On Games Workshop sprue layout and miniature design

[kabaakaba]

Leta be honest, yeah new minis are monopose with with interchangeable hands and head. But poses are way better then they was earlier.  We repose and converted exact this new mono poses. 

[Robbienw]

11 hours ago, kabaakaba said:

Leta be honest, yeah new minis are monopose with with interchangeable hands and head. But poses are way better then they was earlier.  

 

I'd agree with that on some human and xeno figures.  Not in general with newer marines though, a lot of posing is poor and has been for an extended period.  They get it right on a few units like terminators, but posing on a lot of 40k marine stuff doesn't look right.

[Brother Christopher]

28 minutes ago, Robbienw said:

Not in general with newer marines though, a lot of posing is poor and has been for an extended period.  They get it right on a few units like terminators, but posing on a lot of 40k marine stuff doesn't look right.

 

I think you're right. The static poses are okay, the dynamic Space Wolves from the most recent release are great, Terminators are okay. But There's something off about most dynamic poses: the ETB Assault Intercessors and all flavours of Jump Pack Intercessors probably are probably the worst offenders. 

[Robbienw]

Yes the Space Wolves were a rare good example, in particular the Blood Claws.  Wolf Scouts are poor though.

 

Assault and Jump Intercessors are some of the worst.  The new Deathwath kill team poses are really bad as well.

[Brother Christopher]

20 minutes ago, Robbienw said:

The new Deathwath kill team poses are really bad as well.

 

I've seen people stay that, but I don't really see it. I mean, at a glance, from the product shots, they look quite vanilla/okay.

 

But I think we're getting off topic. To steer this slightly back on track, I've also heard that the Deathwatch kill team is quite monopose - a problem that's a direct result of GW's design philosophy where every mini, including rank and file troops, has to be special, which results in repeats of poses.

[phandaal]

3 hours ago, Robbienw said:

 

I'd agree with that on some human and xeno figures.  Not in general with newer marines though, a lot of posing is poor and has been for an extended period.  They get it right on a few units like terminators, but posing on a lot of 40k marine stuff doesn't look right.

 

Yeah the new Terminators look really good. Some other recent SM posing is not good at all though. 100% agreed on the assault/jump intercessors.

 

You can definitely tell when the more skilled modelers are working on the posing.

 

Aggressors are another example. I am a big fan of all things Gravis, but you can really see the difference between their poses vs the new Terminators.

Edited February 5 by phandaal

[Schurge]

The interchangability(sp?)/cross-compatibility of kits was great. I played Chaos and outside of my first kit, everything was increasingly converted because as your collection grew so did your ability to make everything unique. It also extended to vehicles. I managed to have three rhinos even though I only ever bought one. You get ahold of a partial kit in a trade and you could finish it off from parts from rhinos and land raiders. (Being Chaos helped though. I had some very crazy green-stuffed vehicles with maws and tentacles.)

I initially ignored primaris... 'cause Chaos. But when I wanted to do true scale Grey Knights making conversions with primaris bodies was like pulling teeth. I'd say it killed the hobby for me, but really unrelated life changes made it so wargaming is no longer feasible. Those kits are not designed to be turned into other things. They are not meant to be reposed. They aren't meant to have different torsos on the legs. Yeah, in some regard they are "better" than old kits because better proportions and detail, but they really raised the skill floor for modeling creativity.

As others have said, it would be less of an issue if this was a smaller scale game. But still... there is no reason why we can't have modular true scale kits that are cross-range compatible with modern detail. Still. Trade offs. Part of me feels the need to say I enjoyed the new chaos marines... and I did manage to kitbash those reasonably well. But they were less solid and very finicky. Constantly breaking. I am sure part of that was a skill issue. But they weren't meant to be seriously reposed either. 

[Schurge]

12 hours ago, phandaal said:

 

Yeah the new Terminators look really good. Some other recent SM posing is not good at all though. 100% agreed on the assault/jump intercessors.

 

You can definitely tell when the more skilled modelers are working on the posing.

