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Yeah yeah, I know the whole "Because it looks cool" argument. In Warhammer 40K art, do you prefer the exaggerated features of Space Marines, or the more practical (as practical as power armor gets) aesthetic?

What I mean is easier told with images. Here is the former, the brick wall walking Tank Spess Mahreen:


Or the more practical, but somewhat odder looking ones:


They actually look like they could move in these suits, but then you lose out on the walking tank effect. You trade brute force for a bit of finesse. In the end it all comes down to aesthetic choice, but I wondered what others thought.

This pic shows the proper proportions of a marine IMO.
http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/uploads/1304257848/gallery_60566_6038_38748.jpg

The power fist actually looks like it could work too.

I like my space marines to be godlike and over the top. Like this.

Generally I think the walking wall look suits Marines better (I find it more in keeping with their reputation as hard-hitting elite fighters), but there's room for both. The streamlined look would suit depictions of a Chapter that preferred stealth or speed.

If I could only pick one, though, I'd go for "human tanks."

i reckon this is a good portrayal

There's a fine line. I think a lot of it is due to a failure by the artist to remember (or care, I guess) what's underneath the armor.

I definitely don't like the "pinhead" depictions. They don't make any sense, biologically speaking, even accounting for the abnormal physiology of the Space Marines.


I think the "walking tank" depictions are probably the most "accurate". It's important to remember the Marine underneath the armor. So they need to be thick. This is hard armor plating being layered over a genetically and biologically modified seven foot tall dude, built for warfare. So he can't be too agile looking. Part of the Marine mythos is them being surprisingly fast and agile for their size. So it's not necessarily a bad thing for them to look big and "brickish" They're going to have a wider and deeper chest, and then on top of it, there's this suit with advanced life support and power assist functions. Oh, and the suit is covered in layered armor.

Obviously people have different ideas of "realistic" and "practical".

The funny part is, with the exception of a couple nit picks, the "comic book" looking one of the Blood Angel seems the most "accurate" to me. That walking church is completely awful.

Functional, but I don't thing the example pictures capture the look well. The Ultramarine on page 184 of BRB has pretty much perfect Space Marine proportions.

To me, the bulkier and more outlandishly large the armor is, the cooler is look. I don't look at 40k for any kind of realism, except perhaps the Tau because they've made being practical in a universe of impracticality their niche.

I agree with VetSarge. The armour needs volume to contain the artificial musculature, life support and protection layer. The pinhead just looks like they made a witchdoctor angry, but if you imagine a leg fitting inside those "realistic" depiction, the marine in it seems to suffer from heavy muscle loss.
I think this is a main problem with the more recent pictures of power armour: that the artists don't have a real idea how there is a body fitting into. Those who go for bulky look, have no idea of human anatomy. Arms and legs are often not in correct proportion to each other, and expecially the hip joints look quite dislocated. On the other hand I remember an old explosion graphic of a power suit (beakie aera), and to fit through the shoulder fittings the marine would have to stretch out his arms like a scarecrow all the time...

I remember an old picture of then-mentor legion commander Niss Ran-Thall (or so), donning an experimental power suit with help of a tech priest. It actually looked like it could work - but not as a power suit, because there was no way things like strenght-enhancing fibres or live support could find their place in this thin layer of armour, not to speak of insulation against vacuum or extreme temperature.

Hruotland wrote:The armour needs volume to contain the artificial musculature, life support and protection layer.

If one were to go by GW sources, the armour plates would - ironically - probably be the thinnest of it all, being merely "up to an inch thick". However, the fibre bundles could easily be responsible for a notable increase in size. And Astartes armour does not simply include standard life support, but a whole range of gadgets ranging from drug dispensers to food recyclers and bio-monitors ... all designed to give the wearer a small edge in combat, to really make them perform on the highest possible level.

