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It MIGHT be the angle of the pic.

I quite like the 'gauss cannon' looking gun.

Balance wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:The legs do look pretty crappy from this angle.

Why not something longer?



The problem with the gun is that it is so very large and so lacking any detail. If the designer puts that many large flat surfaces on something they need a bot of relief.

Possibly stupid question: Is the 'sitting on butt, legs stretched out in front' historically accurate, as in a position gunners of similar weapons were trained to use at some point? I know I sit like that when I need to work on something low to the ground, but I'm kind of lazy at times, move slow, and rarely get shot at. It doesn't look very 'actiony' or heroic... Most war movies seem to focus on guys firing similar weapons either crouched down or flat on their stomach.

But I won't be surprised

(This is aimed at Killkrazy's Copplestone Castings link.)

Looks like it's historically accurate for tripod mounted heavy machine guns such as the Browning .50 caliber machine gun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cal50_Browning_2REI_2.jpg.JPG
From what I saw searching Google for those types of tripods, the gunners were either sitting in some way similar to the model, or standing in a trench. Looks like it would be the only comfortable way to hold the gun steady and be able to look down the barrel. But maybe someone else has a better understanding or explanation.

Looks like 'pooping in a hole' sitting is the real world way to shoot one of these tripod guns from a ground tripod.

The old GW ones had them in chairs which is a similar pose.

see, just give him a GS bag to sit on, a few minor changes and he is fine, there will also be other guns in the pack! (there had better be!)

The gunner looks like he is giving birth and his legs are coming out of the sides of his stomach, rather than his hips

I thought the regular infantry were fugly, but I think this has to be one of the most horrifically bad models I have ever seen.

The pose was never an issue, but the length of the legs definitely is.

It looks way too much like someone with dwarfism, the proportions are all off.

Wargames Factory have never produced the best of sculpts, and that situation looks set to get even worse now that they've had a hostile takeover by some jackass who stole the company and fired their old sculptor and replaced him with some talentless Zbrush monkey.

The old sculptor did the original shock troops which were at least half decent... these are just horrible, no sense of design or coherence to their weaponry, no attention to proportion or anatomy, the detail is blobby and they just horrible, horrible sculpts.

I find it funny that some of the same people I've seen ripping on mantic in other threads are now posting here in this one defending this abomination of a sculpt.

Is that how you sit with a broken pelvis?

scarletsquig wrote:I find it funny that some of the same people I've seen ripping on mantic in other threads are now posting here in this one defending this abomination of a sculpt.

Design is subjective. I've noticed a lot of people are so used to the Games Workshop 'style' and proportions that more realistic minis look 'wrong' to them. It takes a while to get past the large hands and tons of bling sometimes.

Of course, both bling-heavy and bling-lite are valid styles. 40k is a very different setting from, say, Infinity and both should have a very different design philosophy. WGF is going for a weird kind of 'fits in with GW' path.

These don't do anything for me, but I'm burned out on GW's quasi-gothic look so I'm not really a great person to ask in this case. Is till kind of wish I had ordered the parts* to make some Steel Legion into Stormtroopers when I had the chance and GW had a bitz service.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
* Parts would've included a box of Steel legion, a couple more trooper/special weapon minis, 10+ pairs of metal SM Shoulder Pads (using the smaller ones, maybe a couple of the old fancy ones for the squad leader) and a bunch of the old stormtrooper or kasrkin backpacks.

scarletsquig wrote:The pose was never an issue, but the length of the legs definitely is.

Sorry, the pose is as big an issue for me as the leg length. Even with normal legs nobody sits like that.

I am not impressed with these, and I was waiting for these to finish off my infantry platoon using WGF Shock Troopers. I want to see pictures of the other weapons though.

plastictrees wrote:

scarletsquig wrote:The pose was never an issue, but the length of the legs definitely is.

Sorry, the pose is as big an issue for me as the leg length. Even with normal legs nobody sits like that.

