"An orc is an orc..." Topic

The Mithril Miniatures Orcs are what I have always thought orcs should look like

I like those too. Those and the early Tom Meier orcs.

I like the idea that orcs are easily mutable, a bit like dogs. OK so you can tell that an Alsatian and a Spaniel are both dogs, but their features, size, colouring etc etc differ greatly Great-Dane/Chihuahua style.

So with the orcs, from 'snaga' to 'golins' to orcs' to 'Uruk Hai' with plenty of optional variation depending which Evil Sorceror type has been running their selective breeding programme for the last few centuries.

That said the Grenadier / Chronicle orcs were my favs, and black-grey with red eyes by preference.

The Orcs on the cards of SPI's War of the Ring, and Tom Meier's fit my idea, as do Angus McBride's though the Minifig Pig faced orcs are a kind of favourite because they are from my childhood an dthey have decent armour, unlike th esack wearing Bakshi Orcs

The first look I had was Rankin Bass The hobbit cartoon they had the GW look to them.

When I was first reading LOTR I pictured the orcs looking a lot like the ones in the Peter Jackson movies… corrupted, bestial looking elves.

These Ral Partha orcs were the earliest orc minis I had and I still really like them
link
They're a bit smallish these days… painted purple and lately get used mostly as demons.

I never bought into the whole green skin thing…
picture
most of my other orc minis are shades of brown.

Goblins were always a separate critter for me… out of fairy tales… they could shapechange or grow extra limbs and come in a rainbow of colors.

GW's stuff hasn't really effected my mental pictures, but when people say 'orc' I assume they mean the GW/WOW style orks.

GeoffQRF asked:
"Henrix, is that a fact or anecdotal?

Somewhere in between. It was told to me at the time by a friend and then owner of a FLGS who had good contact with GW while their main business was selling D&D in the UK. He was the Swedish distributor, and had to buy the TSR stuff through them.

Citadel/GW had greenstuff long before their competitors – there's a nice story floating around somewhere where one of their erstwhile sculptors told how they only got just barely the amount they needed for each sculpt, so that they could not take it away, and how the name kneadatite was kept secret from them – thus they called it green stuff.

"Citadel/GW had greenstuff long before their competitors"

Citadel, or specifically the Perry twins, were introduced to ‘greenstuff', now called ‘Kneadatite' but then sold as ‘E-POX-E Putty' by me on my first trip to England in about 1979. They wanted to know how I made interlocking chainmail links and I showed them. They observed the technique wouldn't work so well in Milliput because it lacked elasticity so I gave them all the epoxy I had with me and sent them some more when I got home. After that for a while the management of Ral Partha used to send it to them, later they arraigned their own supplies. It all was purchased retail then shipped to England so I'm sure they tried not to waste it.

The epoxy known as ‘green putty' or ‘greenstuff' (as opposed to the Squadron ‘green putty' which comes in a tube and air dries) has always been made by Polymeric Systems Inc. but was origianlly marketed by Duro. When Duro dropped them for a cheaper, inferior imitation Polymeric systems began to market it directly under the name ‘Kneadatite', this didn't happen until much later, about 1990 I think.

The story is unlikely, at least the part about not knowing what the green epoxy was, it's introduction caused something of a stir and was common knowledge around Citadel.

Corn shucks and hobbit skulls! My link to Totsakan is broken. Here is an image of one of his soldiers:
picture

These depictions of demons are traditional in Thai art and have been around for generations. Such scu;ptures surround most of the Buddhist temples. The idea is similar to that of the gargoyles on European cathedrals – demonic agents of evil bound in servitude to defend the holy ground. Monstrous slave soldiers, essentially.

Anyway, the Thai demons are portrayed as huge, powerful, green, tusked and with red eyes. I saw them back in 1968, when Bankok had more klongs and less vice.

I have always wondered such sources were not more influential in fantasy minis. The virtuous monkey army led by Hanuman the Monkey God would be a lot of fun.

Tom Meier: It all was purchased retail then shipped to England so I'm sure they tried not to waste it.

Probably why I never even got a sniff of it, I only did conversions and dioramas for publicity stuff when I started in 84-ish before moving on to painting samples for shops and adverts. I don't remember even seeing it around at Chewton St. but then again I only saw stuff when it was about to go into production. We did get the nice white miliput though not the nasty yellow stuff :-)

Thihs Wiki entry makes very interesting reading – especially "Orcs in other fantasy works":

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc

Cheers
Mark

My favorite depictions of orcs in miniature are Tom Meier's work for both Ral Partha and, now, Thunderbolt Mountain, the old Asgard Miniatures range and a lot of Bob Olley's sculpts.
I never cared for the pig-faced orcs when Miniature Figurines first produced them, but, as I posted earlier, I have some of the ones Otherworld released driven by nostalgia and the quality of the sculpts. My favorite art piece is Tim Kirk's "The Road to Minas Tirith".

I remember reading on White Dwarf that the idea for Green skintone was inspired by the skin color of a Citadel employee after a night of heavy drinking :-)

I'd like to get a good look at that Tim Kirk pic, but apparently all the hi-res files on the Net have been pulled….