Results

You can view the results two different ways:

  • Kickass Dio Award Show method (thanks to Airtight, General Hawk, Grand Slam, Scrap Iron & zed)
  • Boring Plain 'Ol Text With Special Text-Version Only Commentary method (see below ;-) )

Boring Plain 'Ol Text With Special Text-Version Only Commentary Results

Welcome everyone to the second instalment of the Joecustoms.com Year End Achievement Awards. We've grown bigger and better this year, added many new categories, and received a plethora of nominations. We've got the best of the best on show, so sit back and enjoy the ceremony.

This year has been very interesting for the collectors, Hasbro introduced arguably one of their better waves in the form of wave 5, and steadily improved their offerings as the waves progressed. We were given army builder packs and single carded figures, and don't forget the sweet internet exclusive BAT pack, nor the Python Patrol. Hasbro also drew very mixed reactions with their last wave, cancellations of the Tele Viper/Airborne pack, and the Crimson Guard infiltration which were all disheartening to hear. Hasbro released a CGI movie version of JvC Spy Troops this year, also to a mixed reaction (who knew that Beach Head was secretly a Ninja Turtle?!). Despite all that, we kept on customizing and I have the honour to present to you this year's role call of winners for 2003.

Please note that not everyone voted for every single category and if you'd like to see the spreadsheet of how the votes were cast, click here.

Custom Figures & Vehicles
Technique
Dioramas & Dio-Stories
Joemoticon Theatre
Miscellaneous
  • Most Helpful Board Member: Grand Slam

    If there is a customizing critique to be done, you can be sure Grand Slam has already given his thoughts, advice, and encouragement. Grand Slam has successfully tried to critique every single custom that has come down the pipe line in 2003, and after that he's even critiqued dio-stories, vehicle customs, and joemoticon theatres!

    Of course all this would not mean much to someone if Grand Slam wasn't regarded as one of the all time best Customizers in the community today. His painting skills and eye for "a bad part to turn into gold" has earned him the respect and admiration of his fellow peers, and people want to listen to what he has to say about their work.

    Grand Slam was appointed as a moderator for the forums this year, and even had time to write up a very extensive customizing guide for beginners and intermediates. For all these reasons and more, this award could not have gone to a nicer guy.

  • Joecustoms.com Joseph Colton Lifetime Achievement Award: Beav

    Fittingly, the inaugural Joseph Colton Lifetime Achievement Award has been won by one of the hardest working individuals in our community. Taking over the reigns of the old Bivouac, Beav has painstakingly moulded and refined a website that caters to all sorts of creativity involved in the customizing of G.I. Joes. A look at the numerous added features and designs to JoeCustoms.com in the "2003 Year in Review" section is a testament to the amount of work Beav has put in this year alone.

    Beav has maintained a respectable website that is committed to the art of customizing G.I. Joe toys in all mediums, as well as encouraging healthy and appropriate discussions about all things G.I. Joe, in the forums. The list of things Beav has done to help the community would be an exhaustive one, and the validity by his peers speaks volumes of his character and dedication to his beloved hobby.

    Even though Beav and I have not always seen eye-to-eye on a few issues this year, his assertive demeanour does set him apart, and I can proudly say that Beav is one of the true icons in our G.I. Joe Collector community. All this, and he even brews his own beer!

2003 The Year In Review

It has been another exciting year for the Joecustoms.com community, many changes have been made to the forums, a few milestones have been reached, and there has been a ton of surprises along the way. Thanks to a summary provided to me by Grand Slam, I'll attempt to recap some of the highlights of 2003.

Entering the new year, the Joecustoms.com website took home quite a few awards at last year's Flaggs. The list of accomplishments include, "Best Fan Project of the Year" for the Go Joe project, "Best G.I. Joe Discussion Forum", and finally "The Best G.I. Joe Website of the Year". Everyone should be congratulated on these achievements because this truly was a team effort.

