Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

mikhaila wrote:
Not liking it. Ugly model, and not Ugly in a cool way. The individual elements don't work together well.


This got me thinking...

Is that a bad thing, it being ugly, but "not Ugly in a cool way"? I hadn't really thought about it, but from an artistic point of view, must things always be "cool"?

Like I referenced above, to me, the model has a quality very reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch; but I don't think I would call any of his works "cool", and most I would call ugly. That's scarcely an indictment of him.

Now, of course, from a commercial standpoint, it may be that coolness is an inherently desired quality for retail sales, but that's secondary to what we're talking about here. But is there a market for a model of something that ought to be ugly by rights, and actually is ugly?

Suppose you collect firearms; if we look at an AK-47, most would agree it's ugly. But is it cool too? And if it isn't, does that impact on whatever artistic value it has?

I apologize, this is wandering off topic. It just got me thinking.

You miss the point, or I made it badly. Some things, especially demons and monsters in wargaming, can be quite ugly, yet appeal in some way that makes the ugliness an inherent part of the model, and taking away the ugliness ruins it. Orks in 40k are that way. A 10 year olds ugly conversion of a rhino is not fun to look at. A ramshackle ork truck with battle damage might be. Both look wrong, and are ugly vehicles, yet one has an appeal to it.

The FW bloodthirster is Ugly. Yet it has a powerful look, good poise, looks dangerous and menacing. It comes across as 'cool'. Something the FW Tzeench demon does not.
This model is just ugly to look at. I don't like it. Don't want to paint it or put it together. If I was given the kit, I'd give it away, or have to cut 1/3 of it off to want to use it. Ugly with no redeeming qualities. The scythe is cool, but I've seen that done on a couple of other big fat demons already.

Despite its crazy sewer gate prison, the Ex Illis miniature also has more realistic muscle structure. People don't walk around with every single muscle in their body flexed 24/7. I think if you stuck a new head on it would be a perfectly good model to use in Warhammer.

that GW demon's face looks like the face of the roach alien from the original Men In Black after it shed its Edgar suit

I just realized I haven't thrown my 2 cents in.


what most of you guys don't like are some of my favorite features.

- Size does matter

- The eye reminds me of Final Fantasy Monsters

- pretty gruesome mouth and tongue.

- faces protruding from the skin, nice skin texture and fur

- love the prison stomach

There was also a cage on the spure that can hang on the scythe. I can post the sprue pics if anyone is interested.

Sure, please post away!

Eh. The fur comes out of nowhere on that arm. And there's a pretty big join gap there. Nothing a little greenstuff wouldn't fix though.

http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/8426/fromphonepostgencon085.jpg

http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/4604/fromphonepostgencon086.jpg

http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/1283/fromphonepostgencon087.jpg

http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/5730/fromphonepostgencon088.jpg


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Prophecy07 wrote:Eh. The fur comes out of nowhere on that arm. And there's a pretty big join gap there. Nothing a little greenstuff wouldn't fix though.

Not sure which fur / arm pic you are referring to. I don't see any arms with fur on them

The joins need a bit of work. The red and green ones which where at the booth belong to the game designer. He brought them from his personal collection. the Pro-painted blue one was in a glass display case, so I couldn't get good pics on my iphone

Hopefully they didn't gloss over those details for that fig.

Still think, Rackham did a way better job with this one. Not as big, but still huge and much more detail.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:

Still think, Rackham did a way better job with this one. Not as big, but still huge and much more detail.

Tho one has to ask why he stepped in a paint bucket...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
- Damn, that's a lot of untextured gap-filler they used...

Apparently demons grow hair where it shouldnt grow, and have souls that form as heads protruding out its skin. Why are they always heads?

JSK-Fox wrote:Apparently demons grow hair where it shouldnt grow, and have souls that form as heads protruding out its skin. Why are they always heads?

because if it were feet, that would just be toooo wierd.

whether you like it or not, bastion nailed it. They made the model match their concept art really well.



for better or worse, whatever your opinion may be.

Matching concept art =/= looks awesome.

Actually, I rather like the concept art. Why they made the skull/upper jaw protrude horizontally instead of up like that pic is beyond me. Daemons with massive overbites are not scary.

JSK-Fox wrote:Matching concept art =/= looks awesome.

Agreed

If you don't like either well that's just a matter of preference. My point is bastion imo created exactly what they meant to. That's pretty cool. How many times have you seen the art not match the model and you feel a bit cheated.

I have no desire to paint that model whatsoever. Anima has spoiled me with it's, ya know, actual detail

Buzzsaw wrote:
While I recognize that all of the complaints here boil down to "I don't like it, because I don't",

I've disagreed a fair share of my times with JHDD, but I don't think you're giving him enough credit. He did give valid reasons for disliking that model. You may not agree with those reasons, but they are valid.

Buzzsaw wrote:the bolded one seems a particularly odd complaint. The notion of diabolic beings having the souls of the damned/the whole of the damned be within them is scarcely novel, and it's clearly what they are going for here. It's a long standing, theologically poignant idea, so, yes, it would appear that "The monster is a hollow shell", that would, in fact, be the point.

