To detail or not to detail?

[Legion1963]

I used to spend far far longer painting a mini than I do now. The biggest difference is now I enjoy the painting and I get LOTS of stuff painted.

Indeed. I agree with most of the above but i still like to paint a complex once in a while. ;-)

[Major_Gilbear]

Almost all the miniatures in Gary Chalk and Joe Dever's Tabletop Heroes column were glossed, for example.

I wonder if some of the reasons are as mundance as cost and available materials though?

For example, casting models in lead is (was?) cheap, and that's why models were made in lead in the first place. Likewise ordinary gloss varnish is easy to obtain in small posts for fairly cheap compared to more high-grade specialist varnishes that might only be available at a premium and in much bigger containers. That the gloss varnish also helped to seal the lead figures and protect them from "lead rot" was likely a happy side effect that later became good practice.

Nowadays, lead has been substituted for tin-rich lead-free alloys, sculpting is done on the computer, and paints are specialiy formulated for the sole task of painting models.

So, perhaps it's just that things have moved on in a lot of ways, and that it's not just model photo-shoots and fasionable arty styles that influence people. I mean, the models I see in magazines and books often bear little resemblence to many people's figures - not so much in terms of technical skill or raw talent, but rather in that many people paint quickly to a simple standard with washes and drybrushing over a black undercoat in order to "get through" enough figures to play a big (often GW) game - and it's how many of them were taught (again, often by GW) in the first place too.

Anyway, if it helps, I do in fact gloss varnish all my figures (which is one way I know I don't like the finish!), right beforfe I re-varnish them with a very flat matte to give me my preferred aesthetic.

In this day and age, any caster who allows a mold line to run across a face should be buried in quicklime. 

And yet, it still happens; along with mold lines that are perpendicular to the direction of a model's hair to ensure the maximum amout of fannying about to remove them. 

[Ray Rivers]

A traditional sculpt is made with hand-held tools and hence tends to remain accessible with hand-held tools. It sometimes feels like digital sculpts almost call for digital painting tools.

That is an excellent observation!

[Hobgoblin]

I wonder if some of the reasons are as mundance as cost and available materials though?

For example, casting models in lead is (was?) cheap, and that's why models were made in lead in the first place. Likewise ordinary gloss varnish is easy to obtain in small posts for fairly cheap compared to more high-grade specialist varnishes that might only be available at a premium and in much bigger containers. That the gloss varnish also helped to seal the lead figures and protect them from "lead rot" was likely a happy side effect that later became good practice.

Nowadays, lead has been substituted for tin-rich lead-free alloys, sculpting is done on the computer, and paints are specialiy formulated for the sole task of painting models.

So, perhaps it's just that things have moved on in a lot of ways, and that it's not just model photo-shoots and fasionable arty styles that influence people. I mean, the models I see in magazines and books often bear little resemblence to many people's figures - not so much in terms of technical skill or raw talent, but rather in that many people paint quickly to a simple standard with washes and drybrushing over a black undercoat in order to "get through" enough figures to play a big (often GW) game - and it's how many of them were taught (again, often by GW) in the first place too.

Anyway, if it helps, I do in fact gloss varnish all my figures (which is one way I know I don't like the finish!), right beforfe I re-varnish them with a very flat matte to give me my preferred aesthetic.

Glad to hear it!

It's an interesting hypothesis, but I think the gloss vs matt debate has been going on for a long time - it was certainly alive and kicking in the early 80s. I think it's more likely to be a matter of evolving aesthetics. For example, in this article, Aly Morrison says that gloss "gives good tough protection and brings out the depth and brightness of the colours you have used." Earlier in the same article, he says this:

"The general feel I like to get on a figure is that of porcelain or ceramics. I don't particularly like the finish to be too 'authentic'. These are fantasy figures and that's how I like them to look."

I think John Blanche says something similar (in Heroes for Wargames, perhaps?) about using several layers of polyurethane gloss varnish to give a porcelain-like effect.

I wonder if the tipping point (for fantasy figures at least) might have been an article by Rick Priestley (I think) in which he recommended the black undercoat for mass production of armies. It was in one of the early Citadel compendiums or journals. It was around that time that Warhammer went from a "large skirmish" game (like today's Lion Rampant) to a really big affair - which meant less time for porcelain effects, I suppose.

[Lovejoy]

I think the excessive over-detailing and very dynamic posing is down to three things really; scale-creep, multi-part figures and sculptors becoming separated from the production process.

