Those Who Work: More

 The average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit.

by the sweat on their brow is an empire built

A few months ago, most of these weren't even on my list for this civilian project.  I had vaguely conceived of the water carrier (a Wave One Colony 87 sculpt) as a merchant, so I painted him with the last group, but after the paint hit the miniature, I realised that he was a labourer, not the capitalist.

The dwarf sculpt came in with a Kickstarter delivery, and I already have a duplicate of the sculpt earmarked for my Squats project, so he got folded into the project. I then managed to acquire the Bob Olley servitor sculpts from eBay, and before I knew it I had another four workers to go with the last two groups. 

Under the cut for more photos and conversation about the paint schemes.

Kay Dee, freeman porter to Pash Grolin

Like I mentioned, I vaguely conceived of promoting Kay Dee to a merchantman in his own right, but the actual paint came out with him clearly working for someone else. In the original Kickstarter, he's flagged as working for Pash Grolin, although I think Pash moves around the wasteland, trading between settlements. Kay seems more of a local porter, possibly working in the same square where Lazlo Zhao peddles his food.

Kay has the unpainted ceramite that I like to use to represent cheap-but-far-future stuff, using the same technique as I use on pre-Heresy Death Guard. It's simple to do and looks striking, keeping the miniature grounded against the bright colours that I use on the civilians.

I love his weird harness. It's a different kind of speculative fiction than 40K's nightmarish servitor concepts, but comes from a similar place. For 40K settings, it easily represents a cheaper alternative to servitors, which require maintenance from those fully inducted into the holy mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus (and presumably also the corresponding tithes which that holy order demands).

Vel of Närke, local smith

This delightful sculpt is by the famous Inso, who produces a great many fantastic space dwarfs in the old Citadel style. He's now available for order from Macrocosm, who have recently been running several successful space dwarf kickstarters.

I already had a copy of this sculpt which will be part of my ongoing Squat project, but when Macrocosm threw another copy in for free, I had one for this civilian project! Very generous of them.

The orange serves two purposes. First, it obviously matches the safety gear on some of the other working class folk. Second, it's a nod to the Warhammer Fantasy dwarf slayers, who famously dyed their hair orange and spiked it into giant mohawks.

I don't think Vel here has shamed his family and needs to dye his hair - and besides, I don't like Squats having the same cultural notes as fantasy dwarfs and shouldn't have 'slayers' in the same sense - but I did like the idea of having this unsubtle nod to his fantasy cousins.

This sculpt has so much character, he almost painted himself. I can't wait to paint him again.

8-0B, mining and engineering servitor

8-0B here is a classic Bob Olley sculpt and just so much fun to paint. I've gone for a vibrant yellow that hopefully picks up 'industrial hardware' notes.

Bob Olley sculpts are always full of tiny, busy details, so while it is tempting to add hazard stripes and lots of grimey weathering, the risk was that the miniature would become overwhelmed with detail with a resulting effect like dazzle camouflage.

I think I have managed to balance Bob's traditional details by keeping things relatively simple with grey-blue workman's pants, minimising the variation on the cabling and keeping his chestpiece the unwashed ceramic that I like. Let me know how well I did!

0-11E, mining and engineering servitor

Another Bob Olley servitor, and one of my favourites. She's a deeply weird sculpt, with the exposed breasts and the... monokini? So weird. Which is exactly my favourite thing about this miniature. You would never see any company release something like this these days - or if they did, they would try and make her sexy, all svelte and objectifying.

You can say a lot of things about this sculpt, but 'sexy' is probably not amongst them.

(I mean, this is a safe space. Your kinks aren't my &c &c).

A friend of mine commented that her blue glove makes her pretty glam rock, which is kind of neat. I mostly gave her a blue glove because I wanted to emphasise how weird it is that she has a glove on her meat-hand and avoid neutral browns or blacks, but also she has a blue glove in the White Dwarf 111 advertisement.

The unweathered yellows are following the same logic as her fellow servitor 8-OB, above.

I love this sculpt so much. I should mention that others who have painted her make the claim that the boob window is intended as part of the chest armour, that the apparent monokini should actually go over leggings.

I say that those people are cowards.