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anybody else feel that the KoW and DB KS have made Mantic 'level up' as a company?

 judgedoug wrote:
anybody else feel that the KoW and DB KS have made Mantic 'level up' as a company?

Its amazing what a large cash injection will do to a company

 Cyporiean wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
anybody else feel that the KoW and DB KS have made Mantic 'level up' as a company?

Its amazing what a large cash injection will do to a company

works for me. I love getting awesome models on the cheap!

Schmapdi wrote:
Excellent - everything shown so far is meeting/exceeding expectations. Giving me high hopes for all the Celestians I ordered.

Some good news on that front.. the Men at Arms are confirmed for hard plastic. The horses for the knights will be too (likely with restic riders and barding).

 scarletsquig wrote:

Schmapdi wrote:
Excellent - everything shown so far is meeting/exceeding expectations. Giving me high hopes for all the Celestians I ordered.

Some good news on that front.. the Men at Arms are confirmed for hard plastic. The horses for the knights will be too (likely with restic riders and barding).

Where was this at? I don't see anything on the Mantic forums...

^ BoW video.

 scarletsquig wrote:
^ BoW video.

a-jiggity a-jiggity jamamaJAM!

 scarletsquig wrote:

Schmapdi wrote:
Excellent - everything shown so far is meeting/exceeding expectations. Giving me high hopes for all the Celestians I ordered.

Some good news on that front.. the Men at Arms are confirmed for hard plastic. The horses for the knights will be too (likely with restic riders and barding).

whuh-whah-whoah?
nice! any news on what that means for KS pledge rewards/BOGOFs? (not that it matters to me anymore, have 75 of the buggers incoming anyway )

 darkPrince010 wrote:
Unless I'm mistaken, I think the first pic there is for the Abyssal Dwarf Obsidian Golems, or at least one version of them.

That was confirmed to me by either Ronnie or Bob Naismith (they were in a case on Bob's sculpting table at today's Open Day).

I'll see about posting the pictures I got either later today or tomorrow - have Doctor Who to watch first...

Here's hoping this doesn't auto-append - photodump from the Mantic Open Day, including greens of some of the new stuff.

Thanks for that, lots of great pics there.. the Vampiress is looking really nice:

Loving Bob's work there, he a great sculptor.

Ah... that female vampire isn't looking so good, at the moment...

Mental note - watermark images in future.

The Vampiress looked pretty close to the art on the cover of the book, certainly in general terms - I didn't have my copy to hand to cross-reference. Also, as noted by a number of people, green stuff doesn't photo that well - I avoid using flash when taking pictures of models, which may not have helped.

Bob's a nutter, but a good nutter to talk to.

^ Ah, okay, I'll take the pic down if you're not keen on image-grabbers, just wanted to show off what I was talking about.

I made sure to re-host it so as to not use up any of your bandwidth.

The Vampire's face looks more than a little long compared to the art.

It always comes down to the face, doesn't it?

Very true, Alpharius, it does - the general pose is correct, but I think any problem is actually around the mouth, rather than the whole face. There isn't enough of a snarl there compared to the art.

This shows slightly better in the front-on shot than the side-on one, though.

More Remy sculpts of the ogres.







Looking good!

Hands are a bit too big for my personal taste (to the point where I think I might cut off a finger on mine!), but I accept the majority of people prefer the PP/GW style where the hands are the same size as torsos, with tiny little legs and have been constantly asking Mantic to make their models less "true scale" ever since the elves were released.. makes sense to follow the popular trend.

Most important thing is that I'm happy with the heads, which look a lot better than the initial concept art which had a big blubbery warmachine trollblood face, complete with porcupine quills sticking out of it. The beards are so much better and add a lot of character to the faces. These are very "Rackham" looking sculpts on the whole.

6 different heads is a good number too, enough to take a couple of units of them without having to use any repeats.

The armour is also a lot better, the shoulder pads aren't quite as crazy/ plastered with scibor press-moulds as the concept art which is good.

I'm hoping Mantic release a 40mm plastic base, I'm going to have to commission a 3rd party company to make some mdf ones for me otherwise... the flat renedra bases just don't cut it for Mantic minis since you still have to deal with that raised disc under the feet.

The faces look good, the sculpt quality is good, but I'm a bit worried by the proportion imbalance between the upper and lower bodies in that shot. Maybe it's the angle, but he also seems quite knock-kneed there. I'll agree with you re: the fingers.

I love 'em, scale balance issues included!

These are helping ease any concept art to actual model fears I might have still had.

