With Warhammer: The Old World so close to release, we’ve gone behind the scenes to talk to many of the people who worked on different aspects of the game over the last few years. Our first discussion concerned the finer details of lore, before the designers pitched in with the notes they took when creating the miniatures and heraldry. Today, the ’Eavy Metal team talk about what it was like to balance old and new when painting miniatures for the new project.
What changed in the years between Warhammer Fantasy ending and the Old World project starting, and how did this affect your approach to painting?
Jonathan: The approaches, techniques, and tools for painting have changed massively, but so has the photography. The way we took photos back in the 90s was different, and new digital photography is much brighter and crisper, which demands things painted to a different standard. Miniatures have to be rendered sharper, and there is a heavier focus on detail. The main goal before was for things to be bright enough to catch your eye in a big photo.
Rowan: It’s interesting when looking back at painting from across the last 10 to 15 years – and particularly the things that we’ve been interested in rendering across the years. The old Necrosphinx was a big centrepiece at the time, and compared to the rest of the Tomb Kings of Khemri range it has a lot of texture work, but the style of the time was to really dial that up to the max. In a modern miniature like the Bone Dragon, you need to look a bit closer because that detail is still there, but it’s not as exaggerated – it’s a little more subtle and realistic.
Dan H: As a result of these changing priorities, the way that we approach miniatures has changed. Bretonnians are an example of a faction that has changed quite drastically in terms of how we paint them. A lot of our focus has been on characters, exemplars in the range that let us reinforce and refine the faction aesthetics.
For us, being the new custodians of this specific era of Warhammer is a massive deal. Being the people who take on something as iconic as a Liche King or a Damsel on a Unicorn like Élisse Duchaard, heroes and character archetypes that people have known and loved for upwards of 20 years is a huge responsibility.
Holly: There’s an element of future-proofing too, but we always have to consider the fact that this world is hugely important to a lot of people, both those who have worked on it in the past and the fans.
Are you trying to match old styles, or are you pushing ahead as far as you can?
Dan H: We don’t necessarily want to limit ourselves. We can treat something like the Damsel as a statement of intent, a little bit like the designers did with the packed layout of the Knights of the Realm on foot. If we then revisit Bretonnia in the future, we’ve laid this much stronger foundation for future work.
Rob: Leading with your best idea is always the goal. When designing the Damsel on Unicorn, we wanted to make the best one we could possibly make, and when the ’Eavy Metal team painted it, they wanted to paint the best one they possibly could. We like to think we’ve done that. Does that mean we won’t ever do anything better? No, because we’re always pushing ourselves
The Kingdom of Bretonnia now all sport a uniform paint scheme. Can you break down your approach to painting this faction?
Kieran: The foot knights were a good place to start. We spent a lot of time thinking about how we take something that exists – the idea of Bretonnian Knights – and modernise the painting in a way that doesn’t make them sit outside the existing range. Nearly the whole army has been repainted in the colours of Duke Gastille, the Red Hand of Brionne, by a combination of the ’Eavy Metal and army painting teams, so it really was a brand-new direction.
Rowan: We set the precedent for many of the textures, colours, and ideas when we painted the Lord on Royal Pegasus. It was a handy template to work from, but we still had to figure out new ways to approach the heraldry on other miniatures because there is an expectation for Bretonnians that you will have a lot of mixed designs and colours.
Kieran: These knights now fit into the army as a uniform force due to the red and the black heraldry of Duke Gastille, but they’re not all the same. Some have quartered or checkerboard patterns on their shields, others might have surcoats painted with patterns or colours split differently. They also have favours and heraldic elements that are painted to match and represent their own personal heraldry.
Rowan: You can convey a lot through these elements too. Some knights have “mismatching” heraldry across their favours, trinkets, weapons, and helmets. The idea here is that they may have been given certain things as gifts or rewards, or perhaps a weapon has been passed down from one family member to another. I think doing that, alongside giving each knight their own take on a Baron or Duke’s heraldry, is instrumental to bringing your own narrative in.
Keiran: I think as well that the new scheme makes the Questing and Grail Knights seem perhaps even more important. Now that the Knights of the Realm are anchored in the background as the knights of the Barony or Dukedom, it lets the bright and personalised heraldry shine through – the Grail Knights are even more elevated to their saintly position.
Rowan: Looking at those old knights is quite a nostalgia trip. A lot of the miniatures that we’re working alongside are as old as fifth or sixth edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle. For many of us, they are forever linked with the time we first got into Warhammer and are a little magical, but as professional painters, we can also see the strategies and decisions that were made.
Élisse Duchaard is a stand-out character with a paint job to match. How did you tackle her?
Kieran: We had to work hard on making sure each of these different elements was rendered differently despite being the same colour; the unicorn has to look different to the white dress because a horse's skin doesn’t look like white cloth! It’s still part of the same army as the Men-at-Arms, so we had to ground this magical creature a little, which we achieved with dirt on the forelocks and lower limbs, and also with speckling and glazing a skin tone onto the muzzle – it brings a little bit of realism.
