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 legoburner wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
You captured what makes the art seem weak. It does seem too washed out, whereas something that was drawn and then painted by hand would have more room for the artist to emphasize certain areas or add visual weight and technique to enhance the picture.

Your screen gamma and contrast has a much bigger effect on this than anything else - you dont have pure black on your monitor unless you have an amazing OLED display and everything configured correctly, so images are always going to look washed out on a screen compared to print.

This is 100% true and is a huge problem when it comes to any media in digital and physical form.

I'm the IT Director at a national photo lab. We have a department dedicated solely to color management. To give someone an idea how this works:

- You must use a high quality monitor, specifically, we use EIZO ColorEdge monitors. (for example http://www.eizo.com/products/coloredge/cg248-4k/)

- The monitor must be calibrated at least twice per week, in total darkness, using digital pucks (they hang from the monitor, onto the screen, and read in the color values of colored rectangles that are displayed on the screen).This creates a monitor profile, which your OS applies to anything displayed, so that it will transform the colors of an image to a color space on-screen to what is displayable.

- The physical printer - whether laser-exposed photographic paper developed chemically or giclee-printed ink, must be calibrated several times per week. Printing a control image, which is usually several hundred small squares of varying colors, which is then painstakingly read by a piece of hardware into a piece of software which will then give you a profile for that _printer_, ie, the color range that the printer is capable of doing. Colorimeters and densitometers, basically (check out the wide range of stuff from Xrite just for this purpose - https://www.xrite.com/color-measurement-products) To make it more complicated, some printers require multiple profiles - for example, Noritsu R2R-1100's - which are like half a million bucks - will print a control strip, which is then processed chemically, then read back into the printer, and then you print a color gamut test, which you process chemically, and read that to create the printer profile. And guess what, the chemistry can change because of usage and replacement - as in, old Stabilizer chemicals drained and fresh chemicals added - so recalibration time.

- You can combine all of the printer profiles available into one homegenized profile which will be a representation of what the entire production facility can produce.
- each individual printer profile is used by the printer, however, as that will adjust sometimes daily, so the printer knows that a 232.67.88 color coming into the printer might need to drift to 233.66.88 because of a recent chemistry change!

So now you have your sweet monitor, and Windows is applying the monitor profile. You open your image in whatever, and then you apply a soft-proofing Lab or Printer profile to the image- and voila - you have a near-as-physically-possible representation, on your monitor, of what the final physical print will look like.

It is a very time consuming and expensive process but it is the only way that a device that adds light (a monitor) can accurately represent a device that adds darkness (a printer).


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 warboss wrote:
It feels like a leftover from the 1990's and 2nd edition space marines with the little arm sprues where you always had that one hand that was either balled up into a fist or you tacked on a tiny combat knife to just put something/anything there.

I think each sprue has enough arms to do carrying rifle poses.

But that does remind me of

 legoburner wrote:


We are past this point now and can do sliding cores which would let us get the best of both worlds, but these are our earlier miniatures before we learned such magic.

Thanks for the explanation. Does the above then mean that future units won't have the balled fist throughout then?

The balled fist is still pretty likely, because it can be adapted to hold things as well (melee weapons, pistols, etc) whereas other hand poses can not. Each model/design is assessed on a case by case basis though so it is impossible to say one way or the other.

We were speculating on how the Epirian Contractors ended up looking the way they do, and this seems like the thread to share it.

I can only assume the error lies in inexperience, and having too few eyes on them during the design stage. Everyone was too close to the material. Many of the design decisions make sense on paper, but on the finished model the end result is unpleasant. It's like they never asked a normal person for their viewpoint, which would have saved some trouble. It's like this book cover that must have been seen by at least one graphic designer and one editor and yet still went to print without a comma:


Or this book cover, which was later changed. (Look at it quickly and then look away for best effect.)

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
So far, the minnow is my favorite. I love the heaviness of the design for a flying creature, indicating (to me at least) that it is actually swimming rather than flying -- maybe on the currents of transdimensional aether? These guys are definitely fauna from some kind of nightmare psychic ocean.