I don't often agree with VS, but the "fine line" sums up my own thoughts regarding the subject perfectly. The Space Marines would be less memorable and less unique if they would not look a bit like "walking tanks", so to a certain degree coolness needs to override realism. However, it is very easy to go too far and scale up the suit to a level where it becomes difficult for me to imagine how they would move in battle, where my suspension of disbelief just stops working and where I discount an artist's impression of the subject as ridiculous. I think that, to me, the items most critical are the breastplate and armguards - if you look around, it's easy to find images where it's absolutely impossible for a Marine to, say, cross his arms before the chest or even just aim their weapons. Some of the miniatures suffer from this as well; even the Marine Scouts can look a bit awkward when you see them trying to twist their plastic neck far enough to get a rough glimpse through their scopes, as the massive chest prevents them from holding the rifle like a normal man.

Fortunately, in many cases, the availability of targeters and bio-neural interfaces allows for an easy cop-out by simply assuming that Marines don't aim like normal people anyways, as their helmets have a built-in gun cam.

How to do the "walking tank" look with half-decently realistic proportions, and make it look very, very good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYYeImrXo9U

Skip to around 6:20 for a still look at the finished piece.

I always liked this from forgeworld's Taros Campaign book, it looks like the marine's body and armour are in proportion. He's sleek and futuristic but still looks heavily armoured.

 rems01 wrote:
I always liked this from forgeworld's Taros Campaign book, it looks like the marine's body and armour are in proportion. He's sleek and futuristic but still looks heavily armoured.

That is an awesome picture, not to mention that it is a marine from the Raptors chapter, probably the coolest chapter around (and my personal favorite).

 rems01 wrote:
I always liked this from forgeworld's Taros Campaign book, it looks like the marine's body and armour are in proportion. He's sleek and futuristic but still looks heavily armoured.

Although a cool looking picture, the proportions are off - way off in the case of his legs. Look how long/bulky they are!

Not as much as you might think. The breastplate is smaller, but that allows far more flexibility in the torso. Our spines do actually bend, so having a midsection of armor that is more flexible would help with maneuverability.

As for the legs, they're not that bad. The thigh armor appears to be going up to cover his hips for some reason.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
Not as much as you might think. The breastplate is smaller, but that allows far more flexibility in the torso. Our spines do actually bend, so having a midsection of armor that is more flexible would help with maneuverability.

As for the legs, they're not that bad. The thigh armor appears to be going up to cover his hips for some reason.

The legs, scaled next to the torso, head and arms, are about twice as long as they should be. There's no two ways about it. Other than that, it's a fine piece of art - which is all it is after all, not a sketch in a medical journal on human anatomy, so I'm not hung up on that point or anything. But still, you only have to look at it (and picture the man/skeleton inside) to see how ridiculous the legs are.

 Anfauglir wrote:

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
Not as much as you might think. The breastplate is smaller, but that allows far more flexibility in the torso. Our spines do actually bend, so having a midsection of armor that is more flexible would help with maneuverability.

As for the legs, they're not that bad. The thigh armor appears to be going up to cover his hips for some reason.

The legs, scaled next to the torso, head and arms, are about twice as long as they should be. There's no two ways about it. Other than that, it's a fine piece of art - which is all it is after all, not a sketch in a medical journal on human anatomy, so I'm not hung up on that point or anything. But still, you only have to look at it (and picture the man/skeleton inside) to see how ridiculous the legs are.

Yeah, the feet should be around the second rivet on the left shin piece if you wanted them to be properly proportioned.

Out of the images you provided, OP... I like the comic book-ish Blood Raven since it best looks like the minis. I also like the first "practical" image you provided. The last one with the Salamander just looks ridiculous to me, despite how well done the pic is. Lol

I find pinhead marines silly.

Not that we need to return to the RT-era super-giant heads, or anything, but space marines should look like big humans, not suits of armor which may or may not be piloted by a person.

They're not mecha suits, people.

They're not mecha suits, people.

well as it goes, they are... they are controlled by the inhabitant's natural movements, but actually having their own system of muscule-like fiber bundles that move the armour - thus, power armour. Just that the "pilot's" legs are inside the suit's legs, and his arms are inside the suit's arms.

