Does anyone else's miniatures look very...questionable?

[Manveru123]

It was probably rushed. They had delays and stuff.

[Haplok]

That is sad. 

 

And warrants a refund or replacement IMO.

[Multihog]

Damn, those mouths and eyes are awful.

[Yosharian]

So I guess no official response, then?  This is really shameful, Obsi.

[Hulk'O'Saurus]

Hold on a while... at least until I stop laughing... there... now you can shame Obs as much as you want :D. 

[Merany]

Received mine today.

They do look cheap, that is for sure and I'm disappointed, especially given the price.

That being said, it's not as bad as the pictures, I thought, so I'm not crossing the "this is not acceptable" line either.

 

Still, I expected better.

[Guest Blutwurstritter]

This looks suspiciously alike to the handiwork of my 6 year old nephew. I hope there is no child labor involved in this !

[Salmanasar]

Mine arrived today, I choose unpainted.

 

I think that provided pics dont give them any justice, because they seem bigger than they really are. They're tiny, so you cant do better face than few black stripes even if you try. Not to mention that anyone who ever painted mini should know, that for 40$ you'll only get some ****ty rushed job, not an pice of art.

 

Even then, I think that people doesnt understand, that those minis have one specific quirk - they have realistic proportions. Usually you get something stylised, with exaggerated limbs and heads, so face detail are clearer. PoE minis are more like realistic military figurines from companies like hat, italieri, revell or bandai, so they doesnt look as good, because details are blending. It's totally fine by me, but I understand that people who usually played with their warhammer or d&d minis feels dissapointed.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Salmanasar

[daven]

Pics of the unpainted?

 

And does someone want to send their painted ones to Ashens?

Edited September 20, 2018 by daven

[Yosharian]

Mine arrived today, I choose unpainted.

 

I think that provided pics dont give them any justice, because they seem bigger than they really are. They're tiny, so you cant do better face than few black stripes even if you try. Not to mention that anyone who ever painted mini should know, that for 40$ you'll only get some ****ty rushed job, not an pice of art.

 

Even then, I think that people doesnt understand, that those minis have one specific quirk - they have realistic proportions. Usually you get something stylised, with exaggerated limbs and heads, so face detail are clearer. PoE minis are more like realistic military figurines from companies like hat, italieri, revell or bandai, so they doesnt look as good, because details are blending. It's totally fine by me, but I understand that people who usually played with their warhammer or d&d minis feels dissapointed.

 

The miniatures are awful and any attempt to defend them is laughable at best.  Some people just have money to burn I guess.

[Salmanasar]

Pics of the unpainted?

 

And does someone want to send their painted ones to Ashens?

 

unfortunately my phone cannot connect to PC for some reason, but they look similar to the painted ones, only striped of paint

 

but, as I said, problem isnt in paintjob/details per se, but in realistic proportions of the minis (and lack of relative scale in posted pictures, so they seem at least two times bigger than they really are). For comparison, while the heads of my wh40k space marine and cadian shocktrooper figures have about 7 mm height, the head of Aloth have only 4 mm. wh40k figures are also overall much bulkier, but despite that, they keep the same total height of 28mm.

Ofc molds for the PoE minis could be better, because robes and armor arent as detailed as they could even considering proportions, but faces are just too small to give them more detailed look.

 

 

 

Mine arrived today, I choose unpainted.

 

I think that provided pics dont give them any justice, because they seem bigger than they really are. They're tiny, so you cant do better face than few black stripes even if you try. Not to mention that anyone who ever painted mini should know, that for 40$ you'll only get some ****ty rushed job, not an pice of art.

 

Even then, I think that people doesnt understand, that those minis have one specific quirk - they have realistic proportions. Usually you get something stylised, with exaggerated limbs and heads, so face detail are clearer. PoE minis are more like realistic military figurines from companies like hat, italieri, revell or bandai, so they doesnt look as good, because details are blending. It's totally fine by me, but I understand that people who usually played with their warhammer or d&d minis feels dissapointed.

 

The miniatures are awful and any attempt to defend them is laughable at best.  Some people just have money to burn I guess.

