Realistic Sculpts

[dreamingleopard]

There are several things I'd like to see in the evolution of miniature gaming, and this is a thread for appeals to sculptors.  From top-heavy mechs that would likely fall over to static dummies with no personality, I've seen it.  I would like to air these annoyances in sections, and I invite everyone else to do the same with their concerns.  Don't get me wrong - most sculptors are doing a fabulous job - but there's always room for improvement, beginning sculptors (not to be singled out here!) can use this constructive criticism of the field in general, and we need to become aware of how and why trends come into being, how to foster good ones or bring runaway trends back under moderate control.  Please note: these are not in any particular order of importance; #1 isn't my pet peeve.  It simply is an extension of thoughts from another thread.  To those who wish to post their issues with figs, please title and number your topic for ease of reference.  Thanks.  Please remember that everyone's entitled to their opinions.

TOPIC #1:  SKIN

What annoys me is nudity without function.  If we're being sexy, we get usually get naked.  Yet we have modern Conans with guns and no chest protection, running about in the icy wastes without a coat.
We have jungle Sheena's with huge knockers flying free, yet no woman would do that any more than a Scot would play football without his strap.  Bras have a purpose, and their function is related to adequate coverage in relationship to the size of the woman's cup.

The same common sense should apply to hoods.  If one wants to be anonymous, then one would be hooded and clothed - unless one was also engaged in erecting a brick wall or some other sweaty heavy physical labour, or didn't care about his anonymity to the person he's abusing close-up (like a headsman) but cared with respect to onlookers.  If one wanted anonymous sex, one would probably be topless and hooded (though why (s)he expects to get some is a mystery).  If one wanted intimacy, one wears no hood; it's a matter of trust (unless the hood is donned after the face is shown for the purpose of imagination). 

It's not that I'm a prude... it's just that many of the figs being sculpted don't make sense.  I conclude the personalities of the figs are all either idiotic or raving lunatics - which is fine if the fig is insane from reading the Necronomicon.  If not, then such nonsense is like watching a sci-fi film riddled with technical flaws (like a two-dimensional explosion in space accompanied by a sound).  It ruins the realism, and I have to ask, what's the point then?  Mere voyeurism - because it sells?  What's that, to someone who braves going and getting some for real?  Faint heart never won fair lady.  I've been around long enough to see many decent young men hide in this hobby as an avoidance of that risk.  To them I advise this: risk it and bring her into the hobby. The more prosperous veterans in gaming are almost all happily married.  These people have come to realize that sportsmanship is about playing the game within the limitations and rules placed upon you, despite the odds against.  It's not about having 6-pack abs, a naked teen chick in one arm and a megagun blasting the crap out of a patch of slime mould.  In reality, she'd probably smack you one, insist on you putting down the weapon and then handing over your shirt for her own wear.  As for the slime, she'd tell you to either leave it alone or set it on fire and leave, to get the hell out of this insect-infested dungeon.  I would probably snatch the lantern and leave with or without you.

I suppose this is my plea to the sculptors out there for more realism in the sculpts.  The more the gender stereotyping is fostered, the more we all end up feeling inadequate, even though this is not the case.  To those sculptors that brave that push and produce the "wimpy" little geek-boy or the tough middle-aged broad who isn't a despicable hag, I salute you.

[Mancha]

I'm not a fan of gratuitous nudity in minis either, but it seems to me that this well-written discussion is the application of a little too much reason to miniatures.  When it comes down to it, probably the only reason that can really be applied to miniatures and determination of what to sculpt is based on what sells.  I suspect that, in the miniatures world as elsewhere, nudity sells.

[Alfrik]

Space marines blasting away with their helmets off.... I thinks many scuplters are modeling the "Action Shot Poster Guy/Gal" with a strong influence from Pulp Novels of the 30-40s. I have a single figure action game that uses hit location with 12 areas and absolutly send some gamers screaming as the protection of each area "is what is on the figure". I must say that this ruling in my single figure games has led to more figures in full period protection, or any kind of protection that they can model on. Have to say, laser pistol shot to a head with no visor/helm is deadly... rendering the points cost of the rest of his gear moot. But that just my 2 cents.

[Plynkes]

What annoys me is nudity without function...
 
We have jungle Sheena's with huge knockers flying free, yet no woman would do that any more than a Scot would play football without his strap.  Bras have a purpose, and their function is related to adequate coverage in relationship to the size of the woman's cup.

