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Hopefully all these remarks continue to push Mantic towards 3D sculpts in the future so that these little glitches can be dealt with more quickly.

I REALLY hope they've got all these kinks ironed out in time for Warpath.

 Barzam wrote:

And those Zees, are you really complaining about the figure's hand being undetailed? You do realize how small they're going to be, right? Those guys are going to have hands that are probably even smaller than the ones that Mantic's Elves have. They're going to be so small that you really aren't going to be able to tell if they sculpted a knuckle or not.

About half the height of an average human, that's not an excuse to not have detailed sculpts, especially if they look so amateurish.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:

 Barzam wrote:

And those Zees, are you really complaining about the figure's hand being undetailed? You do realize how small they're going to be, right? Those guys are going to have hands that are probably even smaller than the ones that Mantic's Elves have. They're going to be so small that you really aren't going to be able to tell if they sculpted a knuckle or not.

About half the height of an average human, that's not an excuse to not have detailed sculpts, especially if they look so amateurish.

The average human is about 5'6" these minis will be nowhere near that less than 1" in all likleyhood. Still they don't come across as quality sculpts which is a shame as apart from them the rebs look pretty good. I don't want to see lack of consitancy and variable proportions is becoming mantics thing.

To many models have tiny legs its fine for the trolls to have them it can be a troll thing but mantic need to pick heroic or TS proportions and stick to them.

Maybe if we swap the ape arms from the battle sisters onto the Zee's they will look right :-(

 dragqueeninspace wrote:


The average human is about 5'6" these minis will be nowhere near that less than 1" in all likleyhood.

Oh wow, 10 points for being so delightfully purposefully obtuse

The Zees are roughly 15-18mm tall, which means the level of detail on them is EXCEPTIONALLY good compared to 15mm sci fi manufacturers such as Khurusan and Rebel. Do you really want knuckle joints at that scale?




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Earth Dragon wrote:

SO......having longer arms is fine, but since they are clones, they should all have the same dimensions and proportions.

If it were a cartoon. That's not how cloning actually works, though.

 judgedoug wrote:
The Zees are roughly 15-18mm tall, which means the level of detail on them is EXCEPTIONALLY good compared to 15mm sci fi manufacturers such as Khurusan and Rebel. Do you really want knuckle joints at that scale?

Seriously?



compared to these from Khurasan:







Do you not see a difference in sculpt quality and level of detail? And you think the Mantic sculpt is better?

So both Mantic's and Khurusan's have banana fingers and Khurusan's female has a muppet face. The Khurusan figs are white metal and washed with black gesso or ink, while the Mantic shots are grey resin.

You've also chosen to compare them to 15mm sculpts by fething Tom Meier, sculpts that are pretty much universally recognized as the greatest 15mm sculpts of all time.

Would you like to grab pics of any of Khurusan's other 15mm figures? Perhaps the entire rest of their range?


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Typical 15mm (not the atypical "best 15mm sculpts in the universe")







This one's BRILLIANT






Now that we're comparing apples to apples...

This guy even looks like a Zee!

Burn. Also, imo the face and torso of the zees are as detailed as the ones Jake linked.

The difference being Khurasan's figures are scaled for 15mm, so hence often smaller and less detail, as it's not a defining aspect of 15mm or the medium.

That Zee might only be 15mm, but it's not scaled for 15mm use, so is larger and therefore should have better details, instead, it looks half finished on the arms etc. How you can;t acknowledge that I'm unsure.

 judgedoug wrote:
The Zees are roughly 15-18mm tall, which means the level of detail on them is EXCEPTIONALLY good compared to 15mm sci fi manufacturers such as Khurusan and Rebel. Do you really want knuckle joints at that scale?

The Zees might be small, but I doubt that they are smaller than, say, Red Box Games' Dwarves, and almost certainly not smaller than their goblins. The hands on the Zees look fine to me, but the proportions on at least one of them look off. Could be the angle of the photo, since that one appears to be bending at the waist. Also, the detail falls down a bit in my opinion. There are details but not particularly sharp ones, and the "realism" of some of them is a bit low. I'm thinking of the straps and fabrics here: Straps that are tightened down pinch in, deform the silhouette a bit, and cause different wrinkle patterns and that is not shown on these figures. There may be other examples, but without better pictures, its hard to tell. Wish Mantic had taken better pictures (again...)

