Most of the potential choices were eliminated quite quickly though as it turned out they were released on the wrong side of the year 2000. Choice made, I set about securing a new on sprue Kev Adams and Jes Goodwin ork boy to paint. Having found a seller with some for a decent price, I decided to grab a Perry twins sculpted gretchin from them as well - if I was going back to '93, I might as well go all in!
When the minis arrived, it took a surprising amount of effort (mental, not physical) to remove them from the sprue, I felt a little like I was harming historical artefacts which is probably a bit of an odd way to feel about bits of plastic, but I was really conscious that the minis are not very much younger than I am and they were still as they had come out of the factory at Lenton. Having overcome the headweasels, cleaned up and assembled the minis, I started to think about how I was going to paint them. With the ork boy being my primary focus as he would be my competition entry, I turned to the original source of orky know-whatz Codex: Orks which I'd been fortunate to grab a second hand copy of a few years back.
The lore and rules for the orks might have evolved over the last 32 years, but sandwiched between the ork banners and the wargear cards are 12 glorious pages of orks painted by the 'Eavy Metal team and after some leafing back and forth, I decided there was really only one tribe that my ork could hail from, the Goffs. I picked out some elements the models painted by the 'Eavy Metal team that I particularly liked and got started.
I'm not sure why I was so taken with the green flak armour, but it's one of my favourite parts of the ork boy. I also thought I'd have a bit of fun with some parts too, for example his boots are painted to look a bit like Dr Martens. I carried this over into the markings he's wearing too, with (claimed) kill counts on his right shoulder - five for his shoota and 'lots' for his axe. The glyph on his back is 'grim' meaning ruthless and dangerous and he's proudly rocking the goff's horned skull too.
Once I'd finished the ork, I got stuck into the gretchin, I knew from the get go that I wanted the autogun to have a red casing as that had always seemed to be iconic of 90s grots, so I started from there but kept to a similar colour scheme to help tie them together. Painting both minis was a lot of fun, but I was also struck by just how simple, yet incredibly evocative they are. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of modern sculpts, but there is really something about the slightly shonky 'hand sculpted-ness' of earlier incarnations of miniatures. There was also something quite fun about taking inspiration from 30 odd year old studio models but applying more 'modern' painting techniques to dial up the details of the models.
Speaking of modern models, Olden Demon has a Freestyle category so I grabbed a couple of new old minis out of the cabinet too to photograph as well - I ultimately decided to enter the Kev Adams Tin-Borg, but I don't think I've shared the Nic Evans Plague Marine on the blog before:
All in all, this has been an incredibly satisfying wee project and it's got me looking at another retro project I've been meaning to do for the last couple of years, who knows, I might go back to the 90s one more time before the year is out. In the meantime, as always, thanks for reading and happy hobbying. Oh and good luck to all to the other hobbyists who are entering Olden Demon!
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