"Why Are 28mm Figures Anatomically Incorrect?" Topic

I find it ironic that gamers argue over the correct shape of a German helmet, for example, when the figure's head looks like a pumpkin! I have been wondering why nearly all 28mm figures depict humans as being so broad and chunky instead of being anatomically correct? Has this always been the case? Just something people now expect that companies fear producing more accurate models? Why? Questions, questions, questions.

BTW I'm really wishing to see more accurate 28mm figures like Ansell is doing and like we see in 1/72.

Anatomically correct models are harder to paint. Details are too small sometimes to bother – belts and nick knacks are just too small for wargaming table. Also, weapons can be very brittle and not suitable for wargaming.

I was having a similar conversation in a GW shop the other day. The Manager was trying to explain the rule of thirds to me. I didn't really follow at the time but found this tutorial online. Its hard to read on my iMac.

link

I have not found where it relates to the width of the figure though.

First you need to qualify what is "accurate". What would be the source or standard used to determine that a miniature is "correct". Otherwise, we are all just spinning our wheels here.

Ok, a couple of things about sculpting. First off it is about perception, faces tend to be key features of recognitions, meaning the face and by extension the head tend to be enlarged, if you look at children's drawings you a primary example of this. followed by other detailing characteristics, guns, muscles, equipement, the lesser details will tend to be smaller.

So to sum up the points of recognition tend to be larger.

Secondly, as for scale models, the master tend to be sculpted larger than the final product generally 3 to 5 times scale. Then the molds are pantigraphed from the masters…

Lastly, sculpting is about practice and study. It sometime helps to draw what you want to sculpt, to roughly plan out your proportions. But practice is the biggest thing.

A 28mm figure if made the correct width would no doubt snap and or bend.
A 6mm figure whilst easily 6mm tall, could not be 1.5mm wide, that would be crazy talk.

All about having toys that are practical I suspect.

Which if true explains why so many vehicles look small.
They are scuplted to the correct dimensions but do not take into account the fact the figures are wider than they would be if correct.

I have some great 6mm figures that are 6mm tall, but assuming 1mm = 1 foot then they should as noted be about 1.5mm wide.
However they are mostly around 3mm wide.
I am not 3 foot wide!

This then means that a correctly sculpted 5 foot wide car looks too thin to have 2 men in it as they are 7mm wide.
The car is correct the men are not.
But then the men can't be correct as 1.5mm wide figures would never get out of the mould in 1 piece.

I think more small scale vehicles need to take this into account and few do.

Anyway, those are my musings…
I am sure the prinicple applies to all scales.

"I find it ironic that gamers argue over the correct shape of a German helmet…"

Not arguing, mostly; many are just disappointed that sculptors cannot reproduce the basic shapes of material objects.

There really is no argument about the shape of a WWII stahlhelm. But when a miniature figure's WWII stahlhelm is more reminiscent of a blueberry muffin, it deserves comment.

And then there's the issue of scale/size of said objects…

Allen

"BTW I'm really wishing to see more accurate 28mm figures like… we see in 1/72."

Now that's just funny!

link

Allen

I have a head like a pumpkin and am broad and chunky. So I reject your assumption….

Jaz
6sided.net – Blog Network Exclusively For Gamers

It sounds like the hard plastic Hat 28mm may be of interest – they use a more-realistic style.

@Dan, hehe Ramon is also a GW shop manager nowadays. :) Anyway, to reply to your question on width, the traditional shoulder with is normally a little more than twice the height of the head for males and a little less for females.

Almost all the proportion rules for the human figure deal with an unclothed body. Add clothing that is probably too large, in multiple layers to keep out the cold and worn baggy for comfort and you get a lot closer to reality than some of the spindly Napoleonics in spandex that I've seen in 1/72.

"Add clothing that is probably too large… and worn baggy…"

Sling the trousers around crotch-level and you have the hip-hop youngsters I see around (and some older folks without shame). They still manage to look skinny.

