...in terms of realism?



Wasn't sure where to post this as it covers the sculpting of course but the painting partly too, particularly the fleshtones.

Einion

If that's not quite your cup of tea, these should fit the bill nicely!







From the McFarlane Toys Call Of Duty range.

They've produced some military figures for a few years now, the older series can still be found in a few places and the quality is close to these more recent ones. Scale varies; smaller ones are 3" in height I think and they can be found for $5.99... yeah, six bucks How's that for a recession buster?!

Einion

One thing I would ask is, are these production figures or are these photos of the masters for the figures? I worked on Dusty Trails figures for a very similar line. and I have also worked on masters for Sota toys and the masters of the figures and the set pieces that go with them are produced in 1/6 scale. You can pack a whole lot of detail in to a piece when it is that size. My job for both firms was to build the miniature sets the figures would go on. It really was easy to add a high level of detail when you are working that big.

Very cool, Einion. I collect their dragons and can vouch for McFarlane's quality and value. Best flesh tones on any production figures I've ever seen.

And this are model figures 1:6

Marc

From what the site says these are examples of the production pieces (not a 'hero' version). With really good photography they of course look their best.

As to size these ones are 6-inch collectibles, which is roughly the same as a 150mm figure.

Not that big, not to worry! These ones are roughly 1/11 or 1/12 scale, about a 150.

The smaller true military figures that I refer to in the second post are approximately half that.

Einion

These McFarlane figures are great. I have a couple of the hockey players that I have repainted and the level of realism in terms of sculpting is outstanding. They're vinyl figures (at least the hockey ones are) so I had to prime them before painting but what a joy to paint a face sculpted like that. The nice thing is they are cheap, relatively speaking so I would recommend picking some of these up if anyone was looking for something different to paint.

Definitely a standard to aspire to, the results do inspire hope I make the grade before I expire.....(couldn't help myself )

This reminds me of some other discussions, where the amount of weathering, for example, is actually nowhere as extreme in real life as it is on the scale kit....

looking at the figures, the results really do speak for the "Less is more" school

cheers

I would be willing to bet these are made the same way we made our pieces. Do the masters in 1/6 scale and then have them shrunk down in China. Our pieces were produced as 6 inch figures as well.

Einion - great thread and interesting topic raised, I think these figures are produced using a special camera and computer as you'll see in the following -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfgcutcahs creating the toys of Todd Mcfarlane. Not sure if it's my computer but the sound quality is poor , so not absolutely sure of the process.
Jeff - I'm sure there's a russian company that by using computers they are able to physically enlarge or reduce a figure, perhaps this is the same method you use.
Thanks for posting.
Cheers Ken

Adam Beane is one of the sculptors making them.

The sculpting at McFarlane toys is the very best out there, no doubt. The painting of these production pieces is quite good too. But it is a "style" that runs counter to the accepted "norm" among figure painters.

These toys show a painting style that concerns itself with surface effects, not "highlight and shadow" (which is the norm in military miniatures). Surface effects will achieve a certain fool the eye realism. As a closet model builder, this kind of effect is the height of achievement in making models. But with our miniatures we go for a more forced "artistic" effect.

If you painted your miniatures like these toys, they might achieve a certain kind of "realism" but, they would not be "acceptable" within the expectations of our figure shows. We expect a more "artistic" interpretation. Having been a modeler, I have mixed feelings about this.

For one, the "artistic" style has morphed into a sort of caricature or cliche of itself in that the style has been pushed to such extremes that great contrast has become the "ultimate litmus" in determining what is the "best" of the breed. While there certainly is a great deal of skill displayed by many of our painters, my personal feeling is that, taken to extremes, the style moves quite far away from any reasonable expectation of "fool the eye" realism as displayed by these well produced toys. To some extent it has become a sort of formalized fiction, which we have all agreed to accept simply by participating.

To top it off, many practitioners move even further away from realism when they choose paints which do not give the proper realistic finish: dead flat for clothing, egg shell for leather and skin, bright polished effects for metal and high gloss for those bits which require it. Too often figures display beautiful painting techniques, but the finished piece has a consistent semi-matte, or even dead flat finish which runs counter to any attempt at realistic depiction of surface texture.

