One thing about the various models that we call “Oldhammer” is when looking for them in the old catalogues, there’s an awful lot of them that just aren’t listed in various catalogues. This guy is one of those. After a bit of digging around, I found a model that this guy is a variation of – “Mannik” of the ORC1 range, as shown in the 1987 Citadel Compendium. So given the way things worked back then, it only makes sense that this model was sculpted and released alongside. It’s certainly got the weird, malformed, and horrible-to-paint face that quite a few of Kev Adams’ earlier orcs had before he refined and stuck with the orc look that has remained today through any number of Citadel’s sculptors and even games companies (hello, Blizzard!)
The interesting thing (to me) is that the model on the left was originally painted by me back in the 90’s, along with the shield of the guy on the right. Basically, a couple of years ago I found my original model rotting in a figure case, and decided to rebase him and touch him up just a little. At the same time, I started a “new” version of the same model in something closer to my current style. Except.. in fixing up the original, his orc-face shield popped off. And then various combinations of the two models and the original shield fell in and out of the black hole that apparently exists on and around my painting area, eventually resulting in the newly-painted model having the original shield glued onto it, and the old model having the newer shield glued onto it as I found them and tried to finish off both models for the final time this month.
So now they’re both finished, but truth be told – and especially sitting here looking at the images as I write this, I’m not happy with the new (our left) shield. I think the original one really aces it. I’m going to have to go in again and fix up that newer shield.
I’ll update in some form once I’ve done that…
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Well, I think both shields are pretty damn good meself, even though I’ve got confused with old and new, left and right, and front and back views! 🙂
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Thanks John – you’re not the only one – that’s how the wrong shields ended up on the models! 😉
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Great work on both, I can see similarities to both models in the painting and then there are stark contrasts in style. I think both shields work, at least one isn’t a Orcasso ! LOL
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Cheers Dave! Looking at them on the blog here I do think I’m going to have to pull the newer one in and give it more of a touch up to bring it up closer to the original one.
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Smashing bit of work there, and beautiful freehand painting on the shields too, in fact your last few posts have all had lovely stuff in them, but you post them faster that I can keep up with!!
Cheers Roger.
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Thanks Roger – that was the backlog drawback of not blogging for a couple of weeks while shit was on fire in the first half of October. I didn’t want the October posts to drag through to halfway through the following month (like the September posts did) so I bit the bullet and set them up to auto-post every 12 hours for a week. We should now be on a more normal schedule for a bit. 🙂
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Really great. Love the shield work.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thansk Pete 🙂
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Those orcs do look a bit primitive in the face, don’t they? It makes me appreciate the evolution they’ve had in design. For the shield, if you really thin your paint down and give the one on the left some highlights, it should look a lot closer to matching the other shield. The colors don’t even need to match, I think the highlights and the texture they provide is the only real difference. Great job on this old sculpt that I would think would be hard to get motivated to finish.
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Yeah, I wasn’t really in the right headspace when I finished that shield. I wanted it done and out of here more than I wanted it good. So it’s just a matter of picking the right pale off-white green and dabbing the final layer of highlight in and it’ll be good enough. I’m still not happy with the shape of the face on the new one, but it’ll do once I fix the highlights.
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I can totally understand what you mean. It is hard to take your time on a project that you’ve not wanted to paint for a long time. It will look great when you get around to fixing it up, I am sure! 🙂
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Nice! That lead pic is pretty eye-catching. I was like ‘wth is this?!’. 🙂
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Orclones!
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Nice work! Love the faces on the shields! 🙂
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Thank you!
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The shields are eye candy. Very well done Azazel.
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The freehands on the shields really makes these shine. I prefer the older one, but I think it is mostly due to the skin highlights being a bit more bright.
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