I totally get that vibe, too. It sounds like the background will fit in with that, so they are a successful representation. However, there are a lot of people who dislike the minnows, and I can also completely see why. Like campy old Adam West Batman, you either go with it or you hate it.

The minnow strikes me as a riskier design choice than, say, the Karist Trooper. The Trooper is totally serviceable sculpt (and seems designed for an easy-to-look-great contrasting paint scheme) but a bit generic IMO. The minnow, however, is not something I can recall seeing anywhere else. That sort of originality will definitely trigger the "Marmite effect."

Bob, that's a touch offensive, you are making some pretty off base presumptions there when you've only seen three models in the Epirian range and have not read any of the detailed background yet. You seem to be missing the large numbers of people who like the Epirians - our preliminary market research found the ratio of Karist fans to Epirian fans to be approximately 60:40 based on the core infantry model designs alone. You've yet to see the models in the flesh either, allowing proportions to be viewed as intended. It is fine for you (and plenty of other people) to dislike designs as presented, but drawing pointless conjecture about our standard development processes, which are extremely in depth and encompass scores of people, is just conjecture. We are not 8 guys sitting in a room, well over a hundred people have worked on this project with cross-level involvement and thousands of years of combined experience in game and plastic development.

 Manchu wrote:
The minnow strikes me as a riskier design choice than, say, the Karist Trooper. The Trooper is totally serviceable sculpt (and seems designed for an easy-to-look-great contrasting paint scheme) but a bit generic IMO. The minnow, however, is not something I can recall seeing anywhere else. That sort of originality will definitely trigger the "Marmite effect."

It's riskier, but it could also yield the biggest reward. Anyone who wants to get plastic flying aliens will pretty much have to buy them. It just depends on how many people are, say Highlording it up rather than Kroothawking over the Minnows. Same thing with the drones, however I think the payoff there is more obvious.

PS: I'm going to have to call them something else because Minnows just gets a certain song in my head.

 legoburner wrote:
Bob, that's a touch offensive, you are making some pretty off base presumptions there when you've only seen three models in the Epirian range and have not read any of the detailed background yet. You seem to be missing the large numbers of people who like the Epirians - our preliminary market research found the ratio of Karist fans to Epirian fans to be approximately 60:40 based on the core infantry model designs alone. You've yet to see the models in the flesh either, allowing proportions to be viewed as intended. It is fine for you (and plenty of other people) to dislike designs as presented, but drawing pointless conjecture about our standard development processes, which are extremely in depth and encompass scores of people, is just conjecture. We are not 8 guys sitting in a room, well over a hundred people have worked on this project with cross-level involvement and thousands of years of combined experience in game and plastic development.

I wish GW and Mantic would embed themselves in a critical discussion of their models. As it stands, what has been said in this thread is fairly lightweight in comparison.

I will repeat what I personally said in the N&R thread:

This is a great example of the George Lucas effect - only a few people saying "YES!" and not enough critical eyes saying "NO" before going into production. This is why there is a need for Professional Naysayers that someone can hire, who is not close to the project, and say "this is a terrible design." Oh, man, I wish GW and Mantic would hire one of those.

If well over a hundred people worked on this project and all approved the Epirian infantry sculpts, then shame on them. If no-one noticed the Karist broken wrist, then shame on them.
However, if well over a hundred people found no fault, then I can easily understand how a company with perhaps a dozen people, like Mantic, can let bad sculpts slip through, so there is at least a new perspective cast upon that situation.


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 Manchu wrote:
The minnow strikes me as a riskier design choice than, say, the Karist Trooper. The Trooper is totally serviceable sculpt (and seems designed for an easy-to-look-great contrasting paint scheme) but a bit generic IMO. The minnow, however, is not something I can recall seeing anywhere else. That sort of originality will definitely trigger the "Marmite effect."