The swipe at the 15mm guys is a bit unfair though. The Zees might be that height, but they are certainly not that scale. These figures are all by Khurasan, are 15mm in "scale", and all are in a league with (or markedly better than) every 28mm miniature shown for Deadzone yet:
Xenobiologisxt
Galactic Dictator and Techno-Ninja
SciFi Superhero and Spirited Sidekick
Tween Assassin
Tween Assassin comparison picture to a US Penny and another 15mm soldier

These are amazing figures. Yes, they are the best, and I cherry-picked them, true.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
Hopefully all these remarks continue to push Mantic towards 3D sculpts in the future so that these little glitches can be dealt with more quickly.

I REALLY hope they've got all these kinks ironed out in time for Warpath.

Digital is not a cure-all. Especially as the renders shown so far tell us that their digital sculptors have issues of their own.


Fake edit since there have been a couple posts since I started writing:
Human in Superheavy Battle Armor -Arguably comparable to the Marauder Hulk.
Red Faction Infantry High Command
Evil Mid-Tech Infantry with Rifles
Small Spaceship Crew
Alien Bounty Hunters

Just so there is a better range of 15mm stuff from Khurasan.

 judgedoug wrote:

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Earth Dragon wrote:

SO......having longer arms is fine, but since they are clones, they should all have the same dimensions and proportions.

If it were a cartoon. That's not how cloning actually works, though.

But it's a reasonable point since we are dealing with science fiction universe cloning.

~Eric

 Earthbeard wrote:
The difference being Khurasan's figures are scaled for 15mm, so hence often smaller and less detail, as it's not a defining aspect of 15mm or the medium.

That Zee might only be 15mm, but it's not scaled for 15mm use, so is larger and therefore should have better details, instead, it looks half finished on the arms etc. How you can;t acknowledge that I'm unsure.

It's not just scale, but ultimate size matters as well. I don't expect a 28mm/1:72 scale mouse to have life-like detail... they're pretty damn small to begin with.

 Earthbeard wrote:
The difference being Khurasan's figures are scaled for 15mm, so hence often smaller and less detail, as it's not a defining aspect of 15mm or the medium.

That Zee might only be 15mm, but it's not scaled for 15mm use, so is larger and therefore should have better details, instead, it looks half finished on the arms etc. How you can;t acknowledge that I'm unsure.

I can see how that makes sense when you're saying it but how does it make sense in reality? They are "scaled" from a fictional 3 foot creature to a height of 15-18mm ish. You lose detail the smaller you go. That's why 6mm figures lack things like faces and Napoleonics with painted grains of rice lack rifles and shakos.

I'm not arguing they're amazing fantastic sculpts. (In fact, I don't like the Zees at all, in this or the Dreadball team) I'm arguing that anyone that owns any 15mm-18mm figures can see that these Zees are perfectly fine, and featureless banana fingers are the norm (actually, they might be the exception, I have lots of 15's that don't have fingers, they just have flesh-mitts holding spears or rifles)

Look at some of the Hasslefree kids, small minis but scaled to 28mm. Sorry, this Zee looks very poorly sculpted.

 Taarnak wrote:

But it's a reasonable point since we are dealing with science fiction universe cloning.

~Eric

Eh, but I think that's lazy. I prefer more science than fantasy in my sci-fi.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Taarnak wrote:

But it's a reasonable point since we are dealing with science fiction universe cloning.

~Eric

Eh, but I think that's lazy. I prefer more science than fantasy in my sci-fi.

That's also a reasonable point.

~Eric

 Taarnak wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:

 Taarnak wrote:

But it's a reasonable point since we are dealing with science fiction universe cloning.

~Eric

Eh, but I think that's lazy. I prefer more science than fantasy in my sci-fi.

