Hasslefree Head To Kickstarter For Fantasy’s Femme Fatales
September 8, 2016 by dracs
Hasslefree Miniatures have announced that they will be making their first foray into Kickstarter to make minis based on the artwork of Matt Dixon.
Matt has provided standard pin-up style concepts for the miniature, including the new bard Erryn a'dell (see above).
However, Hasslefree plan to make three variants for each of the miniatures. These include a winter clothes variation.
Such miniatures should make for a nice alternative, especially when your adventures take your party somewhere a wee bit chilly.
For the other variant, Hasslefree have gone for something a little more suited to warm weather by going completely "skyclad".
For these Hasslefree reportedly drew their nude concepts over Matt's initial concepts. It's a little harder to see what adventuring environs these might suit, but given Hasslefree's track record of good body sculpts they should be pretty decent models.
The Kickstarter will initially be looking for funds for four female miniatures, along with their variants, but they say that they currently have concepts for a number of other females and one male figure should they surpass their goal.
Is this a Kickstarter you think you will support?
"Such miniatures should make for a nice alternative, especially when your adventures take your party somewhere a wee bit chilly..."
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I love Hasslefree minis and have a load of them still to paint , but these dont interest me at all which is a shame as they have been talking about a kickstarter for a while now and this is not what I expected .
Yes but winter option for me I’m fed up with nudity in this industry.
What nudity? There’s more nudity in your average commercial block than in wargaming as whole, given how downright conservative the target audience is.
Waiting on the e-mail to tell me its live. They have been dangling this tantalisation in front of my nose for a month. Will definitely back and probably get all variants.
i like the concept art , a bit more benny hill cheeky than anything.
main stream should be more love and less sex. you also don’t need to hit someone over the head with a sledge hammer to touch on subject matter either . i totally understand not wanting your gaming experience to go there.
but its interesting where people draw the line. why pickaxing someone in the groin or spilling their entrails is ok but sex is offensive . don’t think I’ve heard people saying that’s too violent in our industry very often.
in your daily life people project sex at you all the time ,its such a dominant psychological force it seems to me that this is something that absolutely should be an option in games going for a sense of realism, or that want to approach the issue . if you want to include all the multiple layers of complexity that make up are experience of reality, it is something that has a place.
i know pinups are not always this and that there is a market for them in the bluntest possible way . a lot of the pinups out there though have a sensuality, but it is often not the only thing represented.
they are often a thing of beauty when it comes to the sculpts .
the characters in our stories are mostly idealised representations of certain archetypes
whether tarzan built hero’s or the lithe perfectly sculpted heroine.
which raises the question when does a pinup become a pinup ?
kingdom death’s satan miniature is a interesting one. i think it is one of the most imaginative miniatures on the market, its concept is brilliant . it’s art and miniature are completely inline with the concept but it could not be much more sexual , without being in the act.
sorry for drifting off topic a little.
For me the original (clothed) concepts are a nice ‘pin-up’ style of attractive women. I can see them appealing broadly to men & women alike. They are understated sexy, in a good way.
The nude versions are just boobs because posed naked women = sex.
If you just care about mini’s you can skip the rest of this post BTW.
I was out shopping with my wife today and walked past Anne Summers, there was a big poster in the window of a women wearing nothing but sexy underwear (obviously, because their main product offering is sexy underwear) next to a man fully dressed in an expensive looking suit. They were holding a rope, so clearly implying that their customers can expect are in for sexy times. Discussing this later with my wife, here is what we didn’t like about that advert.
The woman (near nude) was being portrayed as entirely subservient to the fully dressed man. This isn’t an image either of us is comfortable with because, as my wife put it, the woman might as well be a stripper performing for the wealthy man. This doesn’t seem like a good thing to be promoting, there was no sense of equality or respect to it, and didn’t feel sexy to use. She appeared downgraded to a sex object, not as being sexy,
My wife added that she learned a long time ago that feeling sexy is about your attitude, not what you wear. By the same token, those nude concepts don’t project sexy to me, they are just the lowest common denominator – more flesh. The clothed versions appear empowered and confident – they got to keep their dignity and carry off sexy.
And now I’m off to look at more little people to push around my tabletop. 😉
In this case the “naked women = sex” isn’t entirely true. Hasslefree tend to sculpt all of their miniatures as nudes which then get cast up and sold as “dolls” for other sculptors. Their sculptor then sculpts the rest of the miniature, clothes, weapons etc, onto one of the nudes. Checkout Hasslefriesian on Facebook and look at his gallery, you can see lots of WIPs, most of which started out as a nude before being progressed into something else. So it’s no surprise that they’re doing 3 variants of each model, one of which is a nude because the nude will be the first one he sculpts, the remaining two will be two separate sculpts that are based on the nude.
That is very interesting, I did not know this! I guess it would help to get the figures proportions and pose right before adding bulky items over the top that can distort the body shape.
