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It's funny, the only known Black man I knew of in 40k was Inquisitor Toth in Dawn of War and surprise surprise

chromedog wrote:Because the vast majority of miniatures gamers are white and for most of them, painting them anything but "Caucasian" is going to actually require conscious thought.

It's not a conscious decision to paint them not-black. It just does not occur to them to paint them any other colour.

Add to this that most people mass paint their armies using the same palette, one paint at a time. so having mixed skin colours adds alot more time to painting.

There are black skinned space marines and imperial guard, all a person has to do is change the paint they use.

I paint all my exposed skin black. Flesh tones are much easier in dark brown.

I was thinking that most people paint skin white because, as a miniature is small in scale, the face (which is the primary part of the exposed skin) is the main focal point, and to have it dark could potentially draw away from this part of the model. Then again, I'm no art expert.

Still, I've run my multi-racial WHFB Marauder unit with great success.

melta madness wrote:why are there so few black modles in 40k some of the scaryest warriors in history have been black the zulus mr t etc it even says in the space wolves codex that there are dark skinned people on fenris so ware are they thaughts???

except you know, the vikings, Aztecs, samurai... i think they're spread pretty evenly.

chromedog wrote:Because the vast majority of miniatures gamers are white and for most of them, painting them anything but "Caucasian" is going to actually require conscious thought.

It's not a conscious decision to paint them not-black. It just does not occur to them to paint them any other colour.

Actually I went deep enough into the details of the planet to know that it would be a distinct advantage to have lighter skin. The people are a largely subterranian people who do not get exposed to a lot of solar radiation and thus have very pale skin as they need to absorb what does manage to get through and get what they can from the limited time above ground in order to produce enough vit. D. Dark skin would block more and thus lead to sickness and other health issues that thus breeds a pale skinned people. natural selection 101. Why underground? Because I like caves and such and thought it would be neat to have a chapter that specializes in underground warfare.

I've got several black Catachans... Now thinking I need to model B.A. Baracus as a Sly Marbo stand-in

Nurglitch wrote:mikhaila:

I remember this awful show on Spike TV that was basically an hour of martial-arts oriented nerds trash-talking each other and using traditional weapons on pieces of meat and sparring dummies. It was called "Ultimate Warrior" or somesuch. Anyhow, the zulus were on that.

Maledictus:

I agree. ph34r's gotta learn how to spell 'colour' before he criticizes another dude's lettering-arranging.

off-topic but that show is so great because its so bad, i recommend watching some of the other episodes if anyone here gets easy laughs at over macho bad TV!


I paint my IG mostly white skinned, my orges are darker, but not black per-say. And my orks are blue. At my old gaming store in Manhattan there was a CF army that was all black, and i saw some IG armies that had some black soldiers. I have also seen a ton of armies that are more tan than anything else!

It is really whatever you want to do. I would love to see an army based off the zulus, def a space marine army!

Someone already beat me too it, but just because its awesome.

melta madness wrote:guy who wrote this im dyslexic so liven up a bit wasnt a stupidity thing i just wanted to heer some opinions

Melta,

You're online. You exist in a text-only world. The only way anyone else has to judge your intelligence, or whether your posts are worth reading and responding to, is how they are written.

You're dyslexic. That's great. I know plenty of dyslexics who somehow manage to spell correctly. When I type in the text field of my browser, misspelled words get underlined in red. If your browser doesn't do that for you, perhaps you should find one that does. Google Chrome would be my suggestion, but there are plenty that have this feature. Your disability may make things harder for you, but don't treat it like an excuse, because it's a poor one with the tools available to you.

As for skin color, most of my models are green...

there are plenty of dark skinned characters in the fluff and artwork. a couple that i can think of off the top of my head would be Harlon Nayl from abnett's inquisition books and the remembrancer chick from horus rising. in the catachan codex i'm pretty sure there are some chaps in the artwork that have dark skin and african looking features to boot.

I think you're confusing a lack of african themes in 40k (which is unsurprising since the games creators live in england) with a lack of dark skinned characters which there are plenty of.

it annoys me when people self righteously read into something as trivial as the painted skin on a miniature space marine

chromedog wrote:Because the vast majority of miniatures gamers are white and for most of them, painting them anything but "Caucasian" is going to actually require conscious thought.

It's not a conscious decision to paint them not-black. It just does not occur to them to paint them any other colour.

this is annoying, I'm sorry chromedog but i can hear the PC smugness dripping from your post

Kurgash wrote:It's funny, the only known Black man I knew of in 40k was Inquisitor Toth in Dawn of War and surprise surprise

Spoiler:

He was the demon all along!