That's also a reasonable point.

~Eric

Reasonable points made in a reasonable matter in an internet message board thread? UNREASONABLE

 Krinsath wrote:

Bossk_Hogg wrote:

overtyrant wrote:
Girl looks fine and yeah one of the zees arms looks long, go figure it's an alien.

Except "its analien" isnt an excuse to just do a gakky job. It should at least be consistent within the species. The arms on the left Zee are longer than the one on the right. Its the same problem as the derpy nuns.

Because humanity is a very consistent species with all dimensions being nearly identical between all its members.

Looking at them though, I'm not sure you can definitively state the arms are longer. They appear to be, but at the same time the angling of the arms on the right one could be creating a slight illusion. Their bases appear to be equal in size, and the forearms are actually very close to the same length measuring from elbow to wrist to raise the question. Comparing the left forearm of the right model to the right forearm of the left model (no chance for confusion there!) seems to indicate they're very close in length.

Not saying that this is scientific fact, but based on what I can observe it actually falls within the realm of reasonable doubt which way it goes. It'd come down to the upper arms on both, which are much more difficult to compare accurately.

Do you recognize the nun arms were off? Its the exact same thing here, sculpted by someone who doesnt grasp that some bones arent femur length.

Bossk_Hogg wrote:

Do you recognize the nun arms were off? Its the exact same thing here, sculpted by someone who doesnt grasp that some bones arent femur length.

The nun arms were off because they're humans. We have a fairly solid understanding of how human anatomy informs the guidelines that determine "good" proportions. Those models deviate from it, and thus we can say "those aren't good" for that reason.

The Zees are not human, ergo human proportions do not apply. CONSISTENCY is indeed something that would apply, but the pictures we have make it hard to say definitively either way if they've failed that standard. At this point, there's nothing to say that's "bad" any more than there is to say it's "good" in that regard. We don't have Zee lying around to look at and see what their "real" dimensions are (not even the DreadBall team has pictures AFAIK), and the two examples are reasonably identifiable as being from the same race so they're not wholly inconsistent.

In other words, you would need much better data than what you gave on hand to make the determination you're claiming. A single two-dimensional photograph of two three-dimensional objects that may or may not have physically been in the same position/location when the picture was taken is very poor evidence. I'm not saying you're wrong, because later information could validate your argument. I'm saying we all lack the data to deal with that as some sort of verified fact.

They could be inconsistent and you would be correct because they are not consistent. They might just as likely be exactly the same dimensions, in which case your argument is incorrect because they are not humans and that standard would not apply. Time will tell as we see more images and/or models in hand.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Earthbeard wrote:
The difference being Khurasan's figures are scaled for 15mm, so hence often smaller and less detail, as it's not a defining aspect of 15mm or the medium.

That Zee might only be 15mm, but it's not scaled for 15mm use, so is larger and therefore should have better details, instead, it looks half finished on the arms etc. How you can;t acknowledge that I'm unsure.

I can see how that makes sense when you're saying it but how does it make sense in reality? They are "scaled" from a fictional 3 foot creature to a height of 15-18mm ish. You lose detail the smaller you go. That's why 6mm figures lack things like faces and Napoleonics with painted grains of rice lack rifles and shakos.

I'm not arguing they're amazing fantastic sculpts. (In fact, I don't like the Zees at all, in this or the Dreadball team) I'm arguing that anyone that owns any 15mm-18mm figures can see that these Zees are perfectly fine, and featureless banana fingers are the norm (actually, they might be the exception, I have lots of 15's that don't have fingers, they just have flesh-mitts holding spears or rifles)

I can't agree with them being 'fictional' creations grants an excuse, maybe it the pictures etc, but the zee on the right looks so much better than the one on the left, at least the one on the right looks mostly finished.

I agree with your points about a lot of 15mm miniatures features, hell some 28mm stuff I've seen suffers from lack of details too. But, 28mm generally are held up to a higher basis of sculpting, regardless of how much detail it's size and form can take. I can appreciate that these zee may have different physical forms to humanity etc, but the left figure looks unfinished, simple as.

