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Vulkan?

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/The_Horus_Heresy/HORUS_HERESY_CHARACTER_SERIES/VULKAN_PRIMARCH_OF_THE_SALAMANDERS.html

Paint your dudes with whatever skin color you like. It's a massive, massive universe, so there's people of all races and creeds (including ones we wouldn't even have now) floating around. The game just largely has white guys because it's written and painted by white guys. It's just people writing what they know without really making much of an effort to be terribly inclusive. Some legions are chiefly a certain kind of ethnicity (Thousand Sons and Word Bearers, pre-Heresy, are largely Arabic, White Scars are Mongolian, and Space Wolves are Nordic, obviously) but you can really do whatever you feel is best.

 Brother SRM wrote:
The game just largely has white guys because it's written and painted by white guys. It's just people writing what they know without really making much of an effort to be terribly inclusive.

Both of these points are quite true. The latter is just quite surprising, in this day and age.

I'd reiterate the point that you should paint your minis however you would like to paint them. If you want to avoid controversy, pick an xeno army or just keep your helmets on!

One pragmatic reason for painting people from different racial/ethnic backgrounds is that you diversify your painting skills.

 ruprecht wrote:
GW has been pretty anglocentric (and a sausage fest) in the past, but that's probably just a result of being started and run by white english nerds, not deliberate -ism.

You can paint your space barbies whatever colour you like.

This is the explanation.

You can paint models whatever you like, any skin colour. Any colour for that matter.

What I always found humorous is that when GW first is going to include some left-out part of the world's humanity (women, people of different colour...) they seem to just make an entire army of it, concentrating each minority to it's own. So we should include women now? Allright let's make Sisters of Battle. Include blacks? Allright Salamanders.

Primary reason I picked White Scars over Salamanders (oh dear that sounds bad) is I was convinced I couldnt do Salamander skin (which isnt brown, its jet BLACK) without it looking like a bunch of guys in blackface.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Haha yes! I pity the fool who defies the emperor

I just wet myself laughing at this...

Salamanders I know someone probably said it but yeah they are the only black people in the Galaxy. Like literally I have never seen a GW codex with a black marines.

WAIT!! Dow 2 had a black librarian!

My suspicion is that most planets of the Imperium of Man have a narrow genetic range due to the founder effect. It would be very difficult to get a good sized initial population to form colonies, especially if they were mostly formed during the relatively narrow time span of the Dark Age of Technology. So, my guess is that you will likely find fairly uniform populations, either black, white, or other, depending on the planet and the circumstances under which it was settled.

That being said, I decided to paint my Astra Militarum Officer of the Fleet black to further distinguish him from my regular infantry. The Officer of the Fleet is an off-worlder and likely has origins from quite far in the galaxy to his current deployment. Darker skin is an adaptation to higher exposure to ultraviolet light, which might actually serve him well as a space naval officer.

In terms of painting, it is relatively easy to make a Caucasian or other light skinned figure look fairly good with little work. Base coat, then apply a wash, and you already have all the fine detail standing out.

Dark skinned figures take more work to make them look good. I start with the dark undercoat, and a wash won't help you here. You have to highlight all the raised edges with a lighter tone. Other minor features make a big difference on dark-skinned figures. For example, painting the inside of the mouth flesh, the whites of the teeth, the lighter colored palms of the hands, etc.

It actually took a little while before my collection of tools and skills as a painter were up to the challenge of making good-looking dark-skinned figures.

 zombiekila707 wrote:
Salamanders I know someone probably said it but yeah they are the only black people in the Galaxy. Like literally I have never seen a GW codex with a black marines.

WAIT!! Dow 2 had a black librarian!

IIRC the first Black Templar army list (in Codex Armageddon) had a black marshall. I think it was the first dark skinned human I'd seen in 40k (at least an official GW studio army).

But there might have been an African Catachan or two in their codex. I'd have to go back and look.

But yeah, even the Tallarns tended to look pretty pale.

A buddy of mine painted up his Praetorians as black and painted them like the Bahamas Police Force.

Hoodie wrote:So I noticed there's like no black people. So I was wondering if it's just grim dark stuff, like there's only white people now?

This thread comes up weekly. The answer is always "you're being lazy and not looking anywhere closely enough".

As for painting a black space marine, go ahead. There are several examples in canon fluff.

I have a whole black unit of catachans...

The Salamanders are not exactly "Black" (as we understand that term - Sub-Saharan African Descent).

Trying to claim they are is a bit of a stretch, and my guess (since I asked them) is that most Blacks would probably be offended by claiming that the Salamanders were Sub-Saharan Africans due to their complexion looking more like 19th century Minstrel Show or early 20th Century Popular music (Al Jolsen) Blackface (a DJ friend of mine just said, upon seeing it for the first time: "At least it doesn't have white lips.").

The Salamanders seem to be more a genetic modification than a melanin-rich ethnicity (since melanin would have a hard time creating that coloration on its own - it would need to act in concert with at least one other protein).

But the overall lack of Minorities in the gaming community is a complicated and complex issue, which has some unsettling consequences depending upon the reasons for the absence.

