Brian Nelson Big'uns

Firstly, a confession, these are not really Oldhammer, being sculpted in the mid 90s.  But I really like them, so I'll be including them in my orc force anyway. I got these three via a swap, and they got pushed up the painting queue. There's a simplicity about them that appeals to me, and the painting choices are easy. 

All three were designed by Brian Nelson early on in his career at Citadel.  Sadly, although he went on to sculpt many iconic Citadel minis, he only orcs he did were these three troopers and three command minis.  I have the standard bearer, and I'm looking for more to bulk out the unit a bit.  I'm avoiding evilbay, as most of the sellers on there seem to have solid gold versions, judging by the buy it now prices.

Planning to Paint

Everything about these models is either skin, metal or equipment. No clothes or anything else. This does mean that they could look a bit dull, so I want something to add interest, which means the shields and any little bits of decoration (basically the belt buckle) will have to provide that colour and brightness.

I have a rough guide when painting units.  If the unit is mono-pose, or the minis are very similar, I try and add variety in the paint scheme.  If the minis are varied, with different poses and equipment, I try to give them some uniformity through the colours.  Of course, sometimes this is inappropriate, such as for uniformed regulars, but its a good general rule.  For these orcs I was looking for that variety, so I chose different skin tones, and decided to have different shields with some variety of background colour.

The actual painting was straightforward, using my standard orc painting style. As with the goblin wolf riders I added a bit of extra detailing after the wash.

Shields - a Splash of Colour

I had originally planned on using more of the Marauder shields, the ones with the Evil Sun, to give a nice bit of red, but a full unit of theses can looking rather regular. So to give a bit more variation I chose a selection of the old plastic Citadel shields.

While I deciding what to paint on them I looked at the standard bearer; there's a skull on the top of the pole, which got me thinking of skulls on shields, but not white skulls, red skulls.  To give even more colour and variety I decided to paint the background of each shield different.  These are taken from defeated enemies that the orcs added their own symbol onto.

I may come back to these and add a bit more detail, the eyes could do with a pupil, maybe red, and the red skull looks a bit crude. Then again, it was painted by orcs. I suppose a bit of blood on the severed head, though I'm not a fan of painting lots of gore on minis.

Once again I really enjoyed painting these lovely minis. I like the look of the trophy shields, and I have some similar plans for the standard bearer. 

One observation though, for Big'uns they aren't actually that tall. They slouch and are quite bulky, but I like that look. If only the range were bigger.

*EDIT* As Snapfit mentions below, GW have re released these for The Old World.  They are available as a command pack and a trooper pack with five minis.  While not cheap, I've seen single minis for more than a pack on evilbay.