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Topic.

If I were to start playing Orks, I think I'd definitely give them a different skin color, if only to be different.

Red would be the second one that comes to mind, mostly because of Warcraft 3. Grey or Brown would be the next one down my list, mostly because those are some colors of edible mushrooms.

Hans Chung-Otterson wrote:Topic.

If I were to start playing Orks, I think I'd definitely give them a different skin color, if only to be different.

I've had a number of different thoughts. The key thing with them though is that (for me) they need to be darkly colored. I never liked the cartoony bright green they recommend for orks. For me its always been a darker green for the orks. But a Dark Red, Brown, Black, Grey, orange, or even blue could be interesting.

In Fantasy Fluff, the darker the skin of an Orc, the more badass they are, hence why their elites are called Black Orcs (since their skin would be dark green to near-black). However Orks are part-fungi, so they might be brightly colored too (alot of poisonous mushrooms are brightly colored).

I've seen red, blue and brown orcs. All of them look good. GW orcs are great because their exaggerated features make it easy to paint the skin areas to a reasonable standard.

Blue becouse its lucky. Tried Red but they boyz didn't run any faster.

One of my local game opponents, Ramos Asura here on Dakka, does his orks in red..

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/250857.page

My Ork spore landed on an Ice world heavy in methane.
Hence the dark Blue with ice blue hi-lights.

Nice blue orks dude! Can you post some more pictures of them??

dkellyj wrote:My Ork spore landed on an Ice world heavy in methane.

I would point out why this is virtually impossible if not highly unlikely, but whatever.

Anyway, I'm not going to tell you how to paint your orks (I think they should be green, if only because that is a well-defined trait of theirs, just like how there are no female Space Marines and how all tyranids have 6 limbs), but have you considered the possibility of giving them the appearance of heavy warpaint?

chaos0xomega wrote:

dkellyj wrote:My Ork spore landed on an Ice world heavy in methane.

I would point out why this is virtually impossible if not highly unlikely, but whatever.

Anyway, I'm not going to tell you how to paint your orks (I think they should be green, if only because that is a well-defined trait of theirs, just like how there are no female Space Marines and how all tyranids have 6 limbs), but have you considered the possibility of giving them the appearance of heavy warpaint?

LOL.... im sure you would like every space marine army to be ultra marines, and all imperial guard to be painted up in some digi cameo ?? Where is the creativity ??

Paint those orks blue, it looks great dude, oh and i have a Hive queen with 6 legs, scything talons, and a venom cannon. Show me WHERE it says nids have NO MORE than 6 limbs, not implied and show me where orks are said to be only green??

I can see orks with brown skin, mix in some dark reds with some of that brown.
As long as it's natural i think.
Blue may be a bit of a stretch.. but i guess it depends on the end result of how believable it is.
But lets not make them bright red with white poke-a-dots.

I like the idea of using natural fungus colors, or even potato colors... and we all know potatoes even come in red.

KRUDD wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

dkellyj wrote:My Ork spore landed on an Ice world heavy in methane.

I would point out why this is virtually impossible if not highly unlikely, but whatever.

Anyway, I'm not going to tell you how to paint your orks (I think they should be green, if only because that is a well-defined trait of theirs, just like how there are no female Space Marines and how all tyranids have 6 limbs), but have you considered the possibility of giving them the appearance of heavy warpaint?

LOL.... im sure you would like every space marine army to be ultra marines, and all imperial guard to be painted up in some digi cameo ?? Where is the creativity ??

Nope, I'm all for coming up with cool innovative color schemes (and I despise Ultrasmurfs), but orks, also called GREENskins just about everywhere in the fluff, have a trait that is inherent to every member of their species: GREEN skin tones.

Show me WHERE it says nids have NO MORE than 6 limbs, not implied and show me where orks are said to be only green??

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/blogPost.jsp?aId=8100041a

Read the part where it says "All tyranids have six limbs and five armor plates on their heads." It doesn't need to say 'NO MORE than' it specifies quite clearly that 6 is the number, and the number is 6. It's also listed in the 4th ed. codex (and I would assume the 3rd and 5th ed. one as well). This is a long standing aspect of the Tyranids physical appearance from the earliest days of their mention.

As for orks, aside from the name greenskins, page 4 of the current ork codex states "The skin of the Ork is green and leather tough..." It doesn't need to say they are only green, the sentence is describing the Orkoid race, stating clearly that an Orks skin is green.

I will say, I think "greenskin" as a nickname for Ork is cringe-worthy. They're brutish, war-loving, and low-intelligence...and we mainly identify them based on their skin color? Yeesh. Anyway, that's not what this thread is about, sry, moving on...

I have some purplish blue Orks, but it's because they are Genestealer Hybrids (back in the day anything could be infected by Genestealers) Probably not exactly what you were looking for, but the answer is "yes".

Trees are green, except for those exceptions which people take great care to duplicate because they are unusual and which give us yellow, red and variegated leaves.
I see no reason why the vast majority of the orkoid race can't be green with there being some regional exceptions based on peculiar circumstances.

Green, gray and blue are the only 3 colours of orks I've seen

If the Orks got mutated by Tzeentch, they could end up as multi-colored monstrosities.

And there's always the Magic Mushroom colors.

Also, Yeah I doubt the term "greenskin" would be politically correct in our society. However given that most orks dont really seem to care about it (or indeed anything else than punching your face in) I dont think that's a problem.

This topic has inspired me to do up some red skinned orks, and hope my running dice rolls improve! FASTA BOYZ, FASTA!

but Blue is the color of luck for Orks. Why only improve running dice when you can improve ALL your dice rolls? ;D

I already have blue orks... but not entirely blue skin orks... more like braveheart woad facepainted ork style
Plus "red ones go fasta" is an iconic ork phrase

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:If the Orks got mutated by Tzeentch, they could end up as multi-colored monstrosities.

And there's always the Magic Mushroom colors.

Also, Yeah I doubt the term "greenskin" would be politically correct in our society. However given that most orks dont really seem to care about it (or indeed anything else than punching your face in) I dont think that's a problem.

I've fairly certain advocates of political correctness were visited by the Inquisition and never seen from again. Orks seem to like it, green iz da best!

Can't say I've painted mine any other color, though I went for a dark green instead of bright cartoony green

I paint my orks red, with orange eyes. for war paint I use shadow grey or a blue, like deff skullz, as its a nice contrast. Got the idea from WC3 but it still looks nice and is a change from the normal green.

Personally i don't like the bright goblin green that GW recommends. I like to use Camo green as the highlight tones for my orks.
It gives them a more "earthy" green color than goblin green.

I saw blue-ish orks in a French GW on vacation once, they were awesome. Not smurf blue, but a very pale blue/white-ish, they were on a frozen planet, around their nose and lips it was pink/redish as if it was warmer. They were awesome, i'm not a good enough painter to recreate it though.

I start my orks off with a green that is almost black, and than highlight with lighter shades, with lower rank orks getting the lightest shades.

@daggermaw: Where did you get your avatar? i never could get to him in the game.

brown is good

Just give them face paint in whatever colour you like, but green arms. Death Skullz, in particular, are well known for face paint.

I'm currently painting my orks in a dwarf flesh with ogryn flesh wash and gryphone sepia wash over it.
My basic fluff is that my warband is a group of Blood Axes that believe if they 'camoflage' their skin to look
like 'da humies skin' they'll be able to sneak up on the humans far easier. Hence the painboy altered the
pigmentation of their skin to look more human.

I chose to make my orks unique by using a bright, pearlescent macaw green. This is the kind of paint they use for cars. It makes the light play with them in interesting ways, but doesn't photograph great.