"Scale reduction to ridiculousness" Topic

I won't single out any specific examples, but this mild rant is about making things so small that they no longer look good as models. Fat wings on airplanes, fat lances and pikes, fat bodies and oversized heads. Really poor faces because their features are exaggerated and cartoonish. It isn't possible to make an actual model in that scale. In fact, it isn't really a model anymore but a caricature of the object depicted.

When the thing modeled cannot be given correctly sized lines and proportions, either because the medium would be too fragile, or the sculptor cannot work in so small a size, or both, then the result is a clunky version with little or no appeal.

We've gotten used to "scale creep" of a different sort: fattening up details to make them handleable; seeing a rough simulation as acceptable. We collectors and gamers have encouraged the industry to get sloppy and lazy.

Lead and similar alloys do not translate well in smaller figures than c. 54mm. The smaller you go in metal the fatter the arms and legs look, the thicker the weapons must be.

I like the heft of metal and started collecting wargaming pieces exclusively in that medium. But my first exposure to unpainted wargaming miniatures was 25mm. The sculpts looked disappointingly rough and exaggerated. But the painted versions prettied them up enormously. I was encouraged and so I "bit", lowering my aesthetics to be practical.

In a way I regretted that decision and feel like I prostituted my aesthetic standards.

Airplanes are worse than tabletop miniatures this way. The smallest scale that still looks like a true model is 1/72. Smaller scales fatten struts and wings, etc., to keep the model from becoming too fragile, and (or) it is easy to make. Gaming pieces are not attractive models in the smaller scales.

YMMV, of course……………

To me they are game pieces, which means they must function as such. So even in 6mm I need to be able to tell a PzIV from a PzIII. Exaggerated detail helps with that. Ditto with the ability to put up with extensive handling and the occasional "drop."

I learned this the hard way with my 15mm ACW. I had the bayonets made to scale and they do not even survive from the caster to me half the time. Now I just snip them off but gamers don't like this aspect of the models.

But then, I am a gamer, not a scale modeler.

After all "54mm" is not a scale, but a measurement. This hobby can't even agree on scales and seems determined to be difficult.

Why would you go 15mm that matches nothing else in the world when you could have gone HO and had a world of scenic materials available to you?

Are you talking about guys who game with things that are even smaller than grains of rice?

TMP link

Dan

My pet peeve are hands that look like baseball gloves and are larger than the head of the figure.

But, remember these are warGAMING figures not models. Normally anything smaller than 54mm is not referred to as a "model". So, as GAME tokens(checkers, chess, etc) wargame figures are mere representations not models.

Dave
WargamingMiniatures.com

Just like with people, very few figures have both functionality and aesthetics. :)

Dan

Well, you are welcome to game 54mm and above and leave the rest of us to "prostitute our aesthetic standards." It's got to be mighty lonely up on that horse… can't remember the last 54mm or larger convention game I saw…

I've seen 6mm figures that I thought were very well sculpted for the scale, and 54mm figures that just looked silly.

A piece doesn't stop being a "model" just because someone judges that it is no longer sufficiently realistic. It is simply then a model that doesn't fit that person's needs. Model vs miniature/ gaming piece is really just a loosely defined functional question.

For me the scale frustration comes on the opposite side of the equation. I don't like a dozen jumbo figures representing a whole regiment. It just doesn't feel right.

Scale snobbery is ridiculous and should be the only thing beneath us.

Actually, All the King's Men put on very nice games for Hurricon and Recon in 54mm:
link

I saw a 54mm ACW game at a convention once. Well, it was more of a GM standing there with a game ready to be played. He got zero participants. The table and minis looked great, but not very playable. I didn't play, not because I'm a snob, but sci-fi is more my thing.

Below 15mm it is hard to tell what you are looking at. Even with 15mm and 25mm I need to wear reading glasses to see what I'm looking at. And figures of any scale which have disproportional dimensions look cartoonish.

You did prostitute your aesthetics. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Me? I give my aesthetics away. I am an aeshtetic , I suppose.

I am 56 wear glasses all the time but can still see the detail on 6mm stuff easily enough. I am actually dabbling in the world of 3mm Napoleonics and they are still recognisable as what they are meant to be.

I always like later Wargames Factory and Perry plastics, and Perry, foundry and Crusader metals for more anatomical accuracy in my figures.
But that is just my (current) preference.
I am tolerant with a bit of inaccuracy if the figure looks good!

I'm putting together a war game, not a diorama. As long as players can tell what's what and everything is painted, it works for me.

I have to wear reading glasses whenever I game and I can tell 6mm figs apart just fine. Due to the glasses I would rather game in 6mm and CM, that way a 6' wide table fits on a banquet table's 30" width easily – and my glasses work up to that distance too.

As an occasional sculptor, painter and purveyor of small scale figures, I'd like to put forward a mild rebuttal to the OP's mild rant.

We all have our own sense of what looks right and what looks like wrong. This is a very personal choice and in a hobby as diverse as ours there are lots of different opinions.

Some people will use that much abused verb, to drool, when they refer to a very small group of exquisitely painted miniatures attempting to portray a historical formation of many thousands of men while others will see them as just a jumped up skirmish line. Some will get excited over an armoured division and all its supports modelled in 1/300 at a 1:1 level, whole others will scornfully dismiss it as ‘braille gaming' or some other such perjorative.

While we all fight our own corner there is no right and wrong, there is just one's own set of value and judgements.

So, yes, when making wee men at 6mm we do have to compromise – ankles are thickened, features are exaggerated and weapons are bulkier. But we make wargames figures, not scale models. What matters is that they are practical to cast, that the figures have enough relief on them to paint up well and give clues to the painter as to where the paint is meant to go and that the weapons and figures themselves are robust and stand up to wargamers' handling. IF we were making scale models, aimed at serious modellers, we would be making something very different. The figures would look very thin, they would be very bland with next to no relief and any weapons would be unbelievably fine and fragile.

What we do is neither ‘sloppy' nor ‘lazy' – it is appropriate and thought out fully, and to label it as such seems to show a poor understanding of the issues involved or the demands of the customer base. As the OP is obviously not a fan or a user of small scale models he surely cannot be in the best position to hand down judgements in such sweeping terms.

I would also point out that any sculpt in any size is a caricature. Even those that would not cause the OP to blush at his own drop in aesthetic standards. Liberties will be taken in order for the final product to convey the correct appearance intended by the sculptor. There are too many glass houses around here for us to get involved in a stone throwing competition.

I am thoroughly chastised. Can't claim to be surprised either.

A particular "model" on TMP's front page set me off. I see no excuse for the exaggerated thickness where it isn't absolutely necessary. And it does seem lazy to me. Your point about the smaller scales is well taken, how weapons and even bodies must be thickened to permit handling. And you're right, I don't game in the smaller scales precisely because I can't stand the look of the miniatures. Personal aesthetics rule. But there is a laziness involved in the smaller scales too, not just expediency. And it was my appraisal of a poor miniature that focused a long discontent of how the hobby has apparently enabled such lazy sculpting, i.e. thickness where it isn't needed, or at least not to the degree indulged in…………

But can you turn the turrets of the tanks? ;-).