Evening!

I was wondering what you think, maybe someone even knows this...

You all know the close-up pictures of miniatures in the various GW publications (rule books, codices etc.).

The miniatures there are usually painted to a very high standard (at least from my point of view). But there are also pictures of whole armies, or dioramas etc.

Someone told me once that the miniatures are just painted in a way that they look very good when photographed from a certain angle. So if you'd turn the mini around, it looked terrible (maybe not even painted).

Do you think this is true? I mean after all these guys have to paint loads of miniatures, and if I consider how long it takes me to finish a stand of infantry for E:A, I think maybe they have a way to speed things up. I wonder how they manage not to get totally nuts when painting all day long.  

And do you think the miniatures on the close-ups are the same standard as the ones you see on the army-shots?

best regards,
M

Someone told me once that the miniatures are just painted in a way that they look very good when photographed from a certain angle. So if you'd turn the mini around, it looked terrible (maybe not even painted).

Do you think this is true?

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Agreed ...      

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

I have seen them cut corners though, maybe not in epic but they do do it.

I remember a picture of the then new lizardmen saurus from the studio army where the front ranks were amazing but by the time you reached the back ones the standard was nothing like as high. I'll try and find a picture

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I think the quality varies somewhat. For example some of the studio pieces painted up for the release of E40k were of an extrememly high quality. For E:A the budget was somewhat lower and (with all due respect to the painters, some of whom frequent these boards) the quality of the painted stuff not always as high. Even the E40k studio Space Marine army has widly varying quality: Some of the infantry stands used in the unit descriptions in the rulebook are absolutely fantastic while some of the tanks are just a basic drbrush and wash and could have been painted by your average gamer.

I can use myself as an example. Around the time the current Epic Chaos plastic spure was released I had just won a competition on the Specialist Games site. Andy then dropped me a mail asking if I happened to have any models from that spure painted up that they could use for the online store. I did, and after touching these basic gaming standard pieces up with a few extra highlights I sent them in. I got a bit of store credit as payment and SG got their display pieces at an absolutely minimum expense. I'd certainly not say that these models are anywhere near the stuff you'd see when Epic was well supported, but they still used it.

The same thing goes for some of the FW Epic and also some of the early 40k stuff. It looks good, but it it not much above a good gaming standard.

As with everything economy plays in.

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Sofa General

Nobody expects the Inquisition!!!
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are you actually saying that the E:A Chaos Infantry I see in the GW online store were painted by you?  

I use exactly the same technique: 1st rank = painted with 3 stages highlights, just one for all the ranks below.
This way I can paint 20 goblins more easily.

For the pictures, it's also true with NMM: this technique is better when you look the mini in the right angle.

The most funny is when you open your old gw books, for exemple "space marine battle" or the books of SM2 supplements. There you can see monochromatic blood angels, red with blue head, maybe an orange drybrush but nothing more, the bolter is not even painted !
The minis in rogue trader are hilarious too (the best is the antigrav vehicle made with the old shampoo bottle )
In general, exception made for heroes/general, normal infantry and tanks are not so impressive in nowadays books, but at least they're nice.

I'm more impressed with golden daemons winners or with modeller magazines.

Much of what you see in a GW painted mini is good photography.  My hats off to being able to maintain a high standard while painting oodles of minis, but photography makes or breaks that mini's representation in pictures.

There are plenty of minis painted by GW staff that can be found done to a higher standard in the painting community, but GW does good work for the volume & the photography is excellent.  I still look at what Phil Lewis did with GW &, for it's time, it was great stuff.  The minis were just a bit above average, but his photography skills were great.

Vehicles have always been a real weak spot for GW panters as they have treated them like standard 28mm infantry minis for years.  More recently GW has started to apply regular armor painting techniques, but their vehicles are still far from where they could be.  With the FW publication focused on modelling/painting armor using traditional techniques, I'd bet that the quality of vehicle painting will improve.

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WAAARGH!!
The Lost & the Dipped

From talking to people at WHW the front rank units are done by completely different people then the back ranks. Several people who I know from the store there have gone on to be eavy metal painters - but there job is doing ranks whilst the front rank is done to a higher standard by somebody else

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Heaps of the photos shown in White Dwarf are just rearangements of the same minis while a cammera is on a tripod and then photoshoping the images together.

Under identical lighting conditions and camera settings the photos will mesh together perfectly.

I have seen dozens of examples of this where you can see exactly the same miniature in several photos (its really obvious with some of the things like harlequins that can be given different poses and have complex colour schemes.

I have seen other photos where they appear to have photoshopped models to swap colours when doing the same technique to make the repeat models less obvious.

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Epic- A version of the game with even smaller models that is often dominated by titans which are vehicles the size of a large building and have the ability to pwn...everything. There is also infantry, whose only function in Epic is to provide valuable traction to Titans walking across snowy paths.

Several years ago Jervis and Andy sent one of the studio minis to me for a prize for a tourney I was running.  It was painted to the same standard all around.

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Neal

If I remember correctly, WmN did the Chaos infantry pictures in the online store. In fact, Tuffskull - who is still about here somewhere - did a lot (most?) of the minis in the Epic rule book, and other pieces in the store.

Darkone also has a number of the 'Eavy Metal miniatures for Epic (and other systems) from previous editions, and they are painted to the same standard from all angles. I would guess that the painters could not be sure that their minis would not be used in a battle report, and would need to be photographed from a variety of angles.

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Yeah. Paul did the Eldar infantry for Swordwind as well as most of the Imperial Guard tanks IIRC. I think Carl Woordow (from Drpship) did the Eldar vehicles and the Titans, but I can't reember if he did studio pieces for the E:A rulebook.

And regarding the photoshopping: I'd be very surprised if GW didn't photoshop their products to some extent, not that the miniatures probably aren't nicely painted to begin with, but a few color and contrast adjustments, and touching up some minor imperfections would almost certainly be standard. If they didn't they'd be pretty much the only ones in the entire advertising business

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Sofa General

Nobody expects the Inquisition!!!
http://theepiclounge.wordpress.com/

And regarding the photoshopping: I'd be very surprised if GW didn't photoshop their products to some extent, not that the miniatures probably aren't nicely painted to begin with, but a few color and contrast adjustments, and touching up some minor imperfections would almost certainly be standard. If they didn't they'd be pretty much the only ones in the entire advertising business

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Epic- A version of the game with even smaller models that is often dominated by titans which are vehicles the size of a large building and have the ability to pwn...everything. There is also infantry, whose only function in Epic is to provide valuable traction to Titans walking across snowy paths.