A glimpse into the process and a feedback request.
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Most if not all 15mm scale weapons for the 15mm scale Leviathans are in T1 or are about to move to T1.

T1 is the term used for first test shot, the molds have been cut and we are tweaking the runners, gates and sometimes the vents to make sure the plastic fills the mold properly.

The Heavy Assault Troopers are not quite at T1 but are nearing completion, I hope to get a look at the files for these soon.

The APC is a large complicated model, perhaps even more so than the Leviathans. When I delivered the APC files I had not broken up the body, it was sent over as two halves because the way they approach components like this will depend on the draft angle, depth and direction of pull of the mold halves. They need to look at these components with the understanding of the best way to approach the kit with an eye to molding and assembly. With the Leviathans, we had the benefit of having a resin kit that was already in production and a sample for the engineers to examine, this kit is a little more of a challenge. The Engineers needed to tackle this kit with only the CAD files and their experience. In instances like this we will go back and forth reviewing files and sometimes asking for changes or clarifications to see if we can optimize the assembly of features of the kit.

Sometimes the conversations will lead to improvements of the base design. One such conversation led to some thought and revision of the wheels for the APC. The hubs are supposed to remain stationary as the tire is driven around the hub. Could we have moving “rolling” wheels? Can we make the wheels a stiff black rubber? Although we need to do some testing with the rubber aspect, the spinning wheels feature is now, I am happy to say, a part of the kit. The rubber looks to be a green light but we need to test and design with an eye towards ease of assembly and durability. Another conversation led to a way to make the doors and hatches open and close rather than making you decide which way to glue the door or hatch. The rear hatch (as you can see from the pictures) is large enough to make this an easy affair and was designed as a feature from the start. The top of the APC has this feature built into the design as well but we are still discussing if we can achieve this with the side doors and the hood.

Conversations like these are continual, until we have the green light to go to mold cut, we will continue to tweak the model and make improvements where possible. Individually some changes or improvements may not seem like much, when you add them together it makes for a much better product and one that I hope you will agree sets DreamForge above the standard offerings.

These are some images from a conversation between me, my account rep and the Engineers to go over how they decided to break up the body and thought on assembly.









The engineering bandwidth can only handle so many projects at one time, as they complete a kit I make sure they have the next available so that I am not the bottleneck in the process. This allows me to tweak the kits until I am satisfied with the results. I have pulled back the Command Squad to go over the kit and make it a more interesting and valued addition to the line. I will work on these files over the next couple of weeks while we wait on the engineering staff to finalize all the Heavy Troopers files. I am still fidgeting with the Black Widows squad and their load-out.

I have a question for all of you. As you are aware, I am not a fan of the over sexualized female trooper. This is not to say I do not appreciate the art form. Mr. Poots Kingdom Death and Raging Heroes are two examples of finely crafted designs that celebrate the female form. You all have seen Ada, so you know where I am taking the design, a far more conservative approach. These ladies are soldiers and double D chest armor simply does not fit with how I view Iron Core.

My question to you is this; does Ada have enough of the female feel to be recognizable on the tabletop, is this model (the proportions) female enough to be in your opinion what you are looking for? There are subtle changes I can make to the mesh, very slight exaggerations to the hip or pose. I am not talking about pigeon toed firing stances but subtly weigh shifts in the hips. Is the model itself female enough or would you like further subtle tweaks to the form? Perhaps a new helmet design as an option? Please let me know your thoughts…

All the best!

Mark Mondragon

DreamForge-Games

 NoseGoblin wrote:

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Any sketches availlable on the tank? i see 3D of an APC, but not a tank!

Not quite yet, still tweaking to be done before it is ready to go.

Jacqualine Cooper 22 minutes ago

I pledged solely for the Black Widows (and have been quite patient about it). Before I give you my opinion on the models and Ada, I wanted to weigh in on a lot of the arguments that seem to be for the Black Widows being just a scaled down, slightly shorter, slightly skinnier male model. I'd like to point out that I am a female law enforcement officer. I am 5'10", and wear a 38D bra - I do NOT look like a cheesecake model or a stripper - I look proportional - tall women with a healthy frame (Read: rib cage circumference) do NOT always have B-Cups or smaller. I know some women on the force that are like that (very few), but most of us float between a small C and a large D. It sounds big, but it just looks proportional - cup size is not linear... while a 5'2" girl with a 32D bra would look very busty and sexualized, its not just a 'scale up' for a taller woman (and given the height of Ada, assuming the men are about 6' tall, I'd guess she is more my height than a petite thing) - if I had B-cups, I'd look funny and boy-ish even wearing a tight T-shirt. So if you're going to complain about cup-size, look at real women before saying "D-cups unrealistic D'rrrr"

Also, body armour - particularly Kevlar - is meant to be worn TIGHTLY - loose space is a bad thing because it allows the armor to shift its position out of adequate protection, hinders freedom of movement, etc. That's why kevlar vests have elastic/velcro straps that wrap entirely around the waist to hold the kevlar to the wearer's shape. When just wearing an undershirt and the vest, it is obvious that I have breasts. After I put on a uniform shirt - which is a bit baggy at the bottom since its standard between men and women (because it doesn't hinder us to be so), it does hide my breasts. Still, if I stand next to a male officer the same height as I am, upon observation my chest does protrude more and at a different angle before going to the vertical plunge to the belt-line.

