Those Who Work: Prospector

 A civilian painted a little while ago!

make sure your helmet is polarised against radiation, kids

This guy had been sitting on my desk for a long time, but I managed to finish him over Christmas. He then sat in my photos account! I was hoping to get more civilians painted to post him with, but the Old World Army Challenge started up, and that's that.

Not really much to say - he's from the Genestealer Cult range, which have a great unified aesthetic for mining and industrial workers, while being grounded in Warhammer 40,000's setting. I demilitarized him a little, giving him a mining laser and the wrench arm, but there is no conversion work.

..so, yes, he still has grenades and a pistol holster. Hellsreach-style planets are dangerous places!

There are still loads more civilians in my pile of inspiration or whatever we're calling them these days, but I really need to get cracking on their terrain.

Those Who Trade: Animals

 Here, at the end of all things the Colony 87 miniatures.

Julius Samarkan and his living goods behind some electro-barriers

This is it, folks! The last Colony 87 miniatures! Crooked Dice have also grouped some cyberpunk miniatures and added to the range since the Third Wave Kickstarter, but these are moving into a different aesthetic, so I didn't pick them up. I'm happy to say that this is more-or-less the whole range and move into new directions. For one thing, all my new civilians need somewhere to live...

For the final post, we have alien pet merchant Julius Samarkan and most of the Colony 87/Crooked Dice animals (except for the space cat from yesterday). These were a lot of fun to paint, although obviously a little fiddly in some cases. I don't think I'll keep them all as Samarkan's, but use them to liven up tables.

Anyway, below the cut!

Those Animals: Gyrinx

 Psychic feline-analogues from beyond the stars.

or, put another way: space kitties!

If I'm going to paint cats, I'm always going to call them Gyrinx. I know that the original Rogue Trader bestiary described them as orange, but that text is more what we traditionally call guidelines anyway, right? (For some great ones, by the way, check out Sho3box).

The kitten on the left is one of the handful of remaining Colony 87 sculpts (although Crooked Dice may have just put him in; I don't think he was part of Jon's brief). The other two are from Bad Squiddo Games, part of her Vikings range. I got them originally for my wood elves, but they don't work as hunting cats. They do work as weird alien cats, though.

Those Animals: Neo-Camels

 No desert setting is complete without them.

Pash Grolin brings a train of goods into town from the wasteland

Nothing like a good set of science fiction animals which are just regular animals with a weird skin colour. Put them next to some lobotomized cyborgs and it feels like Rogue Trader country. 

In my defence, I thought the coat was going to come out much yellower than it did; this is Aggaros Dunes applied straight over white. It's a great colour, but way more naturalistic than I expected.

Pink faces are fun, though.

These guys come from Copplestone Castings and are a real treat. I might pick up the Baggage Yaks and add them to the train.

More photos under the cut, but for once no more rambling.

Those Who Fly: Aliens

Short one today.

Freeman Liste and his navigator, Zee

I put these posts together around themed sets, but today's set consists of a single miniature: Freeman Liste.

Those Who Trade: Slann

 Space frogs: in space.

ready to drop some fresh tracks

I love Slann. Slann are easily one of the best parts of the #oldhammer movement. They exemplify that period of weird Warhammer, where things were sometimes just a little dumb but were stranger and more outside the norm of speculative fiction. Frogs who once ruled a mighty and magical empire, now collapsed into decadence and primitivism.* I especially love space Slann, because you get all that in space.

One of the things that first drew me to the Colony 87 range was the fact that it included a Slann. Jon called him an 'Amphiran', but we all knew what he was. When Crooked Dice took over the range, they included a new one. They knew what was up. Space frogs, man.

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.

Those Who Trade

Even a failing colony has a middle class.

get yer $small_good here

It feels like everyone else has entered a quarantine work-from-home hellscape that, while stressful, has at least allowed a lot more time to paint. In contrast, I have had a lot less time to paint or do basically any kind of hobby work.

It doesn't help that I have a new contract, which involves supervising my old team for the next twelve months and a lot more tedious meetings.

Anyway, I have finished these four members of Colony 87's limited middle class. Why don't we pop below the cut for a longer conversation...

Those Who Fly

Space. The #grimdark frontier.

two pilots and a navigator walk into a bar...

Thistle has meant that even when I am home and my partner is not, I am not able to get as much work done as I actually want. It's worth it, but a little frustrating. Now that the gnome project is wrapping up, I can concentrate on other projects. Although, having said that, I think I've started... three new ones this week? Don't look at me.

