In the first interlude, I explained that the key to a bigature is that it must be a model of something large relative to a person, and also be physically big. The 1:1 version of a bigature should have a sense of scale to it already, but then the scale model should be large and imposing too.
Big is of course relative. I know plenty of people who primarily play skirmish games and will tell me that they haven’t painted a tank miniature because it’s too big and they’re intimidated by it, which is perfectly reasonable if all you’ve painted is 28mm people. Equally, I know people who have painted literal legions of 6 and 10mm miniatures, which is as much surface area as a titan, but you’d not call it big.
Our case study today is the AMT USS Enterprise-C model kit. The Enterprise-C appears in the episode Yesterday’s Enterprise of The Next Generation and is undeniably a big object, being about five hundred metres long according to official guides and the model itself is about 35-40 centimetres long. It is, objectively, a large model in comparison to a regular infantry model. So why isn’t it a bigature?
Now, one could look at my grading here and go “oh, but the warhound, reaver and mastodon are all large, expensive resin kits” and be wrong. It’s true, but the stompa is undeniably a bigature and it’s “only” £90 and it’s made of hard plastic, so neither statement is true.
Personally, it comes down to detail. A bigature has to be big enough to have both prominent detail and for that detail to be in scale. This is in part what makes the Adeptus Titanicus versions of the titans not bigatures: they have to compromise on some details purely to make them out of plastic at a quarter scale. The AMT Enterprise-C has both highly simplified details in some places and other details are exaggerated for moulding or painting purposes.
You can see on this image here, the deflector and the escape pods are both massively oversized in order to give you something to paint. This isn’t bad, but it violates what I now consider a core tenant of bigatureology.
The other problem, and this is specifically about the AMT Enterprise-C kit, is that as a very old model (although mine was likely manufactured in the last 2-3 years) it is made of a brittle hard plastic, with a reasonable degree of flashing and slightly soft detail, with some deformation that made the assembly a pig. If it weren’t for the other issues, I’d have stuck it out and happily done the filling and reshaping required, but as it stands it just wasn’t for me. There are some stunning examples out there though of people’s painted (and in some cases, lit, the white portions are actually translucent to enable you to light it and leave the windows unpainted) Enterpise-C or Yammaguchis.
One final note though, is that whilst the model is long, the volume it occupies isn’t huge. It’s longer than a stompa is for sure, but it’s absolutely smaller. A bigature has to feel big, both in terms of scale and size.
So to recap:
- A bigature must be of an object that is of a significant size compared to a person
- The model of a bigature must appear physically large
- Details on the model should be in-scale wherever possible
- The model should be highly detailed
So what would a Star Trek bigature look like? Anything over 50cm long would likely count. An unspoken part of rule #2 is that the model should be at least slightly unweildly, and something over 50cm long is going to be imposing to move and handle.
So what’s next? The Stompa is approaching completion, but there probably won’t be another bigature project this year. I have a MEGA SCALE Zaku II in the stash for when I next want a giant project, but it’s probably a next year task at this point. I do want to touch on Project Trojan from the ’24 retrospective briefly. Unfortunately, a lot has happened this year, some of it related to my dayjob (which I will not discuss further) and some of it related to Epigram (which you can read on the Hypersteel Nightmare blog) and aside from some sketches and some plans, nothing has come of it. It is still something I want to do dearly but I have to balance that with everything else. As of now it’s on hold, and we’ll see where it goes.