Friday, February 01, 2008
Heresy Miniatures Review
Okay, my latest pile of swag arrived in the mail yesterday, some of the sci-fi goodness from Heresy Miniatures. Andy Foster and his friends do some great sculpts. Andy's sculpting style captures great caricatures of heroes from tv or movies. Easily identifiable as to who the mini resembles.
A long time back, I snagged one of his initial Thrud the Barbarian figures. One of these days, I'm going to actually have to PAINT all the Thrud minis I've accumulated. Hopefully, I'll be able to do the sculpts justice, as Andy's is beautiful and captures all of the "thrud-ness" that is Thrud.
Although I didn't order any of his fantasy-themed miniature in this particular pile o' swag, I really like the approach Andy has taken to some of the fantasy miniatures. Many of the characters are sculpted with the heads or arms separate, allowing for multiple options when assembling the figure. This makes these ideal for building role-playing characters. I wish more manufacturers would take a hint from this concept.
Overall quality control is superb. ALL of my figures were excellent castings, with very little cleanup on each. The mold lines were minimal and there were NO instances of mold mis-aligning. Maybe I just got lucky with this batch, but I'd prefer to think that the gang at Heresy was just doing a great job.
Dr. Hugh McCrimmon
Okay, I'm not a big Dr. Who fan, but this representation of David Tennat was just too good to pass up.
Captain Nathan (Macolm), Haylee and Rev. Shepard (Book)-
I really hope Andy can get around to doing the rest of the Serenity crew, as these first three sculpts are great.
Ellie Mental and the Major-
Great likenesses of Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich from The Fifth Element. I'm going to have to put that movie in the DVD player while I'm painting these minis.
Vincent B. Ruddock, wanted criminal. Armed and dangerous with his... teacup.
Security team and pilots-
The separate pistols are great, allowing you to put whichever style of gun in the character's hand that you prefer. This would even be helpful if you decided to use other manufacturer's weapons. That might be handy (pun intended) if you were going to use the minis in a GW Necromunda gang or such. Many of the minis in the security detail and such seem like there would only need to be a small amount of modeling needed to have some characters reminiscent of the original Battlestar Galactica colonial warriors and pilots. It will certainly be on my mind whenever I get to the point of painting these figures. It also makes me consider ordering another batch of these guys to model with different weapons to make a greater variety of sci-fi characters... I think that idea might have to wait until the the bank account is a little healthier.
I also snagged a whole mess of 20mm plastic round slottabases, and some new 30mm round bases. The 20mm bases I intend on using for several hobbit-sized figures, as I think they'll be the most appropriate, without using a full 25mm base. I'm still not quite sure what I'll use the 30mm bases for, but I'm certain that something will eventually come up for that use. As the Heresy site allows you to order the individual figures with your choice of base for each figure, I selected the 20mm bases for each of mine. Surprisingly, many of the figures I ordered would probably look pretty good on either a 20mm round OR a 25mm standard round base. For the most part though, I'm likely to use standard-sized GW 25mm bases for these figures I ordered this time around.
Overall, theses are beautiful minis that I hope I get the opportunity to sit and paint sometime soon...
A long time back, I snagged one of his initial Thrud the Barbarian figures. One of these days, I'm going to actually have to PAINT all the Thrud minis I've accumulated. Hopefully, I'll be able to do the sculpts justice, as Andy's is beautiful and captures all of the "thrud-ness" that is Thrud.
Although I didn't order any of his fantasy-themed miniature in this particular pile o' swag, I really like the approach Andy has taken to some of the fantasy miniatures. Many of the characters are sculpted with the heads or arms separate, allowing for multiple options when assembling the figure. This makes these ideal for building role-playing characters. I wish more manufacturers would take a hint from this concept.
Overall quality control is superb. ALL of my figures were excellent castings, with very little cleanup on each. The mold lines were minimal and there were NO instances of mold mis-aligning. Maybe I just got lucky with this batch, but I'd prefer to think that the gang at Heresy was just doing a great job.
Dr. Hugh McCrimmon
Okay, I'm not a big Dr. Who fan, but this representation of David Tennat was just too good to pass up.
Captain Nathan (Macolm), Haylee and Rev. Shepard (Book)-
I really hope Andy can get around to doing the rest of the Serenity crew, as these first three sculpts are great.
Ellie Mental and the Major-
Great likenesses of Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich from The Fifth Element. I'm going to have to put that movie in the DVD player while I'm painting these minis.
Vincent B. Ruddock, wanted criminal. Armed and dangerous with his... teacup.
Security team and pilots-
The separate pistols are great, allowing you to put whichever style of gun in the character's hand that you prefer. This would even be helpful if you decided to use other manufacturer's weapons. That might be handy (pun intended) if you were going to use the minis in a GW Necromunda gang or such. Many of the minis in the security detail and such seem like there would only need to be a small amount of modeling needed to have some characters reminiscent of the original Battlestar Galactica colonial warriors and pilots. It will certainly be on my mind whenever I get to the point of painting these figures. It also makes me consider ordering another batch of these guys to model with different weapons to make a greater variety of sci-fi characters... I think that idea might have to wait until the the bank account is a little healthier.
I also snagged a whole mess of 20mm plastic round slottabases, and some new 30mm round bases. The 20mm bases I intend on using for several hobbit-sized figures, as I think they'll be the most appropriate, without using a full 25mm base. I'm still not quite sure what I'll use the 30mm bases for, but I'm certain that something will eventually come up for that use. As the Heresy site allows you to order the individual figures with your choice of base for each figure, I selected the 20mm bases for each of mine. Surprisingly, many of the figures I ordered would probably look pretty good on either a 20mm round OR a 25mm standard round base. For the most part though, I'm likely to use standard-sized GW 25mm bases for these figures I ordered this time around.
Overall, theses are beautiful minis that I hope I get the opportunity to sit and paint sometime soon...
Labels: product reviews
