This time I have a very “Oldhammer” Warhammer Orc Warrior, known as “Slyss” from the 2nd-3rd Edition era, sculpted by Kev Adams. I bought this guy and started to paint him long, long ago and only recently found him in a Chessex case and made myself complete him.
As can be seen, he’s one of those models with the huge, spiky shield boss. A big part of getting this guy finished was simply deciding what to do with it. The easier option would have been to make it a big, nasty spike. The other obvious option, though a little more involved was to follow Oldhammer tradition and turn it into a 3-D shield, and use the boss as the basis for a nose. Obviously, I went with the latter. I built up very slight brow ridges, bridge of the nose, cheekbones, lower lip, teeth and nostrils with liquid greenstuff. Mostly so the shield wouldn’t look like a completely flat piece with a big spike sticking out of it. The Bridge of the nose and nostrils then, were the most important aspects.
The earliest reference I can find of this guy is in the 1987 Citadel Journal, which pretty safely dates the model to 1986-87. He’s an evil-looking bastard, alright – and a good example of the whole “older models have character” thing that people like to bandy around – and overuse at times. With such squinty eyes and a weird-as-hell mouth – he fits in here. He’d work okay these days as some sort of Chaos Mutant, painted in more human skin tones.
Rear view shows the slightly crude, but still detailed sculpting of Kev Adams’ early Warhammer Orcs. Along with the crocodillian mouth and face that is oddly reminiscent of some renditions of trollface. Also, my awesome handpainted woodgrain shieldback. :p
This pic is the money shot – my show-off pic for the freehanded Ogre-Face shield design. No radiating black sun lines or chequerboard on this one. Just the nasty face, scowling at the world in front.
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Oh Wow Man! This is brilliant. He’s a nasty looking Ork isn’t he haha. Love the face on the shield. Really impressive work mate. I think he’s one of my favourites of yours. Very tidy indeed.
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Thanks mate. Glad you like it. He’s an evil bastard for sure. 😉
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Cracking job mate, he’s right on the money! Love it 🙂
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Cheers mate. I felt that it all worked together in that old-school kinda way.
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Great shield!
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Thanks! I’m quite happy with how it turned out.
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Yes, that shield is pretty awesome, and he did turn out very nicely.
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Thank you Ann. I Appreciate it.
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Lovely reworking on the shield boss of what most people (including me of course!) would have just have painted as a spike. We’ve talked about Kev Adams Orcs before but alot of them around this time (87ish) were quite strange looking. Your phrase ‘crocodillian mouth’ sums a lot of them up perfectly!
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I could easily see you doing the same on some of your models. 🙂
Agreed – these early Kev Adams sculpts are clearly from a time before he decided on the style that he preferred for orcs, which in turn became the “house style” for GW. I assume it was Kev and not the Art Director (Blanche back then?) because everything seems to have been FFA-crazy in those earlier Ansell years…
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