Painting Contest 2026 Results!

Hey friends,

The time has come to announce the results of the third Bulkamancer Painting Contest! Last year, when we had 296 entrants and 238 finishers, we thought it was a lot and we would never be able to breach those numbers. Joke's on us, as this year's contest attracted an absolutely unbelievable amount of 428 entrants, 363 of whom managed to reach the deadline in time! Thank you to everyone who signed up for the contest! Never in our wildest dreams we entertained the idea of a solid 52% participant count increase. I suppose it's a sign we are doing something right. However, we had to order an extra batch of 100 pins last week, as the 300 we commissioned initially was not enough. Which means another delay for some people to get their prize, and I apologize for that. Foresight is clearly not our main talent. But enough about that; let's discuss the results!

Judging

In case you weren't paying attention, we had invited three judges this year:

• Artur Monteiro

• Matthew Adams (a.k.a. SuperTank)

• Darya Mezheedova

Sure, we could have invited more, but have you ever heard that too many cooks spoil the broth? More people doesn't always mean more expertise. It also means more polar opinions and less personal accountability.

This being our third contest, we have gathered quite a lot of feedback and experience when it comes to judging the contest over the years. And believe me when I say this year the judges have outdone themselves and put so much effort into the contest that I'm willing to personally defend their honor in a death ring against anyone who would dare claim the judges did a sloppy job or didn't care about the results. Because this couldn't be any further from the truth. But allow me to elaborate.

From the very beginning, we have been very open about how the judging would work. On our website, we have posted criteria and FAQ with exhaustive descriptions of the process. First of all, each judge looked at every single entry and put it into one of three buckers: novice, advanced, or potential winner. No, we will not be sharing which category your entry ended up in, in respect to our judges' privacy, so please don't even ask. When the contest ended, the judges looked through their advanced bucket one more time to ensure they didn't miss any potential winners there. Afterwards, for each entry marked as a potential winner by at least one judge, the judges thoroughly reviewed and scored it against the criteria and also left their comments for the participant. Lastly, all three judges gathered together and argued for two days straight on who should be the winners, and neither of them of them was willing to budge on the matter. In the end, I decided to resolve the issue by splitting the first place between two participants to appease all judges. Both winners would get the full amount of $600, but really, after watching how hard the judges fought for their favorites, I felt the extra cost was a small price to pay for the true passion shown by them over these last few days.

So let me say it again: should anyone dare say the judges did not do their job properly, I won't even entertain it as a joke. At this is the most effort I've seen put by judges into a contest, either ours or someone else's (you didn't really think we never peeked outside of our little studio to see what's going on around us, did you?). Dozens of hours and hundreds of entries processed by every judge is not something you can easily find anywhere. They didn't have to put so much effort and it was far beyond the workload they were promised, and yet they did it all without batting an eye even once. And for that, I'm extremely grateful to each of them!

And if that isn't enough, SuperTank is still planning to hold a review stream for willing participants. But we will discuss it at a later date in a separate announcement

Winners

This post is already getting much bigger than I originally intended, so let me get straight to the point.

I will limit this post to only glancing through the winners, because this is really not the best format to view the entries in all their glory. All the winners and honorable mentions can be viewed much more convenienty on our website. The site also contains the comments by the judges and extra photos posted by the participants. So I encourage you to check it out!

https://bulkamancer.com/contest-2026/winners

As I mentioned above, there are two 1st places this year, as both entries were equally good and the judges simply couldn't put one above the other.

Co-1st place: blackbird

More pics: https://discord.com/channels/1027464521444507680/1551437008545517650

Co-1st place: Moonvina

More pics: https://discord.com/channels/1027464521444507680/1550962335416459415

2nd place: komui

More pics: https://discord.com/channels/1027464521444507680/1551246275243016272

3rd place: The13thday

More pics: https://discord.com/channels/1027464521444507680/1546938446218526893

Congratulations to all the winners! Well and truly deserved!

Honorable mentions

Between 363 finished entries, of course we couldn't just stop at highlighting 4 winners and ignoring all other amazing works submitted by other contestants. This year, the judges have picked 32 entries that deserve an honorable mention. And let me repeat myself: you should really go to the website to look at the entries more thoroughly and read the comments by the judges.