Also, on Body Armor: Even in something as simple and relatively supple as KEVLAR, the cut is very different for a woman than for a man. I had the misfortune of having to wear men's body armor in the Academy: It fit horribly - I could not cross my arms without being poked in the sides of my arms by the unnatural bend in the kevlar around my breasts - further, the torso length was too long, so if I had to kneel or bend over it felt like I was being punched in the gut. On top of all that, I constantly felt like my breasts were being shoved into my armpits - so every night I was sore and bruised. Saying "The same Body armor fits men and women just fine with no modifications" is just like when my Major said "Suck it up, its what we have so its what you're issued" - its just an excuse... the reason we didn't have female-proportioned armor wasn't because we didn't need it - it was because we were intruding on a "men's profession" where the higher-ups didn't really want us and the industry hadn't caught on yet that we weren't going to leave and go back to 'womanly jobs.' Only one woman in my academy class had proper-fitting kevlar, and that was because her's was custom made due to her being a 4'5" petite little thing for whom no off-the-shelf vest existed (BTW: She did fine in defensive tactics and took down men three times her size, so please no 'she was too small to be a cop' comments). The rest of us were insanely jealous.

Myself and many other LEOs praised our respective deities when companies began rolling out kevlar vests specifically designed for female proportions (NOT BOOB ARMOR - ARMOR CUT TO ALLOW FULL FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT FOR A FEMALE FRAME AND NOT COMPRESS THINGS THAT WEREN'T MEANT TO BE COMPRESSED). These new vests aren't painful to wear, don't feel like they are shoving our breasts into our armpits, and don't cause longterm injury/deformity. When next to a man's vest, there is a definitive difference in the cut and design.

I don't know how current military women are with their ceramic armor - but I have a feeling that they are in the same boat that I was.

As for the models themselves... when I look at the Dreamforge minis, the first thing I note is that they are wearing basically form-fitting body-suits with what appear to be Kevlar sections sewn-in, and ceramic armor plating over that. All fine and quite cool. However, poor Ada looks to be in the situation I was in in the academy... the kevlar is all the same cut as the men's, the chest armor appears to not be re-angled for the female frame, and in general it looks like the poor girl was issued men's armor off the shelf that happened to be sized for a petite man, and was then told "Suck it up." For armor that covers everything like that, it'd be even worse than my ill-fitting armor at the academy: for one, female hips are wider and work differently than men's... because our pelvis is wider and shaped differently. Also, if a women has had a child at any point in her past, her hips and pelvis will have permanently shifted. We don't walk the same, run the same, or stand the same as a man - we follow the same principles, but we have a different center of mass and our hips move differently. That means kevlar needs to be sectioned differently to allow us freedom of movement while still providing the same protection. As for poor Ada's chest armor... I feel a bit of sympathy for her because I'm sure she has that 'my breasts are in my armpits' feeling that I'm so very glad I don't have to deal with anymore.

Anyway, bottom line is: If female soldiers are a rarity or new thing for the Eisenkern, or if the higher-ups don't really like women intruding into their 'male space' - then leave the design alone. Its fluffy and representative of how women were treated as we first began tearing down the gender boundaries of western civilization. Just make sure it isn't glossed over in the fluff and it'll be a homage to the struggle to be accepted in traditionally male dominated professions.

If the Eisenkern are egalitarian, then please, please give them armor that is not a cut&paste of the men's armor and looks like it might actually protect them without hurting them in the process.

As far as helmets, I wear the same helmets as everyone else in training and have never had a problem. While facial structure is different, there aren't any moving parts in my head that would require a redesign of a helmet... Helmets are truely unisex armor. A different design of the helmet would be more due to a different battlefield role or some cultural significance than necessity.

 Azazelx wrote:
Hm. Two things to comment on.

WGF China obviously really know their stuff in terms of putting together model kits. What were they doing before they became WGF? Or has this expertise been part of their growth since the Chinese takeover?

 Azazelx wrote:
I hope Mark can take into account the information and feedback from Jacqualine.

 Dr Mathias wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
I hope Mark can take into account the information and feedback from Jacqualine.

Same here, I'd even vote to have her look over the final designs before going to tooling

 Azazelx wrote:
Hm. Two things to comment on.

WGF China obviously really know their stuff in terms of putting together model kits. What were they doing before they became WGF? Or has this expertise been part of their growth since the Chinese takeover?

I hope Mark can take into account the information and feedback from Jacqualine.

 Theophony wrote:
I'm with the female officer on this one. From what I remember about the history, I think women would have earned their place in the armed forces and the fine German engineering would have created better fitting armor for them. With this in mind, I wish Jacqueline could send some photos to Mark to show the differences. I think it would help, as I can only slightly imagine what she is talking about. I don't think their should be a game difference for the black widows, just female troopers to add to the unit. Kind of like colonial marines have mixed units.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
Time permitting, I might enjoy a little bit of hip on the models. I think the chest armour is fine as it is and shouldn't be changed. I probably couldn't guess which soldier is female or not at 200 paces, so to me it's not that important.

Who'd've thunk I'd side with a more conservative approach?

 RiTides wrote:
I think you can do that excellent commentor justice and avoid cheesecake armor.

Something like this from Aliens:



Would address her points, but also be refreshingly different from the armor seen on most female miniatures.

 Krinsath wrote:
Brief skim of the Internet (i.e. - Mark probably already did this and is fifteen steps ahead of us) revealed this:

Spoiler:

from http://www.policemag.com/photogallery/photos/5/women-s-body-armor.aspx

So one would imagine if that's what real body armor looks like, it's a good starting point. However, I wasn't able to find if that's "good" design or just a marketing gimmick.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
In all seriousness, it's interesting how the standard thought so often is that, in order to not be patronizing or objectifying, female soldier miniatures should be attired in the same gear the males should be. As this incident shows, and as women talk about being more integrated into the real life infantry, military women wearing ballistic protection and uniforms formed and cut for men... don't really like them all that much.

Not that female designed armor looks much like boob plate, but it wouldn't just be smaller versions of male armor/uniforms.

Fascinating.