Tag Archives: miniatures concepts

Space Rat-Men Special Characters

Finishing my idea of a space hulk with warp-mutated rats on board: (See previous posts: Space Rat-men, Space Rat-men leaders and Space Rat-men characters.)

The large rat-hulk thing on the left with his midget controller (maybe they’re twins?) are kind-of like a space mutant rat-men version of Pinky and The Brain (wikipedia entry for Pinky and the Brain). The other creature is a Rat-man who has been possessed by a warp-entity and his form has mutated (Bestial face: Goat, Teleport, Cloven Hooves, Scorpion Tail,Temporal Instability, Acid Excretion, Suckers, Growth X2).

And here is the sketchbook page from over a year ago where I sketched the basic ideas:

This is fan art based on Games Workshop’s intellectual property.

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Hysterical Games’ PanzerfĂ€uste

I’ve been working hard on a commission from Hysterical Games over the last year; drawing concepts for their fantasy World War 2 miniatures wargame ‘PanzerfĂ€uste’. Their Kickstarter project has gone live and surpassed its initial goal! I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this project. Here’s a link to the Kickstarter page:
PanzerfĂ€uste – Mechanised Warfare in A Mythical Realm

As part of this ongoing commission I created Wojtek the Bear, a character I based on the actual bear named Wojtek by Polish troops who adopted him in World War 2 Wikipedia entry for Wojtek (bear), carrying a MG08-15 machine gun. Wojtek is a helpful bear used by the Troglodytes in the PanzerfÀuste world to carry things and to fight the Dwarves.

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Colony 87

A commission I had last year to draw concepts for a Science Fiction 28mm miniatures range Kickstarter has been funded within a few hours!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/62661939/colony-87-28mm-sci-fi-civilians/description

Here are some of the sketches (an amphibian-alien trader, human trader, a pair of nobles with a freakish pet and a porter with a some sort of servo-yoke). The designs were influenced by, amongst many other things, Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner (1982) costumes by Michael Kaplan and Charles Knode and the nobles costumes in the David Lynch Dune movie (1984) by Bob Ringwood. I tried a gothic-arch hat from Russian history for the female noble though we settled on a simple cowl.


These have been sculpted by the talented miniature designer Mike Anderson.

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More Mutant Space Rat-Men

I’ve got a couple of commissions on at the moment but I found time to finish off my third page of SF Rat-Men ideas, specifically the bloated leader and a SF version of a Grey Seer.

Continuing the theme of a space hulk with warp-mutated rats on board: (See posts https://www.willbeck.com/artblog?p=1597 and https://www.willbeck.com/artblog?p=1111) The largest mutant rat-man has taken hydraulic shears and attached them to his deformed arm to make a crude combat weapon.

The Rat-man psyker inhales warp-tainted fuel pods (from areas of the space hulk exposed to the warp) to enhance his psychic powers (similar to how Skaven Grey Seers eat warpstone).

The ‘warp-rats’ are rats that have been fed the warp-tainted fuel and are herded into battle causing localised distortions in reality.

GW are souping up the Skaven for the End Times business the new Boneripper and especially the Stormfiends are quite futuristic looking.

The ‘Stormfiends’ appear to have little large-brained rats attached to their backs – I think someone at GW had been playing Planescape:Torment with its Cranium Rats and their Wererat servants – here’s a link if you’re interested: http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/Torment/Walkthrough/act3-underground/underground-warrens-of-thought.php).

As always these are purely for fun and not intended to breach Games Workshop’s copyright.

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Space Mutant Rat-Men Leaders

A brief diversion back to my ideas for how to get a relatively sensibly explained version of Games Workshop’s Skaven into the Warhammer 40,000 setting. https://www.willbeck.com/artblog?p=1111 These are mutant rat-men leaders and a psycho-rat-man with a couple of alternative heads. Like all the space rat-men they live a life of vicious in-fighting on drifitng space-hulks with the biggest or sneakiest getting to the top of the pile.

I’ve still to colour in my space psychic rat-man and also some special characters which I shall post here when I’ve done ’em.

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SF Citizen miniatures

I’ve been commissioned to design some Science Fiction citizens miniatures (fleeing from alien invasion, standing around and working) for a project Redfeather Casting is putting together. These could be suitable for any SF wargame or role-playing game but would be equally at home in games of Warhammer 40,000.

Here are my initial doodles:

And my more refined costume drawings:

More to come soon!

Here is the site where Red Feather casting is seeing how much interest there would be in these miniatures:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/588815.page

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Space Rat-men ideas 1

Earlier this year I heard about an abandoned Russian cruise ship drifting around the Atlantic Ocean and inhabited by rats ( http://phys.org/news/2013-02-abandoned-russian-ship-km-ireland.html ) I had always wondered how you’d make sense of having rat-men in Warhammer 40,000 and this led me to think wouldn’t there be rats in the holds of space freighters? What might happen to those rats aboard vessels lost in the warp?

I imagine Space Hulks ( http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Space_Hulk )
aren’t just inhabited by Genestealers, Orks or Chaos Renegades. Sometimes the rats on board would have mutated having been exposed to the warp (and perhaps having eaten warp-tainted cargo and human corpses). Some might have mutated into rat-men! Their equipment would reflect the technological environment they live in; not much wood, tools you might find on a space craft, scavenged and improvised weapons and armour.

I’ve a couple more pages of these to colour in, including my version of how a Skaven Grey Seer could be done.

Skaven, Grey Seer and that sort of thing is copyright Games Workshop; this is fan art not intended to infringe GW’s copyright.

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New statues

These are some ideas for new statues for Warhammer 40,000 as I think the Imperium deserves more variety in statues (and a more martial pose)!

I figured that the kit wouldn’t need to be as configurable as your usual 28mm miniature but should have a few optional heads and weapons so you could use several of the same statue in a game. They need to look like exaggerated stylistic statues and not just a 28mm or bigger miniature painted like a statue which looks wrong on the tabletop. I’ve designed a Saint or Battle Sister as I think these would be commemorated as statues as well.

Again this is fan art and not intended to infringe on GW’s copyright.

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Human Variants 1 (inked and coloured)

Here’s the inked (on paper) and coloured (digitally) version. I created the runic language from looking at Tolkien’s Angerthas (Dwarvish) runes and making them look a bit more technical.
I’ve some more ideas for these and some other human variants; I just felt that this page needed some colour.

This is still fan-art and not meant to infringe on GW’s copyright.

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Skaven Rat King

Skaven Rat King
I’d never heard of Rat Kings until I was looking for pictures of rats on t’internet (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king_%28folklore%29 ) and thought it would make an interesting idea for a Skaven mutant; a master moulder perhaps. I added some digital paint to this to flesh him out some more.

Fan art, copyright Games Workshop etc.

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