Ill look forward to your new additions to your Bretonnians :D
gIL^
Haha - fair point. I think actually I was thinking of non-human armies without historical equivalents and I just got fixated on the example you used there, which was stupid. It's more of an issue with 40K I guess, where there's basically no reason whatsoever to have a whitewashed galaxy, and even the one studio army that occasionally included a brown face - the Salamanders - ended up being retconned to have a genetic abnormality that gave them jet black skin and red eyes instead of being just...you know...black. Like people are, a lot.
And don't get me started on the representation of women in GW settings...
Thommy H
I completely agree but atleast there's sisters of battle.
If im correct the white Scars are competently East Asian though so that's something...
It was a retcon? That at least explains why they're still painted as actual "black" people (i.e. very dark brown skin*) instead of the coal black-beings they're always described as.
* Yeah, I'm irritatingly pedant about colour descriptions, but brown isn't black and pinkish orange skin isn't white. Albinos are white.
Admiral
They did paint them like black* people - see this image from Codex: Armageddon, where they were first fleshed out in any detail. They weren't all black (as you can see), they just had a slight tendency to paint some of them that way. Which is a perfectly ordinary thing to expect from a human population after 38,000 years of migration through space: why would anywhere be racially homogeneous? Did only people of Northern-European origin get to leave Earth?
What then happened was that they decided that Salamanders weren't just sometimes black, but actually had a mutation caused by their environment that gave them pitch black skin and red eyes. Like this.
So, in other words, the only example they had of an army in the studio that had a realistic distribution of different racial phenotypes was changed to be a bizarre novelty and the black people were edited out of the setting in favour of strange mutants. Basically, you don't get to be black in 40K unless you have some magical reason to be. You can't just...be black.
It's racist and I hate it.
*Black is a socio-political description, as is white. It's only nominally about actual pigments.
I prefer interesting things in my fiction, Mutations with red eyes in a fire planet is interesting as you said a Socio-political description of pigments is boring. So call racist if you like, I think it’s not Gw’s intention to recon black people from the GW universe.
Also if it’s a Socio-political description of pigments then why bring it into the fictional universe at all?
I don’t want to throw a spanner in the works but 38,000 years of migration through space would in fact create a racially homogeneous genus on a planet with no new immigration to these planets they would simply become the same colour. Also you have to remember is that the Emperor is white and so are his sons and so forth it would make sense that the Space marine chapters who are all from the same Gene Seed would end up the same colour, Sorry but isn’t that Genetics?
In addition in a politically correct society where people can call racist pretty easily it’s easy for companies to stay away from creating anything with black skin in case of unforeseen racial implications. We have all heard about stories about people and companies being labeled for racism for something they have done or printed.
I want an Araby army in warhammer but it’s likely we won’t because of political correctness.
Allegations of racism or bigotry can sink people and companies even if unfounded, If i was GW i would stay away from anything that could potentially offend, Whitemen, Dwarfs, Greenskins and Elves are hard to be offended about so they will keep expanding on that and i don’t blame them.
They did paint them like black* people - see this image from Codex: Armageddon, where they were first fleshed out in any detail. They weren't all black (as you can see), they just had a slight tendency to paint some of them that way. Which is a perfectly ordinary thing to expect from a human population after 38,000 years of migration through space: why would anywhere be racially homogeneous? Did only people of Northern-European origin get to leave Earth?
What then happened was that they decided that Salamanders weren't just sometimes black, but actually had a mutation caused by their environment that gave them pitch black skin and red eyes. Like this.
Thommy H
Apart from the red eyes, I can't really tell which one has pitch black skin and which has normal african native skin.
The way I see it, if GW created a specific separate army with non-white skin then they will offend people who see that race as being depicted in a negative way. The only way they can do it is as part of a mixed racial army, where people of all skin colours are depicted in the same way.
Getting back to the topic and away from are GW racist or not. These are really nice minis. I see you went for a lighter skin tone. I think on the Daemonsmith with the beard in particular, a ‘black’ skin tone would have been difficult to see, esp from a distance, due to the beard.
Was thinking to take my CD’s to the ToS, glad I’m not now as they would have been embarrassed to stand next to yours, great effort!
Beautifully painted…the lighter colored painting scheme for the war machines and Dawi Zharr armor is a nice change of pace. Normally such flashy silver tones make me think of the “good” armies (Elves and empire come to mind)…but you have managed a really nice balance of colors/tones with your models. Impressively well done :hat off
These look great, especially the armor. A suggestion though would be to paint the leather hand guards on the fireglaives, they look a bit plain compared to the rest of the model.