History and the rest of the thread disagree with you...

kenshin620 wrote:

CT GAMER wrote:So what if the gun is subpar

Its not just the gun, its the man behind it

edit to answer balance

well google gave me these pics

Hexol wrote:
Looks like it's historically accurate for tripod mounted heavy machine guns such as the Browning .50 caliber machine gun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cal50_Browning_2REI_2.jpg.JPG
From what I saw searching Google for those types of tripods, the gunners were either sitting in some way similar to the model, or standing in a trench. Looks like it would be the only comfortable way to hold the gun steady and be able to look down the barrel. But maybe someone else has a better understanding or explanation.

Edit:


Just noticed this posted on the comments on their site:

Wargames Factory commented on
06-Jul-2011 08:10 PM

Our head of design is reworking the legs.

It seems that the negative comments did get through!

There's nothing wrong with having the gunner sitting behind the weapon. It's the execution of it in this particular instance that is lacking.

General Seric wrote:

History and the rest of the thread disagree with you...

Umm, if you're looking at those pictures and think that any of them are sitting the same way as this model then I really don't know how to respond.

plastictrees wrote:Umm, if you're looking at those pictures and think that any of them are sitting the same way as this model then I really don't know how to respond.

How about with "You're right, they are sitting the same way, it's just that the sculpt makes the pose look completely unnatural because of how small the models' legs are in relation to the rest of their body"?

Funny that WGF indicated that no more changes would be made to the model, and yet now they're redesigning the legs. Glad to hear it though, as I want them to progress as a model company and refine the quality of their sculpts.

SkaerKrow wrote:

plastictrees wrote:Umm, if you're looking at those pictures and think that any of them are sitting the same way as this model then I really don't know how to respond.

How about with "You're right, they are sitting the same way, it's just that the sculpt makes the pose look completely unnatural because of how small the models' legs are in relation to the rest of their body"?

Funny that WGF indicated that no more changes would be made to the model, and yet now they're redesigning the legs. Glad to hear it though, as I want them to progress as a model company and refine the quality of their sculpts.

THe main reason I liked the old owners so much is that they actively worked wtih customers to make products we would like. Now maybe they listened too much and certainly they should've listened to me more but they did. They put up concept art, they tweeked things, they completely redesigned things.

Imagine if GW had shown off the plastic Cadians or Catachans before making them? And listened to feedback. How much better would they be?

So I'm glad to hear comments on the legs did get through, maybe the new owners aren't half bad.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Imagine if GW had shown off the plastic Cadians or Catachans before making them? And listened to feedback. How much better would they be?

GW did have an official forum once I believe

Its not there anymore

kenshin620 wrote:

Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Imagine if GW had shown off the plastic Cadians or Catachans before making them? And listened to feedback. How much better would they be?

GW did have an official forum once I believe

Its not there anymore

I have a WD from the 80s where they solicited for play testers.

Machine gun practice in the military is indeed done sitting on the ground. I was converting some IG heavy weapon teams a few years ago and the friend and hobbyist sitting next to me, who is a US Army veteran, pointed out that fact as a modeling suggestion for my weapon team conversions. Because of the limitations of the leg modeling on Cadian Heavy Weapon team miniatures I converted my gunner to sit on a sandbag because it required less extreme converting, but actual MG practice is done sitting on the ground and that fact was good inspiration for what was for me one of my more fun conversions that year.

To me it just seams like a kneeling pose would be better, maybe not more accurate, but better.




This guy is classic

Sitting is prolly more comfy, but I don't think our plastic army men care about being comfortable.

I prefer the 1 knee look like the IG heavy weapon teams

Kneeling is more associated with AT guns than MGs. And the two weapons systems perform very differently. But the crews models are designed to be used with both- so you can have sitting AT gunners or kneeling MGs- neither make much sense.

Kneeling is what a lot of Warhammer fans are used to from the Games Workshop Heavy Weapon team sprues, but it's not accurate, at least not for machine gunners.

