With the unveiling of Lady Malys I wanted to upload my wyches drafts in a blog entry.. and then noticed I skipped some blog entries I wanted to do before.. and ofcourse now I cant do the wyches before that.. Next attempt to really keep this going commencing.

Many of my blog entries will focus on drafts over my more finished work like the Dark eldar Graea character of the last entry. One reason for this is because drafts will otherwise stay on my computer doing nothing.. another is that I mostly only finish commission artwork, drafts are often just to get an idea out of my system.

The first of my random gathering; Karanak, the Eightheaded daemon hound.

Recently with the Karanak shenanigans I dug this one up again in support of a theory of his ( apparently not ) leaving.
Karanak is my favorite khorne character, but it has for a long time bugged me that he walks around with 3 heads, not 8. ( if anyone knows the biblebook revelations thoroughly, Im raised in a relgious households with illustrated children books featuring the beast rising from the seas and well before knowing Karanak that image had a strong imprint on me.) When drawing the concept I visualised a much bigger daemon ( more slaughterbrute in size than fleshhound ) with besides the essential ties to fleshhounds also a wink towards juggernauts. I didnt pull through my initial plan to have some of the heads be juggernaut ( or metallic fleshhound ) heads, and the result might be too simple.. reflected in a bare juggernaut hindleg.

Keeping with Chaos

Lets get one thing out there.. In contrary to probably a large majority I prefer gravtanks for 40k.. the brick shape of 40k tanks combined with grav tanks for me evokes better the intention of their look. Even more so with chaos... Even though I was having a break from 40k back then when I saw Firefly the Reavers vehicles evoked a very strong chaos feeling for me.

When a conversation came along for chaos tanks I made the following draft ( I actually have a wip extended more detailed version wich might some day feature this blog.) but I think I never posted it. While they shouldnt have legs or mouths, I imagined chaos tanks as possessed entities and one way to evoke this was have their pilot whipping the vehicle in submission. An idea I extended to a digital conversion ( for wich Im probably more known on the forums.) :

( I find it hard to believe Marines, especially Chaos marines would want to have vehicle babysit duties.. hence the chaff doing that job.)

Another one of these thought experiments some time was that 40k really lacks on Trolls, Trolls are iconic for Warhammer, but their comical nature a difficult fit. Many of my ideas start as the following, a bunch of heads. For some reason just drawing the head is enough for me to grasp back the original idea I had with it.. its my doctors scribling I guess.

The easiest way to do 40k trolls is to do them like any 40k greenskin... cyborg them up (1). Though for me it didnt evoke the feeling enough of the Troll as an unique auxillery to greenskin rather than an extension of the greenskin genealogy. Besides a little sidestep to nurgle (3) as nurgle can keep comical and cute and still make it dark, another step was going the "Trolls.. but they are actually aliens" thing. Both of (2) Represented giving trolls over to the Genestealer cults heritage, either a common creature on mining world that can get infected, or a side product of the generations, the top one represents A Troll as an extension of dreadjawz, but I get back to that below.

(4) is an out of the box approach, Trolls as a Tau auxellery race and one of the many blind auxelery races I have drafted, for an unexplainable reason I feel a blind species adds a symbolic element to the Greater good, perhaps one of the races I read about has been described as blind and its as simple as that sticking in my brain.

Weeks after abandoning this thought project I suddenly came onto (5) and no, its not simple a Cyborg troll again ( though it brings them back to the greenskin family.) my mind was busy with returning Tinboyz for Space Orks/Gretchin and I realised this too would be an interesting take on a 40k Troll. A robotic one. However, it would be a double up on Killa khans and Deff dreads, and it would miss an important organic element that gives the true troll vibe.

The key of the face is that its mimicking a flawed green skin face, but in reality its an organic fungal like lifeform, that grows symbiotically in massess of scrap.. internally the fungus troggothus will connect to pieces of scrap brooding in Space orks vast Scrapyards, as they growingly observe ( or.. more terrifyingly.. absorb ) lost grotz working the scrapyards, the heap will start to mimic their behavior more and more, and to a certain point grow a limited form of sentience, at wich points some of the internal fungal mass will grow outwards to mimic a face. Over time this can lead to large Scraptroll outbreaks that offer the orks a good fight, but not rarely they follow the Orks into their waaghs while other times a daring gretchin or a cunning gruntherd will domesticate a scraptroll for their own needs. Its definitely among a long list of drafts I want to expand on eventually.

But first, lets go back to Dreadjawz..

DreadJawz ?

This one too originates from the same place my previous 2 blog entries came.. the idea to draw more triumvirates beyond the 3 Gathering storm offered. And like those they had to be faction mixes. Whereas the Tau joined the Necron, Orks went with the Tyranids, though eventually it a concept that stuck for me, and has more drafts somewhere.

With Dreadjawz the idea was a return of RT/2nd edition GSC Ork hybrids. Though instead of a GSC investation that happens over generation, and doesnt really fit the lore anymore, it was based on one sentence about the orktarius war ( and yes, this draft is old, predating the 8th edition return to and completion of the orktarius war.)

It was described that the war was so intense that even on a microbiologic level the two forces where at war.. ork spores fighting tyranid genes. And that whoever wins.. its the galaxy that suffers.

I imagined the end product to be monstrous orks, capable of assimilating not only mechanical technology but also biotechnology and growing by violence and the consumption of mass. Even the esotheric getting merged they have a Waaaghmind that has the capability to control both orks, especially lesser ones, and function as a synapse for lesser tyranids. Basically, the ork/tyranid version of Ynnari, without a doomed mcguffin quest.

I recently even returned them in a digital conversion as one of the imho 5 potential future Ork kill tems ( in order : Freebooterz, (Revolutionary ) Grots , Madboyz, Ork hybrids and Burna boyz ( the likeliest of them all.. sadly.) though here they are more starved outcasts of ork society.

I shall end this with a Gue'vesa digital conversion, made for the same purpose ( a visual speculation on kill teams potential future.. to be continued... perhaps.)