Are miniatures getting "cartoonish"?

[Grim Dog Studios]

Hi all, 

 

Over the past few years I'm sure we have all noticed a change in the "appearance" and design that GW are going for in their miniatures.

It seems with each miniature release the figures themselves get, for lack of a better word, more "cartoonish" and busy, which I feel is in stark contrast

to the Grim-dark that 40K is meant to be. Warhammer 40K effectively created the term grim-dark, but now I feel that it is deviating

from this greatly. Take for example a lot of the recent chaos releases. The figures themselves are impressively designed with 

regards to the far greater dynamic posing of them than what was available in previous years, but the figures themselves are just

"bloated" with excess detail. Take the recent plastic Khârn the Betrayer for example:

 

 

I feel like all of the chains and spikes detract from the figure, making him appear far less menacing than he should look in my opinion,

when Khârn is meant to be one of the most menacing characters within the 40K lore. It is as though GW have to literally cover their "evil"

figures head to toe in skulls and chains and spikes to make them look "scary" when in actual fact they end up looking like something out of

a childrens tv show.

Now look at this wonderful conversion of Khârn from this blog: 

 

http://www.the-vanus-temple.com/portfolio/Khârn-betrayer/

http://i1.wp.com/www.the-vanus-temple.com/wp-content/uploads/285.jpg

 

Whilst he has the evil chains/spikes/skulls, they are quite minimalistic compared to the official figure but yet it screams "scary and menacing" far 

more than the plastic Khârn.

Another example of "busy" models are the new Death Guard that came in Dark Imperium which are just an overload of tentacles, eyes and mouths with 

spiked teeth.

 

Of course, this is all my own opinion and might differ greatly from your own, so I suppose my question to you all is do you like this change in aesthetic that is slowly happening to 40K, or do you prefer the more grim-dark tone that the 41st Millennium is largely known for?

[Arkangilos]

They aren't much different than the originals.

 

With everything in the past year, I would think they had eaten memberberries or something.

Edited September 1, 2017 by Arkangilos

[Captain Idaho]

I certainly don't think the models are too cartoonish just painted very brightly, which is a necessity sonetime for the colour when photographs are taken.

 

That Khârn is terrible in my view. Awful pose.

[Tyrannicide]

Yes. Also, the studio painting style exacerbates the quality.

[Adeptus]

A lot of GW models are very busy. The limited edition chaplain terminator is a good example, you can barely see the poor block under the bundles of purity seals and scrolls and chains and whatnot.

[Lexington]

It's a notable departure from their older, harder-edged style. I think this comes out of learning and pushing plastics technology, and an effort to create a "brand" style that's readable from far away. There's places and times where it works, but also many where I don't think it works very well at all - Chaos models like Khârn being a very good example of the latter.

Edited September 1, 2017 by Lexington

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

Have you seen the old school models, specifically goff rockers and the old noise marines?

[Arkangilos]

Have you seen the old school models, specifically goff rockers and the old noise marines?

Even the old Nurgle aligned marines.

 

Atia actually did a temperial distort article about it (old marines) on her blog.

 

Tzeentch https://war-of-sigmar.herokuapp.com/bloggings/1551

 

Slaanesh https://war-of-sigmar.herokuapp.com/bloggings/1513

Edited September 1, 2017 by Arkangilos

[Space Truckin]

i think the old school models where wacky in their own way.  They were more of a social parody as was most of the 40k material back then.

Some of the new models are just plain kids saturday morning cartoonish - which I think works great for AoS and high fantasy stuff personally not so much for 40k.

the studio's painting style exacerbates these features but hells bells those new Death Guard aren't sneaking up on anyone.  I mean if GW were ever guilty of putting to many skulls skulls skulls on some mini's it should be Death guard and well Khorne.   But hey hoo....Bells for the Bell God.

Edited September 1, 2017 by Space Truckin

[Shockmaster]

Yes feels like GW is returning to it's roots, they remembered that 40k is not meant to be taken so seriously & the term grimdark was a joke.

 

Not all the minis are winners but then that is partly personal taste, as I am sure if I was to list some of my least favourite models released in the last few years some people would be big fans of those very same models.

Edited September 1, 2017 by Shockmaster

[Doghouse]

For me personally the sculpting was all about Jes Goodwin, Brian Nelson and the Perry Twins. I think over all there has been a noticeable change in art direction that feels more Blizzard/MMO to me which I am not really a fan of. There has been a general change in aesthetic which I think started around the time of the Wulfen and AoS.

 

I'm just sticking to the older minis for now and see where they take it. It's never been an issue of realism to me, it's more of the style they are adopting and the direction they are heading that isn't for me anymore.

[Space Truckin]

@doghouse   very well said.

[Lay]

The newer minis are certainly busy looking and don't lend themselves to conversions like some of their earlier versions. To me, Khârn looks like he's tripping over the skulls dangling in front of his legs and the oversized chains on his arm mess up his silhouette.

On the other hand, some of the better looking minis that have come out recently look pretty damn close to some of my favorite codex artwork.