But I wholeheartedly agree, the pinhead suits are silly, the power armours are to represent something like a space knight suit, not a mega robo suit.

I thought this might be interesting for scale uses. He's got a little bit of a pin head thing going, but it's not bad I think.

Genetic engineering and super-magic-steroids might make you one huge, muscular dude... but it doesn't make your skull inflate.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I thought this might be interesting for scale uses. He's got a little bit of a pin head thing going, but it's not bad I think.

Honestly, I prefer his earlier versions, like this one;



If you imagine the DKoK from the first image scaled so that his eyeline is just above the bottom of the Marine's breastplate, I think that would be pretty much bang-on in terms of proportion. This newer image looks much more comic-booky.

EDIT:

Forgive my shoddy MSPaint skills, but something like this;



...with perhaps just a touch more bulk about the legs.

Firstly, marines are more like 8 feet tall (very tall humans), and less like twice as tall as a normal person.

Secondly, the helmet on the picture doesn't assume that the helmet has any thickness or is filled with electronics or anything. The actual head would be even smaller.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
Yeah yeah, I know the whole "Because it looks cool" argument. In Warhammer 40K art, do you prefer the exaggerated features of Space Marines, or the more practical (as practical as power armor gets) aesthetic?

What I mean is easier told with images. Here is the former, the brick wall walking Tank Spess Mahreen:

Spoiler:

Ignore the smiley face

Or the more practical, but somewhat odder looking ones:

Spoiler:

They actually look like they could move in these suits, but then you lose out on the walking tank effect. You trade brute force for a bit of finesse. In the end it all comes down to aesthetic choice, but I wondered what others thought.

I'll be honest, they look pretty much the same to me. I think the top two images are a little bigger than what I imagine, but I chalk that up to the more anime-style they are drawn in. I think the bottom three images are a little undersized for my tastes, but I chalk that up to fan-art from people still trying to grasp human proportions and working from real-world anatomy. Both styles approach the same concept from different foundations, which lead to slight artistic differences, but to my eye they are obviously intended to represent the same thing. I guess they both look fan-arty to me, first and foremost.



This is the way I really like my Space Marines. Slightly larger than life, still recognizably human. Kind of like a middleground between the two. Personally, I want my Space Marines to look slim and fast enough to outperform every Olympian ever, and at the same time look stacked enough to take on Master Chief as well as the whole cast of Gears of War in a fist-fight. A tall order I know, but most of the Games Workshop artists do a pretty good job of pulling it off.

If you like a little more realism in your Space Marines, I think this artist does a good job (the cover art is wraparound, but I couldn't find an image of the back).



I think part of the grandeur of Space Marines is depicting them wearing armor (and with physical frames) that look like they would make it impossible for them to pull off the feats of athleticism we know they are capable of. Just personal preference, of course.

IMO this image shows the most "realistic" proportions of a space marine:

where did you find that? it looks incredible. Only nitpick I have is the extended breastplate. he won't be able to bend forward that well.

It's a Red Scorpion, which is FW's pet chapter, so I'd imagine one of the Vraks books, possibly Badab as well.

FW seems to have a good sense of what a Marine ought to look like, reasonably well proportioned, accounting for heavy-duty armour.

The helmet and the pauldrons are what sell me on it though. Big enough to keep the PAULDRONS look, but small enough that you can still use your bloody arms. And the head is actually a head and not some pygmy abomination.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
It's a Red Scorpion, which is FW's pet chapter, so I'd imagine one of the Vraks books, possibly Badab as well.

FW seems to have a good sense of what a Marine ought to look like, reasonably well proportioned, accounting for heavy-duty armour.

I disagree, personally, Forgeworld's Marine art just presents them as slightly taller human males. They're missing the subtle feeling of wrongness, of inhumanity, of primal power that a nearly-eight-feet-tall-walking man-tank should have. Now, I don't like the "pinhead" art too much either, it goes too far in the other direction and over-stylizes things, but the way Marines are described don't fit with the FW imagery IMO.