictures and choose wisely. 🙂

Results

UPDATE: The winner for December 2011 is Flameon. Congratulations!

Chest of Colors

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