So, for 25 years minis sort of passed me by, but finally the work of Tom Meier was brought to my attention. Apparently he's been around for a long time, and in an old-skool resurgence that seems to parallel that in the RPG scene he's been active in the past several years as he hadn't been for a while.
The images below are all very recent. The last are "greens" of Jaime and Cersei Lannister he did for an upcoming series of Song of Fire and Ice minis. In all frankness, they are the shiznit.
What other sculptors / companies are out there that produced or are producing this kind of quality work (at 25 to 30mm, not 54mm)? Links and images much appreciated!
(https://www.thunderboltmountain.com/images/painted_figs/kesby/kesby_8011.JPG)
(https://www.thunderboltmountain.com/images/elves/huntsman.JPG)
(https://www.thunderboltmountain.com/images/goblins/Elf-GobHumanComparison.jpg)
(http://darkswordminiatures.com/gallery/images/miniatures/grrm_Jaime_Cersi_g1.jpg)
I'm afraid Tom's one of a kind. Reaper has the occasional figure that wouldn't run off the table top weeping in shame when put next to his stuff. Julie Guthrie in particular can come close some days. Darksword has a lot of nice stuff, but much of it was done by him. The Perry twins have some historical lines that ditch the Warhammer esthetic and approach photorealism as does their metal stuff from GW's Lord of the Rings line. But there's something in Tom's sculpting that goes beyond photorealism and enters the realm of the renaissance old masters.
http://www.perry-miniatures.com/index2.html
http://www.reapermini.com/
http://www.darkswordminiatures.com/index.html
QuoteBut there's something in Tom's sculpting that goes beyond photorealism and enters the realm of the old masters.
Miniature Old Masters? Who are those?
My minis taste is pretty unrefined and I lack sophistication in that regard.
So far I only know that I like old, real 25mm Minis better than nigh-30mm contemporaries.
No, I mean Davinci, Michellangelo, Raphiel, not the turtles either.
From what I've read of his blogs it's a deliberate technical decision. For instance on his naitivity figures he picked a specific painting to duplicate the style of.
Thirty millimeter is really a good thing. As Warhammer's crept up to it, the heads and hands of their human figures stayed about the same size. This massively improved the proportioning of their figures. There's a lot of former GW sculptors out there that also improved with a little extra room to work.
It also let Tom Meir sculpt an even more insane level of detail.
Quote from: David JohansenNo, I mean Davinci, Michellangelo, Raphiel, not the turtles either.
That´s a good one.
It's the faces--those figures are actual people.
Strangely enough, he's great at faces and at surface detail, but the poses are sometimes weak (this from a minis ignoramus but someone who's looked at sculpture a lot). The examples above are very good all around, though.
Some of the minis painting services linked by the darksword site charge $100+ per mini, btw. Up to $400, in fact. To think how much I saved by NOT having a minis fetish all these years...
I think his poses are generally pretty realistic and thus far more static than what one is used to in this day of dynamic figures.
Besides he sculpted an anime school girl with a multibarreled hamster firing gun so he wins. Also, there's his napoleonic caricature figures that he sculpted to play with with his son that are also amazing and fun.