Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi everybody,

I recently got my some Bullgryns and want to try (emphasis on try) to build and paint them in a Maori style.
But to do so I could use some help from the more experienced audience here. I would like to achieve a skin tone somewhere around that:

Can anybody recommend me some citadel colors to achieve that? My current go to for dark skin is Rhinox hide base, Doombull brown and Tuskor Fur highlights, which comes out pretty dark


as a weapon I would like to build something like a Wahaika:

Here my question would be: does anybody know of a source were I could get those in a size fitting a bullgryn? Maybe some 40 or 50 mm wargame?

I would really appreciate any tips or advice, thanks, Pyro

For a skin like that, I'd start off with mournfang brown, go through bugmans glow to a mid fleshtone. cadian fleshtone perhaps. Then id use a glaze to warm it with some more orange tones. Bloodletter, or whatever the new contrast is that's an orangey colour. This would work well if you planned to do tattoos as well, as you could go for a cold blue in the tattoo and it would contrast nicely.

Best suggestion for weapons would be the untamed beast bone weapons. Bit of shaving and filling and you could make the right sort of shape

I have found this article to help - its not GW paint but should help you get the right tone:
http://www.coolminiornot.com/articles/1310-ethnic-skintones

I think a medium skin tone with a wash of Seraphim Sepia could be a good starting point. It will darken the skin while giving it an orange tint. Depends on how thorough you want to be, but you can later glaze some of the skin areas with other colors to get it even closer to the picture you posted. But I think Seraphim Sepia will get you a long way.

Hi from New Zealand, land of the Maori.

Maori warrior wargaming figures are available, but mostly at 28mm, and frequently armed with European muskets (as were the historical warriors in colonial days), e.g. https://www.empressminiatures.com/maori-wars-7-c.asp .

Judging by a quick Google search, most traditional Maori weapons on such wargaming figures are fairly undetailed. This is partly because of the difficulty of replicating very fine detail at such a small scale, and partly for cultural accuracy reasons - each tribe had their own unique carving and tattoo styles, and for any warrior to use another tribe's designs would be a fatal insult (and even today would have you accused of cultural misappropriation).

But if you're going for a 'warriors in the year 40,000 inspired by their distant Terran ancestors' vibe, you should be ok - just don't copy tattoos or carvings directly. (The movie Moana had similar issues with Pacific tattoos and carving - could be worth researching.)

As for how to represent tattoos or carvings on a Bullgryn, both have the same issues - extremely fine detail difficult to even see. The obvious choices are:
- 3D printing at very high resolution
- painting very carefully with an extremely fine brush.
It can be done - I've seen effective tattoos even on 28mm figures - but be prepared for a lot of work and a lot of mistake fixing.

Hmm, sudden thought, perhaps the Bullgryns would also/instead paint or sew some designs on their uniforms and armour, which might be slightly easier to paint?

Thanks for those excellent tips. I have some surplus Bullgryn heads in my bitsbox and will try it out. The approach with the orange glaze sounds interesting. I never tried glazes so far but that might be a good opportunity to learn something new.

@ Kale: cool website, thanks. As I also have some iroquese warriors waiting in my backlog that will come in handy.

@ tattoos: I thought about experimenting with a really sharp artist pen. Also @ Clang: I did not know that copying a design would be considered unfriendly. Good to know. As I only want a general maori inspired vibe I will just paint from imagination.
I also thought about the uniforms/armor And was thinking about some polynesian artwork. Don't know yet if I can pull that off at that scale, but trying won't hurt

Tattoos are more than possible, especially on the big lumps of flesh canvas the bullgryns have. It just takes a little patience and steady hand.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Clang wrote:
Hi from New Zealand, land of the Maori.


But if you're going for a 'warriors in the year 40,000 inspired by their distant Terran ancestors' vibe, you should be ok - just don't copy tattoos or carvings directly. (The movie Moana had similar issues with Pacific tattoos and carving - could be worth researching.)

See I've not heard any criticism of the tattoos or designs in Moana, usually the opposite, with praise for its authenticity. They had a traditional Samoan tattooer consult on every part of the tattoo design process I believe. It's one of my daughter's favourite films, and I'm heavily tattooed so I did some casual reading on it.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Tattoos are more than possible, especially on the big lumps of flesh canvas the bullgryns have. It just takes a little patience and steady hand.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Clang wrote:
Hi from New Zealand, land of the Maori.


But if you're going for a 'warriors in the year 40,000 inspired by their distant Terran ancestors' vibe, you should be ok - just don't copy tattoos or carvings directly. (The movie Moana had similar issues with Pacific tattoos and carving - could be worth researching.)

See I've not heard any criticism of the tattoos or designs in Moana, usually the opposite, with praise for its authenticity. They had a traditional Samoan tattooer consult on every part of the tattoo design process I believe. It's one of my daughter's favourite films, and I'm heavily tattooed so I did some casual reading on it.

