A bigature is a big miniature. As a term, I first heard it on the making of featurette on the Matrix Reloaded, talking about the miniature set for the Zion docks, and later in various ILM and Weta making-of features for stuff like the Lord of the Rings. I’m not quite in the space to be able to justify renting an entire building and turning it into a 1:72nd scale filming minature (yet) but there is something about a big model that I adore.

As I mentioned in my 2024 recap, one of the things I realised last year is that I take a disproportionate amount of enjoyment out of building, painting and admiring large models, and as much as I love a good army project or any single smaller miniature, that was what I wanted to focus more on.

In my mind, the distinguishing feature of a bigature is it’s size relative to its scale. Warhammer 40,000 titans are an excellent example of this: they are huge, typically tens of centimetres tall with a physically imposing presence. Just being big doesn’t count: a 1:24 or 1:12 scale model is going to be just as big if not bigger than any titan or other bigature, but it’s just a bigger version of a smaller model. Similarly, a big thing in a smaller scale can’t be a bigature. The Adeptus Titanicus Warhound is an almost perfect recreation of it’s 40K scale sibling but it’s small and so equally ineligble.

This isn’t to say that either of these things are not worthy of love or care, just that they aren’t bigatures. It is the combination of the smallness of scale, and the largeness of the model, that really catches my attention. A 1:12 scale dolls house would almost certainly be a bigature, for instance, but a 1:12 scale car probably wouldn’t be.

A brief aside about dolls houses

Alongside model railroading, dolls houses are one of those scale model-adjacent hobbies that will get me one day. There is an element to the mundanity that really grabs me, but the reason for this aside is that some time ago I discovered that there is a specific niche in dolls house making for producing 1:144 scale dolls houses, something I used to take advantage of for terrain for 10mm wargames). This gives you a to-scale dolls house for your dolls house, which I find deeply satisfying.

One of the other big parts of the joy of bigatures for me is that, to steal a phrase from art conservator Julian Baumgartner, big isn’t better, it’s just better. As much as lay people will admire a small model, or even a collection, a big model is always going to turn more heads.

There is also a small part of me that has adored the idea of the 40k titans almost as long as I can remember. Seeing the Siege of Terra diorama at Warhammer World as a child was a formative experieince for me, with the two Warlord titans dueling over the breach in the wall. Alongside drooling over the Forgeworld catalogues with the then-new Lucius pattern warhounds.

I am very fortunate to be in a position to acquire these models now, and to have the time and skills to do them justice.

Also I am very excited to put some easter eggs in the interior of the reaver titan. The second worst part about not being able to do the interior of the mastodon was not being able to put funny jokes in the interior. The worst part is knowing the interior is there, unloved.

Finally, I have two sneak peaks for you: First, I have decided on a name for the reaver: Vocat Cataegis or Caller of the Storm. It’s fun, storm themed and also gives a neat link to the Thunder Warriors (or Legiones Cataegis) given how Legio Tempestus will have been around during the Unification Wars and this titan may have even witnessed the arrival of the Emperor on Mars.

Second: this is peak scifi modelmaking. You might not like it, but you can’t deny it. Yes I know that the New Orleans class has the highlighters the other way around but I preferred the tapering look here (and modern highlighters don’t have the same dimple on their caps). The USS Soval is nearly ready for paint (I decided against some of the more extreme modifications), I just need to get some more masking tape.