I know that my Japanese friends tend to be appalled that we act out WWII battles (a subject that is more touchy than even with the Germans). Although they seem to be much more accepting of Naval Wargames that take place in WWII.

But as to why war gaming is a predominantly white, middle/working-class pastime is an issue which I think will be a long time before anyone takes the time to investigate.

This does not mean there are not Minorities participating, or that minorities are not depicted in gaming (although the depictions tend to be hugely problematic in terms of social acceptability - the "Planet of X" trope, which seems to pervade gaming is a leftover from the 1950's). David Brin has written about the issues of portraying Minorities as socially excluded groups who form unified, and completely separate communities. It is basically. Remnant of the "Separate but Equal" attitudes of the 1950's that pervaded both society and Sci-Fi up until the late-1970's (Samuel R. Delaney has written actual academic works on this subject).

The furor over the Black Stormtroopers in the latest Star Wars trailer is a good example of the fact that these issues still pervade the community

But the gaming community could probably stand to work on its portrayals of minorities, and I know that it has improved since I was younger.

MB


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ailaros wrote:

Hoodie wrote:So I noticed there's like no black people. So I was wondering if it's just grim dark stuff, like there's only white people now?

This thread comes up weekly. The answer is always "you're being lazy and not looking anywhere closely enough".

As for painting a black space marine, go ahead. There are several examples in canon fluff.

The fact that you have to "look closely enough should be a clue that thee representation of ethnicities within the genre is not representative of our society.

One needn't "Look closely" within our society to notice ethnicities within our world. Yet one must look for exceptions and rare occurrences among the gaming genres to find such ethnicities.

MB

I've painted about 30% of my more generic Imperial Guardsmen with African skin tones since they were called Imperial Army. I also do a variety of "brown" tones that (as far as I am concerned) cover evrything from Olive-skinned Mediterranean types, through Arabs, Asian Indians to Burmese.

My Tallarn Desert raiders are painted as Arabs, not as TH Lawrence.

My Space Marines have a mix of ethnicities' skin tones in them. If I ever get around to doing my Salamanders, they will have African skin tones similar to those that were first shown with the Salamanders, because screw that awful retcon.

This topic has been talked to death for 25+ years of 40k, but yes, we do not see much variation in the story, fluff, but Salamanders.
.
I always wanted to make this army as IG; http://www.motifake.com/image/demotivational-poster/0801/war-face-demotivational-poster-1200163691.jpg

i think the model in the OP looks like Sloth from the Goonies, if he had a beard

This model has since been stolen from me so I can't provide you with better pictures, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Um, the threads about 40k, not wfb.

I figured that by the time 38,000 years have gone by, everyone has just kinda blended into one color.... which is, of course, a plastic-y grey

I'm prety sure that in the THQ Dawn Of War series of games, Inquisitor Toth is quite dark skinned. Or did I make that up entirely? .. he could be gdubs token guy?

 Dramagod2 wrote:
I figured that by the time 38,000 years have gone by, everyone has just kinda blended into one color.... which is, of course, a plastic-y grey

Lol

Some research now points to skin color in europe evolving pale skin in less than 5,000 years. There was probably enough time during the dark ages for planetary populations to have split from their founders skin color.

The current thought is:

Hairy pre-humans were covered in hair, and it didn't really matter what their skin color was. Apes are grayish/beige without hair, check google.

Once they left the woosd and hit the plains, that hair was too hot so early humans lost their hair. But without hair the ultraviolet light levels at the equator were bad news, so they evolved dark skin to protect from the damage from ultraviolet rays.

Then when humans moved to areas with less direct sunlight, they evolved lighter skin because you need a certain amoutn of UV to make Vitamin D. A few places where we could get it in in our diet, the skin color stayed dark.

So once humans lost all their technology, people with dark skin in northern areas are going to get Rickitts, and people with light skin in equatorial are are going to have vitamin deficiencies, sunburn, and skin cancer. And eventually it would all largely balance out and you'd get a dispersion similiar to earth given similiar conditions.

If nobody else mentioned it, Dragon Forge and Mad Robot have kits with obviously black heads (male). Crooked Dice and maybe another place..but I am drawing a blank, have black female heads.

From a modeling perspective. Paint your models how you want them to be. From this thread perspective. This is becoming more of a debate about why there is or few in the genre ? I feel this thread is more general talk than modeling.

Yes, indeed.

Debate the the other aspects of the subject in the appropriate sub-forum.

Let's keep the P&M forums about P&M.

I own these, they're great casts.


These are some Mad Robot ones.. I actually own these as well Also great casts!



The Crooked Dice Female Heads


If you look through the Crooked Dice store though, I think you'll see that you can pretty much paint up your models with whatever skin color you want.

I have heard some people mention difficulty with painting darker skin color. For me, I plan on starting with a lighter brown base color and using washes until the skintone is where I want it. I think when you start with too dark of a base color and are planning on ending up with a dark color it's just way too difficult to get believable highlights.

 scuzz_bucket wrote:
Um, the threads about 40k, not wfb.

It's converted for 40k. Regarding how to paint, you should start with a really dark brown base, and use many levels of highlights. I usually use about seven or eight paints.

Here you go. It's not hard and doesn't need a fuss. Just do it.