Bring on the Werewolf previews!

I love them as well.
A little top heavy, but that's what I think of when I think muscly ogre!

Wow. These are making me want to play KoW!

Yup, looks great but the waistline and lower body is a little off for me. Love the heads and I don't actually have an issue with the hands. I think if the rest of the body was in the same proportion the hands would be correct. They only looks so big because the legs / waist are so small.

The tiny legs look really, really bad. I hope it's something to do with the camera angle or something. If the final models look like that, these moved from "must haves" to "no way."

I'll definitely be paying attention for more pictures to see how this shapes up.

I think the legs are fine,
The picture with the loin cloth makes it look like they start 75% down the model, but they really start around 50% down (the axe is covering it) The leg is still going on the right side.

Yeah, the axe, loincloth, and angle are making it look more exaggerated than it really is IMO. Love the detail on those faces, looks great.

 frozenwastes wrote:
The tiny legs look really, really bad. I hope it's something to do with the camera angle or something. If the final models look like that, these moved from "must haves" to "no way."

I'll definitely be paying attention for more pictures to see how this shapes up.

Yeah, as I said, I agree with you, but accept that my opinion of wanting true-scale minis is a minority.

This is what the market wants these days, not "balanced" proportions, tiny legs and giant hands are very much the "in" thing when it comes to fantasy:



GW is moving back into that kind of "toylike" style with its latest large monster miniatures too. It sells.

So, from that perspective, Mantic will probably make more money with OTT sculpts. As long as I can find ways to kitbash these ogres into something more acceptable I'll be fine with that (that PP trollblood at least shows that my plan for cutting off a finger should work great). It's still a good sculpt, and that outweighs any other problems I have with it.

I have no doubt that in 10 years time we'll be looking back on these sorts of sculpts with the same kind of horror that we currently look at red-period GW sculpts, it's just a current fashion.

That's another reason why I prefer to buy true-scale and non-stylised miniatures, they age much better. My Eldar howling banshees and fire dragons from 2nd edition still look brilliant and I've never felt the need to replace them with a newer, more "hero scale" sculpt.

Same goes for Perry Dwarfs and Empire... the metals from 1992 are just as good (if not better!) than the current plastics.

Same goes for my Mantic orcs which I'm certain will hold up better in 20 years time, at which point the "default GW orc" will probably look totally different. GW changes its artistic style radically every so often to make sure that people have to buy new miniatures... you can clearly see it with the "hamfist phase" that the fantasy plastics went through, a design style which got thrown away as soon as 7th edition started in favour of making the weapons the more ridiculously over-scaled components of the models.

Looks really nice. Arguments about scaling and proportion aside, it looks like a nicely sculpted mini with lots of character.

Look at the previous pics of the Ogre bodies. You'll see that this particular pose is not only leaning forward, but the angle the photo is taken exaggerates it, too.

 scarletsquig wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:
The tiny legs look really, really bad. I hope it's something to do with the camera angle or something. If the final models look like that, these moved from "must haves" to "no way."

I'll definitely be paying attention for more pictures to see how this shapes up.

Yeah, as I said, I agree with you, but accept that my opinion of wanting true-scale minis is a minority.

This is what the market wants these days, not "balanced" proportions, tiny legs and giant hands are very much the "in" thing when it comes to fantasy:
<snip>

GW is moving back into that kind of "toylike" style with its latest large monster miniatures too. It sells.

So, from that perspective, Mantic will probably make more money with OTT sculpts. As long as I can find ways to kitbash these ogres into something more acceptable I'll be fine with that (that PP trollblood at least shows that my plan for cutting off a finger should work great). It's still a good sculpt, and that outweighs any other problems I have with it.

I have no doubt that in 10 years time we'll be looking back on these sorts of sculpts with the same kind of horror that we currently look at red-period GW sculpts, it's just a current fashion

I think we need to consider the difference (which I think you do, just making it clear) between quality and style.

What's really great a bout a lot of the products that Mantic is putting out right now is that they have been able to get the funding to work up everything at once, with quality guys like Remy Tremblay (who did the Ogres). This creates a unified aesthetic to the lines that bind everything together (take a look at the unity in proportion with the Dreadball game between the Corporate, ForgeFather and Marauder teams, all, again, done by RT).

These ogres are clearly of high quality (honestly, some of the best I have seen), and cannot be condemned as these minotaurs can.

Are the Ogres more realistic? Not so much, but are they a good realization of the concept art? You be the judge...

To me, that's one of the best translations of concept art to sculpt, and a real feather in the cap for Mantic.