here in the USA, there are 2 ways to enter GBWC. you can either enter one of the multiple preliminary contests held by a national chain of hobby stores which are judged by their questionably qualified, non-Bandai affiliated employees, with only photos of the winning entries submitted to Bandai for judging. OR you can submit your entry online via photos, which are put into that same pool of photo entries mentioned previously and completely bypass having to go through 2 judgings. Bandai doesn't send a single judge and we do not have a physical national competition whatsoever... Bandai judges choose our national winner without ever having laid eyes upon the actual entries... this is a horrible way to hold a competition of this type. the judges never get to see what the entries look like in real life and the photos misrepresent them as RGB screens are incapable of reproducing all of the color values that the human eye can see with 100% accuracy. everyone that i've talked to that entered last year is pretty salty about this...
That seems very different from what Korea's GBWC experiences. According to Korea's GBWC official page, a Bandai Spirits Hobby judge judged the builds. It doesn't make any sense to me why they wouldn't because it is Bandai 😕 I'll keep this in mind when it's time for me to return to the US. One thing I did notice and realized, though, is that the judging took place before the event. A Filipino builder talked about the judging process during his live stream. Apparently, photos are looked at during the judging process. At Korea's GBWC, people who placed were notified before the ceremony. Each of them had a piece of paper in hand to show the staff. This makes me wonder if the judging did take place before the event to ensure the people who had placed would be there. So, pictures are not bad (the entries chosen were amazing), but there should be at least one judge from Bandai.
here in the USA, there are 2 ways to enter GBWC. you can either enter one of the multiple preliminary contests held by a national chain of hobby stores which are judged by their questionably qualified, non-Bandai affiliated employees, with only photos of the winning entries submitted to Bandai for judging. OR you can submit your entry online via photos, which are put into that same pool of photo entries mentioned previously and completely bypass having to go through 2 judgings. Bandai doesn't send a single judge and we do not have a physical national competition whatsoever... Bandai judges choose our national winner without ever having laid eyes upon the actual entries... this is a horrible way to hold a competition of this type. the judges never get to see what the entries look like in real life and the photos misrepresent them as RGB screens are incapable of reproducing all of the color values that the human eye can see with 100% accuracy. everyone that i've talked to that entered last year is pretty salty about this...
That seems very different from what Korea's GBWC experiences. According to Korea's GBWC official page, a Bandai Spirits Hobby judge judged the builds. It doesn't make any sense to me why they wouldn't because it is Bandai 😕 I'll keep this in mind when it's time for me to return to the US.
One thing I did notice and realized, though, is that the judging took place before the event. A Filipino builder talked about the judging process during his live stream. Apparently, photos are looked at during the judging process. At Korea's GBWC, people who placed were notified before the ceremony. Each of them had a piece of paper in hand to show the staff. This makes me wonder if the judging did take place before the event to ensure the people who had placed would be there. So, pictures are not bad (the entries chosen were amazing), but there should be at least one judge from Bandai.
Where was it ?! Did you participate?
It was at the Bandai Namco Fun Expo! A video of that event and my GBWC build for this year are on our channel :)