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Some marine chapters and legions recruit from a single planet. The process of geenseed infusion also tend to morph the facial features of any recruit closer to their gene-sire primarch, and the Alpha Legion in in particular strive to have everyone look as similar as possible using surgery for extra likeness. So while it's sometime fitting for everyone to look more or less the same, for other legions/chapters, having divergent facial features is a cool touch to show the scope of their recruitment. To some extent one can simply paint bare heads in various skin-tones, but it looks a lot better if the heads are designed with different morphological features.

For my WorldEater force I've long strived to seek out heads of various ethnicities to personalize my army and to display the wide net of recruitment utilized by the sons of Angron.

This is the sources I've found so far:

http://www.dragonforge.com/Painting%20service/for%20sale/conversion_parts.htm

African

Looks like this on a marine:


https://puppetswar.eu/product.php?id_product=32

North- and South american native
(These heads are on their way out from the puppetswar stock. Presumably since they don't look very good IMO. They do however look a lot better IRL than in these pics)



https://puppetswar.eu/models-and-bits-46/all-bits/heads/cossack-heads.html
Eastern european / Slavic (I don't know if there is any morphological difference to speak of in 28mm though, so it might just be the distinctive haircuts .
BEWARE, I bought a set of these but they're not well scaled for marines. Too small. They can work for scouts or smaller human figures though.
I believe a newer version is now sold, which might be better scaled for marines.


https://puppetswar.eu/models-and-bits-46/all-bits/heads/norsemen-heads.html
Northern/Scandinavian
(I guess there's an abundance of spacewolfs filling this niche as well, but they tend to have a bit too crazy haircuts for my liking)



http://www.spellcrow.com/wolves-space-knights-heads-p-234.html
Nordic/Germanic

Also, we have the dreaded Disco Marines(!)

http://www.spellcrow.com/disco-knights-heads-p-350.html
(The guys with the big afro-haircuts is perhaps a bit too lighthearted a look for many of the armies in the grimdark future, and the quality seems a bit questionable IMO, but I included them for completeness)

And the newest source I just found thanks to a tip from a friend.

Aurel_309 on Shapeways
https://www.shapeways.com/shops/aurel-1

Here we have collections of both African and Asian heads.


I'm particularly exited by the latter, as asian heads are hard to come by in a suitable size. There's a fair but of historical models of course but those tend to be in too small or large size.

There's also caucasian heads, plus women heads of various ethnicities. Great for mixed-gender guard regiments!
And they scale well to GW models.




Let me know if there are any more heads out there that I've missed.

Yeesh those native puppetwar heads.

Victorian Miniatures and Statuesque minis both make some decent female heads for assorted races.

Thanks for sharing! I wasn’t aware of Aurel.

Wow, most of those heads are awesome! If I ever did an IG army these would be great way to give the infantry some character and keep the painting process interesting

Badablack wrote:Yeesh those native puppetwar heads.

Victorian Miniatures and Statuesque minis both make some decent female heads for assorted races.

Yeah, the native heads look really rough, but noticeble better in person compared to the renders.
I've painted up one of them and he looks like a human Though admittedly, the sculpting has a somewhat dated look.

vizier wrote:Thanks for sharing! I wasn’t aware of Aurel.

You're welcome! Just heard of Aurel myself. Looking forward to trying them out if I can muster up a shapeways order sometime.

Snake Tortoise wrote:Wow, most of those heads are awesome! If I ever did an IG army these would be great way to give the infantry some character and keep the painting process interesting

Indeed. Having a good variety of heads has really helped with freshening up the process of a marine legion force, as they tend to get very similar otherwise.
There's really a wealth of heads around these days. Lots of opportunities to have some ladies on the battlefield too.

Great resource!

If my painting skills were up to anything fancier than 'slap on a basecoat and ink it' I'd be all over this...

For those of you who've always wanted Wesley Snipes, Laurence Fishbourne and Barack Obama in their Space Marine army.

I'm sure any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental.

Well hot damn, those shapeways designs are fantastic. And they're even not hideously expensive.

Thanks for sharing, some of those look really good.

If I didn't almost exclusively make models with full-face helmets/gasmasks nowadays, I'd be all over those Shapeways heads!

Christ, that bottom row, middle head from Dragonforge could pass for Barack Obama lol.

Neat, these would be great for making a more varied/individual Kill Team.

New African heads from Puppetswar


https://puppetswar.eu/african-heads.html