Seriously, it's very clear that this model is a reference to a tradition that's centuries old (it could have walked straight out of Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, which was painted in the fifteenth century).

I consider myself something of a dilettante when it comes to religion, and while I don't exactly have the best credentials when it comes to Catholic lore, I've never heard of a demon with a prison in its chest. The closest I've ever come is to depictions of the mouth of Hell as a dragon's mouth in artwork. But I've never seen that metaphor carried on down to the stomach. However, that's beside the point. The problem with the soul prison isn't that it doesn't have enough basis in real-world religion, but just that's it's executed very badly. It appears to be just a single potral on the stomach, with no integration with the rest of the model. There's a seed of a really good idea there, but this model doesn't attempt to exploit it nearly enough. Like I said before, a demonic prison should be the entire thematic basis for a single model - by mixing the prison metaphor up with a bunch of other weird stuff on the model, the sculptor takes the energy out of what could be a very powerful image.

And on another point, I find it very odd that this thing keeps getting linked to Bosch. I like Bosch's work. This fails to elicit any of wonderful weirdness of Bosch's world. Personally, I think it looks nothing like any of Bosch's creatures. Bosch's demons dance in the uncanny valley, trying to look just enough like something we recognize while being wrong in a very obvious way. Like a perfectly ordinary-looking man who happens to have a sparrow's head for no discernable reason. Or a pink frog with fangs in a minister's hat and robes reading music off of a tortured soul's butt. These things are weird and potentially frightening because they carry a hint of humanity but are very clearly an aberration against nature. This demon model has none of that. It's too much weird in too many different ways and not enough human to trigger the revulsion of something that just shouldn't be. The head with horns for eyes could possibly approach that feeling if that motif was carried throughout the rest of the model, but it's not. Like I said, it's trying to do too much at once.

Personally, I see much more H.R. Giger influence here than Bosch.

As I said before, I think Ex Illis should be praised for attempting something original in an industry where ripping off each others' motifs is endemic. And this model is very original. So good on them. But that praise should not be taken to mean that all criticism of this model is invalid. There are some very good reasons to dislike this model. Even if you personally like it, that doesn't mean those reasons are invalid. If nothing else, this round of criticism could be a lesson learned by the sculptors, and the next time around they could be better able to give us something that truly wows us.

The model looks like it's concept art perhaps, but the concept art looks better. The pose, the proportions, the style; the concept art has it.

Seeing the concept art only proves my point. The design can work, but the model falls short of doing it justice.

Concept art Always looks better. Well any good concept art looks better.

Lord-Ironfist UNA wrote:Despite its crazy sewer gate prison, the Ex Illis miniature also has more realistic muscle structure. People don't walk around with every single muscle in their body flexed 24/7.

Speak for youself, pal. I type extreme, I walk extreme, and I even sleep extreme.

The closest I've ever come is to depictions of the mouth of Hell as a dragon's mouth in artwork. But I've never seen that metaphor carried on down to the stomach.

Actually there is one being in one of Boschs pictures that has a prison with inmates in his body, but this being is a humanoid cut in half ond his whole torso serving as the shell of the prison.

Concept art Always looks better. Well any good concept art looks better.

Sorry, you are wrong. Rackham alone already managed to go beyond already good concept art and others do it too from time to time.

I think I'd like the prison more if it were organic, with bone instead of bars and a sewer gate.

Lord-Ironfist UNA wrote:People don't walk around with every single muscle in their body flexed 24/7.

Don't ever say that in front of Chuck Norris.

Prophecy07 wrote:Eh. The fur comes out of nowhere on that arm. And there's a pretty big join gap there. Nothing a little greenstuff wouldn't fix though.

I think it's actually a garter belt we are seeing with some kind of decorative material hanging off it. Now a huge monster with a garter belt fetish IS something to be afraid of.

Well... I ordered some of their Priests.

I hope they fit with 40K models...

while i don't really care much for the big demon, i can picture in my mind the start of a nurgle conversion using it, that gut-prison could spill forth a lot of nurglings

The skin texture reminds me of my DinoRiders from childhood.



But that T-Rex is far cooler.

H.B.M.C. wrote:It this model had an actual face, rather than... several... it would work, but because it hasn't, it doesn't.

/thread

yeah,
I don't like the face(/lack of), and agree that some of the section joins are off.

But we are mostly looking at it as conversion fodder for 40k, and I think that if the price is right I'll buy it.
I really want a huge Nurgly beast that looks like this concept art for 'lord of the pit', MTG card.


I had a pop at this with my GD of nurgle.. but ihe wasn't big enough...


this guy is the right size and with a bit of work should work a treat...

...if the price is right.

Panic...

The heck with the model, Ex Illis wristbands, FTW!!!

Actually Helldorado has such a big Bellytongue-Guy.....

Le Grognard wrote:The heck with the model, Ex Illis wristbands, FTW!!!

feth the wristbands, Konami lanyards!