"Team's Favorite" Award

Let's move on to arguably the most sought-for prize in our contests - the ability to select a character for us to sculpt in December!

I'd like to point out that the "Team's Favorite" award is not about the best painted work. (Almost) Neither one of us is a professional painter, and we are not qualified to select the best artistic work. We leave that part to the judges. The "Team's Favorite" is all about picking one work that warms our hearts without any specific reason or justification behind it. As such, anyone can be nominated for this award regardless of their skill level.

Same as last year, I invited every member of our extended team, including cutters, presupporters, and regular guest artists, to nominate one entry. We even invited our ex-member Totenn to pick his favorite, seeing as how many people still love painting his models even two years later. Afterwards, we all voted for one lucky winner. And here it is!

Congratulations to the winner! You are officially Bulka's most favorite this time!

But hey, let's not forget the other 18 nominees to the award! And seriously, I'm tired of saying this: go and see it all on the website for a much better experience, more information, and more quality pics. Why are you even still reading this post?

Desk Mats

We haven't forgotten about the Unbreadable desk mats we promised to 30 participants! By the way, here is what they look like.

Wanna see everyone who got one? What if I tell you it can be done on the website?

The criteria for obtaining those were never made clear, and there was a good reason for that. From the start, the idea was to award people who would really want one instead of pushing them towards a simple "Do this to receive a prize". Of course, one sure way was to paint an "Unbreadable" character. Which, in hindsight, should've been obvious, but we deliberately avoided saying that to make sure people paint the models they like instead of the ones that would give them an extra prize. 5 more mats were awarded to the winners, none of whom declined the prize. As for the remaining 13 mats, I'd spent 3 hours carefully picking people who I knew would be deligted to obtain such a mat, and indeed all of them were overjoyed to be selected. Honestly, I wish we had more mats to give, but even 30 was not something easily obtained or distributed.

Achievements

Apparently, many people really liked the idea with achievements introduced by us last year, so we decided to make it a tradition and come up with some new achievements for this contest as well.

The biggest challenge is assigning them all, as some of the more interesting ones require thoroughly looking through every registration and finished entry, sometimes multiple times. And honestly, between 428 entrants, 363 finishers, and 25 achievements to assign, it was not something many people would call "fun time". But me and Jamberia, our SMM, pushed through the ordeal like champs, all just to make you happy! Our efforts were primarily focused on awarding people who managed to finish their entry, but we also included one achievement for those who did not meet the deadline.

Do you wonder where you can see the achievements you received? Why, on the website, of course, by finding and clicking on your entry! Seriously, how many more times do I need to tell you to stop reading this post and just go see the exact same things in a better format? But hey, since you are still here, here's the full list of achievements this year.

Special achievement

Lastly, I would like to discuss one special achievement. This one is not meant for participants, but is instead awarded to people who have made (or will yet make) this entire contest possible. And this time it's not something you can find on the website, but I'm giving you the link nonetheless just because I can and because it's really this good.

This achievement is awarded to:

• Artur Monteiro - our judge from Brazil.

• Matthew Adams - our judge from Ireland.

• Darya Mezheedova - our judge from Russia.

• Kormirluk - our contest gatekeeper, who manually reviewed and approved a vast majority of entries.

• AshOak - our assistant in shipping the pins across the U.S.

• SephTheOverwitch - our assistant in shipping the pins across the world. Unless German customs office really throws her into jail this time for receiving those dangerous pins that threaten the world's stability.

• Poak - a talented web developer who created the amazing website for us. If it wasn't for him, this contest wouldn't be half as friendly for both participants and organizers. Truly, Poak is the GOAT!

Also, I would like to express my sincerest thanks to PONGOJ, our 2D artist who continues to spend exhorbitant amounts of time drawing all sorts of art of us, including the desk mat art, website design elements, announcements, and achievements for this year's contest.

Allow be to wrap up by thanking every participant and follower of this contest once more! You are making all these efforts worth it!

See you next year!