The LAF Games Workshop Discussion Thread

[Duncan McDane]

I suspect that GW could, if they were so inclined, release a set of generic orcs that were simply much better than everyone else's.

I don't agree with that. GW doesn't make the best models in the world, only the widest available. Digisculpts will never best handsculpted ones unless you make megamultipart kits out of them, and that's not for everybody. The Silver Tower Dwarf Slayer consists of 11(!) parts. Ridiculous for a 28mm fig in my book. Add to that fur/hair won't be as detailed in digisculpts as in handsculpts, mail looks too artificial, ditto for plain skin, grain in wooden poles and especially in fantasy those are main features of miniatures.
Add to that GW is expensive to very expensive, compared to other manufacturers unless you buy a starter box / complete game, that's superb value for money.
I won't name all the sculptors available, but current models by Chis Fitzpatrick, Tom Meier, Felix Panugia e.g. are much better in detail than anything GW produces at the moment... So yes, if GW did some generic Orcs Avatars of War would pick up immediately with better ones at a cheaper price. So I don't blame GW for not doing so, it's a simple matter of business...

[Andrew Rae]

That's all got nothing to do with digital sculpting and everything to do with plastic miniatures production.

[Duncan McDane]

Maybe, but I've got some metal digisculpts too and they suffer from the same thing... Hair, foldings with clothes, they're not up to par with handsculpts. But I'm happily proven wrong  .

[Andrew Rae]

Blame the sculptor not the tools. I've got hand-sculpted figures that show the same issues. Heck, I've sculpted figures both by hand and digitally that show those issues!

[Major_Gilbear]

It's also to do with the casting material mediums - and plastic is intolerant of anything that even comes close to being an undercut, which is why you often get what you get.

Technically though, one could still reproduce the style of a "hand" sculpt "digitally if you wanted to - every ring in a piece of chainmail could be slightly different and irregular if you wanted it to be for example. I'm not really sure it would actually make a model notably better in the end (which is one reason nobody really does that with digital sculpts, with time invested into the sculpt being another).

So as Andrew says, odd-looking hair, or fur, or chainmail has very little/nothing to do with the sculpting medium, and much more to do with the sculptor and the casting medium (and, presumably, time).

[Andrew Rae]

To go into things a bit further, there certainly are traits that feature more prominently in digitally sculpted figures than in hand sculpted ones.

For example, strangely swirly cloaks. In hand sculpting, cloaks are a pain in the ass; in digital they are relatively easy and can be pulled this way and that so that if the sculptor doesn't keep things in check, they look a mess. It's easier, so the reckless sculptor takes things further than is perhaps desirable.

But poorly sculpted drapery that doesn't follow natural patterns is all down to the sculptor. It's the sculptor who ignores natural drapery, either through ignorance or choice, not the tools they are using. There's nothing about digital sculpting that inhibits natural drapery.

Other things, such as too small heads (not a GW problem), too small details or blank expressions are down to the disconnect between what we see on screen and what appears in reality with a printed model. The sculptor has to learn the level of exaggeration required (with face the answer is 'a lot more than you'd think'). I'm not much of a fan of the new wave of '8+ heads tall' figures that are appearing from various companies (no more realistic than a 5 head tall bobble-head), and this has been facilitated by how much easier it is to control the head size on a digitally sculpted figure. Just ask any traditional sculptor who has had to scrap a head because they'd managed to make it that little bit too big.

Regarding fur, it's certainly easier to get a simulation of fur (or at least what over the years what wargamers have accepted fur looks like) with some putty and a needle. But the much maligned fur-like-leaves actually first appeared on Brian Nelson's plastic Chaos Warriors, which were hand sculpted and done for plastic production. I think GW have actually improved their method of sculpting fur for plastic a lot, but it's always going to be much more restricted than something sculpted for resin or metal production. Bizarrely, I chose this as a reference in the few times I've sculpted fur digitally, even though I was working for metal production - at the time I liked the look. I fear I failed miserably but that's down to me, not my tools. In future I will try a different method!

[Andrew May]

I don't agree with that. GW doesn't make the best models in the world, only the widest available. Digisculpts will never best handsculpted ones unless you make megamultipart kits out of them, and that's not for everybody. The Silver Tower Dwarf Slayer consists of 11(!) parts. Ridiculous for a 28mm fig in my book. Add to that fur/hair won't be as detailed in digisculpts as in handsculpts, mail looks too artificial, ditto for plain skin, grain in wooden poles and especially in fantasy those are main features of miniatures.
Add to that GW is expensive to very expensive, compared to other manufacturers unless you buy a starter box / complete game, that's superb value for money.
I won't name all the sculptors available, but current models by Chis Fitzpatrick, Tom Meier, Felix Panugia e.g. are much better in detail than anything GW produces at the moment... So yes, if GW did some generic Orcs Avatars of War would pick up immediately with better ones at a cheaper price. So I don't blame GW for not doing so, it's a simple matter of business...

What a load of biased ill informed tosh.