Having been a modeler for years, I have always been VERY conscious of the effects of matte, egg shell, semi-gloss and gloss effects on my figures. I have also been very aware of the tendency to over-paint as a sort of self imposed "standard" specially designed to impress other modelers. I believe that highlight and shadow do have their place in the depiction of miniatures. It does "push" the eye and create a greater effect of depth. But when I look at a figure and wonder what color is intended for a particular part, that tells me the effect has been carried beyond what is reasonable or in any way "realistic".

For me, ideally, the ultimate would be something between the fabulous surface effects shown by these great toys, and the over-wrought highlight and shadow displayed by so many figures. But that is probably just me, as I find that the chalk and soot brigade have won the hearts and minds of most of modeldom. My ideals of restraint and special attention to surface effects and the ascendancy of true color over light and shade has been largely superseded by the present paradigm.

That means that my models often get overlooked and relegated to the perpetual silver medal because I have not followed in the footpath of the current paradigm. Sometimes I feel bad about that. But I personally prefer the restrained effect to violent over-painting....

What do others think?

You certainly know how to set the cat among the pigeons Mike.

I think this style of painting became vogue when acrylics became more available. I for one prefer the more subtle finish. I think it's a case of the figure is not always the finished piece the photo is.

Carl

Very interesting comments, Mike. This is something that I discuss with modeling friends quite frequently and is certainly a hot topic of debate amongst aircraft modelers (I am primarily an aircraft modeler and a closet figure painter ). There are those aircraft modelers who strive to paint as closely as possible to the color and texture of the 1:1 subject. For example, if the real subject aircraft has a uniform color (new and unfaded) they will paint their model in a uniform color that replicates the original color as closely as possible. I believe however, that in doing so, they discount the effect of scale distance. A model painted in this fashion often looks visually uninteresting, "flat" and toy-like. For this reason, I tend to subscribe to the "over-painting" school of thought (again, if I've interpreted your idea of this correctly).

I feel that a degree of excessive contrast is needed to fool the viewers eye into seeing detail and texture that really isn't there. The pursuit of this is something that I'm currently playing with now in aircraft finishing. I was always impressed by a painting that Shep Paine referenced in his book, "Building and Painting Scale Figures" (see below):

He shows how the painter fools the viewer into seeing detail on the helmet that really isn't there by "cleverly positioning highlights and shadows". When you look closely at the helmet in the painting, it's just a bunch of squiggles!

To illustrate a similar idea in aircraft modeling, something I'm more familiar with (bear with me, as I think it applies to figures also), have a look at the following:

The console detail above, the work of Spanish modeler, Juan Villabla (borrowed from his article on the Accurate Miniatures website: http://www.accurate-miniatures.com/builds/avenger/avenger.shtml ) is "over-painted" in what some call the "Spanish" method. Here's the cool part - while it can look overdone in a close-up photo, it looks very convincing when looking at it with the naked eye, especially in less than ideal lighting conditions.


The above photo is my own effort at this style of painting. I have over-emphasized the contrasts around the instrument frames as seen in the photo, but again, when viewed with the naked eye, it looks very good (in my humble opinion).

Hopefully the above makes some sense and I have not missed the point. I have never considered before how this aspect of my studies (fiddling about ) on aircraft finishing also applies to figures. Putting it in this context is making me think of the different figure finishing styles in a new way.

I wasn't suggesting that there should be any move toward zero shading apart from the fact that we generally paint a lot smaller to begin with the best of the large-scale painters whose work I've seen don't paint without any shading. IMO the best of them do just enough, the weaker stuff being very evident for either a lack of or stylised or 'mannered' lighting (too soft usually)

I feel much the same. Any painting method that could be considered some form of special effect should be reserved for exactly that - special effects. Not used on e v e r y t h i n g one paints (especially where it's not appropriate anyway!), not used by itself, or even excessively on a single figure.

Far too often, as we've seen in a couple of cases, it tries to hide or divert attention away from limitations in other areas - like on Russian studio stuff, where the patterning can be superb (ignoring whether it's anachronistic or excessive) but practically always it is combined with so-so or even downright weak fleshtones, faces!!

As you know I feel the same way about that too.