Scale-creep has resulted in what were 25mm figures now often being 35mm. That's a massive increase in volume and surface area, and so putting on extra detail is much easier. And many view (wrongly, IMHO) detail work to be the mark of a great sculptor, so they want to see that extra space covered with detail.

Multi-part figures have made the dynamic posing options much more open, and also again increased the available surface area of the sculpt. But they can be a pain to build, use and store - or even simply impossible to produce.

As for sculptors becoming separated from the production process - this is the real issue for me. Digital sculpting has certainly exacerbated the problem, but exposure on the internet generally has massively increased the number of people sculpting minis, whether digitally or physically. Most of these people will not have a full understanding of the production process; whether the figures will be tooled for plastics, vulcanised for metals, or RTV moulded for resins. They aren't aware of the positioning of mould fill gates, air traps, undercuts, mould line positioning, volume loss or any of the other production issues that affect a miniature.

As a result, they just sculpt the coolest looking, most dynamic, high detail sculpt they can. And then people coo over it on the internet, and say how great it is. But the resulting miniature will often be a nightmare to put together, paint and store.

Personally, I don't think of myself as a sculptor; I think of myself as a miniatures designer. That means I'm not sculpting to make the coolest sculpt, I'm sculpting to make a usable model. Every step of the way, my focus is on how to get the figure to look good, while being easy to cast, easy to store, and preferably a single piece model. But this is something I've only really come to terms with in the last few years, once I seriously looked into the production processes, and familiarised myself with everything involved.

And I think we could resolve most of the problems people have with overly detailed, overly dynamic sculpts if more sculptors were involved with the whole process, not just making a flashy render or green to post on the internet.


Incidentally, without wishing to derail the thread, I just thought I'd mention to Vermis... I don't know if you know this, but Nick Bibby is finally back to sculpting a dragon! Here's a pic from his facebook page:

Sometimes my dreams do come true!




(PS - gloss varnish is evil...)

[Major_Gilbear]

Interesting point Lovejoy.

I suppose what you make the models in also has a bearing on how you design a model to best take advantage of that medium.

I guess you can see the truth of what you say in the the sculpts of people who do work closely with the manufacturing process or who make their own models - Perrys, Andy Foster, Mike Thorpe, Kev White, (yourself!) to name a few.

Saying that, I am aware that some of the "bad habits" may indeed stem from good habits; details like pouches and grenades are used to fill in parts on a model that would struggle to mould well or would leave an undercut too severe for the mould. I guess that once you start adding detail -with good intentions- it can be hard to stop. 

Also, that dragon! 

(I need to stay away from buying giant expensive dragons that I'll never build or game with though...  )

(PS - gloss varnish is evil...)

 

[FramFramson]

One of the best "design" elements I've ever seen on miniatures and which amazes me hasn't been more widely duplicated are Mark Copplestone's bug-eyes.

Copplestone doesn't sculpt eyes the way most sculptors do, as a faithful shaping of eyes in tiny form, no, instead he makes them little balls that protrude from the face. But this actually works amazingly well, because those are the easiest eyes to paint in the world. The dark tone or wash you use for blacklining the eyes flows around it, it's dead easy to dab on the white on the raised prominence, and even painting pupils is simple because again, the surface is raised and not recessed. When painted they look perfectly fine and don't read as "bug eyes" at all. 

[Vermis]

Personally, I don't think of myself as a sculptor; I think of myself as a miniatures designer. That means I'm not sculpting to make the coolest sculpt, I'm sculpting to make a usable model. Every step of the way, my focus is on how to get the figure to look good, while being easy to cast, easy to store, and preferably a single piece model. But this is something I've only really come to terms with in the last few years, once I seriously looked into the production processes, and familiarised myself with everything involved.

And I think we could resolve most of the problems people have with overly detailed, overly dynamic sculpts if more sculptors were involved with the whole process, not just making a flashy render or green to post on the internet.

Good points, Michael!

Incidentally, without wishing to derail the thread, I just thought I'd mention to Vermis... I don't know if you know this, but Nick Bibby is finally back to sculpting a dragon! Here's a pic from his facebook page:
*snip*
Sometimes my dreams do come true!

Woo! An actual reason to join facebook! I was just thinking too, imagine if polymer clay was introduced to the industry a decade or two earlier, what sort of dragons and other things might he still produce?

This sort, I suppose. Brilliant stuff. Ironically, I'm loving all the little details.