 

have you ever seen 1:72 scale miniatures from above-mentioned companies, or at least took those "better" warhammer/d&d figures and compared their proportions with PoE minis before posting?

[Yosharian]

 

Pics of the unpainted?

 

And does someone want to send their painted ones to Ashens?

 

unfortunately my phone cannot connect to PC for some reason, but they look similar to the painted ones, only striped of paint

 

but, as I said, problem isnt in paintjob/details per se, but in realistic proportions of the minis (and lack of relative scale in posted pictures, so they seem at least two times bigger than they really are). For comparison, while the heads of my wh40k space marine and cadian shocktrooper figures have about 7 mm height, the head of Aloth have only 4 mm. wh40k figures are also overall much bulkier, but despite that, they keep the same total height of 28mm.

Ofc molds for the PoE minis could be better, because robes and armor arent as detailed as they could even considering proportions, but faces are just too small to give them more detailed look.

 

 

 

Mine arrived today, I choose unpainted.

 

I think that provided pics dont give them any justice, because they seem bigger than they really are. They're tiny, so you cant do better face than few black stripes even if you try. Not to mention that anyone who ever painted mini should know, that for 40$ you'll only get some ****ty rushed job, not an pice of art.

 

Even then, I think that people doesnt understand, that those minis have one specific quirk - they have realistic proportions. Usually you get something stylised, with exaggerated limbs and heads, so face detail are clearer. PoE minis are more like realistic military figurines from companies like hat, italieri, revell or bandai, so they doesnt look as good, because details are blending. It's totally fine by me, but I understand that people who usually played with their warhammer or d&d minis feels dissapointed.

 

The miniatures are awful and any attempt to defend them is laughable at best.  Some people just have money to burn I guess.

 

have you ever seen 1:72 scale miniatures from above-mentioned companies, or at least took those "better" warhammer/d&d figures and compared their proportions with PoE minis before posting?

 

 

 

 

The miniatures are awful and any attempt to defend them is laughable at best.

[XEternalXDreamsX]

I Lol'd when reading "questionable".. ..but yes, very much so.

Edited September 21, 2018 by XEternalXDreamsX

[Salmanasar]

 

 

Pics of the unpainted?

 

And does someone want to send their painted ones to Ashens?

 

unfortunately my phone cannot connect to PC for some reason, but they look similar to the painted ones, only striped of paint

 

but, as I said, problem isnt in paintjob/details per se, but in realistic proportions of the minis (and lack of relative scale in posted pictures, so they seem at least two times bigger than they really are). For comparison, while the heads of my wh40k space marine and cadian shocktrooper figures have about 7 mm height, the head of Aloth have only 4 mm. wh40k figures are also overall much bulkier, but despite that, they keep the same total height of 28mm.

Ofc molds for the PoE minis could be better, because robes and armor arent as detailed as they could even considering proportions, but faces are just too small to give them more detailed look.

 

 

 

Mine arrived today, I choose unpainted.

 

I think that provided pics dont give them any justice, because they seem bigger than they really are. They're tiny, so you cant do better face than few black stripes even if you try. Not to mention that anyone who ever painted mini should know, that for 40$ you'll only get some ****ty rushed job, not an pice of art.

 

Even then, I think that people doesnt understand, that those minis have one specific quirk - they have realistic proportions. Usually you get something stylised, with exaggerated limbs and heads, so face detail are clearer. PoE minis are more like realistic military figurines from companies like hat, italieri, revell or bandai, so they doesnt look as good, because details are blending. It's totally fine by me, but I understand that people who usually played with their warhammer or d&d minis feels dissapointed.

 

The miniatures are awful and any attempt to defend them is laughable at best.  Some people just have money to burn I guess.

 

have you ever seen 1:72 scale miniatures from above-mentioned companies, or at least took those "better" warhammer/d&d figures and compared their proportions with PoE minis before posting?

 

 

 

 

The miniatures are awful and any attempt to defend them is laughable at best.

 

Then prove me wrong and design better head while keeping realistic proportions (they used in-game models as base, mind you), oh, and dont forget to paint them "properly" You're just childish now. Go and find some arguments, then we can speak again.

