Golem Showcase – Marauder Raptor
on September 20, 2011 at 10:21 amMantic have unveiled their Marauder Raptor. It’s one of the two vehicles featuring in the first wave of Warpath releases. Today we get some nuggets about its paintjob from Golem’s Tommie.
Before Tommie started painting the Orx Marauders a great deal of thought was given over to the Orx signature colour - red. The Forge Father signature blue scheme had already been fixed by the concept art – but the Orx could be anything. Yellow was out as that was the colour of the Kings of War Orc. Green’d clash with the obligatory green skin. Brown or grey would look dull. Black could work if it was livened up with neon detailing. Eventually Tommie settled on red. It also feeds into the idea of Red versus Blue.
So red plates. The blue plates have been scavenged from destroyed Forge Father vehicles – and so you can see some looted Forge Father caution stripes. I’ve been trying to work out what these black and yellow stripes should be properly called – chevrons? dags? bendy sinisters? I need to know as they send me giddy – when I encounter them in real life I go all faint and start thinking I’m a Necromunda ganger.
For this paintjob Tommie pulled off the tricky balance of wanting the Raptor to look battered and weathered, but also bright and photography-friendly. As great as the Forge World approach is (heavy use of weathering powders, airbrushing, faded drybrushing) it does wash out a lot of the detail and. The chips and flecks in the red are painted with clean and vibrant colours – Dark Flesh > Blood Red > Vomit Brown.
The last and most difficult thing to paint was the missiles. They need to draw the eye and not get mistaken for another panel. So bright colours to draw the eye – like yellow or gold? I suggested quartering or checking the missiles to make them more fireworky – but that would distract from their circular shape. Eventually Tommie nailed it with a vibrant green with red tips which didn’t distract from the shape.
Any questions?
hazard stripes is what I call ‘em… :P
I’m sure there’s a cool technical heraldry term to use.
It’s a nice clean paint-job, but I’d probably only give it 7.5/10. The chipping and tarnishing doesn’t quite work for me. The ubiquitous verdigris just doesn’t look like any real metal weathering, especially around the parts that would have heavy use (engine block), but doesn’t add vibrancy to the model either. The chipping is incredibly heavy, but only on the edges of the panels, which looks a bit odd, especially round the inside of the forks and mudguards (how did they get so chipped, when the panel centre didn’t at all).
I know the FW method is intensive and has its draw backs, but I’d rather see nice looking weathering, or much less. Mantic seem to be going for a more old Skool vibrant look, so I’d probably say less.
I do like the colour scheme a lot, but I think if the red panels had been a lot less chipped, but the scavenged ones the same as now, with less turquoise wash on the metal it would have been spot on.
Looking forward to seeing what Golem come up with for the other vehicles!
Fair enough. You could argue the chips in the hard to reach places happened to the plates before they were part of the Raptor – and they’ve since been repurposed.
The model has a very 80s vibe, and so the colour scheme reflects this. But unchipped factory-fresh paintjobs aren’t as much nowadays. Be interesting to see a Raptor in a muted olive scheme with subtle weathering.