I disagree. That's a rather sweeping statement and isn't universally true. It all depends on the context. To the Nuba people for example it is clothing that doesn't have a function, they are (or at least were, until we got at them) quite happy to let everything flap about, male and female. Google "Leni Riefenstahl Nuba" and you'll see a whole bunch of Jungle (well, desert) Sheenas (and Steves) who have no use for either bras or jockstraps.

While the Nuba were somewhat exceptional in the carefree way the ladies seem to have left their genitals uncovered, boobs loose and free were the norm in sub-Saharan Africa (and gents with their cocks out all day not as uncommon as you may think) until Western civilisation's morality took over and shamed many of them into covering up.

[Connectamabob]

For my part, I divide these into two groups: "playable characters", and "cheesecake".

Playable characters have to have a certain degree of logic to them. Not just in regards to skin, but in more or less all aspects. My biggest pet peeves are impractical weapons and awkward poses. Many figures are sculpted carrying what look like crew-served guns as if they were pistols, or two foot wide swords with weird random curves and hooks all over the blade.

Sure, if your guy is a powered armored super soldier or a flesh-covered killbot from the future it makes sense that he could carry a gun like that, but if he's not, well...

Poses seem to be more a matter of sculptural skill, but still, plan properly: your badass alien safari hunter shouldn't look like he's flailing about randomly while in mid faceplant from tripping over his own feet. Learn how the body works: take a shooting range class, a martial arts class, or even just invest in a few good, targeted reference books. To a good sculptor, kinesiology is just as important as anatomy. IMO something too many sculpting tutorials omit.

Re: nudity- For playable characters I agree it has to be in character. This can go both ways however: a loincloth on a demon is just as conspicuously unrealistic as toplessness on a northern/middle European warrior, yet most demon models out there are strangely modest. And as many a National Geographic issue has shown us, there are/were regions and cultures who's barbarian warriors would be likely to fight topless.

Cheesecake figures I'm relaxed about. They don't have to make sense because they represent a kind of "Halloween costume" idea, rather than a hypothetical reality. Pretty much anything can be fair game, including conspicuous nudity.

In fact I'd like to challenge some of your notions Re: how males perceive female nudity. I'm not gonna claim any viewpoint is universal (politics has given me a hatred of selection bias, confirmation bias, and false consensus fallacies) while there are males who do become focused on nudity out of low self confidence induced frustration, that isn't the root or the sum of it.

Most men find the female form extremely beautiful. Not any specific sort of beautiful, just beautiful period. Not the beauty of sex, or of landscape, or of mathematics, or of spirit, or anything else: just image goes in, happy comes out. It's a very simple reaction, but because humans are complex, what becomes of that reaction is up to individual influences. It means nothing, and can therefore be spun to mean literally anything.

Hetero males are sexually attracted to females, and so when those two impulses cross, you get the "nudity = sex" thing, which is pretty simple & straightforward, but again, you're dealing with a convergence of influences, not a single influence. Most gay guys I've known found women beautiful too, just without the sexual cross-influence.

In either case (sexual or abstract), it means nothing as to how women or their sexuality are perceived, either as a group or individuals. Those are also separate but converging influences. A man in a loving relationship sees his partner's body as beautiful and sexual, both as as intersecting and separate impulses, but this has no bearing on weather or not he sees her as a person at the same time. A man can perceive a stranger the same way: the fact that he doesn't know her as a person is a separate influence on a different axis from his perception of her physicality.

Those influences can stack and modify each others outcome, but how they do depends on what other influences are present and how he's learned to process them. He can be aware of the unknown variables of her personhood, and how that has the the potential to modify his perception of her, or not. He can leave room for those variables to work, or not.

Everyone has their own pick-up-sticks pile of influences. Sometimes these are more or less statistically consistent across a population due to culture, but even that's an illusion: you can predict a population's collective behavior based on that, but not an individual's behavior. In a large enough population, even statistical rarities become an everyday thing at street level.

What I'm getting at is that a man liking nudity for it's own sake, either abstract or erotic, by itself doesn't signify anything as to how they perceive either women or themselves. You can say that given common cultural influences, it's more statistically likely to mean on thing or another, but that's not the same as universal, or even common when you start narrowing the field to subcultures (especially those with more individualist leanings). Assuming that a taste for cheesecake is by itself a reliable symptom of interpersonal issues, and calling for a limit to such on that basis, is a much bigger leap than you seem to think.

To be fair these are very common misconceptions (yay, culture!).

Not that I don't agree your desire to see people with social difficulties overcome their problems. I'm totally with you on that. Better to tackle it by the roots than by loosely targeted symptoms though.

