where did this come from? Orcs

ManicMan

ManicMan

Lord
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?
 
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.
 
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).
 
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.
 
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!'
 
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?
 
sigh.. I'm pre-dating Dave Andrews so far. I have well known early 1973s Green Orcs at the moment.. this is gonna take some time.. Though I wouldn't mind a quick message to Dave Andrews or Rick Priestley. Dave Andrews appears to be a bit of a myth.. very little on him (alot of crap on the Games Workshop Wikia which was repeated in a number of places like how to 'created and sculpted' the Skaven... which I talked about on this forum back in 2024) and it appears unknown if he is still alive or not. As for Priestley, he is quite active and does alot of talking and stuff BUT.. He has a facebook page and no contact details.. I don't have Face book so if anyone knows a contact address or some way to pop a message to him, that'll be great ^_^
 
ugh.. thinks are focusing around two people as a key link but neither appears to be contactable.. Dave Andrews, who appears to be a complete mystery as while he did alot of the building art and some great dioramas, there is also confusing and conflicting information on him (like.. how the hell did he win Golden Demon in 1996 as he was WORKING for Games Workshop at the time and around the time had in fact been one of the judges...)

and the Other is an USA artist called Tim Kirk who alot of people should know his work and probably why he is key to this. He has a website but it closed some time back leaving on a phone number which 1) I don't think is active and 2) I'm not gonna phone the USA on the off chance here.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top