Earlier this year I was contacted by a Russian fellow who wanted to commission some images of Space Pirates to turn into miniatures. As I had already sketched a few (previous posts) he picked three so this is the first one, a fat bo’sun who has to boss the unruly pirates about. I gave him some alternative weapons and a different head design.
I started with a rough pencil sketch, scanned the sketch in and worked it up in Painter and Manga(Clip) Studio.
And the last (for now, though I’m working on more!) of my Space Pirate sketchbook pages.
To follow: a full page Space Pirate concept design (black and white).
Here’s my next sketch of four space pirates. If they were going to made into miniatures I like to give them alternative heads! There’s a humanoid alien here too.
Boy do I not use this website enough, it needs a right old tidy-up. Anywaaaayy… here’s a page of some sketches from a year or two ago. They’re some ideas I had for that classic SF trope: Space Pirates! I was considering whether to design them as costumes for a film or miniatures for a game.
I incorporated some of the feel of late 1980’s/early 1990’s Citadel Space Pirates by Bob Olley and Bob Naismith (Bob Olley’s Space Pirates Bob Naismith’s Space Pirates) with some traditional piratical gear and other influences like the mercenaries from Riddick (2013), and the Ravagers from Guardians Of The Galaxy(2014) and Vol. 2 (2017). More of these tomorrow!
Hello! I’ve realised that I hadn’t posted all of my Spitfyre concepts on this website, so here are a few more of my Spitfyre images I produced late last year and earlier this year. The Gnomes get a giant falcon (roughly the size of a Bloch mb 150) with pennants and helmet painted in the Escadrille (squadron) colour.
For the Dwarves; a vulture bomber that acts dive bombs like the German WWII Junkers 87 Stuka and the massive Kampfkondor 111; a giant condor bomber based on the Heinkel.
I’ve grouped them all on my Miniatures Concepts page under Panzerfäuste. [Miniatures Concepts]
A new wave of Jon Boyce’s science fiction Colony 87 miniatures are on their way, concept drawings by me and sculpts by the excellent miniature sculptors Mike Anderson and John Pickford. Here’s a link to the Facebook page.
Colony 87 on Facebook
The brief from Jon was to draw a “female, deep space pilot wearing flight suit covered with pockets, cabling, tubing etc. Hard-seal connection at neck, calves and forearms. Helmet is removed and under arm in classic pilot pose. Mature, but attractive – think Helen Mirren. One side of head is shaved.”
My process is to created a reference sheet from all sorts of images I’ve collected from the internet and my own books; ranging from space suit designs by Fred Freeman of ex-Nazi rocket scientist Wernher Von Brown’s First Men to the Moon (1960) book, (Retro-future Space Suit) to actual space suits and movie space suits from science fiction films. Then produce a sketch of my initial ideas to send to the client (in this case Jon Boyce).
It’s been quiet on this website but that doesn’t mean I’ve not been working away. Here are some images I created for Hysterical Games’ Panzerfäuste Spitfyre game. This is a wargame of aerial combat in their ‘historo-fantasy’ world.
As a 10mm wargame the miniatures would need to be easily identifiable from the basic shape and size. So I found some WWII spotterguides online and enlarged the silhouettes of the Spitfire and Messerschmitt 109 aircraft so that they were all the same scale to work on.
Then I scaled a plan view of the planes to each and proceeded to digitally paint (on a layer above) the creatures in top down view, keeping the pilots and machine guns on separate layers. I used these as guides only, for the fantastical creatures like the Orc wyverns I could tweak the wing shapes quite closely to the aircraft but for the giant creatures I’d need to keep the proportions similar to their real-world counterparts.
Here’s the Orc Hurrikane air-beast:
I quickly sketched these Space Ork Kommandos earlier this year as part of my idea for an improved Shadow War:Armageddon. These are based in part on Mark Bedford’s excellent Forge World Space Ork Kommando conversion kit; I liked them and thought since the Freebooter Flash Gitz have Kustom Shootas maybe the Kommandos’ could have a Kustom Snipa rifle and also a Ghillie suit for camouflage (maybe a Ghillie Squig!). (Ghillie Suit Wikipedia entry)
As always with Games Workshop this is fan art and not intended to infringe their intellectual property.
I promised a diversion but it’s really still following the same subject! I had this idea when Games Workshop brought out Shadow War:Armageddon a few months ago. The box contained some OK scenery (though pricey and rather heavy on the skulls and Adeptus Mechanicus symbols!), some Space Marine Scouts and Ork Boyz and the welcome return of the Necromunda rules. Now I suspect not many people bought it for the Scouts and Orks as these were kits that came out years ago, more wanted just the scenery and rules. There was an opportunity missed I feel to show the Imperial Guard (Astra Militarum) and Ork players that they haven’t been forgotten and bring out some plastic Armageddon Ork Hunters for the Imperial Guard and Ork Kommandos for the Orks. Here are my ideas for the Ork Hunters, they could have just been an upgrade sprue with a standard Cadian or Catachan Command sprue with few special characters in the same way they had in Deathwatch Overkill.
I looked at which Guard divisions served on Armageddon and created a motley bunch of expert Ork Hunters, kind of like a Warhammer 40,000 Bad Company (an old strip in 2000AD Bad Company comic on Wikipedia).
Again this is all fan art and not intended to breach Games Workshop intellectual property. Not many people look at this site anyway.
An old sketch of an idea I had for a miniature conversion for Games Workshop’s Inquisitor (a 54mm scale game with about a dozen figures in total and an almost Role-playing game campaign) of the Fellowship of The Ring’s Cave Troll brilliantly sculpted by (I think) Michael Perry.
I thought he’d would make a good mutant slave with the addition of some tatty clothes, a control collar and mining laser so I scribbled him here.
As always this is fan art and not intended to infringe any copyright.
When Microworld Games commissioned me last year to design some trollish mutants to act as a wrecking crew for the Dregs faction and they wanted a huge brutish look with twin flamethrowers, chainsaws and piledrivers I remembered the old sketch and proceeded to sketch out some suitably thuggish-looking giant mutants. The sketches can be found on my Facebook page (click the logo to the right).
