Here's a Minifigs pig-faced orc I painted up in a sort of comic-book style (heavy blacklining in ink). I'm quite pleased with it; I see this style as the best way to get the most out of the wonderful old Minfigs ranges, which have quite spare and shallow detail.
This fellow's not quite finished; I need to touch up some of the highlights on his jerkin and perhaps add a sigil of some sort to his chest and backplates. I may well change the base to a slightly less textured surface.
As I've been playing quite a bit of Mordheim recently with friends and my kids, I wanted to get some quick warbands to introduce some of that game's more characteristic factions: in particular, the Cult of the Possessed. I decided to go with figures that were swiftly and minimally drybrushed in near monochrome, apart from two colourful areas: their weapons and their heads.
This minimalist scheme has two key functions: it allows me to get the miniatures done quickly; and it should make them entirely distinctive on the tabletop. We'll be playing some multiplayer games in the coming months, so I want this particular cult to be umistakeable.
The scheme involves abandoning realism entirely. There's no reason for the weapons to be green (apart from perhaps a hint of verdigris over bronze - but that wouldn't explain the hafts), and there's no diagetic logic behind the red heads and headgear. But besides creating coherence, the abandonment of realism helps, perhaps, to suggest that this warband inhabits - as Cormac McCarthy put it - "regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools".
Oh my god, said the witch hunter ...
For some reason, four (!) coats of matt varnish have failed to quell the shine from the initial coat of Vallejo gloss. I've suggested to the friend that he try a fifth coat in a week or two. We shall see ...
These are glorious old C15 orc by Kev Adams - from the first orc range he did for Citadel.
In a swap a couple of years back, I'd picked up some GW orcs, a few of which had legs from old chaos warriors. I liked the upright stance and the hulking effect, so I added orc arms and a space-ork head. A bit of greenstuff to fill out his back and boots and cover the joins, and a skull from an Oathmark standard for an outlandish belt buckle or codpiece, and he was ready for paint.
I also found an old black orc that I'd started to paint up in a similar scheme to the last pair. So I added a hefty goblin bow and decided that - for now - he'll replace the C15 crossbowman as the gang's leader, with the latter relegated to the ranks or even the sidelines. With his outsized weaponry and fancy hat, this guy looks just intimidating enough to keep his hefty and doubtless uppity underling in check - for now, at least.
These are the first figures for a Mordheim orc warband, for an all-day campaign next weekend. The crossbowman is the 'boss', an old Citadel C15 armoured orc tooled up with some extra armaments and a quiver of bolts for his crossbow. He's not the biggest or meanest of the C15 orcs, but he's one of the ugliest, which must count for something!
The smaller fellow is a Marauder orc. The first wave of Marauder orcs are pleasingly short and squat, which means that older Citadel orcs work well as leader types alongside them. Despite his short stature, this chap might see service as a 'big un', given his melee-focused gear and high-end armour.
I'm painting this warband in a D&D or Gamorrean scheme: essentially the same thing. Citadel orcs were originally D&D orcs (and possibly even closer to Gary Gygax's vision than the Monster Manual illustration; Gygax said at one point that he'd envisaged upturned snouts rather than full-on pig heads), so it seems appropriate. I'm painting the orcs a variety of greens, greenish-blues and browns, with the pink snouts and ears the unifying constant.
We've been playing a bit of Mordheim recently. Skaven slingers are handy in that game, and I had but one metal original painted up. So I've started converting some from Oathmark goblin slaves, using Plague Monk and Mordheim Skaven heads and greenstuff tails.
I painted these guys up pretty quickly, relying on washes over a burnt umber/grey/ivory base for the most part, with a few bits treated with more care.