I did mention that there were a number of new additions to the forums. The list include the opening of the Joecustoms online store (so we can all pick up our own Rumbler "nice pants" T-shirts), a Calendar feature, new submission categories for Action Force, Red Shadows, and Self-Customs, and the very important File Repository where anyone is allowed to submit all kinds of Joe-related media that may help others with their customizing or diorama building projects. On the topic of customizing, I think it's also important to mention that there was a new submission from our own Grand Slam, who wrote a detailed Customizing Tutorial which I highly recommend reading. Another great feature provided for the fans by beav, was the entire lot of customs previously submitted to the Bivouac were finally archived, never to be forgotten! Speaking of forgetting (classic seguey) I almost forgot about the new Joemoticon Theatre forum, showing off board member's comedic talents and even garnering it's own section in the Year End Achievement Awards. To cap it all off, we even got a new logo this year too.

Beav couldn't do it all by himself this year, so new moderators for the forums were appointed and in my personal opinion, Airtight, Grand Slam, and General Hawk, couldn't have been any better picks. We've had some very level-headed moderating through out the year, and I'd like to thank the three deputies for their hard work.

As for community projects, the inaugural Alterna-Joe Contest was won by Sidewinder for his innovative Destro custom, and the contest is currently underway again for next year. For the dio-artists, The G.I. Joe Special Missions was the brainchild of Jon S., who organized the first two projects earlier this year. It is the perfect medium for allowing first time dio-artists to get involved by producing mini dio-stories (between 40 - 50 images) revolving around a central story. There has since been five completed "special missions" by the end of 2003. The customizers weren't left out this year either, as a total of three Group Projects were started in 2003, Traitors to the Cause, Cobra vs. Nazis, and Project R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

Since this is a Joe customizing website, an important milestone was reached this year as Hooligan became the 1000th figure submitted to the site. Not exactly G.I. Joe related, I still feel it is worth sharing that three board members, General Hawk, AutobotC5, and HypnoHustler, got together this year to produce one of the very few C.O.P.S. reference websites on the internet which you can find at the C.O.P.S. HQ.

The annual G.I. Joe convention took place this year in sunny California and our boys were front and centre as usual for all the happenings. Thanks to Airtight, bigjeffstud, General Hawk, jusdb, KJGIL, and the P-luver himself we got many pictures of the event. But they weren't the only ones having fun this year, the Tennessee connection had their own Adventure Convention as well, and if this picture doesn't prove how much fun it is to meet up with these guys from the boards, I don't know what does :). Hold on to your tropical sun tan lotions though, next year's G.I. Joe convention is scheduled to take place in Florida!

The site has grown considerably over the course of this year, at the time of this writing we've got 656 registered users, 29925 articles, 1886 custom figures, 123 custom vehicles, not counting archive or group project items, and a whole lot of creativity in all manners. We have been very fortunate to have active members who always bring fresh ideas, informative opinions, and useful advice to share with the rest of the group, one individual that stands out, and has helped with the organization of this year's year-end awards with his suggestions is Pluv. And just under the wire, we should also acknowledge a new comer to the boards, Sharkbait, who quickly organized a very successful "Secret Santa" idea for the Christmas season.

By now I'm sure you all would have viewed our Joecustoms.com Awards surprise (The Dio-Presentations). It was a carefully collaborated effort by a few members who deserve a big thanks for the work they put in to making this possible. So Scrap-Iron, beav, General Hawk, Grand Slam, Airtight, and zedhatch, congratulations on a job well done.

On behalf of the community I'd like to thank beav for providing us with the means to share this hobby with each other to the fullest extent. I'd also like to thank Grand Slam for his exhaustive compilation of the nominations this year, and if size does matter (no not army building!) - the 2003 Nominations and Awards were a huge success.

Through out the highs and lows that Hasbro has thrown at us this year, no matter what side we're on in the great RAH vs. JvC debate, nor how many disagreements we've had, there's one thing we all do have in common, the love for this hobby and the passion for everything G.I. Joe.

With that, I'll conclude this year's Achievement Awards by congratulating all the winners who proved yet again, that they are the best in their game, as voted for by their peers. You know we'll be back again next year, and knowing is half the battle! Yo Joe! (sorry I couldn't resist).

- Bandalero

Previous Awards

  1. 2002
  2. 2003
  3. 2004
  4. 2005
  5. 2006
  6. 2007
  7. 2008
  8. 2009
  9. 2010
  10. 2011
  11. 2012
  12. 2013
  13. 2014
  14. 2015
  15. 2016
  16. 2017
  17. 2018
  18. 2019
  19. 2020

To teach, improve, share, entertain and showcase the work of the customizing community.