 

Aggressors are another example. I am a big fan of all things Gravis, but you can really see the difference between their poses vs the new Terminators.

 

I don't know why leaning forward like you are about to fall on your face is such a consistent design choice across both the classic and primaris ranges. Even in golden age terminator kits you had at least one guy about to fall on his face if not two.

[kabaakaba]

29 minutes ago, Schurge said:

 

I don't know why leaning forward like you are about to fall on your face is such a consistent design choice across both the classic and primaris ranges. Even in golden age terminator kits you had at least one guy about to fall on his face if not two.

For reasons unknown designers think that's how you fast running. But I think only anime characters run this way.

[Kenzaburo]

19 hours ago, Brother Christopher said:

 

I've seen people stay that, but I don't really see it. I mean, at a glance, from the product shots, they look quite vanilla/okay.

 

But I think we're getting off topic. To steer this slightly back on track, I've also heard that the Deathwatch kill team is quite monopose - a problem that's a direct result of GW's design philosophy where every mini, including rank and file troops, has to be special, which results in repeats of poses.

One of the most problematic offenders for this case was the newer ork boy kit. The boyz overall are good to great quality. I had fun building them. But it's 10 very unique boyz with little options to achieve some variety. And that's just dumb for THE basic ork kit. 

 

The funny thing is: Most of my boyz are from the old Black Reach set, so all you could change were heads and arms for all the bodies you got. But then the standard ork wasn't cluttered in remarkable details and poses so all those kinda alike looking guys simply looked like a uniform green tide. The newer poses are special, look special. The details are special. And the kinda uniform "random ork" look doesn't work anymore. Suddenly you notice the clone army you're looking at. Also the original boyz kit as well as the Black Reach boyz could be used with all the bits from Burnaz and Lootaz, enabling you to fill out squads better if you wanted. Try that with the new kits.

 

Again: The new sculpts look cool, the beast snaggas as well, but wth, GW? As if your designers had no clue that you would need to build an army off of that kit. Which can't be the case. It kinda makes me dread the rumored ork refresh coming with 11th ed.

[Domhnall]

6 hours ago, Schurge said:

 

I don't know why leaning forward like you are about to fall on your face is such a consistent design choice across both the classic and primaris ranges. Even in golden age terminator kits you had at least one guy about to fall on his face if not two.

 

While I agree with what you are saying, my personal opinion is that because it's a static pose trying to convey aggressive forward momentum. and when you start to run from standing still you do lean forward a bit to get that momentum going... whereas an actual mid-running pose would probably look a bit goof on a battlefield miniature.

 

(image taken from this reddit thread so I'm giving credit to where it's from https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/167364w/space_marine_running_with_guns/)

 

Is he running full speed or having a gentle jog?
Is it Realistic? yes.
Does it show he's about to slam into an Ork and punch it in the face? no. 

 

Take any still photo of somebody running and think to yourself, would this make an interesting model? And most of the time that would be no.

Humans running just doesn't work very well when it comes to capturing that idea of speed and aggression that is necessary to make a good model in the way that four legged animals do. You can get a good idea what speed a horse or a dog is going as a miniature by the way that their legs are positioned, because there is a greater range of motion as they get faster. Humans on the other hand don't, so a mid sprint pose does not look all that much faster than a jog when taken as a snapshot. Whereas taking the pose from the initial start of a charge when they are leaning forward does look a bit more 'dramatic', even if it is a bit daft. 

[kabaakaba]

He is sportsman, not guy who charge in fight. There gonna be different pose. Check out charging infantry photos from WW2 or Soviet bayonet attack. WW2 cause it's technically last war where we see same things as 40k

Edited February 6 by kabaakaba

[phandaal]

4 hours ago, Domhnall said:

While I agree with what you are saying, my personal opinion is that because it's a static pose trying to convey aggressive forward momentum. and when you start to run from standing still you do lean forward a bit to get that momentum going... whereas an actual mid-running pose would probably look a bit goof on a battlefield miniature.