I'm fully experiencing the Marmite effect with the fishbats. I really like how bizarre they are and will definitely get some, but they look totally out of place design-wise with the Bauhaus dudes. Like someone wanted to play a game and raided their collection of D&D miniatures and Warzone plastics.

 legoburner wrote:
Bob, that's a touch offensive, you are making some pretty off base presumptions there when you've only seen three models in the Epirian range and have not read any of the detailed background yet. You seem to be missing the large numbers of people who like the Epirians - our preliminary market research found the ratio of Karist fans to Epirian fans to be approximately 60:40 based on the core infantry model designs alone. You've yet to see the models in the flesh either, allowing proportions to be viewed as intended. It is fine for you (and plenty of other people) to dislike designs as presented, but drawing pointless conjecture about our standard development processes, which are extremely in depth and encompass scores of people, is just conjecture

I apologise for any offense. I mostly wanted to share an observation (and humorous pictures). I am honestly surprised at the 60:40 ratio. I do look forward to seeing them in the flesh.

I guess I just assumed you had the same design processes as Mantic. Thank you for clearing up my mistake.

. We are not 8 guys sitting in a room, well over a hundred people have worked on this project with cross-level involvement and thousands of years of combined experience in game and plastic development.

This is actually news to me. Reading the original thread, Spiral Arm Studios came across as a team of maybe a dozen people fully involved in the project and a lot of hired freelancers who have unknown levels of leeway for constructive feedback. I certainly did not suspect your team was composed of a hundred-plus people with millennia of plastic miniatures experience.

judgedoug, of course people in the team say when they dislike things, where did you get that we have unanimous internal approval for everything we do?!

We've had debates that have literally lasted months about the smallest details. At the end of the day it comes down to the following simple measurement:

If everyone who likes the model assigns a point value out of 10 to it, and that total is added up, is it more than double the value of everyone who dislikes the model assigning a point value out of 10 towards how much they dislike it?

We have an entire library full of sculpts that we've rejected because they didnt beat that equation. I could show you things that would make you give up on wargaming they are that off! A full quarter of our initial development budget was sunk into aborted projects as we learned how to make good models and they will never see the light of day because they dont pass muster.

on team sizes, that is counting people with some level of involvement of the project, three and a half years and dozens of people working at external firms we've worked with is a lot of people and experience - every time we approach new people at any level, we get them to sign an NDA and ask their opinions of everything in the pipeline to ensure we maintain a good measure of reality.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Same thing with the drones, however I think the payoff there is more obvious.

Yes the flying drones are really neat. And I like how they appear modular vis-a-vis the spiders. I wonder if that will be reflected in the crunch somehow.

 judgedoug wrote:
I'm fully experiencing the Marmite effect with the fishbats. I really like how bizarre they are and will definitely get some, but they look totally out of place design-wise with the Bauhaus dudes.

I'd guess the contrast is intentional and to my eyes it really works. I'm bothered more by the subtle difference between the Karist Troopers and Templars. I get that any closer would make them a little matchy-matchy. But I think the paint job is pulling them together more than the sculpts, creating a slight uncanny valley effect for me. The minnows, however, are so radically different from the humanoids that they go better together in my eyes. The Epirians also obviously have the organic/mechanical contrast going on, more obviously (the drones are robots, the Karists just dress like robots) but also more subtly (the Epirians almost look like they dress to blend in with their bots). I think this is why the Epirians look better to me alongside of their drones rather than on their own.

Legoburner, thanks for the look into your development process.

Was the example of the assigning point value to a model a real-world example of the design/approval by committee?

I know this is a project very close to you and I'm not criticizing the models to be mean. I'm criticizing the Epirian infantry because I do not think they are good. I'd rather you release kits that are well designed and astoundingly engineered and just blow away your competition. Models that I would buy bucketloads of and keep you sippin' gin and juice well into retirement.

And I say it's the George Lucas effect because I think it is. You've stated years and years and tons of people involved, yet we still got The Phantom Menace and Jar-Jar Binks. Over that time people became invested into the project and became so close they lost objectivity. As a total outsider to the project, the Epirian infantry just aren't good.

Doug, there is a clear difference between design/approval by committee and creating concept artwork and models and gauging the detailed opinions of dozens of people.