Elsewhere we focused on soft and smooth rendering, which with white is a real challenge. We started with exaggerated shadows and glazed those with whites – which takes a very, very long time – which helps make the skin look almost translucent, pushing colours below the layers of the skin. The Damsel herself is all smooth rendering, whether it’s on cloth or on the skin, it’s all to make her look magical.
The staff is meant to be a gift from the Wood Elves, so it’s not painted to match the rest of the Bretonnian equipment. Instead, we looked at Wood Elf miniatures that had been painted by ’Eavy Metal in previous years and tried to make it feel meaningfully different and magical.
How did you tackle the Tomb Kings of Khemri and the Necrolith Bone Dragon?
Rowan: The primary material of the Necrolith Bone Dragon is, perhaps unsurprisingly, bone, so there’s only a narrow span you can work within. It’s a challenge to keep that interesting.
Kieran: We did a lot of research into bones. We didn’t want to just figure out one recipe and stick to it for everything. We spent a lot of time looking at carcasses and bones situated in different environments and observed how bones weathered through the ages. How might the bones of a recent death look versus sand-polished bone?
Rowan: We also extended our thinking to how the model is based – it’s not on the old-style standard sandy base, so some of the bone is painted to reflect this. There’s dirt and weathering that conveys the environment it’s in.
Kieran: Modernising is a really important part of the Old World painting process. One of the larger changes in how ’Eavy Metal renders things is conveying believability and a sense of realism. Eventually, you have to find a line of belief – are we drawing that at accepting this gigantic undead dragon can exist, or are we pushing a bit further and considering how its constituent elements might be affected by reality?
Rowan: A lot of the flavour in the Old World comes from being a little more grounded, and having more of a worn aesthetic. The weathering across the miniature is really important, especially with the metals, and a lot of research was done into how they weather in different environments. Part of pursuing believability is to make sure elements like metal are rendered correctly – no rust on gold, no oxidation on steel and so on. Enamels are a nice focal point across the Tomb Kings army, adding a little splash of colour, so when it came to painting the Bone Dragon, we took care to make it duller and weathered closer to the ground, and polished and gleaming up on the howdah.
Kieran: There is a lot of detail work inside the howdah. It was a total dream to paint and a lot of fun, but also a really difficult thing to balance, making sure it’s a focal point but that it also has that subtle weathering – such as a sun-bleached cloth – which gives a time-worn quality to it. Conceptually, Tomb Kings are a little more static than other ranges in that their traditions and philosophies are fixed in place, but time has marched on, and that has to be represented in the painting.
The dragon itself was painted to feel like it was something that was alive during the Tomb Kings’ reign – a status symbol for a King or a creature in the thrall of a Mortuary Cult priest. When they died, perhaps the dragon was buried with them, and then they were reanimated after. I think It says a lot about the history of Nehekhara, and it shows a different side to the way that society works – it's an opportunity to open things up.
Rowan: Another element that we’ve dug into is the way that flesh is painted on the Tomb Kings. Though the primary image of the faction is of sunbleached skeletons, there’s actually a lot of desiccated flesh on display in old art on the Tomb Kings and Liche Priests.
Kieran: There’s also precedent in the range already, as the old Casket of Souls has quite a realistic-looking fleshy tone on it
Rowan: It’s another case of thinking about where in the world these characters are situated. What’s happened to them since they died? Skin gets leathery as it ages, and paler skin gets quite translucent – these elements then need to be transferred into the afterlife…
Keiran: There are some striking green elements in there, which adds that supernatural vibe into things, which we’ve tried to work into all of the other considerations.
Rowan: Also, we wanted to get some contrast in there because the whole faction can’t just be gold, brown, and red – for example, there’s the blue on the enamel.
Kieran: It looks supernatural and fantastical, but that is just part and parcel of how the Tomb Kings operate as a faction. It’s what makes them feel like part of Warhammer.
Rowan: Ultimately, a lot of our work was making things link back to the older miniatures that have been worked on while also working out how to move things forward. It’s a fine line to walk.
Kieran: There are opportunities for us to pay homage to the long history of Warhammer Fantasy. The World of Legend setting lets us do something really different from what came before, too – it lets us subtly change army identities through the context of the setting. Being part of this process is really exciting.
It’s going to take us a while to digest all of that painting knowledge! Thanks to everyone involved for such a comprehensive retelling of the decisions that went into writing the lore, designing the miniatures, and painting the factions for Warhammer: The Old World. There were all sorts of interesting tangents that didn’t fit neatly into those three subjects, so tomorrow, we’ll be presenting a feast of informative morsels to tide you over until Saturday, when you can pre-order Warhammer: The Old World.
