April's Photoshow is OPEN!

I hope you are all enjoying being inside, or being outside and risking the life of yourself, your family and all those you love so that you can serve your community (YOU ARE AWESOME PEOPLE).

Well if you are stuck inside may I recommend you pop outside to your garden and get some pics of your Traditional scale models because this month's photoshow is all about Traditionals!

It is open to all makes and models, the only requirement is that it must be approximately Traditional (around 1:9) scale. So this would include Breyers, Stones, Customs, Resins and anything else you happen to have that's about the right size.

To enter you first need to be part of the Facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1493893527541574/

Once you've been accepted please read the rules document and comment underneath that you understand:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/popular-votes-photoshows/group-rules/1656408897956702/

Then you just need to upload your pictures into each album. Click on 'photos' and then 'albums' and then select the album you want. Each class has its own album.

You can enter up to 6 photos per class. Once you are done just sit back and wait for voting to start.

GOOD LUCK!

Tiny Breyers

A few days ago Breyer posted this picture on their Facebook page:



The wording (and the fact that it was April 1st) gave many to believe it was an April Fools joke.

They said:

Rugged Lark, one of our most beloved stock horse sculptures, first debuted in 1989. With his calm expression and quiet gait, this fellow is sure to be a welcome addition to Stablemates fans’ herds – the coat color of this particular release was inspired by one of our later Rugged Lark models, Patch.

Well turns out it was an April Fools joke. But also SAVAGE Breyer savage. So much shade for one o your own moulds!

Anyway the real fan favourite Stock Horse Mould mini is...SMART CHIC! Look how tiny and cute he is in ickle form:



I can definitely see this theme being replicated for the BF Single Day Stablemates. It would be really cool if they were all mini versions of the bigger special runs!

So what moulds would you like to see in tiny form? Personally I would like:

Silver
Clydesdale Mare (to go with the ickle stallion)
Clydesdale Foal
New Welsh Mare & Foal Set (they would be ADORBS)
Bobby Jo

And wouldn't it also be awesome if they did it the other way round and did big versions of the ickle ponies? Imagine how poor I would be if they did a big G2 Appaloosa....

Two New Customs

One major advantage of the time being spent in isolation is that I have plenty of time to get on with painting. It's a bit worrying then that after nearly 2 weeks of being stuck in the house all day I'm only just actually finishing some horses!

Anyway, they are at least finished and with lots more on the way I'm going to take some time to share with you the first two 'isolation customs' as I have decided they shall be called.

Come Back

Come Back is a Schleich Arabian mare. Not the best mould in the world but the colour came out really nicely on her.

I absolutely love her mane, the subtle colour shift works really well and she does take a very pretty headshot!

Here is a shot of her I took for a photoshow. Although she is for sale as we aren't shipping anything atm I thought she could enter a show and show herself off!

Apastron

Apastron is a beautiful AA Cupid foal. He has been painted to a lovely decorator with a black coat and celestial themed markings.

A better shot of the markings across his back and body.

I love his ickle white stripe! Even though he's a decorator he still has cute little face markings.

Finally here is a shot of him with his new mummy, Celestia. I thought they would make the perfect pair. Nebula the cat isn't sure what to think though!

Fan Pics!

Today I thought we would do a fun fan special where I would share with you five of my favourite fan photos from the last few years.

First up we have a cool activity to try with your kids at home. This fan printed out one of our Collector's Bingo cards and got her kids to find animals for each of the squares! This would be great fun to do at a live show.



This lovely shot is of a couple of CollectA Friesians happily hanging out, don't they look beautiful together?



And another shot by the same fan of one of my favourite CollectA moulds, the adorable little AQH foal



Here is a shot from one of our fans of a custom we painted doing very well at a live show! Well done on your win :D



What is cuter than big horses? Well small tiny zebras that come in boxes of course!



Want to share some pics with us? Then you know how! Check us out on Facebook or Instagram or drop me an email and I'll be more than happy to share them here.

Brighid and Beltane

Well I don't think anyone guessed this! Well done if you did.

The latest BreyerFest Special Run are Brighid and Beltane and I am absolutely in love. These are the first models that I just have to have, how cute is that foal!



GAH! They are just so squish!!! *squishes*

Supreme Champion Data - An Update

It's been two years since I've done a Blog post with updates about my Supreme Champion data collection project so I thought it would be worth sharing again.

As always I am starting with a disclaimer. There are many flaws with this data collection. Firstly it does not cover all shows, there are many I haven't been able to go to, some shows don't have supreme champions and some I simply don't have the data for. Also there are many factors that could skew the data. These include:

Specialist Shows - For example Animal Artistry Live 2019, the champion was obviously going to be an AA as only AAs were being shown.