We have core guidelines for model design (scale, proportions, etc), we develop a model to those guidelines between a couple of people, that design then gets reviewed by a large pool of people, then passed on to the sculptors, and the final models are then reviewed and have opinions stated by a large pool of the extended team. Models and designs have been ditched at every level when they dont pass muster.

I'm sorry you dont like the basic Epirians, but it is not a 'phantom menace' situation - we have market research and significant analytics behind everything to mitigate risk, and there are plenty of people out there who do like them. We have lots of models that people dont like as well, and nobody outside the team will ever see them. We are not designing for judgedoug, we are designing for ourselves, We are not designing to fill every taste, we design around our preferences and requirements, then we test that design with our extended team, then we test that design with a representative slice of the community based on Dakka's significant dataset.

 judgedoug wrote:
As a total outsider to the project, the Epirian infantry just aren't good.

I wouldn't say they're bad either though. Yes, they don't quite match up to what a lot of other people do in resin or metal, but then again, those materials hold detail far better, and have to take account of infinitely fewer mechanical variables then plastic does. I've certainly seen far worse plastic kits (pumbagors anyone?).

I'd also like to state as someone who's only ever had an occasional passing update on this project whilst it was in development, I wasn't a big fan either when I first saw a picture of them. But when I actually held a sprue/assembled model in my hand, I realised that they looked far better in person then the pictures indicated, and had the potential to be kitbashed with a lot of other stuff out there.

The truth is, it was one of the first plastic kits this company made. Plastics have a horrible and expensive learning curve, and for one of your first kits to be not particularly amazing, but not bad either? I'd call that a success. The kit looks decent on the tabletop, has good conversion possibilities, and there are far worse plastic kits out there. As a hobbyist, I think that our little sci-fi wargaming worlds are all the richer for having them there as an option to paint, model, and play with.

 legoburner wrote:
We are not designing for judgedoug, we are designing for ourselves, then we design for our extended team, then we design for a representative slice of the community based on Dakka's significant dataset.

That seemed unnecessary. Don't go all Romeo on people who don't agree with your design decisions.

For what it is worth when I saw the Epirian infantry I was immediately turned off. They are simply models I would not want on my game table. While some of the other models shown do look nice, those Epirian Contractors look like they belong in a game from 20 years ago.

But you weren't designing these for me, either, so keep on keeping on.

I was not immediately sold on the Epirians, but they've definitely grown on me. I think their design aesthetic also looks significantly better alongside the drones. There are visual elements (yes, including the shoulder pads) that tie them together and really look good alongside one another, IMO. I think Manchu's comment about them dressing like robots kind of hit the nose on the head.

I think most folks like the Karists better, and I can see why (the armor and masks are frickin' sweet), but I suspect I'm going to favor Epirians, at least to start. And not just because I got to playtest the flying drones a bit and they're awesome.

It stands to reason that not everyone is going to like every miniature release for this game. That sounds like a very obvious thing to say, and I know it gets said a lot, but it's something that seems to be forgotten.

The same can also be said about the over-arching aesthetic style, the proportions and scale, the background, the style and mechanics of the game. It will either 'click' with you or not.

The most you can do is try to score a hit with as many potential players and purchasers as you can. Or, try and rope in a hardcore fanbase that will buy whatever you do, and hope that there is enough interest (something like Chibi anime sexbots, etc)

Personally, I would have been over the moon if I could have got plastics that looked this good twenty years ago! But, I like big-hair bands and The Lost Boys so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask..

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 legoburner wrote:
Bob, that's a touch offensive, you are making some pretty off base presumptions there when you've only seen three models in the Epirian range and have not read any of the detailed background yet. You seem to be missing the large numbers of people who like the Epirians - our preliminary market research found the ratio of Karist fans to Epirian fans to be approximately 60:40 based on the core infantry model designs alone. You've yet to see the models in the flesh either, allowing proportions to be viewed as intended. It is fine for you (and plenty of other people) to dislike designs as presented, but drawing pointless conjecture about our standard development processes, which are extremely in depth and encompass scores of people, is just conjecture

I apologise for any offense. I mostly wanted to share an observation (and humorous pictures). I am honestly surprised at the 60:40 ratio. I do look forward to seeing them in the flesh.