Yes, most people think Moana was very respectful of Polynesian cultures (plural, there are many of them), and the film is very popular with most Polynesians, who really appreciated seeing people like themselves as main characters up on the big screen. But I know the film designers had to be careful not to simply copy tattoo patterns. And some people were still upset about Disney 'stealing' another culture. It's unavoidably a moral minefield...

So I tried out the recommendation of queen_annes_revenge (more or less):

Mournfang Brown + Tuskor Fur + 50:50 Tuskor Fur/Cadian Fleshtone. Than carefully add Cassandra Yellow to push it a bit more into orange. Pretty satisfied with the result, therefore thanks again for the great help

I also tried out to potential paint schemes I want to put on the Ogryn armor parts. The blueish cloth comes quite strong as complementary color, but I also like the kilt going from Naggaroth Night to Emperors Children. Maybe I'll use both (blueish armor and violet shield for example) or paint one Ogryn in each variant.


Alsoplayed around a bit with greenstuff to give some Ogryn heads a more maori style vibe. The left one is intended to stick out his tongue doing a Haka. And I tried to give both some wild hair with a bun on top to make them look different from the "normal" Ogryn.

Nice work! That flesh tone has come out good.

Tried to build some alternative Bullgryn weapons with a Maori vibe. Inspiration was from left to right: Tewhatewha, Wahaiki, Nifo'oti, Kotiate. They are a bit flat so I'll have to try if they look good in the Bullgryns. Otherwise I'll try again

Now you made me look up what these weapons are. Very interesting.

Great and unusual custom weapon models and Ogryn heads!

I have some progress again:

Even if I wanted to build them as Bullgryn, I tried to practive painting the new skintone on the upper bodies. Also tried out the tattoo style with a sharp black artist pen (0.1 mm tip). pretty satisfied with the result. They came out a bit darker than the initial picture in this topic, but it's ok.


The heads before I fixed them to the bodies, already with some tattoos. I looked at various pictures of maori face tattoos and tried to get the general vibe without really copying anything. Especially as the lines would have been much finer than I can manage at my current skill level


The big boys now put together and with tattoos. I still have a lot of work to do on the armor, but so far they look nice. The blue gives a neat contrast to the orange-brown skin. For the tattoos I tried to combine various elements/patters of polynesian and samoan tattoos. A lot of wave and geometric patterns, a fish pictogram (upper right, at the upper shoulder) and a turlte (lower right, at the shoulder).

Oh, those work well!
Pretty near conversion!

Perhaps some tribal war paint in the armor?

I thought so too. Yesterday I finished highlighting the blue armor parts. I also ordered some decal sheets for printing to try and do my own. I want to either apply the red/yellow lotos I have on a regimental flag of my army to the two circles at the back of the armor and on the shields - I imagine that will be a nice contrast - or fix a tiki (a traditional "face" symbol) there.

And then I will try to add some polynesian patterns around these circles.

Wow, this is already looking good! I´m tempted to say it´s a shame you used Bullgryns for this theme because of all the sci fi armor covering the bare skin. I´d love to see a bunch of regular fantasy ogres done in this style!

 Pyroalchi wrote:
I thought so too. Yesterday I finished highlighting the blue armor parts. I also ordered some decal sheets for printing to try and do my own. I want to either apply the red/yellow lotos I have on a regimental flag of my army to the two circles at the back of the armor and on the shields - I imagine that will be a nice contrast - or fix a tiki (a traditional "face" symbol) there.

And then I will try to add some polynesian patterns around these circles.

Oh yeah, that might look awesome!

Wow, this is already looking good! I´m tempted to say it´s a shame you used Bullgryns for this theme because of all the sci fi armor covering the bare skin. I´d love to see a bunch of regular fantasy ogres done in this style!

There might be... I have the slight itch to collect and build an Ogryn/Bullgryn force of 20+ dudes. It would look awesome, even if it is a bit expensive. I already have my eyes on Mortians Ogres, the heavy ones as Bullgryns with Turbans, the "light" ones with twin heavy stubbers as counts as heavy weapons teams or Ogryns - maybe with a real arabic flair in mind. But as you said, the free skin on the upper body of the one Ogryn without a shirt and the fantasy Ogres would give a nice "canvas" for more tattoed Maogryns. I watch out for bits and sales from time to time and will see where I get from there.

They're looking great!

And here they are, finished so far.


The feathers were a spontaneous idea by my wife, and I really like the additional flair they give the big boys.
The beautiful beach bases are from Microartsstudio.
Also note a certain sponge/starfish duo on the base in the lower right picture.
I only realized after taking the photos, that there were still some little mistakes to clean up at the shields.

I tried to print out the "fiery lotos" on their backs and shields on decal paper for printers (first try with those) but my printer was not precise enough, so I did them freehand (the result is not too bad I think). But in general such decal paper seems to have potential, if you have some larger image you want to apply or if you have a really good printer.

I had some more tribal markings on the armor in mind, but I think it would be too much. Maybe on the next Maogryns I do. At most I might still add a little Tiki later on.