leolson79

Rewriting this post because, in hindsight, it came across as way more negative than intended. I love the idea of this, and I would love to see Reaper implement something like this in an official capacity. Show your vaccination card at registration, get a "Vaccinated" ribbon. Don't want to? Don't have to. I get why Reaper doesn't want to do that, but I think it would make a lot of folks feel a lot better about attending the con, given the current state of the planet.

Thanks!

Hey, y'all. I'm guessing this question has been answered somewhere before, but given the choice between frantically trying to finish a figure for the painting showcase and digging through the forums... well, here I am. Will the classes be recorded for download later by participants? While this would be helpful to be able to go back and review stuff later, I ask mostly because I'll be at work while most of the classes I'm interested in will be going on, which will make participating live rather difficult. I totally get why they wouldn't be recorded, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask. Thanks!

Thanks, y'all!!

Just a heads up for folks booked at the Embassy under the full rate (like me), the RC rate is actually still available for Wednesday night. If your reservation includes the night of Wednesday the 2nd, you can call the Embassy and they can split your reservation such that you're paying the RC rate for the first night, and the regular rate for the rest. It saved me about $70. It's not a huge amount, but that's $70 I can put toward something else now. Just make sure that when they modify the original reservation to shorten it a day, they still give you whatever rate you originally booked at. My room was around $195/night when I booked, and when they changed it to add the RC rate for the first night, the rate jumped to $233/night for the rest. After a couple of panicked phone calls, I was able to get it straightened out. Hopefully this can help ease the strain on other folks' wallets, like it did mine. Plus, now I can "officially" say that I'm staying at the Embassy for ReaperCon, so hopefully no worries about the swag bag. P.S. For those wondering, I was assured that while I will have to check out and check back in, I will be able to get the same room and I won't have to move my stuff around. Time will tell how that pans out.

That's a bummer. Hopefully, Embassy will just give ReaperCon the whole thing in 2021. It seems pretty clear that RC can fill it without much trouble.

Southwest doesn't fly to DFW. I think you're thinking Love Field. Still in Dallas, but a longer drive to Denton.

Goodie bag is a good point, but Embassy Suites does free breakfast regardless, so at least that's still on the table.

Wow. That was... completely unexpected. Totally missed that. I mean... it's awesome for ReaperCon in general, but since it took a couple months last year to sell out, I figured waiting a day would be ok. Hopefully, they're able to get another block opened up. Thanks for the heads up.

When I try to book through the link, I get " The requested rate is not available for 02 Sep 2020 - 07 Sep 2020 at Embassy Suites by Hilton Denton Convention Center." Is it sold out already?

Brilliant! I had missed this completely. Thank you for the link. Now I don't have to worry about downloading the photos off my phone.

Been meaning to post this; finally getting around to it. Here's my reviews for my full list of classes. This Class Is About Contrast (Greenwald), Thursday 1:00 - Already mentioned this one earlier in the thread, but it's worth saying again - this class was fantastic. Highly recommend it for just about all levels of painters. The presentation part went down to the wire, time-wise, so no actual painting. Some hands-on time to practice what we learned would have been great, but honestly, since it would mean losing out on a portion of the lecture, I'd rather skip the hands-on part in order to maximize the info learned. If Jen doesn't teach this class next year, it will be a tragedy. Blingin' Out Your NMM (Lovejoy), Saturday 1:00 - This is probably going to sound harsh, following the Contrast review, but this class was disappointing. There was a hand out, but it was emailed to folks after the class, and I think the class would have benefited from having physical copies at the beginning. I didn't get the sense that Aaron wasn't interested in the class, as Shadowphaze did, but it did feel somewhat disorganized, and we didn't cover nearly as much as I'd hoped. This is where I think having the hand out ahead of time would have helped - it could have served as a syllabus of sorts and helped to drive the class forward, because the hand out had more information than we got in class. I have some experience with NMM, and I think I'm "ok" at it, but I struggle at times with where to place the highlights, and I was hoping this class would help with that. Bangin’ Reflections - Achieving Convincing NMM Environmental Reflection Effects (Kantor), Saturday 3:00 - No hand out for this one. This was kind of a weird class for me. The first half was a presentation about theory and execution, and the second half was hands-on to put it into practice. The presentation part was great, and quite informative, but I struggled with the hands-on part. I think it's largely because the painting style felt so drastically different from what I normally do, I couldn't wrap my head around it. Not a knock against Ben, but I think this technique isn't for me. Having a hand out of the presentation would have been great. I wasn't the only one taking a picture of the screen with my phone for every slide. Object Source Lighting (Olds), Saturday 5:00 - I wanted to take a refresher on OSL, so I was excited when I saw that a seat had opened up in Drew's class. There was no hand out, but the class was almost all hands on. Drew did a good job explaining everything, and it worked pretty well for me. We did a hobbit with a lantern, where the lantern was the only light source. This was great as a jumping off point, but it would have been cool to see how to tackle situations where there's an ambient light source in the mix as well (i.e. the rest of the figure isn't simply painted black). Maybe a section at the end of the class to discuss challenging situations that one might encounter?

Some of us picked the Windows BECAUSE of the sabotaged name...

There were a handful of vendors who weren't open immediately upon the vendor hall opening (for whatever reason), and they had big sheets covering everything on their booth. Seemed like a good solution. Obviously, it's not going to prevent someone dedicated to helping merchandise sprout legs, but they're going to have a helluva time not looking really conspicuous about it. Since, at that point, the vendor hall would also be filled with actual shoppers, I suspect that would be more than enough of a deterrent. I also think that having a downloadable and printable form for registration would help speed things up considerably. Lyn Stahl had put together one for the GenCon competition this year, and it worked great. I've got no problem making it mandatory, provided there is a stack of blank forms available for the inevitable folks who forgot to fill one out ahead of time.

Gotcha. A good rule of thumb is that if you have to ask if there's enough contrast, the answer is probably no. Give it a few more shades darker. Your brain will be all "what are you doing? you're ruining it! OMG STOP!" Don't stop. The worst case, and highly unlikely, scenario is that you'll be the first person to ever be told by the judges that "there's too much contrast." The blending seems to be fine, from what I can see in the pictures. As long as you've got decent lighting from above and from the front to eliminate unintentional shadows, and keep the figure and camera still, that should be good enough for WIP pics. Take a look at the areas under her cheeks, the back of her neck, and the underside of her arms. From the pics you've shared, it looks like those areas could use a bit more shading. Also the areas above her eyes and below her brow. It doesn't need to be super dark, but having it a darker shade than the basecoat will help to set off the eyes once you get them painted in.