[Brother Sefiel]

Greetings

For me personally the sculpting was all about Jes Goodwin, Brian Nelson and the Perry Twins.

Yeah, particularly Jes. In the beginning there were the eldar, and there were all the rest. Then Jes made some of the rest, and they became good too.

 

I'm just sticking to the older minis for now and see where they take it. It's never been an issue of realism to me, it's more of the style they are adopting and the direction they are heading that isn't for me anymore.

I absolutely loathe the way that muscles apparently have corners nowadays. They do good work some of the time - particularly like the Nurgle stuff - but much of the rest of it is terrible.

[Arkangilos]

What muscles have corners?

[Yodhrin]

For me personally the sculpting was all about Jes Goodwin, Brian Nelson and the Perry Twins. I think over all there has been a noticeable change in art direction that feels more Blizzard/MMO to me which I am not really a fan of. There has been a general change in aesthetic which I think started around the time of the Wulfen and AoS.

 

I'm just sticking to the older minis for now and see where they take it. It's never been an issue of realism to me, it's more of the style they are adopting and the direction they are heading that isn't for me anymore.

 

There's a big element of this definitely, but I think also that things have suffered a bit from the transition to software-based sculpting rather than physical sculpting.

 

That's not to say, before anyone jumps down my throat, that digital is somehow inherently inferior, or that it's tied to any specific style, but it is a very different process and it requires a very different approach that I don't think is given enough emphasis when people are training. With trad sculpting there's a lot of focus on care and precision, on ensuring everything is "just so", because correcting mistakes is very difficult or at the least *very* time-intensive. But if you go into a digital sculpt(or painting/drawing, it's not an issue unique to sculpting) with the same attitude and you're not *very* aware of what you're doing, the result will often look very..."plastic", it will look fake, or cartoonish if you like; because it's *too perfect*. With the ability to constantly tweak, and modify, and correct, and tweak some more with the click of a keyboard, if you go at a digital sculpt with that "gotta be careful and make it as perfect as I can" mindset that people get taught as a "basic" part of training to sculpt/draw etc, you're using a process designed for tools & materials with specific and substantial limitations with tools & material that doesn't have any such things. A pal of mine who does effects work has been transitioning over to digital sculpting and she had to set herself an "undo budget" for each stage of a project, to prevent her sitting there obsessively polishing away at a sculpt until it ended up looking really fake.

 

When we look back at a classic model and compare it to a modern one and think to ourselves "the new one is all cartoony, the old one had character", we're seeing the small flaws in the classic sculpt - a slight misalignment or wrong proportion, a patch where a mistake was corrected, an unplanned change of direction partway through the sculpting process - and those make it read as "more real". Our brains find symmetry very appealing, but that also means they're very good at noticing small flaws, and millions of years of evolution have trained us to think the most attractive things are almost but not quite perfect: the Uncanny Valley thing with robots/videogame characters is an example of what happens when we see something that's too perfect.

 

When you add to that issue the very saturated, bold, achievable painting style the studio affects for models intended for official photos, and the move by the company to produce a more unified "house style", I think that's why the newer models end up looking so...toy-like.

[Doghouse]

Totally agree mate. :tu:

 

A bit like the original darth vader helmet being a little asymmetrical in the old films, then when they did the big reveal in the last prequel something looks a bit off because they fixed it using modern methods.  

[Isengrin]

I think several factors come into play here. For one thing the main difference between those two Kharns is obviously the paint job. As others have already said each serves different purpose and it's essential to acknowledge that distinction.

 

Also, resin and metal have harder, more defined edges. If you put resin and plastic cataphractii legs next to each other you'll see some differences, which is why I prefer resin when it solely comes to looks (although I like to work with plastic more). His pose is awkward and the chains definitely do the new Khârn no favours. Modelling chains sure are superior, but also tricky to work with and they'd get damaged quickly if arranged like that. All that contributes to making the vanus conversion more menacing.

 

So the new Khârn modell has its weaknesses, no doubt. But if you compare it to the old metal version those become severely less pronounced and he is, like many other recently released models, better proportioned, which is a big plus in my book. It's a bit devious of you to use a conversion like that one from the vanus temple, which underscores your argument a bit too easily, but I understand what you're getting at. For example, I can't bring myself to like the new aggressors because of their, for a lack of a better word, cartoonish look. They just don't appear threatening or even a little bit brutal. 

 

To me, the old artwork and background have depicted the grimdarkness of 40k much better than the models from back then really. I mean, most releases from 3rd-4th edition don't look that menacing either and Yodhrin brought up a good point as to why we might still appreciate them more. It's not so much a problem with what GW is rolling out lately, because it is always up to us to put as much grimdark in our armies as we desire.

[MoK]

Two of my favourite characters are Cypher and Khârn. The new Cypher is exactly what I've been waiting for over a decade for. Khârn is meh, I don't like his pose, and I think he's just too busy a model. I'm not a good painter and this busynessjust makes me not want to paint him.

