Grr snarl Trish Carden rant gibber.
Meh. Can hardly be bothered to whip up the bile myself. But I can be anal.
The dragon:
The overall pose is weird and awkward. A zigzag made up of a vertical neck, horizontal trunk, and vertical tail. It doesn't look like it's moving up or forward (which at least the high elf dragon did, after the old Dragon Masters dragon); doesn't look like it's rearing back; doesn't look like it's hovering; and from what I can see isn't resting on that terrible base-terrain piece. It's not even a half-arsed pose: it's a no-arse pose.
The head looks like Trish's standard reptile-monster, but most like her hydra head. Wibbly lips 'cos every reptile-monster has to snarl like a crappy Jurassic Park raptor, but she can't sculpt a snarl so she does this instead. It's like the professional mini-sculptor's equivalent to drawing a dog by starting with an armless stick-man, trapped on a desert island...
Giant snaggle-teeth. Cavernous eye-sockets with tiny eyeballs peering from the bottom. Every possible surface of the face covered in big, deep wrinkles.
The neck and tail look like noodles. Excessively-wrinkled noodles.
Same old human arms with bunchy human shoulders, just set on the surface of the tubular body and pushed along the body and way up towards the spine. Looks very awkward and uncomfortable. Arms just dangling there doesn't help the overall non-pose, either.
The whole torso, what I can see of it, looks awkward and uncomfortable. Just the way the neck attaches and orients to that broad bit that's supposed to be a chest. And what are those spiky bits there meant to be? Scutes? More giant wrinkles? Random "hay guyz lookit the mad bling on dis dagron!!!" texture?
The wings look like they're made of matchsticks and torn tissue paper. The 'extra claws' on the leading edge look like rubber spikes glued on a live lizard for a 1950's-60's 'dinosaur' movie.
It's got giant spikes coming out of just it's arse. I dont know why.
Of all the places where piled-on detail would've been good, it would've been the hands and feet. Something like the crazy scale detail that the plastic griffon has. Instead, just a couple of chops at the knuckle that look like... chops.
The chimera:
Not so many points. It's a bit better, I think. But it does have points.
The pose is better, but the arms are still a bit passive. Less lunging forward than falling forward.
The arms don't look great in themselves. From too much texture to too little. Smooth and rounded, with oversimplified muscles (or 'muscle boundary indication grooves') and elbow folds, make 'em look swollen.
The wings look like the old placcy dragon wings that got packed with everything. Which isn't good. Except these seem to have crap encrusted on the wing membranes. Which is worse.
The dragon head has a goitre. The bird head ain't too bad but a bit too feather-duster and reminds me of this and this, among other things. Can't see the other head too well but it looks like a fairly decent sabre-tusked hedgehog.
The manticore:
More monsters falling forward. This time it tripped.
The vaguely bull-like snout, and the fact it's a heavy beast with a belly instead of a whippet-waist or Michelin-Man bands, are the two parts I like about this. Everything else is a bit cack.
The snout's not helped by the precise crescent wrinkles.
It's got those weird wing-pincers which I guess helped Roginshirozz get in trouble.
The cheek spikes on the purple one look duff. (Not big-D Duff)
The belly doesn't look right as a big smooth orb, and in it's orientation with the legs looks vaguely like a pudgy naked bloke.
The legs are apparently held on with spider webs.
The claws on the planted foot are made of toblerone chunks.
The claw visible on the raised foot looks very different.
Those are the weirdest folds and wrinkles at the joints that I've ever seen; and I've seen a few of Trish's sculpts.
Also, I get that manticores are supposed to be chaos creatures and not subject to strict physical laws and you'd never see one walking down a street blah blah yadda yadda, but these look like a paint factory vomited on them. I especially don't get why the yellow manticore's wings are black and purple.
The cockatrice:
The head on this is the best part of all four. Interesting, though still covered in wrinkles. Beak-wrinkles. Suspicious/Annoyed
Even giant ribs pressing against stretched, emaciated skin need some kind of wrinkles. (I don't think those are supposed to be serratus or pectoral bundles)
Same old placcy dragon-wing look, but this time with a half-arsed scattering of feathers. It doesn't make it look like some weird hybrid creature; it makes it look like it got away before the townsfolk used all the tar and chicken feathers.
The feathers are patchy and random elsewhere. (Back of the legs?) Pluckedchickenmonster indeed.
The wing membranes have so much uniform wrinkle texture, you could scrape a wooden spoon against them and go join a jug band.
There's the legs held on again by one of Trish's idiosyncracies. They don't look quite like tension wrinkles and they don't look quite like fold wrinkles. They look like someone was desperate to put some 'natural' texture there but wouldn't have the wit to know natural if it bit them in the arse.
Maybe it's the angle, though I don't think so; but it looks like cockatrices don't have thighs.
Snake scales again. I wouldn't mind so much if people bothered to google them and didn't assume they looked like they were made from the aforementioned Michelin Man. Crude.
Is that a foot glued to the end of it's tail?
Best thing I can say about all four? At least they're not Mantic dragons.