 

For those who are interested, that's how the aloth figure looks like, when photo is scaled down to the actual size of the figure:

 

yeeeah, that face looks far less ofensive now, isnt it?

 

could they do better? Yes, especially if they didnt re-use game model and made something "exaggerated" from scratch, also aloth pose could be more natural (curently  he looks like neo dodging bullets).

Is this the worst figure ever? Not really, just like your average plastic military figure. Tbh, I didnt expect games workshop quality.

Edited September 21, 2018 by Salmanasar

[Karkarov]

So I am just going to interject again for a moment because I see too many posts from people who don't seem to know anything about miniatures, or pre painted miniatures.

Fact 1:  There is no such thing as a "well painted" pre painted miniature.  If you want someone else to paint your mini's for you, and you want it to be good, you need to buy them unpainted, find someone who does it for money, know they will likely charge you as much as the mini's cost to do it, and have them do it for you.  I myself used to do it a long time ago for 5-10 dollars a mini depending on detail wanted/size of the miniature.  My price was considered cheap.

Fact 2: Good miniatures that are made of quality pewter, and contain strong well defined detail, are expensive.  You also need good quality miniatures to ever achieve a good paint job, so in the defense of the terrible painting... these aren't good quality minis so they aren't going to look great painted no matter what.  They also appear to be made of fairly low quality pewter.  They did cost 25 dollars, I know cause I bought them.  I expected them to be bad but figured it wasn't that expensive and wanted to risk it.  At 25 it definitely could have been better though.

So end game?

The miniature paint job is fine considering, anyone who knows jack about miniatures will tell you what you got is what you would have expected if you did research.  If you want to complain, do so about the quality of the miniatures themselves because they are poor quality.  Why did this happen?  Mostly I imagine it is because the companies that can make a fine quality detailed mini like Reaper or Games Workshop simply don't want to work with companies like Obsidian, or to do so they want too much money/to produce in a volume Obsidian can't bring to the table.

In my opinion the only real mistake Obsidian made was bringing this to the table at all before they confirmed who would be making the minis and the quality they would represent.  It is one thing to make a large 10 inch Od Nua statue.  Lots of people can make large things in decent detail.  Doing it on something 1 inch tall or less?  Lot harder.  Next time Obsidian just don't offer this, assuming there is a next time.

[KDubya]

Back in the day, early 80's and junior high, I had a paper route and mowed lawns for cash. With that disposable income I bought games and figurines from this little war game shop War and Pieces in West Hartford. It was great.

 

Had the whole Grenadier line of DnD figures, lots of fancy Ral Partha ones. Would spend days painting, reading articles in Dragon magazine as to how to paint and all that. 

 

No way you're getting any sort of quality pre-painted figure for $25.

 

That said I'm with Karkarov, Obsidian just should not have offered the figurines as the quality was going to be poor for what they could afford. Better to have nothing than to have crappy workmanship.

 

 

EDIT - grammar 

Edited September 22, 2018 by KDubya

[bjon045]

They look fine for the size they are. There are a lot of people inexperienced with pre-painted mini's (of this size) complaining in this thread. Come back when you have been collecting them for 5+ years. These are probably somewhere between average and good for this size. You would be spending 35-50 to get good quality set at that size.

[Yosharian]

I clearly need to be educated, as I'm not as experienced as you guys are with these types of miniatures.  I apologise for making a fool of myself.

 

I decided to go searching on the internet for similarly-priced and -sized miniatures to the ones that Obsidian produced for the 240 Euro Deadfire collector's edition package.

 

I found some interesting results:

 

 

Did I learn well, or do I need to educate myself further?  I only spent most of my childhood painting miniatures for myself, you see, so I'm not an expert!

 

Original concept art:

Edited September 23, 2018 by Yosharian

[JerekKruger]

If you think that Obsidian could have produced anything similar to the minis you found pictures of for the price then yes, you need to think more about it.

 

The minis you posted are all made by companies that (primarily at least) make minis. That means they own their own all the machines to cast them and employ a bunch of sculpters (well, these days often it's done using some sort of CAD, but let's call them sculpters anyway) to make the prototypes. Obsidian doesn't.