I support and accept sculpting the human figure as a form of art. But I find that heroic scale means taking things that are thin and making them fat so that they can be cast properly, which means that proportion is lost, when that is what it’s all about. Therefor I think that nude minis are only about sexualization and that’s not appealing.
*to me.
Hasslefree has always created the minis in skyclad as they call it and then dress them with whatever clothes is appropiate, they sell a number of nude dollys for sculpters to use .
I remember they did a competition using blank dollys with the winner getting made
Again the debate starts about nudity in our adult hobby, this has been answered in other topics. Where there just came out one thing you: like it or you don’t.
Don’t like don’t buy it, there are more than enough other models out there that will suite your needs.
But please stop senseless nagging and preaching of the same old dead dog that we hear all the time, if you don’t like what you see, click something else.
Skyclad like dekinrie already said, is for people with some more talent than most and what to have a unique model, they finish the sculpting them self.
So next time first read the entire article. On Sunday there is a politic post issue, there you can debate (over and over again) about the socking fact that we are nude under our cloths.
Personally I love the stuff that hasslefree makes, a well talented sculpture he is.
But will have to see more of the stuff before I pledge. They girls look very nice in there winter-gear, very suitable for a game of mine.
Is it only “senseless nagging and preaching” if people disagree with you, or is it holding any opinion in this debate?
I think it’s a perception thing. Because we so rarely see anyone openly saying “I love sexy female miniatures” but we do so often hear “I hate sexy female miniatures” and proponents of that opinion are quite often very black and white about it – if you don’t agree with them you are part of the problem. The net effect of this is that even people who aren’t really into pin-up miniatures but have no objection to them tend to feel slightly alienated. I don’t ever recall seeing someone coming out and saying “pin-up miniatures are awesome and if you don’t like them there’s something wrong with you” (which would be the opposite position) and yet there must be people out there who do like pin-up miniatures otherwise why are people still selling them? So I can understand why people might feel like there’s a lot of preaching goes on when it comes to sexuality and miniatures.
I like all different versions, but each might serve a different purpose. The winter garb would fit very well in a Frostgrave warband. The skyclad models could find a place in a Celt or Pict force and just fit in. Going all out with tribal warpaint could be a very fun painting challenge.
they look good with cloth its a differant type of game without?
This company is offering 3 different variants so you can pick the ones you like. Sounds ideal.
Why not make it fun. Take the nude ones and paint them all in spandex.
High fantasy spandex eh? Forge that narrative sir!
Well…I guess all I can say is I like the look of the clothed minis concept art, I’ll leave the nudes for those who want them. 🙂
@bygone
It’s a well worn debate, no doubt. But I don’t think anyone here considers it answered. People are always going to have opinions on anything even slightly controversial. And as debates go the posts above are all pretty mild and we’ll mannered, nobody’s getting irate.
To quote your own attitude; if you don’t like what you see, click something else.
Hasslefree do a lot of nudes, including some very weird Male Orc pinups.
What he (their sculptor) often seems to do is sculpt a nude pose which they case up and you can buy. He then sculpts the clothes/armour etc onto the nude. Or at least that’s what it looks like he does based on the photos he posts on Face.
Ok that last bit should read based on what he posts on Facebook. My phone seems to have developed a habit of chopping off the end of words, which is really starting to annoy me.
Also, from what I can see on their Facebook page, there’s probably going to be some Male miniatures as well and I’d expect them to be similarly posed and clothed
Hey Guys
Thanks for the comments. Sam is correct, the ‘Skyclad’ art is just me drawing nudity over the top of Matt’s originals 🙂 Mostly so when they show up on the kickstarter they arent just the same picture with the words ‘without any clothes on’ underneath it.
As for why we do them, some of the comments above are mostly correct, with a small exception. Kev actually makes the Skyclad ones from the dollies too, they are usually 2 different minis. He’s very persnickety and to cloth the finished skyclad one would annoy him as he’d have to do things like change the way breasts hang and skin dimples etc. as he likes such things to be correct.
So technically he makes a dolly (Sometimes he finishes those and we sell those too), then sometimes he makes a Skyclad mini from that, as well as the others. It just depends.
in the Kickstarters case all of the dollies are made and already for sale, so all of the Skyclad minis will be their own sculpts. We offer them because … we want to 😀
Our customers vary between painting them nude or sculpting their own clothing/accessories or using them for cutting up and making their own minis. Probably in equal proportion.
And yes, we do plenty of male nudes and some non humans too. We don’t find nudity in and of itself a problem. If you do, we are definitely not the company for you 😉
Thanks for posting. I have seen a few of your male nudes before, fair play for making both if you are going to do nudes.
I can see a case for giving people a canvas to sculpt onto, even if I don’t see the appeal of painting 28mm nude dwarves.
Love the fact Arty @artemisblack has posted. I’m really excited about the Kickstarter the minis all 3 look great and who doesn’t like choice.