I've been very critical of Mantic's QC and items (most are not to my own personal taste etc), but with Dreadball, they seem to have finally stepped up thier game, and then these and then especially the KoW stuff, seem to have jumped them all the way back to beginning. I want them to make quality products, not just cheap and 'good enough' stuff they seem to continually resort to. They need to move away from the 80's/early 90's form they seem to love so much.


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 Lansirill wrote:

 Earthbeard wrote:
The difference being Khurasan's figures are scaled for 15mm, so hence often smaller and less detail, as it's not a defining aspect of 15mm or the medium.

That Zee might only be 15mm, but it's not scaled for 15mm use, so is larger and therefore should have better details, instead, it looks half finished on the arms etc. How you can;t acknowledge that I'm unsure.

It's not just scale, but ultimate size matters as well. I don't expect a 28mm/1:72 scale mouse to have life-like detail... they're pretty damn small to begin with.

I don't disagree here either, a smaller figure is honestly going to be more difficult to get finer details, but both sizes call for a specific start and finish, that're often different to each other.

I just can't shake the feeling of 80's/early 90's era sculpting techniques and style with these, I know it's subjective as most art/aesthetics are, but looking at some of the details and miniatures released these days, the difference for me is like night and day.

A stupid thought.

But, if Zees are still inspired by monkeys... Wouldn't that still be the one time when it'd actually make real sense for them to have longer arms and shorter lengths?

Since we brought Tom Meier And Kevin White ont he scene I guess I can add that Corvus Belli has consistently provided Servants bots that are around the Zees height or smaller and have managed to not create such awful detailing, miniatures height is not the key issue here, its mantics inability to keep a high quality control and accept substandard sculpts.

It might also be that they posted WIP sculpts and not finished sculpts for models send to tooling without saying so, but sounds odd.

In any case for me mantic passes an exam here if they fail I will be really reluctant to support them in the future.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
mantics inability to keep a high quality control and accept substandard sculpts.

Be sure to stay away from the entirety of the 15mm market.

I won't get into details, but seems nothing has changed with this company since I last looked.

 judgedoug wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
mantics inability to keep a high quality control and accept substandard sculpts.

Be sure to stay away from the entirety of the 15mm market.

While not my preferred game era, have you seen CB's 15mm ancients? or the above meier sculpts? but overall I agree 15mm would benefit from more high quality infantry, vehicles have become increasingly better to a rather good standard at present.

But both do not justify how bad Zee is sculpted its a 28mm scale so 1/54? scale model not a 15mm scale so 1/110 scale miniature.



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 Kroothawk wrote:
I won't get into details, but seems nothing has changed with this company since I last looked.

Yes and no, they have improved on areas, but still need improvement on other areas and areas they have improved.

 Kroothawk wrote:
I won't get into details, but seems nothing has changed with this company since I last looked.

Well with a statement like that your better not saying anything at all then.

 Kroothawk wrote:
I won't get into details, but seems nothing has changed with this company since I last looked.

This is the most negative thread I've ever read on Dakka.


Glad to be a part of it!

Seriously, though, a lot of my enthusiasm for Mantic as a company has died between KoW and Deadzone. I really hope they move back to hard plastics and that they spend the time and money to do it right. If the enforcer plastics have the same obvious quality issues as the Men at Arms, I think I'm done with Mantic.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:


This is the most negative thread I've ever read on Dakka.

You should try this one!

I'm pretty sure Bob was kidding.

I'm going to withhold judgement one way or the other until I have the actual minis in my hands. Something else to take into account is that a brilliant paint job can rescue some of the most hopeless minis out there. For example, if you were to look at the studio paint jobs for the Vampire Wars line, you would never touch them. But if you see the paint jobs some truly inspired painters have done on the models, you might actually be inclined to pick up a few.

 judgedoug wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
mantics inability to keep a high quality control and accept substandard sculpts.

Be sure to stay away from the entirety of the 15mm market.

Be sure to talk about something you actually have a clue.