where did this come from? Orcs

[ManicMan]

Okay, Not talking about the concept of Orcs cause there is SOO much of that in folklore which ranges from good faerie folk to butlers to Evil monsters but...

Alot of GW stuff is inspired by mostly Tolkien, D&D and Moorcock. pretty much in that order.. D&D is also inspired by Tolkien which leads to him having a greater presence. But I was thinking.. Tolkien Orcs aren't green skinned. They are kinda grey to black, maybe some browns. Tolkien Orcs aren't bald, they have hair. Tolkien Orcs are smaller then a man, with a human sized one being very rare, and they are more around hobbit size, to a bit under the average human.

That is... nothing like Warhammer Orcs. While most of the proper WH orcs are smaller then humans on average, part of that is due to the bow-legged nature, which Tolkien ones were.. so this really makes WH Orcs much taller then Tolkien Orcs..

So... where did the GW Orcs come from?

 

[Fimm McCool]

Apparently Citadel orcs were originally mostly brown-skinned. I don't remember who, but someone at the studio painted them green, possibly for sh*ts and giggles, and everyone liked it so it stuck.

 

[Brother Meredith]

Be interesting to identify when this happened!

 

[ManicMan]

yeah.. I think I'm gonna have to spend some research time

 

[Citizen Sade]

I suspect Kev Adams is to blame. Look at mid-'80s set box on the BC2 Monsters starter set & Ugezod's Death Commandos & compare with that for goblinoids on the ~'87 Machineries of Destruction.

 

[Brother Meredith]

That would be my guess too. Check out this blog post with the original orc mini that helped get him noticed at Citadel http://eldritchepistles.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-kev-adams-collection-part-1.html

Kev set the comical design aesthetic for the goblinoid range and would guess set them on the path to the bright green they became. The naming of Goblin Green would have helped cement that colour choice too.

 

[ManicMan]

erm... okay.. I've been doing some research and jumping around and.. I kinda got a good lead and it pre-dates Kev Adams.

I kinda need to check up on that lead which involves e-mailing someone who might have something which is very interesting to the topic (or atleast the path I'm looking at right now).

 

[Pariah Press]

I read something by Rick Priestley where he claimed that Dave Andrews was the first person to paint orcs green. I can't quit recall exactly where I read it at the moment though.

 

[Citizen Sade]

Oldenhammer in Toronto's Green Orcs & ham blog post mentions the Dave Andrews and the Players Guild angle. Also, I remember the letters page in White Dwarf asking why Warhammer orcs are green probably in the mid-80s. As I recall, the answer wasn't great being along the lines of 'Cos they is!'

 

[Michael Stockin]

Maybe with them being savages and loin cloth wielding spear chuckers, they feared brown skin would be too human, so opted for a skin tone humans don't have?
Did they learn from their pygmy errors?