Tag Archives: miniatures concepts

Colony 87 Awakens!

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.

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 Braun’s First Men to the Moon (1960) book 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).

You can purchase this miniature here:

Colony 87 range – Pilot A

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Panzerfäuste Spitfyre concepts

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:

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Space Ork Kommandos

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.

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Armageddon Ork Hunters

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.

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Mutant Slave and Dregs Wrecking Crew

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).

Microworld Games

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Happy New Year! Some Dregs Dragoons

Happy New Year everyone! My final concept designs for the beast-riding Beastkin.

I decided the beastmen wouldn’t ride actual horses but a future horse-like beast and I wanted to add an element of a bovine or caprine animal to it. Now, I had a photo on my computer of a strange (to me) animal which I found was called a Takin and its larger, more convex snout seemed perfect. Takin animal
Incidentally the beastman balancing on a horse to shoot is based on a photo of a WW1 german cavalryman.

Microworld Games

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Dregs Tank Hunter and Mobile Artillery

These are the final concept designs for the Tank Hunter tank and the Mobile Artillery tank (both based on the same chassis, vaguely WW2-inspired). I gave the tank hunter metal tusk-shapes to give it a brutal look and the artillery tank a load of spikes on the ‘dozer blade so they would look different at a glance on the tabletop whilst still retaining the spiky, ramshackle nature throughout the range.

Microworld Games

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Dregs Armoured Transport and more sketchbook pages

Some more of my work for Microworld Games, this time the Dregs’ armoured troop carrier. I imagined the Dregs would be like a tribe of warriors and this could be their mobile long-hut. This one was partly based on the AAV-7 amphibious APC which has a jutting front like a jaw (for travelling in water).

These next two pages are of my initial ideas for the Dregs’ Mobile Artillery Tank and Tank Hunter with lots of little beast-men riders as I thought they’d add to the noisy, boisterous nature of the army. On the opposite page are some early ideas for the Beastkin Dragoons, beastmen riding on horse-like beasts to war.

Again these haven’t gone into production yet, but if you’re interested do go and have a look at what has:
Microworld Games

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Dregs tanks sketches and Main Battle Tank

This is another Miniatures Concept project that I was commissioned for earlier this year. It’s for a range of Science Fiction 6mm miniatures produced by Microworld Games for epic scale fights. I was to produce some concept drawings for the various units for the Dregs, the mutant beast-men. I was given a brief description and some images to start with so I based my initial sketches on these to get a flavour of the units.

This first image was of the Dreg’s Main Battle Tank. It had to look functional but also brutal so I had a look at British Chieftan tanks as they have a distinctive silhouette along with some other directions from the brief (including a G.I. Joe tank!). The spikes, trophies and extra armour were all added by the Beastkin Raiders themselves. I imagined them riding the tanks to battle, eager to leap off into the melee.

They’re not available yet, hopefully will be soon, here’s a link to the website:
Microworld Games
More images tomorrow.

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Science Fiction Xeno archaeologist ideas

Currently I’m having a bit of trouble uploading images to my website but I managed to get this one; a page from last year’s sketchbook showing some ideas I had for a Xeno-archeologist exploring dead alien civilisations in a gothic SF world.

I imagined her to be a cross between Indiana Jones and Adèle Blanc-Sec (Adèle Blanc-Sec) more than Lara Croft. To help her she has hired a psyker to detect psychic traces of lost civilisations or artifacts, an ogre-like breed of human as a bodyguard and porter. She has also hired a mercenary human and an extra-terrestrial guide and carries her treasured finds in a stasis-vault with suspensors and a pop-up auto-turret laser.

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