One major difference is that 28mm/15mm/10mm/6mm figures are actually sculpted and moulded generally at the size of the respective figure. The plastic 1/72 figures are sculpted much larger-say 54mm, and then the molds are reduced to 1/72. The Strelets figures that Allen shows above are sculpted in the same fashion as metals, so they have the distorted look.

All that being said, AB's 20mm WW2 and 15mm Naopoleonic are fantastic sculpts in metal-there is some exaggeration in the size of rifle stocks, etc, but otherwise look like a real soldier made tiny. I've read somewhere or other that Anthony Barton started scuplting in the medical field which might explain his particular accuracy.

A noticable trend is that the newer 15mm in general look much better than the sculpts of yesteryear. I'm not sure if this is just a change in taste, or better craft. For example, when I first saw pictures of unpainted Splintered Light Dark Ages figures I thought they were 28mm.

The weird looking Strelets Rumanians remind me that I will use their Red Army figures to pit against my 20mm Winter War Finns that have been sitting unused without an enemy for 5+ years.

I think it has to do with making the figures sturdy enough for the games table, but I think also tradition.

When smaller 20mm and true 25mm height figs were the norm, and everything was made of lead, it was impossible to make a figure that was both sturdy and anatomically correct, so they opted for 'heroic' proportions so that the small parts wouldn't break and figs wouldn't snap off at the ankles.

Now that 28mm (which is often closer to 30mm) is the norm, and figs are made of a slightly stronger alloy we could (and sometimes do) see non-heroic, anatomically correct figs. HOwever most folks seem to follow the sculpting traditions established back when lead 25's had to be heroic by necessity.

To understand the answer to this question you have to look at the history of model soldiers and the reasons why a figure might be distorted. Some reasons for distortion have been mentioned but I'll list them all before examining them.

Durability
Cast-ability
Ease of sculpting
Ease of painting
Aesthetic preference
Advantage to manufacturers

In the beginning the ideal was naturalism modified by fashion-illustration sensibility and the requirements of durability and cast-ability. Larger figures like Britons 1/32 tended to have small heads (as compared to reality) and slightly thickened weapons along with somewhat thicker ankles. Smaller figures 20 and 30mm followed this pattern with emphasis on the distortions required for durability and cast-ability. These were required particularly because of the soft, lead-based alloys used for casting at that time.

Figures made before about 1975 were generally carved in solder or wax, things began to change when epoxy was introduced as a sculpting medium. Wax and solder are carving mediums, epoxy is a medium where the figure is made by building up and adding to. The tendency with carving is restraint or even reduction, the tendency with additive modeling is naturally for things to grow as the sculptor works unless he keeps a very strict watch.

Epoxy also allowed for much better detail and this was attractive to the customers. Increasing the size of key components makes them more noticeable and easier to sculpt. If you oversize the head for example you can essentially fit details which would only be possible on a 1/32 figure on a (titular) 1/56 one.

Also with the consolidation of figure manufacture, painting and rules systems were promoted which emphasized techniques for quick painting and depended on exaggerated detail.

At about the same time fantasy was becoming the most popular figure genre with it's predilection for exaggerated, even grotesque characterization. This style quickly filtered back into historical figures.

All this came together along with the advantage for manufacturers of using a style which was easier for less experienced sculptors to follow to make the ordinary metal figure style of the mid-1980's to now. Many people who started gaming at that time have little experience with anything else and so it has shaped their perception to the point where more natural proportions look strange to them.

In the mid 1990's lead-based alloys were dropped by most manufacturers so the need to exaggerate parts of the figure for durability was greatly reduced. Likewise plastic figures have little mechanical need of distortion but the style continues because of compatibility and aesthetic preference shaped by the decades during which it was dominant.

A number of the Rackham sculpts were, IMO, more accurate to true human form… at least compared to the clunky GW stuff… as well as being made with higher lead content… for that you got many ankles, wrists and weapons that are itty bitty… not durable for any purpose but sitting on a shelf (plenty arrive broken in original packaging).
Another reason I think it's dumb that CMON has decided to re-release them in resin.

