Hi Kantor, if you look over the paintin' stuff thread, you can see most of the Descent 1ed heroes (excluding the 2nd expansion, AoD) painted by myself and others. As you get to the last few pages, you'll see how I've pained 1st edition, to Dungeon Quest, to Promo's and finally 2nd edition.

As per your question, 1st edition core set had a few 'blob' like heroes (I'm talking about you Varikas!) where some of the others were better detailed. I noticed the quality of detail go up with the expansions with the ToI expansion having the best  detail of all Descent games. DungeonQuest and the Promo characters were all a level higher than the Descent 1st characters. With Descent 2nd being the best by far.

On a scale of 1 (blob) - 10 (superb):

Descent 1st w/ expansions varied: 1-5

DQ and Promos: 7-8

Descent 2nd: 9-10

Only reason I'm giving D2e a 9-10 is because of Widow Tarha. The sculptor added a weird mane on her back that isn't in the picture at all and missed a few other items that were in the pic.

I don''t know Coldmoon, I would have given the 1E figs a better score than that, maybe 5-6, instead of 1-5. IMO, of course. I do agree that the second edition figures are better, just not as wide a margin as you give them.

Thanks Coldmoon, that was exactly the answer i was looking for.

Regarding the Descent 1e figures, I found that the monsters had much more detail than the heroes.  I really enjoyed painting the monsters, but often found the heroes frustrating.  I haven't seen the minis from 2e yet as I have to wait till Christmas, but I'm already looking forward to painting the monsters, yet at the same time I'm thinking that painitng the heroes will be a necessary evil.  I really hope this confliction is unjustified.