If you’ve heard the buzz over at Cool Mini or Not, you’ll know that they’ve just announced that they’ll be sponsoring the Crystal Brush painting competition at Adepticon 2011.

Of course, it hasn’t happened yet, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know that it will be crazy competitive.  The prize support is the unheard of sum of 10,000 to the grand prize winner, dwarfing pretty much every similar competition.

Maybe the guys over at Coolmini are trying to replace the Golden Daemon as the world’s premier competition, as I am very certain that a sum like that will attract the attention of many brilliant painters, and since the competition isn’t manufacturer exclusive it won’t scare away the painters who are affiliated with a company (like Eric John of Wyrd, or Matt DePietro of Privateer Press).

Coolmini has some co-sponsors for this deal, and pretty original looking trophy.  All in all, the competition is going to be rough.  I can’t wait to see what the competition turns out.