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Armorama Benelux Workshop 2003

The Day of  Day's

Aaaah, early out of bed (luckily not as early as some of our Dutch friends) en in a wet, unpleasant morning off to Geel (Belgium). As I arrived I found Rudi Meir and Pascal Tognon (KMK) already hard at work, setting up the tables for the demo's and putting it all in a practical way so everybody could walk around free and still see everything.

They where also placing several beautiful build kits and diorama on display so that the eye had also something to look at during the sessions.

Marijn van Gils surprised us by stopping by and leaving his 3 biggest diorama's to date as a treat (Last Round, Godverdomme en 101^st Dalamatian). Unfortualy, marijn could not stay he was in the middle of arranging his marriage  (Dead man walking .....).

I just had time to put up the Armorama banner to the fence when I received my first phone call from Eagle, he could not find it and he was just 50 m away from the place.  Luckily he was a exception (hehehe, sorry, could not resist).

Slowly everybody started to arrive and around 11h00-12h00 most where present (except those who just could not make it in before noon).

At first there was some reservation of the people and several stayed a bit to the side and a bit shy (and I kept hold of my hart, I saw disaster hanging), but after 12h00 the ice seemed broken and there was more interaction at the tables and finally the Armorama crew started to fire their questions at the KMK members (phew).

Especially Gert Mertens was a target, as a PE specialist he was bombarded with questions and I can surely say that he cured several people from their PE fear.

Rudi Meir and Pascal Tognon where also an attention point since they where in airbrushing and weathering the kits in front of them.  And for a lot of builders, this still is a difficult part of modeling.

In the early afternoon Gino Poppe arrived at the scene and now the whole workshop is complete.

Gino not only showed us his latest work, but also gave, us amateurs, a animated lesson in figure painting (in oils) which never kept our attention from the beginning to the end.

His demo was the longest of the whole day (aprox. 40 minutes) but we all learned a lot. I even think that he converted some of us from AVF builders to figure painters.

Also our own Jan (General Faillure) gave a little demo on how to make trees from wire and that also received the necessary attention.