I guess I just assumed you had the same design processes as Mantic. Thank you for clearing up my mistake.

. We are not 8 guys sitting in a room, well over a hundred people have worked on this project with cross-level involvement and thousands of years of combined experience in game and plastic development.

This is actually news to me. Reading the original thread, Spiral Arm Studios came across as a team of maybe a dozen people fully involved in the project and a lot of hired freelancers who have unknown levels of leeway for constructive feedback. I certainly did not suspect your team was composed of a hundred-plus people with millennia of plastic miniatures experience.

While I quite often enjoy your theatre in a lot of threads and it gives me a laugh Bob, sometimes I do wish you would give it a rest..

 Pacific wrote:
Personally, I would have been over the moon if I could have got plastics that looked this good twenty years ago! But, I like big-hair bands and The Lost Boys so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask.

I remember being floored when my buddy got a computer with a Pentium II chip. Floored. I wouldn't want that computer now, 17 years later.

Yes, those Contractors would have been pretty spectacular in 1995, but in 2015 they simply look stiff and extremely dated.

he he I dont think I've gone full foam wars yet, I was poorly trying to illustrated the numbers involved at each stage - a couple, a few dozen, multiple score, so my apologies for any antagonism that might have come across in that - preparing for Salute and a Kickstarter within 24 hours of each other make word not good type!

I am touched that there is so much passion already over so few models and snippets of information, and know that your expectations are extremely high given our pedigree. If you like the drones, wait until you see the hunter, and if you like the minnows you are going to be blown away by their bigger brother.

(please excuse the delay in response too, I was reading some of DC's new 52 before getting ready for bed)

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 legoburner wrote:
We are not designing for judgedoug, we are designing for ourselves, then we design for our extended team, then we design for a representative slice of the community based on Dakka's significant dataset.

That seemed unnecessary. Don't go all Romeo on people who don't agree with your design decisions.

Not agreeing with design decisions is fine. The point being made was that someone not agreeing with design decisions doesn't automatically make them bad decisions.

I'm JudgeDoug's Marine friend.

I'm always on the lookout for new Sci Fi rulesets and I hope JudgeDoug does the KS so I can try it.

Having said that if I ever choose Epirian as my faction I'd have to use a different model line as their gear looks non-functional and the weapons actually look useless. I understand it's the "future" and "Sci Fi" but I'd like a little realism in the design of the weapons and gear. That may just be the warfighter in me though.

Still though I hope this KS does very well because I currently have no Sci Fi ruleset that I can say I really enjoy.

 judgedoug wrote:
I'm criticizing the Epirian infantry because I do not think they are good. As a total outsider to the project, the Epirian infantry just aren't good.

You're not alone, judgedoug. They're pretty uninspired to me as well, and I, plainly, don't like the pants. It seems....I don't know....overdone without adding anything new or unique?


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 legoburner wrote:
We are not designing for judgedoug, we are designing for ourselves, then we design for our extended team, then we design for a representative slice of the community based on Dakka's significant dataset.

With comments like that, you're not going to endear yourselves to anyone, which is a curious approach considering you're going to run a KS.

If you're designing for yourself and then your extended team, then perhaps you should fund everything on your own.

 cincydooley wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 legoburner wrote:
We are not designing for judgedoug, we are designing for ourselves, then we design for our extended team, then we design for a representative slice of the community based on Dakka's significant dataset.

With comments like that, you're not going to endear yourselves to anyone, which is a curious approach considering you're going to run a KS.

If you're designing for yourself and then your extended team, then perhaps you should fund everything on your own.

Have to agree with the Cinc here (shock! ) You may not like the critique but if you want to be professional you have to take it into consideration.

Personally the only problems i have with the eperians is that the arms look a tad short. The fist is not a problem but an open hand would also be nice.

What was so offensive precisely? That he can't please everyone, and that ultimately he has to stay true to the vision that inspired him in the first place over the opinions of a handful of people? Some of whom are being inexplicably antagonistic and then jumping on him the second he says anything even vaguely asserting that their opinion is not the sole measure of value on planet Earth?

