C27 Chaos Beastman - Blob Head

I just love this C27 Chaos Beastman aptly called ‘Blob Head’. A very strange sculpt but a satisfying one to paint:

The legendary Fraser Gray painted this fella up back in the day and his version is truly splendid (see Beastman Conversion). The skin tone is just so damn good. He got rid of the mace and whip as he had a tendency to convert/tweak his miniatures here and there:

I could look at Fraser Gray's work all day. I reckon he could paint a turd and it would be a Golden Demon contender. What a guy!

An Interesting Discovery (or at least I think so!)

I initially wanted to copy the paint job of the Chaos Warrior (No 1) found in White Dwarf issue 101, but alas it was not to be. I just didn’t have the patience (nor the skills) to achieve the same paint job. I did however continue with the green armour look. Here is my effort along with the original:

 

Now, I really, really want Chaos Warrior No 5 (with the bell) along with everyone else I imagine. I once had the chance to buy him on eBay for the princely sum of £7.99 but I made a school boy error by making a best-offer and some other vastly-cleverer-than-me collector snapped him up for the BIN price (curse myself for all eternity!!!).  Also in WD 101 are some delightfully painted Chaos Thugs. Here they are:

Now, you might be wondering where I’m going with this but bear with me. Whilst flicking through WD101 I stumbled upon this:

It certainly was a surprising discovery because its turns out that Chaos Warrior No 5 (with the bell) was the result of a Citadel Journal competition. The Chaos Warrior was designed by a mere mortal (James Jupp) and not by the any of the legendary White Dwarf designers. Many of the Chaos Thugs were also crafted using the winning entries designs. Rodolfo Berongoy designed no less than 6 classic Chaos Thugs many of which are my favourite (No 2, 17 and 18). Some of the Thugs got named too (clicky link link) . I have many of the Chaos Thugs designed by these winners as will many other collectors as these were most likely produced in their thousands or even possibly more! Having read articles on the old GW staff, it was clear that there was more money in designing and sculpting mini’s than there was painting them. I just wonder if these budding designer’s ever got a slice of the profits from the sale of them. The answer most likely is, no. I don’t know if the above is common knowledge as I never seen anything written about them before, so apologies if I have just repeated something than someone else had already covered.

I’m a genealogist by profession and might actually try to contact the competition winners as I would love to know what their thoughts regarding the above discovery. A quick search using 192.com found Rodolfo Berongoy's address. On seconds thoughts, might be a little weird contacting these guys to talk about something that happened over 28 years ago!!