Muties! (Pt. 1)

If you were expecting me to be bringing closure upon any project today... Well, you haven't been reading this blog long enough :D

Instead of that, I'm embarking in a new adventure! Oh, come on, by now you know me, I'm that predictable...

Some intro on this stuff. First of all, I have to say that I have maximum respect for all those concept artists, design developers and all that people who make movies, games, etc. possible. I know it's a hard job and, for each design they get approved, tons of hours of work are simply flushed away forever. Once I've said that, there I go: On The Hobbit movie trilogy, who on earth took the decisions about creatures, costumes, props and all that? Seriously, you can say what you want but, this is not a goblin:

Not a goblin, for Tolkien's sake

I don't know the insights during the pre-production stage or whatever, but the creatures under the Misty Mountains as shown in the film make me difficult to recognise them as goblins. You can call that a prejudice if you like, but those deformed, warty, harelipped, bulbous beings certainly divert from my concept of goblins. If that makes me a grumpy grognard, let it be.

A thousand times better goblins. Don't fit in the PJ aesthetics, but still better goblins

OK. So I have stated that these are too much over the top even for Peter Jackson's standards. I made my point. Enough rants for a day. Why all this intro? You may remember my Hobbit project. I got the Escape from Goblin Town starter box, so I have lots of ugly deformed creatures that won't be goblins on any of my boards. What can I do? Of course, I'm an optimist by nature, so I always try to take advantage of tactical setbacks like this. They may be awful goblins... but they for sure make magnificent post-apoc mutants!!

That's it. If I added some firearms, they could become nice nuclear wasteland dwellers. I immediately went for my GW Skitarii box...

Hmm. I can work with that...

A friend suggested I could make a Hrud warband for WH40K. How cool would that be? I could adhere to the old concept latest seen in the pages of the WH40K3 Rulebook...

Those were the days when Hrud were conceived more like Space Skavens. But after the release of the Xenology book that changed. A lot.

So I had second thoughts on that. Besides, quite recently, the most awesome Asslessman from Leadplague has achieved this absolute marvel: Space Skavens, taking the old Jes Goodwin sketches as reference. Seriously, pay him a visit, the blog that never disappoints.
Then I turned back to the original concept. Mutants! Mutants with guns are as important as underrepresented in WH40K. If I got some ugly people with guns they could serve as wasteland nomadic traders or whatever, not only in 40K settings, but any post-apoc or different ambientations. My first approach looked like this:

Still in early stages, of course, this is just a cut/paste of bits, but I have the first handful at least oriented:

I've begun to greenstuff a few of them. Long robes and stuff. I need to add some shoes or something; if not, they'd just look like ugly men in their bath robes.

 Of course there's a loong way ahead. Goggles, breathers, wires, tech stuff... I don't want to abuse of skulls, but maybe they're in order here. I don't pretend to uniform them; some will have robes, some will wear nothing but their ragged clothes. I'll also use some Dark Vengeance cultists heads as well as Skitarii robed heads. Let's see where this goes.Wish me luck, this is gonna take some time!!