Come on. Vote with your wallet, buy if you like, don't if you don't. Criticize if you like too. But when you have repeated the same point 10 times and are asserting your view is the only one, you are no longer debating, you are getting into harassment territory. If it is going to fail, let it fail, if it is going to succeed, let it succeed. Why are you invested in either option really? You can just walk by the window you know, you don't have to go in the store you weren't going to buy anything from anyways and start yelling at the people who want to shop there lol...

Jumping on him for that statement yet saying nothing about some of the comments directed at him is pretty lopsided too. If you want only the politest of comments, ask it of everyone.

There is also nothing to be done about it since these steel molds have already been cut.

 MajorTom11 wrote:


Jumping on him for that statement yet saying nothing about some of the comments directed at him is pretty lopsided two. If you want only the politest of comments, ask it of everyone.

Well, not entirely. No one else on the thread is going to be asking for donations to a KS at the end of the week, so there's going to be a bit of difference in how the commentary is received.

Like I said, neither of the two presently shown factions do anything for me aesthetically. The drones are solid, but I'm not sure I really have a use for them.

He did apologize for that cincy, not sure what else he can add to that really - preparing for Salute and a Kickstarter launch is a lot of work, and "make word not good type" . Doesn't excuse it, but that's what happens when you engage about things. The apology is below in case it got missed!

 legoburner wrote:
...my apologies for any antagonism that might have come across in that - preparing for Salute and a Kickstarter within 24 hours of each other make word not good type!

I am touched that there is so much passion already over so few models and snippets of information, and know that your expectations are extremely high given our pedigree. If you like the drones, wait until you see the hunter, and if you like the minnows you are going to be blown away by their bigger brother.

(please excuse the delay in response too, I was reading some of DC's new 52 before getting ready for bed)

Then don't buy? He is not asking you to buy anything, he is offering something for people who are interested. He is putting the word out yes, but so he can attract people who are interested. If you are fundamentally not interested for any reason, then he didn't make it tailored to you did he? It's really not complicated.

I get not liking it. Totally. I get liking it. Totally. Either way is perfectly fine with me. What I don't get is this kind of attitude that in making something you didn't like, they have in some way insulted you. That is where it turns off the road for me.

Plus, there are certain people making arguments/statements that completely ignore the fact that the great majority of commentary in that thread is positive and full of enthusiasm. I know it doesn't serve your argument (general your) but pretending it doesn't exist isn't really fair is it?

Don't confuse simply being rude with offering criticism basically. All criticism has been taken remarkably stoically from what I see. Give some credit instead of fishing for an excuse to attack the poor guy. The molds appear to be done... but I bet my bottom dollar they are listening and if able, they will do your best to please you in the future. For now though, there is no point in doing anything beyond not buying is there? Anything further than that seems a bit... malicious no?

Oh, I don't disagree.

I don't particularly like the aesthetics, nor do I have a ton of interest in investing myself in a new sci-fi IP, which Is why I haven't been providing a ton of commentary in general. Honestly, I mostly provided what little commentary I did to express that there are others that agree with what judgedoug is saying. Again, I'm not going to belabor it because nothing about it that I've seen warrants me getting out my wallet.

My larger point is that, as someone putting their hands out and asking for money via KS, I think you need to be 100% measured in your responses. Type it, read it, edit it, and type it again. And then do that again before posting.

The fact remains that, despite the apology, a statement was made that expressed a bit of the "take my ball and go home" attitude. Which again, doesn't seem to be the best attitude to take when asking for funding for your new product.

While I won't be voting with my wallet in that I will be skipping the kickstarter, I would still like to think that we can all make criticisms about the models. Granted I am not interested in the game yet but I would still love to see it succeed as I can't think of a better group of people to start up a wargame given how much they obviously love our little hobby.

If I can push along the development of some awesome looking models by critiquing some designs that don't appeal then I am certainly going to do that! I get the feeling that this game will develop in much the same way as Mantic have only better and faster, starting off with decent but flawed models and slowly evolving into quite an awesome little company.