[Dr. The Viking]

I love nudity!!!

But I agree. We should have more options for deflated magumbos. That's realistic for you. 

I'm afraid my world is filled with enough important stuff to make me fail completely in seeing the points in your argument...

To me gaming with lead figures is the diametrical opposite to anything called realism. Just like I don't think miniature games simulate warfare... they're bloody games.

[Connectamabob]

I've dremmeled and resculpted the breasts on a few figures because they weren't sculpted properly originally.

The most common issues are "floating boob syndrome", where the subject's breasts seem lifted as if the subject were on the down arc of a jump, and "invisible wonderbra syndrome" where the breasts are squished together to form cleavage without visible means of squishing (IRL unconstrained breasts tend to hang outward from the body's centerline).

That and bad implant curvature. Why on earth would anyone choose to model fake boobs instead of natural?

[Mancha]

My feeling is that people who like miniatures also like fantasy, science-fiction and/or Pulp literature, movies, comics, and culture.  These genres of movies and writings are not, themselves, realistic.  Heroes are larger-than-life, heroines are busty and wear over-the-top costumes (that word chosen carefully), and endings are improbable and rely on the Cavalry thundering in at the last minute.  Given how unrealistic our elements of cultural interest are, why would you expect aficionados of these genres to demand realism from their minis?

That said, my impression of the typical LAFer is that we're more into historical gaming than fantasy and sci-fi, so you should expect to find a little more realism here, and fewer two-foot-wide swords, suspension-of-gravity breasts (although thank God for Michi), and loinclothed demons (or even demons in general).

[brigadegames]

When it comes down to it, probably the only reason that can really be applied to miniatures and determination of what to sculpt is based on what sells. 

I can only say that after 10 years it never ceases to amaze me what sells more and what sells less. I have given up trying to predict as well. Sometimes things that sold poorly for 2 years take off in a future year. Now I just make what I want and like and hopefully I hit on something everyone else likes too.

Nudity does sell but it also depends on a lot of things. Unless an unknown sculptor does an incredible job on the female form, most experienced sculptors creating female sculpts (gratuitous or not) have a decent following and can generally command a high/er price per mini.

When I was the distributor for Maidenhead and they did regular releases (we still have a small amount in stock) customers went gaga over the stuff. What amazed me was the number of strict historical gamers buying them. Then regular releases petered out and the range basically died in sales. If the promised rules ever made it to light it would have been a big help as well.

[Plynkes]

That said, my impression of the typical LAFer is that we're more into historical gaming than fantasy and sci-fi...

Odd how we can have such different perceptions of the same place. I would have said precisely the opposite. Seems to me the LAF (especially lately) has a definite lean towards alternative-this or weird war-that, and the "historical" genres generally being sci-fied out of all recognition. Haven't seen a whole lot of "historical gaming" stuff being posted around here of late by comparison.

The stats would seem to bear this impression out, with Future Wars having the most posts of a genre board, followed by Pulp and then VSF; with a historical board coming next (Colonial) about 6000 posts behind those last two, and 10,000 behind Future Wars.

[Doc Twilight]

Being a producer of miniatures, and being married to a female wargamer, I do have my own feelings on nudity and figure look in general.

As for the issue of realistic appearance, my own pet peeve is the predominance of miniatures that play upon period stereotypes or use a distinctly unrealistic approach. On my old website (Honved.com - now gone, thank you Geocities.. you worthless twits), I had a number of articles on the subject. However, to summarize, some of the little things that really annoy me about realism in miniatures, in general. Ancient bits are at the top because I'm in the middle of polishing up a set of Ancient rules, and they're on the brain at the moment.

I am notoriously anal retentive about the way that soldiers "look." I readily admit that this is my own self-imposed burden, since it means I have a much harder time finishing armies, but these are, nevertheless, backed up by some logic.

- Guys with ridiculously long beards who are supposed to be soldiers, especially ancient soldiers. Even the "long bearded" warriors of history kept them bound up. Very rarely do you see a fellow with a ZZ-Top style beard galavanting about in a front line combat unit, particularly in ancient times. If you have a long beard as a Hoplite, guess what? You're an easy target to have your beard snatched and your throat cut.

- Nude Hoplites. This is simply preposterous. Another myth fostered by improper reading of the ancient evidence and interpreting training and athletic scenes as "combat scenes", while at the same time mistaking mythological duels for "accurate depictions" of ancient warfare. This -never- happened, not when anyone could help it, anyway. The problem has only been exacerbated by the recent "300" movie, which has encouraged a plethora of newly sculpted Spartan Hoplites wearing codpieces and cloaks that are being passed off as "accurate."

