febbraio 2013 ~ Hysteria Yard

Hello readers,
This weekend two members of Hysteria Yard went to the Lugdunum 2013 Contest in Lyon (France).
Myself and Cesare decided only a month ago to take the trip and partecipate to the contest, as we were not sure others committments would let us.

We were lucky enough to arrive on Friday afternoon and give ourselves some free time roaming the streets of Lyon.

But first things first.
We must give a big thanks (MERCI!!!!) to Jeremie Bonamant Teboul. He opened his apartment to let us sleep during the weekend. He was a great host and we had the great opportunity to watch live some of his most famous pieces, some of his new WIPs (Oh, My, God!) and peek at the painted pieces for FIGONE.

Now let's go back to the city first and then to the contest.
Lyon, I think, is a wonderful city. I already visited it quite a few times and every time I find it fascinating, clean, full of nice girls (yes, why not?) and people. Even if you are not interested in miniatures or you have girlfriends/boyfriends/wives/husbands, Lyon is quite a place to visit as tourists.
And if you are interested in all that is BD (french comics) you can find lots of libraries and comicbook stores. I spent quite a lot of times searching for a few artbooks, especially those hardly to find like those about fairies from J.B.Monge and others by Brom.
Me and Cesare passed the Friday afternoon walking by the City Centre, waiting for us to meet and have dinner with our italians friends: Fabio and Elisa of 27rosso. We dined to a wok/sushi restaurant where we ate a lot, quite a lot.

Saturday was Contest day and we went straight to write our pieces (and those I brought for my friends in AMIS) in the contest.
The organization was very well organized. They had two lines for pre-enrollment and for those who didn't.
With the enrollment you even received a coupon for a cup of coffee (french style, though).
After placing our displays we waited and said hello to all the others who arrived during the morning.
Infact there were quite a few well known faces: Dino and Andrea Pivato, producers of very fine bases and dispensers of the Holy Spirits (that sate your thirst and warm your belly). Then Marco and Allan from Maloma Games (I know them from Milan where they organize the Painter Aperitivo).
There were also Alex Cortina of Alexandros Models ---wait for it----Awesome Models that speaks italian and so nice conversations about the State of Painting.
There were also Cedric from Smart Max Miniatures (a very big guy that know quite a lot, and the original miniatures painted were exceptional)), Jeremie (twice mentioned but not enough), a few others like Valentine of Ammon miniatures (check them out, they are so nice and frivolous) and the guy by new company Blacksmith miniatures

Once the pieces stopped arriving, we could finally take a throughly look and examine all the pieces.

Obviously we managed to talk and get responses from lot of people: Mirko Cavalloni, Luca Baldino and the guys from Gastart which we went out during the saturday afternoon, Riccardo Ruperti, Enzo Maccaluso, Lorenzo Bartolomei, Matteo Murelli...

Now for the contest in itself.
Not a great number of pieces but not a misery. The total pieces in contest were around 600 (all categories).
The level varied greatly, with the Historic Master Section lacking the most (just around 70 pieces and just half of them of very great quality) and the Fantasy Master offering the most interesting pieces (my personal opinion).
For the others sections there were very good looking pieces and ideas to last a decade.

Thank the Gods that Fabio and Elisa by 27Rosso let us stay at their stand since we were quite tired of the previous day (talking miniatures and nerd stuff chez jeremie with a lot of other guys) .

And I should mention that we finally met in person Dre4dmit, that came from Switzerland for just one day to see the contest. Great!

Here you are few pics by the ambience: