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A while ago Games Workshop stopped crediting the sculptors of their products. They used to be mentioned in white dwarf, on the back of the box sets and in the front of the army books. Now there is nothing. I have noticed on twitter and Facebook, that a few designers are promoting their work, so this does not seem to be actively banned by Gw. I just think it is a little sad that designers don't get credited.

I thought then that it might be a good idea to shine a light on who has done what recently and to give a little credit where it is due.

What I have been able to glean from Twitter is that Darren Latham did the Genestealer cultists and Ulrik. Neil Langdown did the Deathwatch. Aragorn Marks, who has since left Gw, did the Guant Summoner and worked with Jes Goodwin on a lot of the Adeptus Mechanicus stuff.
Matt Holland did all of the recent Tau stuff. Seb Perbet did Archaon. Otherwise I have no idea. If anyone knows who did the other recent releases, I would be interested to know.

Must be some legal or, more likely sales/brand related decision.

GW seem to have removed all the personalities and taken a course to anonymise their creative staff. In the 80s and 90s the magazine and studio were full of personalities, all the famous names people remember are among them. I think it's sad when companies don't credit their creative/artistic staff, it used to be pretty common for comic artists to get no credit.

Not just their sculptors , writers as well.

The Auld Grump

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
Not just their sculptors , writers as well.

The Auld Grump

That's probably just as well

Digital plastic sculpting is a lot more collaborative than traditional sculpting, with the basic model, posing and splits all valuable parts of the process, and often performed by different people. Add in re-use of catalog parts and 3D elements and there can be half a dozen people with equal contributions to a single model. I'd imagine trying to allocate credit for such things to be a pain without hurting sculptor/artist/engineer egos, which might explain some of the move away for plastics at least.

 General Kroll wrote:
Must be some legal or, more likely sales/brand related decision.

I think it hurt/upset them when all the named characters left and set up in competition, brining their names with them, so they decided to do away with named characters. Ain't noone making a career for themselves at games workshop unless it's in games workshop.

Herzlos wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
Must be some legal or, more likely sales/brand related decision.

I think it hurt/upset them when all the named characters left and set up in competition, brining their names with them, so they decided to do away with named characters. Ain't noone making a career for themselves at games workshop unless it's in games workshop.

Nail firmly hit on the head there. They don't want people following the creatives with their money when they leave. Sad maybe, but sensible. I don't mind it too much with the models, as you can see what you are getting. Novels though I want to know whose written it, some writers I'd bypass without a second look (probably another reason not to tell us).

All that'll do is slow down their initial growth though, surely?

I mean, if John Smith opens his own studio tomorrow, I may have no clue who he is, because GW have anonymised all his work, but as soon as I hear "Hi, I'm John Smith, you may have heard of me from GW sculpts such as X,Y or Z" then that little road bump is passed, and if I was a fan of that work I'd likely start taking an interest.

It's like the whole Aelf, Oruk and Astra Militarum thing, it may solve some issues, but it doesn't seem to be particularly effective at solving the issue it seems to be aimed at. Unless there's some legally enforceable method of gagging an artist from discussing previous works they've made?

Probably more likely they don't want to hand too many more people to mantic and warlord, but yeah it wouldn't impede someone setting up for themselves much, if at all.

Herzlos wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
Must be some legal or, more likely sales/brand related decision.

I think it hurt/upset them when all the named characters left and set up in competition, brining their names with them, so they decided to do away with named characters. Ain't noone making a career for themselves at games workshop unless it's in games workshop.

At a certain point in the development of the Sedition Wars game (by Studio McVey) I think the studio stopped crediting people individually for their work, and my impression was that this is similar to the reasoning. That is, sculptors were getting exposure, which meant there was more demand for their work, which in turn meant that (because McVey was using these people as freelancers) they would have to pay more and compete more for their time.

This is my impression from some time ago, and I may be misremembering, but it ultimately came down to money. However, I'm not sure that an analogous situation can be set up for GW; surely they have their sculptors on staff, and, as a large corporation, expect a certain amount of turn-over?

Yeah but don't forget that people develop attachments to individuals whose work they enjoy. The Perry's, Rick and Alessio are good examples of customers following names. Mike Mcvey going to PP probably helped establish war machine in the UK (I'd left the hobby at that point, so I'm only speculating on that).

I think the creatives should be fully acknowledged for the work they do, but I can understand the reasons why. They need to stop that financial slide after all.

 JamesY wrote:
Probably more likely they don't want to hand too many more people to mantic and warlord, but yeah it wouldn't impede someone setting up for themselves much, if at all.

There's anti competition clauses for that. They're tricky to implement, but if you can demonstrate that an employee working for the competition would materially impact your income (and as much as I disagree with GW's usually heavy handed legal attitude, one would be hard pushed to argue that a key creative moving to a direct competitor wouldn't) then they can be enforceable.

I completely agree with you, it's entirely unnecessary. They aren't exactly famous for their attention to detail on legal details though...
Like you said, it's the same as the rebranding of the armies. The reason has no effect on the outcome, and there are much better ways of handling the situation.

There's also the negative connotations which have been removed, like turning Matt Ward into a meme, the constant, endless and utterly banal dredging up of the Nagash figure to beat poor Gary Morley (one of the nicest human beings you could meet) about the head with, the death threat/phial of blood in the mail Gav Thorpe received for the Dark Elf army book he wrote, the guy that physically attacked a writer at an open event in North America...

I personally feel we are really hurting for lack of 'names' in the GW studio, we still have them in terms of Authors and Forge World guys, but there isn't much left at GW 'prime' I'd recognize now other than JJ and Jes Goodwin. But perhaps some of them wanted to be anonymous, so as to avoid the sort of crap that's been pulled on their predecessors.

You say "negative" I say "motivating!"




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 JamesY wrote:
I completely agree with you, it's entirely unnecessary. They aren't exactly famous for their attention to detail on legal details though...
Like you said, it's the same as the rebranding of the armies. The reason has no effect on the outcome, and there are much better ways of handling the situation.

It is a shame that all this energy is being expended (not to mention money) for zero net gain. I can't imagine that there's been any positive impact from all this change. Middle management disease I suspect, a lot of people running around creating jobs for themselves to do so nobody cottons on to the fact that they're not really needed.

That's probably truer than you know. I was only there 9 months, but, even though it was a great 9 months, I wouldn't want to go back. Zero job security at hq (unless your Jez or Merrett), if someone more important than you decides your job could be done differently or in a different chair, you can find yourself redundant. Bugmans is full of such people hoping to find a way back in. There is a lot of scrambling around and trying to look indispensable going on. Part of the reason so many mistakes occur.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
the constant, endless and utterly banal dredging up of the Nagash figure to beat poor Gary Morley (one of the nicest human beings you could meet) about the head with

One one hand, I agree with you about Gary Morley. The Nagash meme is old and there's more to the story behind it. (plus, we have an entirely new giant-hatted overblown thing to focus on) I've been scrutinising older high elf minis lately, and his metal white lions that I have here are still brilliantly posed, finely detailed little figurines. Looking at metal archers* (desperate not to use the plastics), I'd rather use his than Jes'. Gary doesn't especially deserve the reputation foisted on him by Nagash.

On the other hand, does being nice automatically make your sculpting better? I've had my head bitten off for criticising a sculptor's work - that had been ropey twenty years ago and hadn't improved much since - because they were a nice person. Didn't make their sculpting much more attractive.
With track records like that, whether individuals or companies, what Azreal said: I don't think it's entirely wrong to... express a desire that something should improve.

*It's handy that they put the designers' names at the bottom of the page in those old catalogues. Anyone notice that they don't do that anymore...?

 JamesY wrote:
That's probably truer than you know. I was only there 9 months, but, even though it was a great 9 months, I wouldn't want to go back. Zero job security at hq (unless your Jez or Merrett), if someone more important than you decides your job could be done differently or in a different chair, you can find yourself redundant. Bugmans is full of such people hoping to find a way back in. There is a lot of scrambling around and trying to look indispensable going on. Part of the reason so many mistakes occur.

Oh, I've no doubt it happens, I've seen it happen first and second hand on several occasions. Nearly forced my dad into early retirement because of the stress it caused him, lost me the job I spent most of my career in.

Although, prior to the administration, Phoenix resurrection and ultimate redundancy, I did have the joy of watching the middle managers immediately above me have their roles restructured so that actually had to do the job they had previously been responsible for haranguing people at my level for not doing properly (regardless of outside factors and our own relative levels of competence.)

For 6 glorious months I had the pleasure of handing my odious gnome of a former (and still current at the time, sort of) line manager his backside time and again, despite him presiding over a larger location in a bigger town with a much larger catchment area.

The beauty of sales is that there really is nowhere to hide, and sticking it to the bloke who introduced himself to me by turning up first thing in the morning (literally on the doorstep when I arrived to open up,) on his day off, unannounced, to bollock me because my store was only tracking to hit 120% of its target for the month 4 days into that month! will keep me warm for many years to come.

So, yeah, middle management is a disease in most companies, and I've every confidence what you say about GW being a bit thick about the middle is not only true, but a symptom of its wider issues. A GW with fewer accountants, administrators, office managers, lawyers etc and perhaps a little more external accountability for its creatives is probably a healthier GW.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
GW seem to have removed all the personalities and taken a course to anonymise their creative staff. In the 80s and 90s the magazine and studio were full of personalities, all the famous names people remember are among them. I think it's sad when companies don't credit their creative/artistic staff, it used to be pretty common for comic artists to get no credit.

I imagine they want to discourage the sort of personality cult that sprang up about Rick Priestley when he left GW and went to work with Warlord, Mantic Games and other GW competitors. Getting him on board was a huge coup for those companies as much for his fame and name recognition in the industry as it was for his expertise. Hell, the only reason I heard of Warlord Games and their Bolt Action and Terminator Genysis games was because of their association with Rick Priestley.

If GW keeps its creative staff anonymous, they won't develop as strong a professional reputation, following and name recognition as Priestley did; which diminishes their value to competitors.


Ditto for the Perry twins, though as far as I know they're focusing on their own company's historical miniatures and therefore aren't directly competing with GW.


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 Vermis wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
the constant, endless and utterly banal dredging up of the Nagash figure to beat poor Gary Morley (one of the nicest human beings you could meet) about the head with

One one hand, I agree with you about Gary Morley. The Nagash meme is old and there's more to the story behind it. (plus, we have an entirely new giant-hatted overblown thing to focus on) I've been scrutinising older high elf minis lately, and his metal white lions that I have here are still brilliantly posed, finely detailed little figurines. Looking at metal archers* (desperate not to use the plastics), I'd rather use his than Jes'. Gary doesn't especially deserve the reputation foisted on him by Nagash.

I don't understand the hate for the classic Nagash miniature. I mean, sure, its ugly by modern standards, but it looks to me to be fairly typical of the classic miniatures from the 80's and 90's. Was it so universally hated at the time? There are a lot of classic miniatures that I'd regard as much uglier.

I speak as a 24 year old who began wargaming in 2003.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

I don't understand the hate for the classic Nagash miniature. I mean, sure, its ugly by modern standards, but it looks to me to be fairly typical of the classic miniatures from the 80's and 90's. Was it so universally hated at the time? There are a lot of classic miniatures that I'd regard as much uglier.

I speak as a 24 year old who began wargaming in 2003.

Speaking as someone who started a couple of years before you, I can see your point. Buuut like any point in time, including now, there were good things and there were bad things. Tom Meier started in the seventies and continued doing great work while people were snapping up minis that looked like chewed gum. Gary sculpted a lot of good stuff himself, but regarding Nagash...

Well, there's a couple of mitigating points, like the red-period-tastic paintjob on that example and the story that Gary disagreed with the finer points of the concept and turned out a derpy skull-face in protest. That might explain the cheesy grin and Droopy Dog cheekbones, but I'm not sure if it explains the rest of the mini. To cut a long story short, it looks like the big, undead version of the plastic high elf spearmen: cuirass with a skinny waist and ultrawide shoulders (not even counting the... 'pauldrons'); oversized head and hands; big dunce's cap; big foofy sleeves and skirt. Along with all the other odd cartoon skulls studded over the mini, and the fact that this was a bigger, 70mm 'canvas' to work on.

I can't look at the hat without thinking of this:



From the citadel catalogue scans on SoL, Nagash only turned up in 1994. Thanks to the way my mind marks milestones, I can't help but think we got ultra-realistic dinosaurs on the big screen the year before. But taking into account the expectations and limitations of wargaming minis back then - even GW minis - this is a more appropriately comparable thing that we also got the year before. It held up and stuck around a bit longer, IIRC.

Well, I remember when Nagash was the new release. I even bought one. It's fair to say that a lot of the larger 2nd Ed 40K era releases have not aged well.

You've got stuff like the Phoenix Lords, Krell and many of the other named characters which either look fine still or at least hold their own considering their age, but when you look at anything on a base bigger than 25mm you have to look a lot harder. The original Keepertaur was one of my personal favorites, but the Bloodthirster not so much. The original Screamer Killer and Hive Tyrants have their fans, but outside of nostalgia I'd struggle to be one of them.

There's one or two exceptions, outside of the Eldar Avatar though, I'm struggling to think of any I'd point to and say they have aged anything but poorly.

But, in spite of that, Nagash still looks like a chimp got into the dressing up box and is possibly the worst offender from an era where most large biological models had some element of derp.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Well, I remember when Nagash was the new release. I even bought one. It's fair to say that a lot of the larger 2nd Ed 40K era releases have not aged well.

There's one or two exceptions, outside of the Eldar Avatar though, I'm struggling to think of any I'd point to and say they have aged anything but poorly.

The Nurgle Greater Daemon maybe?

Fans can be mean.

Ward-dexes,

Thorpe-Hate

the 'Trish Hammer' (a sculpting tool that renders an otherwise dynamic sculpt into a 2d drawing).

All these things I have seen thrown around, often the name/hate is associated with things that had nothing to do with the artist/designer.

In some ways I can see motivation to not have your name associated with products when some fans confirmation bias will credit you with every other artist's 'bad' work.

 Vermis wrote:

One one hand, I agree with you about Gary Morley. The Nagash meme is old and there's more to the story behind it. (plus, we have an entirely new giant-hatted overblown thing to focus on) I've been scrutinising older high elf minis lately, and his metal white lions that I have here are still brilliantly posed, finely detailed little figurines. Looking at metal archers* (desperate not to use the plastics), I'd rather use his than Jes'. Gary doesn't especially deserve the reputation foisted on him by Nagash.

Beyond Nagash, the issue with Morley was that he could turn out brilliant stuff, or he could turn out weirdly posed manequins, and you just never knew which you were going to get. On a good day, he was one of the best, and he sculpted some of my favourite GW minis of all time.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I don't understand the hate for the classic Nagash miniature. I mean, sure, its ugly by modern standards, but it looks to me to be fairly typical of the classic miniatures from the 80's and 90's. Was it so universally hated at the time?

Yes, even for its time the Nagash mini is just bad.

Mind you, at that time most of GW's bigger minis got fairly mixed reviews...


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nareik wrote:

All these things I have seen thrown around, often the name/hate is associated with things that had nothing to do with the artist/designer.

In some ways I can see motivation to not have your name associated with products when some fans confirmation bias will credit you with every other artist's 'bad' work.

Of course, a large part of that can be alleviated by being transparent about who does what...

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
the constant, endless and utterly banal dredging up of the Nagash figure to beat poor Gary Morley (one of the nicest human beings you could meet) about the head with

It was only an alternative head, not a full sculpt. It wasn't much better in fairness. I've always loved that model though, just looking at it brings happy teenage memories of thick green felt and cardboard hills flooding back.

nareik wrote:
the 'Trish Hammer' (a sculpting tool that renders an otherwise dynamic sculpt into a 2d drawing).

I have honestly never heard that one...

All these things I have seen thrown around, often the name/hate is associated with things that had nothing to do with the artist/designer.

... but I could pick out a Trish dragon at a hundred paces.

JamesY wrote:just looking at it brings happy teenage memories of thick green felt and cardboard hills flooding back.

Sometimes I think nostalgia has a lot to answer for. Not picking you out, James. I've seen it before, in sculpting, rules, whatever. I see dead styles. All the time. Walking around like regular styles. They don't see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're dead.

 Pacific wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
the constant, endless and utterly banal dredging up of the Nagash figure to beat poor Gary Morley (one of the nicest human beings you could meet) about the head with

About this, the story I heard was that the old Nagash was not Gary's fault per se. He'd sculpted Nagash initially wearing a cowl, the mini got returned to him as sales wanted something visibly skeletal. As a contrast, Gary deliberately designed a ridiculous giant skeleton head thinking that when comparing the two they would release the sculpt as he had originally intended. Turns out he was wrong about that...

Regards to the OP I think it's pretty sad if they can't label sculptors, artists, rules writers. It's always been a small and personable industry with many of the creative types hopping between companies, and I think the vast majority are respectful and just want to genuinely follow someone's work (as you would with anyone that is good at something). This once again is creating a wall between the customer, the creative process and the more human elements of that business, I'm not in favour of it.

 notprop wrote:

Of course blaming the bean counters also make s a damn good excuse too (poor old bean counters, when will they get a break!).

I've always been a big undead fan but couldn't ever bring myself to by this back in the day either, just too dammed ugly and had an off-puttingly big price tag too.

Agreed, but, given said head exists



His story has some credibility.