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BeAfraid wrote:I have noticed a trend in the miniatures world since the 1980's, which has been that what originally started off, with Ral Partha pretty much dominating the field with Tom Meier, that Fantasy miniatures began as a very hard Medieval/Dark Ages feel to it, and then with the advent of Warhammer began to drift into a more Swords and Sorcery style...

Yet there remain a tiny few sculptors who remain more true to Tolkien's vision (which Jackson definitely did NOT do). Tom Meier remains the archetypical sculptor cleaving closely to Tolkien's vision of Middle-earth as being a world that was visually more Dark Ages, with rather plain and unadorned soldiers and warriors.

Is there just no demand for simpler fantasy figures that are obviously not simply a historical proxy?

Or is it that no one has made them (in sufficient quantity), and thus there has never been the opportunity for anyone to even use them? Would people, were a simpler line of Fantasy miniatures available, have any interest in them, or is it just that the other genres are that much more appealing?

I feel much the same way. Reading about Tolkien's Dark Age/Old English intent for Middle Earth, and the anglo-saxon/goth influence on the Rohirrim, made me jump into Dark Age gaming when I moved into historicals. (Northumbrian saxons with lots of cav, natch) Combined with the sight of Ted Nasmith's Silmarillion illustrations, Victor Ambrus' celto-norman elves, and some Gondorians converted from Ebob normans, I'm well up for the idea of Dark Age fantasy.
I've even done a few tentative designs of different races - in a style that most fantasy gamers might consider completely boring - and the world they inhabit, and I was gearing up to start some sculpting (especially with some, ah... fiscal inactivity in the near future) when I saw your own goblin plans. Gotta say I'm a little intimidated, but I might carry on anyway. Especially as my initial idea was for 10mm Battle For Five armies proxies.

And not to belittle anyone, but I don't think I'm the only one who'd go for such a thing. It's that we might be just a little thin on the ground in a forum full of GW (and ex-GW) gamers...

Eilif wrote:-As to the Tolkein'esque view of Fantasy, Mithril Miniatures still produces a large and growing line of minis for those interested in gaming or collecting an older style of middle earth. And of course there's always Tom Meir's own company "Thunderbolt Miniatures" which has historical and Arthurian figures in extremely realistic style and proportion. Sargent Major Miniatures also carries the "Bloody day" line of figures (formerly Vendel) that are a bit dated, but reflect the older version of Tolkien.

-I do agree though that Fantasy gaming has for the most part left the more plain medieval/Dark Ages style behind. There's not much reason to bother anymore with such high quality historical miniatures now available. Further many historical figs are now available in the more dynamic poses that used to be purvey of fantasy figures. Ebob and Red Box are two examples of this.

Point about historical minis - I'm eyeing up Footsore's goths for Rohan, meself, and if I ever start up some little shop I don't know if I'd bother too much with humans, unless pressed. But as mentioned, they aren't going to fill in for fantasy non-humans too well!

The other problem with most of those other ranges, as MB mentioned elsewhere, is that they're small, and aren't likely to get very much bigger anytime soon. (I mentioned Ebob's normans - he's only got one unit of heavy infantry, and his mounted normans have been 'coming soon' for months. Now it seems he's dropped off the radar...) Very nicely sculpted, but not entirely complete, or designed and priced for mass battles, which is where my interest mostly lies.

And Vendel... well, yeah. Dated. They seem to have that peculiar 'Foundry' style of historical sculpts, with sausage limbs, dinner-plate pecs, mitten hands (complete with broken wrists), bland faces, squat proportions, and some details that ironically look like a crude Dark Age wood carving. (The beard on one of their trollmen is a blob of putty with a few careless slits poked into it for 'texture'. Bloody disgraceful if I may say so.) Meself, I don't think I'd go nuts with a hyperdynamic collection of individual characters for a single unit block (like RBG, though Tre isn't sculpting for unit blocks; and GW, who unfortunately are), but I like to think I'd be able to inject a little more modernity and care into the theme than that. As well as a decent giant bear and more imaginative mountain trolls, dare I say.

BeAfraid wrote:
Most of the early Fantasy Sculptors:

Tom Meier (predominantly)
Bryan Ansell
Dennis Mize
Julie Guthrie
The Perrys
Bob Olley

And so on....

I only got into wargaming after the turn of the millenium, but when I discovered there was more to it than GW I started looking about, especially for a few of my other peculiar interests. So some of those names ended up near the top of my 'favourite sculptors' list for work they did decades before! Dennis Mize and Julie Guthrie especially - both produced excellent dragon miniatures, and no other mini sculptor I've seen could turn out dinosaurs as well as Dennis. (Though unfortunately few) The '80's Grenadier dragons by Julie and John Dennett have rarely been surpassed since, IMO, and few others had even a hope of coming close.
Talk about trends in fantasy art - most dragons I see these days, in any medium, tend to be spikezillas with little idea about convincing anatomy. But that's another story. Suffice to say that's another reason I've been thinking of getting into the fantasy mini biz: turn out a few dragons of my own, see if they impress.

I had a long reply typed out here, eaten by my computer because some combination of key strokes meaning 'get rid of all this' is too close to 'ctrl+c'. So to boil it down in a matter-of-fact way:

I hadn't heard of Tolkien's dislike of Normans! But I think Middle-Earth had grown beyond the days of the cottage of lost play on the lonely isle, and I have read about his comparison of Gondor to ancient Egypt, Byzantium, and Venice. More a comparison of cultural and geographic themes, but good enough to visualise Gondor as somewhat east-Mediterranean, especially Byzantine. (Many have) Also that he declared the styles featured in the Bayeux tapestry as 'good enough' for the Rohirrim, making no distinction between Anglo-Saxon/Danes and Normans, in which the armour styles had largely converged by 1066 anyway. I prefer to see the Rohirrim as more earlier Saxons, but I see it as the next best thing to an official thumbs-up from the Professor himself, to adapt Norman-style armour in some way. To say nothing about my mentioned influences of Ted Nasmith and Victor Ambrus, and that I'm having a little fun injecting historical influences into my own humble attempts at a fantasy setting. (The western 'wood' elves are Norman-themed. The eastern elves have a touch more Byzantium or near-east about them. Currently wondering what dinosaur cataphracts would look like...)

I am surprised that you were "daunted" by my Goblins. They are a mountain of stress for me, as I am working with a sub-par computer that does not allow me to work very quickly, due to a lack of RAM.

Nevertheless! I might have had a collection of fairly small nits to pick, but unfortunately I think that might've downplayed how impressive I think they are. (Especially after trying sculptris and a few others - I can't get my own head round them. Nowhere near as intuitive as plain putty to me, despite the advantages.)