On a round figure even at a small scale even slight gloss differences sell the representation of different materials in a way that painted illusions of reflections almost always fail to do as well; as we've talked about before, viewing in the round even the very best painted lighting effects fall down for many viewers, where appropriate gloss does exactly what it's supposed to do, enhance the overall effect.

Agree 100%.

Yep, that's often the case. What I can't get my head around sometimes is when views of the model in the flesh don't see that there's something lacking. Fundamentally I think taste drives judgements far more than it should (far more than it's supposed to in written judging guidelines for example); we've seen this continuously for as far back as I can remember.

I totally agree. You just can't paint a 1/32 scale model and a 1/72 scale version of the same thing in exactly the same colour and have them look equally good. Just as gloss level needs to be adjusted for smaller scale usually.

Would it be fair to say that those who use real-world paint chips as the standard for scale paint would also tend to be those who don't want as much weathering, don't use as much/any colour modulation, have their aircraft pristine or nearly so?

There's a difference though between painting sculpted detail in a given way and painting onto a featureless flat surface where the paint is solely responsible to show 3D modelling.

Lots of modellers use painted-in detail/modelling in some way, but it's a separate issue to over-painting (my opinion) basic folds and creases with excessive, and often simultaneously misplaced, highlights and shadows.

Einion

Brent,

I quite agree with you that the "Spanish method" typified by Juan Villalba, and others is overdone in most instances. The bit about it being more effective in less than ideal lighting is true. But, if we hew to the idea that the photos are the actual "finished" piece, then this overpainting can look quite ridiculous. Some of the Spanish models look downright bizarre in real life or in photos. It is almost as if they have acquired some kind of mottled skin discoloration.

But being a model builder also, I have been doing a sort of shading since the late '70s. This was typified by the now unfashionable "Verlinden method": a style which was also advocated by Shep Paine. This involved applying dark washes for shadowing and drybrushing for highlighting. This method is quiet effective for pulling out details and avoids both the rather mechanical look and the extreme exaggerations of contrast typified by the "Spanish method".

But, since we are talking about figures, I have included a couple of photos to illustrate my own "understated" painting technique which relies on precise sheens/textures and a careful consideration of the final effect of color.





Notice that the very dark colors of Billy Bishop's leather coat and Custer's dark blue tunic have deliberately avoided the use of extreme contrast in the highlights. This is done so that these colors read "true" from any viewing distance. There can be no question which color (or material) was intended on any parts of these models because the colors and sheens were carefully chosen to depict them in a "realistic" manner.

The soft sheen of Bishop's coat says leather - and is distinctive from the less carefully tanned leather of his fug-boots. The bright shine of Custer's buttons says brass and is in contrast to the dark dullness of the "gold" lace on his rank tabs. If I had photographed these figures more carefully, you would also see the gloss "wetness" of the eyes and the slight bit of metallic paint mixed into the hair tones to give that little bit of "metallic sheen" that is reflected from hair by the light passing through the translucent hair shafts.

Anyway, my point is that this is more in keeping with the type of surface realism depicted by the McFarlane toys, with the added element of highlight and shadow. But I never let highlighting and shading conflict with what I feel is more important in a scale representation of "realism": depiction of "true" color and attention to surface texture and effects.

I know it is not "fashionable" or going to win me many gold medals these days, but I prefer it to the current fashion of excessive contrast. The current style shows lots of skill but, to my mind, compromises on the concept of miniaturized depiction of the real. In the end, that is what modeling actually is - or should aspire to, in my opinion.

Cheers!!

Mike

Mike, Your Custer has always been a personal favorite and the painting compliments the sculpting perfectly. ~G

I am going to print the thread out, wait until I have quite time, and read it with a nice hot cuppa.

There are a lot of good points here, and comparing styles, the current style of GW minis (particularly the tanks) have the style of an 'exaggerated Verlinden' style of 20 -30 years ago (heavy chipping, drybrush highlights), where as the current trend is to subtler finishes with filters, washes etc.....

Different styles for different folks, is all.

Cheers

I got to see Mike's Custer at the SCAHMS show last year and pictures do not do it justice. That figure is what we should aspire too.

Boneheads Custer etc.

I am with you on that, Gary. Of the thousands who have painted Autie few have done the research to know (and reflect in their painting effort) that he was quite a freckled laddie. I am awed by Mike's job on this bust.--