- Entire ranges of historical miniatures based upon a single photograph. I absolutely detest this. A sculptor finds -one- photograph of a relatively common subject, and decides to give everyone in the range the same basic features. Every Austro-Hungarian soldier has a handlebar moustache (in NONE of the photos of my grandfather or his brothers are ANY OF THEM wearing facial hair), every Cossack is wearing the same hat (Hey, guys, let's all wear a uniform. It's so Cossack-like!), every WW2 German soldier is wearing jackboots (Hans, screw the regulations and the leather shortage, I'm going to get myself some jackboots!).

- Ancient sculptors who use WRG and Osprey sketches as their only basis for designing miniatures. I know that this is difficult - just try to get a period depiction of a Pontic Phalangite anywhere else, I dare ya! - but this has gotten to the point of ridiculousness. The same poses repeated over and over again. The same expression.  The same sketch from "Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome" intepreted four different ways, but all of them essentially the same guy. This is similar to the gripe I've just made above, but it is particularly endemic to the eras before we have photography.

I am not a sculptor, by any means (though I'm practicing) and what I can't understand in regards to both of these is pretty basic. A sculptor can conceive of a million different ways to do up a zombie,or a robot, or a woman in power armor, but he/she can't stretch his/her imagination to allow SOME variation in historical ranges? Surely the uniform may be the same, but the expression, the pose, the basic wear and tear, doesn't have to be identical in every sense. I have a friend who loves the ACW, but refuses on principal to paint a Confederate Army because he says that the majority of Confederate ranges look like, and I'm quoting here, "rejects from Hee-Haw".

-  Really, nudity doesn't bother me in general, nor does it bother Mina, but we're both amazed by some of the incredibly grotesque sculptures being passed off as "heroic nudes" lately. Breasts that would snap a woman's back, men with ridiculously endowed genitalia wearing armor on EVERY OTHER part of their body, that kind of thing. Nudity is fine with me.And they can be good looking, too. But geesh, use some common sense.

- The tendency toward scale creep in most ranges, passed off because the sculptors "Don't believe that we can get accurate detail in anything smaller than X mm". Do I -really- need to wargame with 36mm soldiers because your sculptor isn't competent enough to execute the same detail in 28mm? Do I -really- want that kind of detail in a soldier that I intend to paint some time before the end of the century?


The problem is, as with every aspect of the business, that there is no formal training for people in the niche industry that is wargaming. There are no formal sculpting schools, no "hard and fast" industry standards, no standard works to which more than a handful of sculptors for X Period or Y Genre will commonly refer to. That is, conversely, one of the beautiful things about the hobby, because it produces a very large range of options for a relatively small hobby, per capita, but it can be quite frustrating some times.

-Doc

[dreamingleopard]

Great post, Doc.

HAIR (and other vulnerabilities):

I definitely agree about the long hair...

Yet consider the psychological advantage of not being afraid to show a vulnerability.  Scotsmen flipped their kilts to show their privates as a taunt.  They wore their hair long.  Many had beards.  But what a price to pay for that boldness, and it's not just the annoyance of headlice.  You see the same thing in the bold display of the male peacock, which attracts the females because it states, look here... I'm obvious... and I'm still not afraid of you!  I can definitely see why a fantasy dwarf would risk the hair.  Maybe the bold makes up for the lack in stature.  Conan's propensity for wearing no armour would be a similar move, but hey... he's not real and was never in any real danger of dying.

ARMOUR & WEAPONRY:

I don't know that much about plate armour, but it seems to me that some of the knight sculpts that I've seen are in poses that are too lithe for the metal confines.

And only an idiot would put his gonads directly behind a firing cannon.  Same goes for the recoil in those megaguns.  I can't imagine the shock to the arm and shoulder implied by some of the firing poses I've seen.

As far as weapons go for the gothic horror genre, we need more weapons that spread fire or shrapnel.  Gimme a fig tossing a cocktail or dynamite stick or early equivalent to a flamethrower to pit against the shuggoth.  I want farmers with shotguns.  Well, at least I can find mobs with torches, and there are some hillbilly groups out there. 

For fun, I'd like to see an MIB character flying backwards from the recoil of the wee "Noisy Cricket," maybe on the verge of slamming up against an open dumpster or in the process of knocking over a bunch of garbage cans. 