I never would of thought that the lazy slobs in the 40k community would hate sitting this much. I'm floored.

BrassScorpion wrote:Kneeling is what a lot of Warhammer fans are used to from the Games Workshop Heavy Weapon team sprues, but it's not accurate, at least not for machine gunners.

Yeah, historically, laser cannon operators were more often sitting than kneeling...

Or big boxy featureless guns that make little sense from an operational standpoint. This isn't the wargames community I've grown to tolerate at all! Who are you people? Where did all the Chimera loving, space marine proportion defending, WARMACHINE playing people that used to populate this forum go?

Since when did you all care about proportion and visual logic as much as me? The stick in the mud?

Yeah, historically, laser cannon operators were more often sitting than kneeling...

My quote specified machine gunners. There was a discussion about machine gunners, my comment was about machine gunners. My comment was relevant to what it specified.

I never mentioned laser cannons nor tried to apply the one thing to the other directly, though the discussion was also about adding an atmosphere of realism to the fantasy model, in which case then a sitting pose would add an air of authenticity by modeling the fantasy weapons team after actual soldiers firing heavy machine guns. That was also part of the hobby discussion here. No reason to be smarmy, especially for someone who is supposed to be helping to keep the forum civil. Sure laser cannon operators can do head stands while firing their weapons, but modeling them after some actual soldiers makes gives them an air of plausibility which even fantasy modelers tend to like. Moving on (and out of this thread completely)...
-------------------------------------------------
You can check out some of my conversions done for variety here: http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2009/05/40k-hobby-converting-imperial-guard.html

Sitting, kneeling and prone poses done for visual interest and variety:

And my comment was meant to illustrate that in a science fantasy setting, historical precedence isn't particularly relevant.

insaniak wrote:And my comment was meant to illustrate that in a science fantasy setting, historical precedence isn't particularly relevant.

No, but it helps to ground things in reality, especially when the two things being compared are fundamentally the same. That laser canon doesn't come with a chair and I assume he isn't shooting it in space. Without logical purpose going against logical precedent and historical accuracy is done simply for the sake of being different. Sometimes it works out great with new technologies or ideas requiring a fundamental reconsidering of human behavior. When a world war two machine gun shoots a laser instead then thats not really the case.

The dude should be sitting because otherwise he's going to injure himself by kneeling for hours on rough ground. Using 40k as the precedent for the way "Things should be done" is more often wrong then not. Historically 40k sculpts and designs have been done by people who have no idea what the hell they are sculpting. This is how we got tanks that can't go over curbs, boots the size of torsos, and laser guns with silencers.

Actually, I think the kneeling heavy weapon troopers are one of GW's better design decisions. Yes, they may not be as historically accurate... but they're more interchangeable with the rest of the plastic Guard sets than they would have been if they were sitting, and those same legs work for all of the heavy weapons. Sitting legs wouldn't have made a lot of sense for the mortar, for example.

So I would think that the choice to have them kneeling was as much for practicality as anything.

Or maybe they tried the sitting pose, wound up with something that looked vaguely like WGF's effort here, and decided to go for something that didn't look as silly...

Or maybe they tried the sitting pose, wound up with something that looked vaguely like WGF's effort here, and decided to go for something that didn't look as silly...

Other then the legs being 30% too short I don't think it looks silly at all. He has better control of the weapon while sitting and doesn't look like he's about to ask the gun to marry him.

This looks silly.



This is just wrongly proportioned.



Lets be real though, the IG themselves are wrongly porportioned and bad looking. The HW teams aren't particularly good examples of GWs sculpting talent. Everyone is in the same kneeling position (that for several of those weapons makes no sense). Everyone is shouting. Everyone is pointing. Everyone has huge hands and huge heads. If you look closely enough, the missile doesn't even fit in the damn missile launcher.

It's not just the proportions. The spine is too straight for the legs to be lifted that high. He should be leaning back with his spine curved a little.