I'm pretty sure he wasn't.
It's been a while so i might be wrong but i'm pretty sure he wasn't.

Just paint em whatever you want.

All my dark eldar (the only army I have with dudes showing skin) are brown, because well...I am!

Melta Madness, I've often considered this. Although we are all free to paint our minis any colour we want, GW still portray nearly all the different forces as white. The only models you ever regularly see painted up with black skin are the Salamanders, and even they recently got retconned to be charcoal black due to mutation - a move I still think was racist at worst, ill-judged and insensitive at best.

I am caucasian but some of my Blood Angels and Chaos Marines are black. I just see no reason why there wouldn't be racial diversity in the 41st millenium (unless the Imperium is facist in more ways than we know). Individual gamers can and should paint their minis how they want, but I really think the Eavy Metal team should try harder to 'represent'.

Also, don't worry too much about the dyslexia, just do your best. A lot of folks on Dakkadakka are sticklers for correct spelling and punctuation, and as an English graduate I usually am too - it's important for clear communication. But I have several friends who suffer from severe dyslexia and I know how much of an obstacle it can be, even with spellchecks and suchlike. So I hope people don't give you too much of a hard time over it. Don't let it put you off posting if they do.

In the pictures in the codex's and rulebooks Ive only ever seen one black skinned person and that was a brettonian long-bowman in the 7th ed fantasy rulebook on a full page piece of artwork.

Maledictus wrote:there are plenty of dark skinned characters in the fluff and artwork. a couple that i can think of off the top of my head would be Harlon Nayl from abnett's inquisition books and the remembrancer chick from horus rising. in the catachan codex i'm pretty sure there are some chaps in the artwork that have dark skin and african looking features to boot.

Don't forget Midas Betancore and his Daughter Medea, they where black

It's the same reason so few models are women - because the majority of the players are white and male, so of course they want white male characters in their army! Edited for inflammatory comments. -The Mgmt.

melta madness wrote:some of the scaryest warriors in history have been black the zulus mr t etc

7/10

Nurglitch wrote:mikhaila:

I remember this awful show on Spike TV that was basically an hour of martial-arts oriented nerds trash-talking each other and using traditional weapons on pieces of meat and sparring dummies. It was called "Ultimate Warrior" or somesuch. Anyhow, the zulus were on that.

Maledictus:

I agree. ph34r's gotta learn how to spell 'colour' before he criticizes another dude's lettering-arranging.

Ok, quite off-topic but, American English brother. Color = Colour

I can´t recall any GW´s artwork with a black person -or asian, hispanic....- anyway. Its quite an ethnocentric universe.

Wiglaf wrote:I can´t recall any GW´s artwork with a black person -or asian, hispanic....- anyway. Its quite an ethnocentric universe.

White Scars are based on Mongolians and the Tallarn IG are based on Arabs.

Rube wrote:It's the same reason so few models are women - because the majority of the players are white and male, so of course they want white male characters in their army! Statistically, white men are the most racist, sexist people on the planet.

can i actually see a source for that, cos try talking about how sexist a 'white man' is to an african girl who has just been brutally raped/circumsised, or an saudi girl that has been left to burn to death because they weren't dressed 'properly', or afgan women stones to death for wanting to learn, or the mass genocides in africa by africans on other tribes of africans.

give it a rest, stop talking rubbish.

undivided wrote:

Wiglaf wrote:I can´t recall any GW´s artwork with a black person -or asian, hispanic....- anyway. Its quite an ethnocentric universe.

White Scars are based on Mongolians and the Tallarn IG are based on Arabs.

also the 40k world is based on real world armies/forces, hispanics haven't ever had a unified military style image so are not represented as a IoM force, and to the fact that hispanic isn't actually a race and the majority of hispanic people are white that fall apart right there.

there is a very good japanese space marine force that was presented in WD and the collectors guide.

Maybe its only the white guys who are dumb enough to walk around without a helmet....seriously, why would a helmet be optional?

--then again, many of the chapters are products of a single gene seed. For example, I play blood angels and I paint all of them with blonde hair b/c thats what Sanguinius had.

You should include several black guys in your army, I think it would look good in the SW colors

Also, after 38,000 years don't you think that the skin colors we know exist today might not exist anymore? There is a high possibility that the average skin tone across the Imperium could be much paler today.

Besides, like everyone else said, it's a players choice. I personally pain my models as caucasian just cause it's easier to do, and I see no reason why little plastic men trying to kill each other need to be 'racially diverse' or 'politically correct'.