 

No matter, Obsidian could just subcontract one of these companies right? Well possibly, but whilst the sculpters are working on the prototypes for Obsidian's limited run collectables they aren't working on something that company is going to be able to sell commercially, so they'll need to charge Obsidian a lot to make it worth their while.

 

Now remember the purpose of Obsidian offering these minis to backers isn't to provide backers with sweet collectables: it's to raise more funds for developing Deadfire. So even if Obsidian could produce better minis for the $25 price tag they had attached to them (and I'm not sure they could given what I explained above), much of that $25 is not going to go to doing so.

 

So the fact that $25 can buy you ~6 decently painted good quality commercial minis really doesn't say much about what to expect from Obsidian's $25 collectable minis.

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

Now remember the purpose of Obsidian offering these minis to backers isn't to provide backers with sweet collectables: it's to raise more funds for developing Deadfire.

 

 

And this in itself can't be emphasized enough: I read time and time again how people view their games plus included items at their pledge levels as something they've clear-cut ordered, or bought, when in fact, it is just backing money for a product not yet in existence. Thus, it's a vote of confidence and a shot in the dark rolled into one. As a backer, this means that you'll get what you get when that time comes. Everything is just ideas, concepts, sketches, estimates and lofty goals until your backed game and those pledge level items come into existence. 

In short: As backers we show our support via money, and then hope that we will get some game in the end that is reasonably within our expectations (Otherwise, it would be a scam, no? Well, there's no shortage of those over at KS, at least). This "reasonably similar" applies to any trinkets and backer items and add-ons that we pledge money towards as well.

[OldViking]

Really? Anyone who calls that crap decent, i would never hire.

Then again, i would never give my money to a company to make a game. I don't have to find excuses for ****ty work.

[Yosharian]

If you think that Obsidian could have produced anything similar to the minis you found pictures of for the price then yes, you need to think more about it.

 

The minis you posted are all made by companies that (primarily at least) make minis. That means they own their own all the machines to cast them and employ a bunch of sculpters (well, these days often it's done using some sort of CAD, but let's call them sculpters anyway) to make the prototypes. Obsidian doesn't.

 

No matter, Obsidian could just subcontract one of these companies right? Well possibly, but whilst the sculpters are working on the prototypes for Obsidian's limited run collectables they aren't working on something that company is going to be able to sell commercially, so they'll need to charge Obsidian a lot to make it worth their while.

 

Now remember the purpose of Obsidian offering these minis to backers isn't to provide backers with sweet collectables: it's to raise more funds for developing Deadfire. So even if Obsidian could produce better minis for the $25 price tag they had attached to them (and I'm not sure they could given what I explained above), much of that $25 is not going to go to doing so.

 

So the fact that $25 can buy you ~6 decently painted good quality commercial minis really doesn't say much about what to expect from Obsidian's $25 collectable minis.

 

[JerekKruger]

Really? Anyone who calls that crap decent, i would never hire.

Oh they are crap. I don't think anyone here is suggesting otherwise. Some of us are merely pointing out that expecting them to be otherwise was naive.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Yeah, I painted D&D miniatures for years. These look like my first attempt at a little kobold I made, which turned out to be Miss Piggy. Who knew?

I did lots of small miniatures, since I loved to collect minis of gnomes, dwarves, goblins and kobolds.

And as others have said, it takes time and patience and some skill, but with some good equipment, you can do it, but it takes hours, rather than minutes, and those look like somebody went for the minute burger rather than the hour roast, as it were.

Edited September 23, 2018 by IndiraLightfoot

[Karkarov]

Did I learn well, or do I need to educate myself further?  I only spent most of my childhood painting miniatures for myself, you see, so I'm not an expert!

You are leaving out a few things. 

 

Those mini's you posted are plastic, not pewter.  AKA, they cost significantly less to make.  Also, those are promo pics, not pics of the models in hand so we don't really know for sure what they will actually look like for real.  I find it very hard to believe they are being painted and modeled to the quality the pics suggest, in that volume, for that price.  Your post implies they are "converted", as in models made of parts from multiple other models. 

 

Unless he got them all free from some box he found in a basement he is probably making next to no money, and if he did get them free he is basically charging purely for the paint job.