 

Their running poses do look goofy, but in my opinion those are not the worst poses they make. A lot of models look like they are in between poses, or their sense of momentum is just not there. With Aggressors, for example, one of them is mid-stride and it just looks like he is standing there puffing out his chest with his arms down low.

 

Another "good" example is the recent Sanguinary Guard kit. They look like they are pirouetting in the air with their weapons, which does not match their positioning and does not actually look better even if it is technically more dynamic than older models. The sculptor somehow caught them all in the wrong part of their motion.

 

Like you said, most pictures of people in motion would not look that cool. Some of GW's sculptors get it and pick the poses that work, others do not.

 

Edit: for a non-Space Marine example, the new vs old Imotekh the Stormlord. The new model is technically better in terms of detail and proportion. However, for some reason they chose to reverse the direction his cloak is moving (more likely, it was not considered). So now, instead of looking like he is bringing the storm with him, he looks like the wind is blowing in his face. Little things like that, it just seems like some of their current team do not get.

 

Anyway, I am way off topic here. This has nothing to do with sprue layout. 

Edited February 6 by phandaal

[Evil Eye]

No no, I think that is a completely relevant point; one of my big issues with modern GW is that not only are you often quite locked in to certain poses but the poses are often either slightly subpar (very subjective I know) or are so very distinctive that it makes repeats of the same base body extremely obvious. Even the Tormentor kit, which is one of my favourites of recent years and has considerably more modularity than many others, suffers a bit from this; it can be quite easy to spot the same body used more than once.

 

One thing did occur to me regarding making Marines poseable again without compromising too much on the integrity of the torso sculpt. I said before about simple reversing the direction of the old waist balljoints so the socket formed by the belt was on the hips, allowing for more range of motion without looking odd. However I possibly have had an even better idea- keeping the upwards-facing ball, but moving its position to the chest instead of the waist. This would allow for more of a variety in sculpted in poses via the lower torso as you could have the waist sculpted bent or twisted to certain poses, but the balljoint at the chest would massively increase posing options over single-assembly bodies, and would be very easy to design so that all but the most ridiculous (like, "torso turned backwards") poses looked natural. IMO at least this would be the perfect compromise between the classic assembly style and the newer one...and now I think about it, that's how older modular Terminators did it. In fact I found resin Tartaros legs combined with old Terminator torsos work very well.

[Viridia]

I agree with a lot of what's been said here. As nice as the newer sculpts can be, I miss the ease with which I could assemble the older kits, and from a transport perspective, I couldn't imagine trying to move any of the new larger models like the daemon princes, the new C'tan, even some of the AoS stuff like Nagash. They all seem very fragile for such expensive boxes, and I think GW has moved away from "We're designing wargaming kits for wargamers who want to play with these" to "Look at this new conversation piece, isn't it great?" as they've improved the quality in production without thinking whether it was a good enough trade-off.

 

It also seemed a lot easier to convert or kitbash the older kits as well because of how modular they could be, Space Marines, both loyalist and chaos being the definitive example, though I've had a lot of success just kitbashing some of the older Eldar and Dark Eldar units to make my own corsair warband. On the other hand, now it does feel like you're locked into a lot of monopose-looking figures in different boxes. While that can be okay for regimented units (using the Old World as an example), for people who are collecting lower figure count armies where each model has less of a chance to be lost in the herd as it were, it's a pain in the backside.

[Craig]

The issue I have with sprues is the massive chunky connection from the sprue to the part. There are some really egregious examples in the various launch boxes especially where the connection is in the middle of a shoulder pad or greave which takes a lot of work to smooth out and leave looking good. These are supposed to bring new hobbyists in but I can see people being put off by these frustrating assemblies. The really annoying thing is that they have shown they can do subtle connection points with the space marine heroes sprues which have about 1mm connections that are easy to get clippers to and to smooth out. They just seem to make things unnecessarily difficult.

[jaxom]

The only thing I can universally say about the kits I’ve worked with since 2015 is they are harder to kitbash and easier to convert.