From the workbench of the esteemed Horati0nosebl0wer

I had a sit down while doing some magnet work and considered the notion of what AI can do and has been doing to and with our hobby. Artwork generated through recirculated digital images can be used to create new models for us gamers but it comes with the price of over engineering. Death by Detail seems to be in full swing with where GW and others are going and I think that scale creep is a symptom of it.

To draw down detail to manageable levels a human sense of what a human can work with is required. The supernatural among us who do great things with paint show that simple figures have intrinsic appeal that a painter merely draws out and amplifies through their own skill. This isn’t something a program can reproduce (hopefully ever). From this we are likely to keep seeing great products from 3D sculptors which will amaze us from the outrageous limits of creativity.

On a related note I think that the future of miniature agnostic games will continue to be bright as long as people understand how to build armies. If figures from disparate lines are brought together then the ties that bind them need to be very strong. As the physical material of an army comes together the paint then comes to connect. As a final part to the process the basing finishes the whole deal and makes the whole cohesive. No program to date has a means of building and painting what we love, because of that we need to flex our minds and fine muscle memory. Making better looking stuff by hand is the best way of keeping this hobby/cottage industry/craft(?) moving in an upward trajectory for quality.

You can’t program an army theme and have it physically in hand to play without the human mind. Positronic brains are not yet a reality.