My old IG command squad was multi-cultural(actually the whole army was going to be but I did not get much past completing the command squad before I temporarily quit 40K and sold them all off).

My Command Squad had a Lascannon team, the old metal Medic(the one carrying a bag of blood), a Metal master Vox, and the Cadian Commander Model.
This One


I took one look at this model and thought: Hispanic; so I painted him accordingly(Looked really good too); My medic had more yellow-tinted skin-tone(so as to be Asiatic), and my Lasconnoneer was an African gent.

One of the old redshirts at my local GW was black, and had his entire Cadian force painted as black people, except for his CCS bodyguards, which were white. He used to charge them into combat yelling "Operation: Hide Behind Whitey is a go!" Good times.

As has been said, there are several ethnic models if you know where to look. The current metal rough riders take Mongolian inspiration, the Talarns are Persian. Salamanders are quite literally, black, though this is because of an anomaly between planetary radiation and geneseed, not the actual skin tone of the human-turned Astartes. The Librarian from Dawn of War II: Chaos rising is black.

A great source of fun for many hobbyists, when creating Chapters or Regiments, is creating a whole planet from whence the unit came. It is common for these works of fan fiction to have a basis in an ethnic warrior theme, so certainly Zulu Marines or the Bosconian 3rd, "Baracus' Bad Boys" Regiment are possible.

Manchu reminds you that racial slurs, even when used in self-depreceatory manner, are against DakkaDakka rules.

This topic can take a dangerous turn at any moment. Step lightly brothers.

Laughing God wrote:This topic can take a dangerous turn at any moment. Step lightly brothers.

agreed, 40k is a game where players get to customize their army to look however they want, lets just leave it at that, personal preference is personal preference. As for GW's portrayal of ethnic equality, I'd say from the cadian weapons team box art, to the index astartes artwork for the white scars, GW has covered all the bases, so let's leave it at that fellow Dakkites.

purplefood wrote:

Kurgash wrote:It's funny, the only known Black man I knew of in 40k was Inquisitor Toth in Dawn of War and surprise surprise

Spoiler:

He was the demon all along!

I'm pretty sure he wasn't.
It's been a while so i might be wrong but i'm pretty sure he wasn't.

He wasn't. Kurgash is wrong. Go watch the cut-scenes again.

StarGate wrote:why do they all have afros???

There is a reaper miniature with the afro that was used on both of those models. It's already sculpted and made for an easy conversion.

On topic, about 1/3 of my helmet-less marines have a darker skin tone. No rhyme or reason, just variety. The pulp-fiction chaplain I made for a friend of mine as a birthday present because he really likes that movie.

undivided wrote:

Wiglaf wrote:I can´t recall any GW´s artwork with a black person -or asian, hispanic....- anyway. Its quite an ethnocentric universe.

White Scars are based on Mongolians and the Tallarn IG are based on Arabs.

The art based on those barely reflects that, at least what I´ve seen so far. Both looks caucasian with a slightly different skintone -at their best-, its like GW´s artists were afraid of depict non caucasian people with their actual features to not offend anyone. But maybe its just me.

It's in space...no ultraviolet rays...so darkskinned peoples would eventually get lighter and lighter as time progressed, the same way people get darker and darker when they spend time under the sun...hence people closer to the equator are darker than those far away from. Well, in space no one walks around in a bikini or naked, so skin isn't exposed to skin darkening radiation. Space marines started out black...but hundreds or thousands of years in space turned them caucasian.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Isn't it nice to know as soon as we become a spacefaring culture skin color based racism will fade away?

Wiglaf wrote:

undivided wrote:

Wiglaf wrote:I can´t recall any GW´s artwork with a black person -or asian, hispanic....- anyway. Its quite an ethnocentric universe.

White Scars are based on Mongolians and the Tallarn IG are based on Arabs.

The art based on those barely reflects that, at least what I´ve seen so far. Both looks caucasian with a slightly different skintone -at their best-, its like GW´s artists were afraid of depict non caucasian people with their actual features to not offend anyone. But maybe its just me.

Have you seen the White Scars minitures, they are very mongolian and bone structures are very different between normal humans and space marines.

Shenra wrote:It's in space...no ultraviolet rays...so darkskinned peoples would eventually get lighter and lighter as time progressed, the same way people get darker and darker when they spend time under the sun...hence people closer to the equator are darker than those far away from. Well, in space no one walks around in a bikini or naked, so skin isn't exposed to skin darkening radiation. Space marines started out black...but hundreds or thousands of years in space turned them caucasian.

most humans in the 40k universe (including space marines) are born on worlds not in space.