Old Eldar Concepts

I found these rather yucky scans of Jes Goodwin's Eldar concepts online. and I thought they might be worth a share. They first appeared in White Dwarf somewhere in the 120s if memory serves and were a rather apt discovery after the minor discussion we had with Bryan's undeveloped plans to do 'ork style' book projects for all of the major races in Rogue Trader. Perhaps these pictures were to be part of that project or perhaps they are just mere concepts. Though the adjective 'mere' is not really appropriate when talking about Jes Goodwin's work is it?

As I have already said, the quality of the images is not great but we can certainly see enough to instantly recognise many of the Eldar themes that are style used today, some twenty-five years later. I have always been enormously impressed in the amount of work that just goes into a concept and its background.

One difference that strikes me here are the way the unmasked faces are treated. To my knowledge, there was little use of tribal tattoos or markings in later editions, but the Eldar on some of these pages have remarkable '80s style hairdos and eye shadow... Or is that just me?

Looking at all these drawings make me wonder where they original inspiration for the Eldar came from, beyond the fact that they are really just 'elves in space'. Ultimately, the Eldar remain the most unique and original design produced for Warhammer 40,000.