While the thought of not selling "My" mini to someone that has cheesed me off has a certain amount of appeal, I hadn't thought of it that way. >:D ;D I've LOVED the T-Bolt since I started playing in '86, and I LOVE the artwork by Dave White for the Thunderbolt IIC. Since it wasn't anywhere on the "To Be Done" schedule (according to Sawbones), I thought it was the perfect Opportunity for me to not only get a sculpt made of a variant of my Favorite 'mech, but to also provide something to the Entire BT Community that we might not otherwise see for a few more years. I didn't see it as "A Gamble" at the time, but I still came out the loser. :-\ Due to that "Burn", I'll NEVER Fan Fund another sculpt, Period. :P I'll NEVER contribute to any either. Yes I had my $800.00 in IWM Store Credit, and I used some of it to get 4 of the T IIC. That still doesn't soothe the burn I got from the finished product.
Well if you got 800 dollars worth of credit then that wasn't a total loss at all.
I put ~500 dollars into the Robotech kickstarter and there's no guarantee I'll get anything from it let alone credit.
While the miniature doesn't meet your expectations, it is still available for the whole community to purchase and use should they wish, and if the demand is strong enough there's always a possibility it will be resculpted.
You're honestly going to have to walk me through this again. This whole discussion is on the quality of the sculpts being put out IWM and their sculptors. Good sculpts can be made from bad art (like I emphasized earlier). Conversely bad sculpts can be made from good art.
That depends upon how you define quality. Is it only "this mini looks terrible" or does it also include "this mini is too large?". People have complaints about the Hector but the miniature itself looks great. But as I said, I would suggest that complaints regarding scale are the fault of catalyst more than IWM because they never provide any indication of scale for anyone to follow.
Either way it is the sculptor that is translating the illustration into a mini. You say I should assign blame where it's due and in appropriate measure. Addressing GRUD's grievance over the Thunderbolt IIC, what "due blame" can I assign David White (who provided a fantastic illustration) for the poor sculpt that resulted from it? Likewise, I assign blame to IWM because the sculptors as far as I understand, provide work for IWM and it's IWM that is putting their work out. If a bad sculpt is being released by IWM how can blame not also rest with them? Somewhere along the line there is an affirmation on the part of IWM to produce a bad sculpt (provided by their sculptors whomever they may be for any given bad sculpt), so to me it seems like the blame rests with the sculptor (who provided a bad sculpt) and IWM (who gave the go-ahead for the production of that bad sculpt). If I'm missing something please help me out.
Well from what other people are saying, IWM likely cannot afford to ask for too many alterations. So at some point they will come to a time where they have to say "this is what we have, go ahead with it". If they sculpted the Thunderbolt IIC, and the initial sculpt was poor and they needed it redone would people be okay with them asking for another 400 dollars of fan financing? Because if an artist(sculptor) spends say 20 hours doing a sculpt, is he going to be okay with spending another 20 hours of unpaid time to sculpt it again when he's got kids to feed or bills to pay? Probably not.
A lot of it depends on the process as well. How much oversight is given? Does the sculptor send IWM regular progress shots, so they can help steer them towards the finished product? Is the sculptor new and inexperienced or was it just not their best work? Does the drawing itself translate well to miniature forum? I would suggest for example that those shoulder cowls would not necessarily translate the best. But the miniature's biggest problem looks like the torso. Some details from my understanding don't work well in miniature forum.
Remember that when they pour a mould, they have to pull it apart at the end so when you have recesses in the torso and recesses in the arms as well that might cause problems. An alternative might be making the torso two pieces but if they shrink at different rates you'll get huge mould lines on the thing (a lot of starship miniatures have this problem).
And when I say it might cause problems, think about having two blocks in your hands with a recess in the middle. If the space in the middle is a cube and you fill it with whatever, it's easy to pull it apart after it dries. There's nothing catching.
Now thing about that cube with cylindrical cavities on top and bottom. What does the block look like now? It's half a cube, with a raised cylinder in the middle. Still easy to pull apart right? Now what if that cube has cavities on top and bottom but ALSO on the sides. Now if the cavities were only on the sides, you could simply turn it 90' so that becomes "top and bottom". But you can't because that detail is already there. So now you have a block, with half a cube, a raised cylinder on the top AND along the surface where the two blocks meet you have say half a raised cylinder on either side. When the two blocks are put together those two half cylinders become one cylinder. (so cylinders push in from top and bottom and from say two sides).
Now how do you pull it apart? You essentially have a cube where teeth are biting into the sides. Now from what I understand the moulds do have some give, but in general you can't do this sort of thing too much. The more you do, the less time that mould is going to last. It will have more wear and tear.
So when I look at that Thunderbolt and see recesses in the front torso via the overlapping top armour and details AND shoulder sockets to me it looks like it could be problematic. Mind you I'm not a miniature maker so I say this with what understanding I have of the process from talking to people who do make miniatures (and evaluating the idea of making my own).
But to put it short, how would I assign blame?
5-10% the original artwork (though not necessarily the artist) because from what I understand it wont necessarily translate well
50-60% the sculptor because despite those short comings in the art, the final product could still look a better (like the Society mechs for example).
30-40% IWM for possibly not giving enough direction or feedback to the artist (sculptor) during the sculpting process. Or for other potential factors (sculptors probably have strengths and weaknesses in their art, maybe this job was ill-suited for the sculptor (but maybe they're great with tanks?) or maybe the sculptor was inexperienced and this was one of their first jobs, etcetera).
