Willy Miniatures : new KS !!

[traveller]

I'm curious who makes the design decisions for Willy - does he tell his dude "make the model look like this" (in which case shame on you Willy) or does the designer come up with something which Willy doesn't realize is a straight up copy of a GW fig (in which case shame on you Willy)..

Yep, I would be interested in some background about this, too.
Nice mini as a stand-alone-sculpt, but what is the reason to be so -ehm -"close" to the original?
IMO that was not necessary.

Traveller

[burgun824]

I don't know. I guess this is a little more morally ambiguous for me. I had a bigger issue with Willy's Sara fig and Thrud head. But that was because the orginal figs for those two models were still sold by other companies. Lewdgrip hasn't been sold for quite some time except on secondary markets. I fully appreciate the argument for protecting people's intellectual property but to me it's not a fine line. It's a big, fat, wide, hazy one. I mean what if the fig was in a completely different pose? Would it be okay then?

I really wish I knew more about international copyright law for when these topics pop up.

[Corvidius]

I think it's an awesome mini. It is obviously meant to be Lewdgrip but that's kinda what some folks were screaming for (me included) as there isn't really any alternative version out there. I wouldn't change it completely because I think it looks fantastic, I think I'd probably add some sort of half helm, mohawk or even a full helmet that matched the rest of the team. The Tentacle would be fine as is if not for the combination with the face so while the face is awesome, fitting it into the rest of the team would be even better.

[Norse]

A half helm and maybe a closed mouth grimace would be fine, or even the same kind of head as the chainsaw dude.

Burgun, believe it or not I'm not coming from a legal perspective - I don't know shit about IP law, so I can't talk about it. My indignation is fuelled by the muses:

You've just had a HUGELY successful kickstarter campaign for a new Chaos team. The beastmen are incredible, the warriors and stars are great too. You are at the peak of your creativity, your juices are flowing, the fanboys are moist with anticipation and then...

GW rip off (and the original mini isn't very good in any case!)

It's like 1979 Queen releasing a cover version of a Beatles song...

[burgun824]

Fair enough.

[Darkson]

Change the face for one.
Secondly (and this can be levelled at most FF miniatures companies throwers) why not put him in a pose that more suits his stats and the role he's going to play. He's AG3, and he's on a chaos team. He's not going to be throwing long bombs. If he does get rid of the ball, it's going to be hands off or quick/short passes. Pose him for that.

For example:

(Go RG3)

[traveller]

the fanboys are moist with anticipation and then...

but yes!

Traveller

[theghr]

Change the face for one.
Secondly (and this can be levelled at most FF miniatures companies throwers) why not put him in a pose that more suits his stats and the role he's going to play. He's AG3, and he's on a chaos team. He's not going to be throwing long bombs. If he does get rid of the ball, it's going to be hands off or quick/short passes. Pose him for that.

For example:

(Go RG3)

Good ideas, but i have always envisioned it's the tentacle arm that makes him have Strong Arm. He also has Pass and sure hands which i at least in the formers case are beouse of the tentacle. He uses his tentacle to pass and that's it.

On to him in my upcoming league. Maybe i just bring him up to AG4, or leave him as he is as a somewhat unreliable thrower if someone suddenly need a passer with Pass and Strong arm, and it's great that he has Sure Hands as well.

[Blammaham]

On the whole I don't like te 2nd Ed model very much, but I have it. I think this reboot or update suffers from the same things I don't like about the original (static uninspired pose ugly unappealing face). From a business stand point, I would think that everyone who wants a lewdgrip model already has one, as they aren't that hard to come by. I suppose my question is, who is going to want to have two models that are similar that ate supposed to represent the same thing? 3 Griffs anyone? S.

[Gaixo]

Presumably people would want a star to match the scale and style of their team. If I had purchased this team, I would be glad to have this Lewdgrip to go along with it.

[txapo]

I think some of you should read this to open your mind a bit!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism
Specially the arts bits:
Plagiarism and the history of art
Through all of the history of literature and of the arts in general, works of art are for a large part repetitions of the tradition; to the entire history of artistic creativity belong plagiarism, literary theft, appropriation, incorporation, retelling, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, reprise, thematic variation, ironic retake, parody, imitation, stylistic theft, pastiches, collages, and deliberate assemblages.[3][38][39][11][40][41] There is no rigorous and precise distinction between practices like imitation, stylistic plagiarism, copy, replica and forgery.[3][4][5][6] These appropriation procedures are the main axis of a literate culture, in which the tradition of the canonic past is being constantly rewritten.[41]
[edit]Praisings of artistic plagiarism
A passage of Laurence Sterne's 1767 Tristram Shandy, condemns plagiarism by resorting to plagiarism.[42] Oliver Goldsmith commented:
Sterne's Writings, in which it is clearly shewn, that he, whose manner and style were so long thought original, was, in fact, the most unhesitating plagiarist who ever cribbed from his predecessors in order to garnish his own pages. It must be owned, at the same time, that Sterne selects the materials/ of his mosaic work with so much art, places them so well, and polishes them so highly, that in most cases we are disposed to pardon the want of originality, in consideration of the exquisite talent with which the borrowed materials are wrought up into the new form.[43]

On the other hand, Willy is not breaking any law, nor doing nothing that is punible at least in spain where copyright laws do not protects games at all, only the names, so as far as he calls the player "tentacle" and not the name that by the way, GW hasn't used for a long time, they not have any issue against him. Even the all mighty hasbro as lost all his demands agains a little company falomir who blantanly replicates all his intelectual property, as law does consider a game to be of common property of humandkind and only their comercial names are protected. For exemple this company has relased during the years many games, like Monopoly, Scrabble,... simplily changing their name without paying any royalties to their creators, is it honest praxis? I think not, but spanish law allows it, funny enought only in games, not in books, music, and so on, have a look at some: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgamep ... mir-juegos

Anyway I think that Willy has made his choice on of this miniature to improve a clasical of our youth, I he's managged to do so even improving it, so is a good art. A player less clasical could have had a diferent taste, and he's keeped that.

By the way I would have loved to hear Freddy Mercury singing "Yellow submarine or "Nowhereman"

[Slinky]

Nice post, but txapo completely missed the point that was being presented.

Dr. Ian Malcolm: "Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

[Darkson]

I couldn't care less if it's legal or not (and I wouldn't class Wikipedia as a reliable source for legal advise if I did), what bothers me is it's a blatant copy of a poor figure, which is a bad design in a poor pose, set amongst truly excellent figures.
Willy has shown he has the skill to produce great figures, skills rather than ripping off other figures , I'd rather he used his obvious talent to producing new and fresh takes on FF pieces, both regular and Stars.

[burgun824]

(and I wouldn't class Wikipedia as a reliable source for legal advise if I did)

Why not? There's an entire Wikipedia page telling us how it is reliable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia

Regardless...I'm still buying this team and this fig when it comes time to purchase a chaos team and stars. So you all can point at me as the problem. I'm the jerk that buys this stuff so that he'll keep making more.

[BillyDee]

+1 to both Slinky and Darkson.

The team is awesome, I wish I could have got in on it. Original Stars would hopefully have been equally awesome.