Rogue Trooper Traitor General
It’s Bob Naismith Challenge Time on the Oldhammer Community. Painters the world over are working on pieces from the grandmaster’s extensive back catalogue of gems, to be judged by the Lord Bob Almighty himself. Bob was so prolific in the 1980s (and still is today) that my shortlist of entries was 38 ideas, and one mini that bubbled to the surface was the Traitor General.
The Traitor General is the central antagonist in 2000AD’s Rogue Trooper strip – a treacherous military commander being hunted by the eponymous Rogue Trooper.
The Citadel Miniature is a great likeness of the comic art, burnt face and all. Bob’s sculpted him with a blinded swollen eye, permanent snarl from soft tissue damage to the lips, and the ultimate signaller of evil – a bald head.
I have modified the miniature – filing away the original scupted detail of the burnt scalp, which I feared would look like a hairpiece rather than damaged skin.
The miniature came courtesy of Jason Fulford, who’s already painted a copy and has been a great help pointing me at reference material and inspiration for the colours. A lot of Citadel’s 2000AD range never appeared painted in the official publications, and the comics were in black and white so colour choices took some research. Thanks, Jason!
There’s still loads of time to get your own entry into the competition, just head over to the Oldhammer Community for full details.
But this one miniature isn’t my complete entry to the competition. Coming soon… more Naismithery!
He looks lovely Chris! It’s really pleasing to see a great paint job on such a cool mini.
The burnt scalp detail was filed away you say? It would have looked too messy and/or too difficult to paint it to look like burnt skin?
Thanks Papa! Yeah, I got as far as base coats then got out the files.
I wasn’t confident I could get it looking like a bad wig, or something dropped onto his head.
Filing the sculpted head detail off really improves the mini in my book – it removes a slightly confusing element and increases the likeness to the drawn character. I wonder though if you could have added some painted scarring and blotches on the scalp to evoke the artwork? Not that I don’t like big pink baldies like Richard O’Brien of course.
The camo trousers work very nicely indeed too. Great job!
Thanks axiom! I was actually going to add some nasty red and purple paint blotches but totally forgot until I’d finished the photographs last night! I got carried away with the camoflague pattern and forgot the other finishing touches. Oops.
That’s impressive, I can see the messed up areas of the model (casting issues) but you manage to fly between those and never get trapped, Impressive !
What the others said, you made an improvement to the mini by taking that decision. Judging by the WIP pic, it really has a comic-book from the 80’s hair style, I know what you mean. I think you did right and the result speaks by itself.