There's quite a bit of misconception about the 1920's era in America, too.  Tommy guns were quite hard to get.  Besides the police, the post stations had them, but not every mobster did!  No doubt this misconception is due to the infamy of Al Capone...

How about some women figs with practical weapons?  Frying pans, throwing boiling water from kettles, rolling pins, brooms or mops...  Or the wicked murderess with the poison vial...


SKIN (again):

Thought I was done with the skin thing, but this post elicited a reply...

I've dremmeled and resculpted the breasts on a few figures because they weren't sculpted properly originally...Why on earth would anyone choose to model fake boobs instead of natural?

Yup!  Women sculptors and married male sculptors more often get it right.  Of the unattached male sculptors, many of them do, too, but of those who don't, it can give the impression of lack of experience, and that could be a might embarassing.  Better to leave the topless sculpt of an action fig to an experienced sculptor.  Those nubians out there on the grassland were not doing the hunting.  No support is fine for low impact work like gathering or child minding.  Asian women are a lot less likely to wear a bra.  But in a D&D fighter, toplessness would be risky if the breasts are large (as modern male preference in sculpts seems to want).  Maternity and age makes them naturally sag, even small breasts, with or without the use of a bra.  That should not take away their beauty, but apparently the beholders think otherwise.  Big boobs don't have anti-grav implants.  And so the bra is invented... probably man's most difficult engineering feat (and they still haven't got it right).  I'm not an anthropologist, but I bet you the bigger breasted Amazons wrapped themselves, or... check this out: http://www.wellsphere.com/skin-health-article/breast-reduction-amazon-style-the-legend-of-amazonian-breast-mutiliation/790221.  There's a clutz-factor here to consider as well.  Big boobs can throw off balance, interfere with momentum and they get in the way.  Modern day argument?  Ask an Olympic female athlete with larger breasts if she'd compete braless.  Then again, there's the social pressure to prevent large-breasted women (even if slight-built) from engaging in active professions (prostitution doesn't count) - ballerinas, for instance.  Many a girl's dreams of that profession are dashed, not because she lacks skill, but simply because she doesn't look the part. 

The point is, form and function must be both physically and perceptually married well in order to excel at what one does.

[Mancha]

Odd how we can have such different perceptions of the same place. I would have said precisely the opposite. Seems to me the LAF (especially lately) has a definite lean towards alternative-this or weird war-that, and the "historical" genres generally being sci-fied out of all recognition. Haven't seen a whole lot of "historical gaming" stuff being posted around here of late by comparison.

The stats would seem to bear this impression out, with Future Wars having the most posts of a genre board, followed by Pulp and then VSF; with a historical board coming next (Colonial) about 6000 posts behind those last two, and 10,000 behind Future Wars.

I totally agree with you.  However, I feel that "weird/alternative"-whatever is just a variation of normal.  If you want a weird/alternative army, you start with a normal army and add strange elements (such as gas masks and some appropriate version of battle-armor...or maybe females).  It's as if we want to get crazy , but we can only do so in small steps. 

And not that I'm taunting or anything.  I totally dig weird/alternative.   

[Mancha]

I can only say that after 10 years it never ceases to amaze me what sells more and what sells less. I have given up trying to predict as well. ... Now I just make what I want and like and hopefully I hit on something everyone else likes too.

I can totally appreciate this.

You know, Grandpa Lon  , I wish some day you'd pull up your rocking chair and tell us--all arrayed at your feet, looking up at you in adoration--how Brigade began.  I, for one, would be interested.

[Hammers]

I suppose this is my plea to the sculptors out there for more realism in the sculpts.  The more the gender stereotyping is fostered, the more we all end up feeling inadequate, even though this is not the case.  To those sculptors that brave that push and produce the "wimpy" little geek-boy or the tough middle-aged broad who isn't a despicable hag, I salute you.

Feeling inadequate? We are talking about 28mm miniatures, right? Standing next to such a thing I'd say I'd have a hard time feeling inadequate. 

I am of course being facetious. Interesting post but I don't agree with you. I think you are finding way to much sexual frustration in the inspiration of sculptors. Miniatures for wargames are representations. Representations are stereotypes. Stereotypes form archetypes. Wargaming is a form of story telling and for the stories we tell we need archetypes, be it cannibal savages with their cocks out or sultry martian princesses with anti-gravity tits.

I also wonder where you are looking for miniatures. There are hordes of miniatures out there these days and of the most variable character. Many of them will fill the description of  "wimpy" little geek-boy or the tough middle-aged broad who isn't a despicable hag".