My 2009 Beefcake Calendar

Several years ago on the Reaper forum, somebody brought up the idea that it might be fun to have a informal beauty contest of some of the "hotter" female Reaper Miniatures models. For those of you who are not familiar with Reaper's models, the company makes numerous fine 28mm pewter minis suitable for tabletop miniature gaming or for representing your roleplaying game's characters. Reaper is particularly noted for having produced a few anatomically-correct female models dressed only in their birthday-suits, which they sell under the "Urban Legends" title.

So naturally the guys all jumped in with their favourite elf chicks or succubi or barbarian girls in chainmail bikinis...at which point I, being me, said there should be a few posters of Reaper's more eligible orc lads too.

My enthusiasm met with several "ewww"s and "ugh"s and one particular notable "would give me nightmares", and one person even went so far as to say that orcs are "butt-ugly"??

After that, I made it my mission to make the all-orcs calendar a reality. I put a posting on Reaper's forum asking any comers to paint their favourite orc model and send me a picture of it. All the models in the calendar are by Reaper and painted by Reaper forum members. I accept entries from painters of all skill levels and give credit to each artist involved.

None of the painted minis themselves have been edited in any way by me, though I sometimes change the background to make it more dynamic if need be.

In the past, I have uploaded the calendar PDF to my own web host, but this year, thanks to Mythmere and the other folks at Swords & Wizardry, I have discovered Lulu.

Lulu is a print-on-demand company that allows the author to upload ebooks, photos, and other digital media for others to purchase. Lulu handles any printing, binding and shipping necessary for a share of the earnings. Best of all, an author can use Lulu to share free downloadable media. This is good, especially for one like me with a teeny ftp host and bandwidth restrictions.

Anyway, my calendar is a 12 page PDF, 150 dpi resolution, and is around 2.5 MB in size...and FREE!.

Here's the link >> 2009 Beefcake Calendar download

If you for whatever reason are disinclined or disallowed to download PDFs to your computer, the images are on my Flickr account for your viewing pleasure.

The link >> Beefcake Calendar set on Flickr

Next year, I am feeling inclined to create a special "Monsters of D&D" project similar to the Beefcake, and perhaps even formatting it to be printed by Lulu as a professionally bound wall calendar.