One Exceptional Model - One really nice model can win several championships and this can alter data. For example if a good Western Trail entry does very well this will impact the data, even though it is the same entry that is attributable to all those wins.

Assumptions - Sometimes I've had to make assumptions about the breed. That's why generic breeds such as 'warmblood' may do better. If I had reliable information about each type of Warmblood then this may not be in top spot.

Classes - Not all shows have classes for all types of models. So if a show doesn't have a performance section then it can't win. Equally if a show has a workmanship and a breed section then that doubles the chances of an AR or CM winning.

Make Up of Supreme - Some shows do not allow the performance winners into the supreme, this obviously effects the number of performance entries that can win.

Numerous other factors that take too long to mention!

OK disclaimer over, let's drill down into the data!

The Data

The data is collected from 174 shows over a 12 year period, starting 2018 and ending in 2020.

All shows were held in the UK.

For each supreme champion the following is recorded:

Show Name

Year

Finish

Colour

Breed

Mould (this is incomplete and therefore not included here)

Type (In Hand or Performance)

Brand

Performance Type (where relevant)

Data is then collected and presented in pie charts. I've also included a list of the Top 5 most popular for each category, the number in brackets is the number of champions I have recorded for that item.

Brand

Brand is the make of the model. For Artist Resin/China this is simply recorded as 'Artist Resin' or 'Artist China'.

This first pie chart shows what this looks like with AR included:

This second pie chart has been edited to remove AR, because AR is more of a finish than a brand I think it is helpful to look at it without this (I forgot to remove Artist China from this one, sorry)!

The top five brands are:

Breyer (34)

Peter Stone (10)

Animal Artistry (8)

Equorum (6); RubberNedz (6)

CopperFox (5)

This excludes artist resin and china!

Breed

Below is the pie chart of breeds. As you can see there is real variety of the breeds that have won, which is lovely. Unfortunately, it's really hard to get accurate data from photos on what type of Warmblood each one is going back 12 years. So take the Warmblood with a pinch of salt!

Below are the Top 5 breeds:

Warmblood (10)

Appaloosa (9)

Mustang (8)

Paint (7); Thoroughbred (7); Arabian (7); Sport Horse (7)

Andalusian (6)

Colour

Below is the pie chart showing the colours of the models. Again lots of variety but some real clear favourites here:

The top 5 colours are:

Grey (33)

Pinto (29); Bay (29)

Chestnut (14)

Blanket Spot (13); Palomino (13)

Buckskin (7); Sabino (7)

Finish

The below data looks at the finish of the horse. This is which section it would generally show in, it is as broad as possible without being too broad.

The top 5 finishes are:

Artist Resin (82)

Custom (31)

Original Finish (20)

CTF (19)

Animal Artistry (8)

Performance Type

29 of the live shows had performance champions. From this data I have created a graph to show which performance type is most popular. Again this is quite general, but specific enough to produce good data:

The Top 5 performance types are:

Scene (6)

Driven (5); Western Trail (5)

Show Jumping (4)

Cross Country (3); Western Pleasure (3)

Costume (2)

Type

The final graph shows a comparison between in hand and performance winners. Again it is worth noting that many shows either don't have a performance section or don't let performance in the supreme, so take this final one with a pinch of salt!

The green is in hand, the yellow performance.

The Perfect Entry

So *if* we are to trust the data our perfect entry would be:

Finish: Artist Resin

Colour: Grey

Breed: Warmblood

Type: In Hand

Brand: Artist Resin

It is finally worth noting that AR Warmblood is probably one of the most competitive classes to win. I judge it. A Lot. And it is tough, it is often full of really nice entries. That said I'm pretty sure the last time I judged it I placed a Grey Warmblood as first!

I hope you found this interesting. To end, I say it at the beginning and I say it again here, there are lots of flaws with this data collection, it is just a bit of fun, so please don't shout at me for the problems with my research!

Enjoy :)

Congratulations to March's Champion!

March's theme for Popular Votes Photoshows was 'Schleich'.

I'm not entirely sure what it says about the Schleich horses that the winner of the entire show was a rabbit, but it is a very very cute rabbit and a lovely photo so we'll leave it at that!

A very well done to Abbie and her adorable rabbit FTF Patches, your rosette will be with you at some undisclosed future time when all this has blown over and I can leave my house once more.

Seriously though how cute is this rabbit? It has a little house!!!

The theme for April's show is 'Traditional' which will include all makes and models as long as they are approximately Traditional (vaguely 1:9) scale. If you don't already take part in Popular Votes Photoshows then you can join the Facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1493893527541574/