[Grim Dog Studios]

I agree that using the Khârn conversion was perhaps a poor example to emphasise my point, the paint jobs are very different and like you said resin can have much sharper edges and more detail. However, I still feel like the Studio Khârn is busy, and I think Doghouse hit the nail on the head with his comparison to the Blizzard/WoW/MMO style. He also mentioned the Wulfen. The Space Wolves range as a whole has become a bit of a competition to see who can have the most wolftails and pelts on them, I won't get started on the Wolf Sled  . GW seem to "overdo" things if that makes sense, they have to cover the models in chains and spikes to show that theyre evil, or in the Space Wolves case wolf pelts and wolf icons to show that they are like wolves. Of course this isn't the case across the entire range, but it does feel like it is heading in that direction.

The different paintjobs have been mentioned and I do agree that the paintjob can affect how the model "feels" entirely. The new Deathguard for example, the shade of green that the Studio has decided to use a little too bright and vibrant for my taste, whereas I have seen some beautiful paintjobs online that use pale, sickly green shades which do make them lookmore threatening, for example these miniatures:

 

Source: http://40khobbyblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/dark-imperium-death-guard-wip-2.html

 

It is fantastic how by just changing the the way a model is painted, the entire feel of the miniature changes. The models themselves are still a little busy for my taste, but a different paintjob goes a long way into making them feel more menacing and grim-dark.

 

I suppose at the end of the day it all depends on what each individual hobbyist is wanting from their 40K experience. For me its a grim-dark vibe that harkens back to all the old artwork from artists such as John Blanche, whilst for others it may be a completely different experience that they are looking for. By all means this isn't something I'm losing sleep over or going to quit the hobby for, just a minor dislike in the direcetion that GW has taken in previous years.

[MoK]

I preferred the old Death Guard models personally. I don't know why GW automatically thinks ALL Chaos is mutated. I say bring back non mutated Chaos Dreadnoughts. I am using 30k models for my Black Legion and FW Iron Clad dreads because I dont want tentacles or mutations. Spikes and trophies I can live with, but clutter, no thanks.

[Volt]

They've always been cartoonish. I think your confusion OP is that you are conflating the more serious miniatures made by Forge World with the always goofy ones made by GW. Remember, your picture in the OP isn't the last Khârn model until the update. It was this goofy lookin fella.

 

http://pro.bols.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/KharnTheBetrayerOLD.jpg

 

 

I preferred the old Death Guard models personally. I don't know why GW automatically thinks ALL Chaos is mutated. I say bring back non mutated Chaos Dreadnoughts. I am using 30k models for my Black Legion and FW Iron Clad dreads because I dont want tentacles or mutations. Spikes and trophies I can live with, but clutter, no thanks.

Well it is? Anything touched by the Dark Gods is going to be horribly mutated in some way. The only way your Chaos force is coming out not-looking warped is because they haven't actually received any attention from the Dark Gods. You try rolling on the chaos boon tables in the 40k or WHFB RPG's and you'll see how fleeting your austere looks are. Your first couple rolls are liable to turn you into a tentacled beastman abomination.

Edited September 2, 2017 by Volt

[Ranwulf]

 

40K always been cartoonish. And Blanche artwork was always just as busy and could always get on silly.

 

[the jeske]

Have you seen the old school models, specifically goff rockers and the old noise marines?

the 2ed rock NM were in style and not over the top. If you want to compare an over done model to a normal one put the terminator chaplain next to the primaris one.

 

Well it is?

 

only it isn't IW replcace muated part with machine parts. AL was never know for it's mutation, neither were the NL till ADB started doing them. WB were a legion of mini chaplains. Plus there is something like over doing it. The old plastics aged well [as old and as last last gen their models were], the new stuff is 3ed sculpted and more often then not they cram as much stuff on the models as possible, because if they do not the models look flat, and not in a good way. It is true for AoS models too.

[Ascanius]

I think the paint jobs are largely responsible for the cartoonish feel. Though obviously CAD multipart plastic models aren't restricted in the same way that older metal and resin models were by the limitations of both design and production technology, and that means they can do more outlandish things, it's also just a fact that there were a lot of straight up goofy, literally cartoonish (as in stretched/bulging/popping, like a Tex Avery character's tongue unveiling and eyes ejecting from its head) features on old models. Atia's Temporal Distort posts prove that!

 

Actually, in a lot of ways I think modern models are less cartoonish. People have criticised the different crozius style for the Primaris Chaplain, especially lacking a winged head, but proportionally most older croziuses look like they'd be the thickness of a leg from a grand piano. Likewise, compare the sculpting of the skull face on that helmet, or the ribcage on the armour, to the finecast chaplain with powerfist.

 

I understand the "more is not necessarily more" attitude; I'm really glad I could get one of the old Thousand Sons upgrade kit sorcerers from a poster here before the new line came out and the old kit went away, because I love that sculpt even though it's much more simple. But I also like the new, complicated Thousand Sons Sorcerer kits.