In our final look at the Orc & Goblin Tribes before they arrive for pre-orders tomorrow, we’re speaking to Dan from the ‘Eavy Metal team and designer JTY about how they gave Old World Orcs their own identity.
Dan: When this project got going, we knew that we really wanted the Orc & Goblin Tribes to stand out. In fact, we made that conscious choice to change the way we painted Orc skin even before we started painting them – the first place we tried the new skin recipe was on the new Bretonnian Paladin. We used the Orc’s head impaled on their greatsword as the testbed!
We’d inherited the miniatures used in some previous editions of Warhammer Fantasy Battle, but a lot of them are painted with colours that no longer exist in the Citadel Colour range. We also feel they’re a bit vivid, and we prefer more muted tones for Warhammer: The Old World.
JTY: In the early 2000s, Warhammer Orcs were the same colour across all our ranges and settings. We wanted a separate identity for Warhammer: The Old World, and we’ve landed on a bottle green.
Dan: Before we started, the ranges were all pulling from the same well. We wanted to build a distinction between an Ork, an Orruk, and an Orc. By reducing the brightness of the skin tones, we’re grounding them back into the World of Legend.
It does also mean that on Ogdruz Swampdigga – who has gathered a lot of stuff in his travels – this more muted skin is not fighting for space on the miniature. His darker skin rebalances the contrast with the brighter objects on his clothes and his base.
JTY: Yeah, like the fact that he’s wearing a big red crab as a shoulder pad! These things can stand out. The River Troll hide that he’s wearing is a different colour to his skin – an effect that I really like.
Dan: The nose of the Troll is rendered higher. So Ogdruz’s face is one feature point, but having the hide sit higher means that neither element becomes the more dominant part. He’s blending into the Troll, to show how far he’s gone into becoming one!
We wanted to push Ogdruz slightly further “off” the rest of the Orcs. The idea is that he has been living amongst Trolls, so his skin has a slightly greyer appearance to try and reinforce that link. It also gave us a chance to then experiment with some warmer tones for the Troll hide, and test out the Troll scheme at the same time…
Dan: On the new Black Orc Bigboss, meanwhile, we decided to move away from darker skin – and we aim to repaint the rest of our Black Orcs in the same way.
JTY: We made a conscious decision to illustrate the fact that Black Orcs are so-called due to their cruel, dark sense of humour, and because they come from the Dark Lands, which are a Chaos-infested hellscape. It’s not because their skin is uniformly dark – we want to make that very clear, so that hobbyists can use a range of skintones for their Black Orcs.
Orc skin tends to get darker or more gnarled as they get older, ageing like rawhide rather than a fine wine. This lets you use different green skintones across your mobs, and you can also introduce other naturalistic colours, such as pinks and greys in the noses and lips.
Thanks again guys – very illuminating. The Orc & Goblin Tribes will be available to pre-order tomorrow!