You're mistaking stylistic/aesthetic  choices informed by the necessities of plastics tooling for "quality" of sculpting (whatever that means). Also the price thing...the figures cost what they cost and you'll just have to get over it.

[grant]

 

How do you really feel Andrew?

[Duncan McDane]

Fine, show me a digisculpt by Gael Goumont that is better than a comparable handsculpt by him...  .

[Andrew Rae]

What would that prove? Gael's been sculpting by hand a lot longer than he's been sculpting digitally.

[Hobgoblin]

Games workshop stopped being generic years ago, if they ever were. Their style has always been fantasy ramped up to 11.perhaps that just seems generic since they have been the go to fantasy game maker for pushing 40 years.

Oh, they certainly were generic - through several editions of Warhammer at the very least. And I don't think "fantasy ramped up to 11" has always been their thing either. There's still a lot of the "pathetic aesthetic" about the Skaven, for example. I think you could argue that a lot of GW's fantasy stuff is - even now - still more restrained than, e.g., Reaper's.

Why make something generic that lowers the standard of the product line to compete with your copy cats, when you can just continue making your own stylised stuff and having the industry follow?

Why would generic stuff lower the standards, though? Some of the less stylised current GW stuff is of a very high standard - the e.g. LOTR range and those marvellous ungors.

And isn't is something of an open question as to whether the industry will follow the AOS trend? The imitators, for now, seem to be still looking to the later iterations of WHFB.

I think you're confusing gw and citadel as they have been for the last few decades with what they were during their very early origins before they set themselves a style.

Well, their take on the generic certainly became the norm (in the 90s, perhaps?). And even in the 80s, their stuff was the best expression of generic fantasy around, but it was always fairly generic. Sure, they added lots of their own touches (the Slann and the Skaven, most obviously), but the core of the Old World was alway Tolkien and Moorcock filtered through D&D. I don't think they've got very far away from that until fairly recently (with things like that big undead wizard - Nagash? - and then AOS). The classic Warhammer stuff was generally a bit more earth and gritty and historically grounded than what the likes of Reaper and Ral Partha were producing.

Certainly, there's been a move towards the cartoonish ever since the introduction of slottabases, but the overall look of Warhammer  has, for the most part, been somewhat pseudo-historical. Much less so now, though!  

[Hobgoblin]

I don't agree with that. GW doesn't make the best models in the world, only the widest available. Digisculpts will never best handsculpted ones unless you make megamultipart kits out of them, and that's not for everybody. The Silver Tower Dwarf Slayer consists of 11(!) parts. Ridiculous for a 28mm fig in my book. Add to that fur/hair won't be as detailed in digisculpts as in handsculpts, mail looks too artificial, ditto for plain skin, grain in wooden poles and especially in fantasy those are main features of miniatures.

Ah, but we're talking about multi-part, multi-option kits here. I can't think of a manufacturer that does fairly naturalistic fantasy (those ungors again!) in plastic as well as GW. There are lots of people who do the over-the-top-stuff as well or better than GW in plastic, but my hypothetical orcs are generic low-fantasy!

Add to that GW is expensive to very expensive, compared to other manufacturers unless you buy a starter box / complete game, that's superb value for money.

Are manufacturers like Avatars of War that much cheaper?

I won't name all the sculptors available, but current models by Chis Fitzpatrick, Tom Meier, Felix Panugia e.g. are much better in detail than anything GW produces at the moment... So yes, if GW did some generic Orcs Avatars of War would pick up immediately with better ones at a cheaper price. So I don't blame GW for not doing so, it's a simple matter of business...

Hang on - Avatars of War don't do rank-and-file orcs of the over-the-top GW sort yet, so I don't see them jumping in immediately!

I agree that Tom Meier's stuff is sublime. But it's all in metal, as far as I'm aware. The Thunder Mountain orcs are brilliant, but they're not multi-part, multi-option kits.

[Andrew May]

How do you really feel Andrew?

Trust me, I held back.

I really want to post up some of the Kingdom Death hard plastics and comparisons to the resins but feel that again, the aesthetic choice or sculpting "style" would distract from the point I'm trying to make.

[Malebolgia]

Fine, show me a digisculpt by Gael Goumont that is better than a comparable handsculpt by him...  .

Check out Andrew's sculpts...(Statuesque). His digital stuff is way beyond most traditional sculpts in terms of quality *IMO*. Really, 3D printed models can be insanely good. Warzone/AVP models, extremely well done and better than a lot of traditionally sculpted models.

[Andrew Rae]

I really want to post up some of the Kingdom Death hard plastics and comparisons to the resins but feel that again, the aesthetic choice or sculpting "style" would distract from the point I'm trying to make.

That's certainly pertinent with all the comparisons being made between the Forgeworld and GW primarch models. One is a collectors piece sculpted for resin production that largely ignores the existing sculpting style and aesthetic, the other is designed for plastic and very much follows the GW house style, which as you said is formed from the needs of plastic production.