Those Who Play

Despite the bright colours, this might be the most grimdark set yet.

Children shouldn't have any place on a battlefield, especially not in the kind of warzones that Warhammer 40,000 describes. It's a bit bleak for tabletop gaming. At the same time, these were really fun models to paint. I imagine that they'll add a certain amount of charm to the townscape once I get around to some buildings and other terrain.

In the meantime, let's not dwell on the implications.

Those Who Work

The lifeblood of Empire.

♪ ♫ one of these is not like the others ♪

The end of the world has sapped a bit of my motivation, I'm afraid. The fact that I am horrific on my brushes doesn't help, and my usual small detail brush is getting a bit bristly, meaning that it's even more difficult to get any work done.

Also, we got a kitten.

Thistle

Still, I spent the past few days getting started on my Old World Army Challenge Project gnomes and doing these working-class folks as a palate cleanser. (I then ran out of white undercoat, so getting the gnomes done might be a bit of a challenge!)

Three of them are from the Colony 87 range, the same as the majority of my civilians. The lady with all the gear is from Crooked Dice's Paranormal Exterminators range, although I just picked her up cheap in an order from Bad Squiddo a couple years ago just because she looked like fun.

For more photos, we go below the cut...

Those Who Work: Droids

Robots are workers too! Synth rights!

these aren't produced by no STC I seen

A while ago, I was invited into an old school gaming group on Facebook, basically a treasure trove of people with way more talent than I have painting extremely cool shit, but without the seventeen mechadendrites and three-different-browns palette of the INQ28 crowd. (Who, to be clear are also a treasure trove of people with way more talent than I have. I can like two things.)

One of the admins of the group had made these little droids, and just after I joined he was selling the last few from his limited run. I hadn't yet figured out how I was going to do terrain and civilians, but I definitely had to have them.

I then picked up the Jackobot, from Citadel's long lost Paranoia range. A few other #oldhammer types have also painted up this model, and I struggled with how to do a colour scheme for him for a while. A mishap with undercoating meant that he had a kind of blotchy, uneven undercoat, which presented a perfect opportunity to practice chipping and weathering.

Under the cut, we have many, many more photos.

Those Who Rule

Sometimes a family is a lord, a lady, their baby, their homonculus, and their other... baby.

Lord Greiss, Lord-Governor of Colony 87, and family

Last time, the civilians were the intelligentsia; scholars, priests, adeptus administatrum. I've split my civilians into class-based groups (sort of, as we'll see) to create batches that are easier to manage. This week was the aristocracy.

(Well, and last week. It's been a bit of a tough fortnight.)

Let's take a closer look below the cut.

Those Who Study, Those Who Pray

Back in February, I rambled excessively about old-school terrain and old-school wargaming aesthetics. It was a bit much.

a Moebius scene from La Cité Feu, 1985

I'm still working on how I'll put together a table of terrain to match my big mouth, but I've also been working on some people to populate it. I've gone a bit off doing big, tedious army-scale projects at the moment (aside from my ongoing work with the Old World Army Challenge), but doing small-scale projects like Kill Teams or Blood Bowl teams are definitely juicy and fun.

Last year, I backed a Colony 87 kickstarter to get myself a huge range of Science Fiction civilians. The range was originally conceived by noted #oldhammer luminary axiom, who has since passed the governorship of Colony 87 to Crooked Dice Miniatures. The range is a beautiful set of space folks with old-school aesthetics, and I've been keen to paint them since I got them.

I also have a handful of Rogue Trader-era sculpts and some sundries I've picked up along the way. I'm sure I'll add more as well. I will split them all into rough categories (workers, aristocracy, bourgeois, intelligentsia, &c), and paint them in lil' groups.

I am trying to steer clear of the 'browns and grey' #grimdark aesthetic and toward something brighter and more old-school. I would like to think these would fit as easily into Rogue Trader-era Warhammer 40K as a Moebius crowd scene as anything in Modernhammer. We'll see.

Here are the first few I finished. They are administrative workers, priests, scholars and the like:

Chamber Secretary Felix Saponya, Administratum

Botanist Hereward Osman, Mechanicus

High Priestess Cardinia, Ministorum

Recordist Junger, Administratum

Wandering Alexei, (poss. Mechanicus)

And this fellow is a Rogue Trader-era sculpt (whose hand seems to be slightly miscast):

Astropath Yerl, Astra Telepathica