"rule of thirds to me"

Systems like that are very rough guidelines only useful for absolute beginners. The people who make them up seem more interested in imposing their aesthetic preferences on reality than investigating it scientifically.

"So to sum up the points of recognition tend to be larger."

I assume you mean miniature sculpting but even so that's just convention, the old soft plastic figures from Revel and Atlantic had small heads 1/8 of height or less and no particular accentuation of details.

"First you need to qualify what is "accurate"."

Modern armies measure recruits so they can get the ergonomics of uniforms and equipment right. There is plenty of data.

"I have a head like a pumpkin and am broad and chunky."

I have a very large head too, size 7 7/8 U.S. a bit more than 1/7 of my height but the extremes for adults in both directions are not much. A head 1/8 pf overall height is noticeably small while one 1/6 of height is enormous for a full grown man.

"Modern armies measure recruits so they can get the ergonomics of uniforms and equipment right. There is plenty of data."

I know.

I guess I get frustrated because often the critics would have you believe that one uniform should fit all, and my point is simply that those studies yield data that results in uniforms being made in many sizes, and they in turn are worn by soldiers that they do not ideally fit.

While you can make the arguement that sculpting figs that scale to being within the range of human variation is favorable. That range seems to often be as far outside the perception of the critic as the sculpter's fig seems to be outside of the range.

I'm surprised that no one asks the given follow up question:

Why are (almost) all the statues that you see all over the world anatomically incorrect?

Human perception is a weird thing. Simple scale up or down things and they often look weird. In particular if you have to look at it from a different angle.

Speaking of statues that are anatomically incorrect:

"The proportions of the David are atypical of Michelangelo's work; the figure has an unusually large head and hands (particularly apparent in the right hand). These enlargements may be due to the fact that the statue was originally intended to be placed on the cathedral roofline, where the important parts of the sculpture would necessarily be accentuated in order to be visible from below.The statue is unusually slender (front to back) in comparison to its height. This may be the result of the work that had been done on the block before Michelangelo began carving it."

"I guess I get frustrated because often the critics would have you believe that one uniform should fit all"

Well the average uniform should fit the average guy, you can't make a line of figures and have them all be above average. I don't think anyone would object to tall and short guys in a range provided the other proportions were maintained.

""The proportions of the David are atypical of Michelangelo's work; the figure has an unusually large head and hands (particularly apparent in the right hand)."

That is misleading. The 'David' is well within the normal range. It is unusual only because the strictures of proportion at the time were so tight. For example his "unusually large head" is 1/7.5 of his overall height, it is unusual only because 1/8 (an unrealistically small head) was the ideal artistic convention of the time. It is unusual for Michelangelo because he often made figures with heads even smaller than 1/8. David's hands are on the large side (again within the normal range) but hands are one of the more variable parts of the body, they are shaped by use. Perhaps Michelangelo was trying to show this was not a young noble but a shepherd, a young man who worked with his hands all day.

In any case there is no comparison to the typical distortions in small metal figures where a 1/6 head is accounted realistic and 1/5 is normal, the proportions of a young child. The width of David's large hands is no more than half the height of his (normal sized) head where a typical gaming figure's hands look like glass blowers gloves.

Henrix, statues are made that way so they look normal when viewed. Statues usually sit on pedestals. Michelangelo was excellent at it. Learned this in my art classes and saw David in person from the 'sweet spot' viewing spot.

Sorry if brief. Posting from mobile is a pain.

"statues are made that way so they look normal when viewed."

More like some statues are distorted so they look more striking from the angle which they are expected to be viewed. This was a largely a Mannerist thing you don't see it much on Classical, Romantic or even Baroque sculpture. Normal is a very pliable thing, dependent on what you expect to see.

I made a longer post about the myth of statues being distorted to be viewed from below, particularly 'David' on my blog. link

Here is one of the pics:

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