Monday 25 August 2014

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.

6 comments:

  1. IIRC the Eldar as a whole were also influenced heavily by the 'New Romantic' movement that was around at the time of their inception; this ties in nicely with the eye shadow and hair styles; I guess they were Elves in a Space who were also fans of the Human League!!

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    1. Bonus point if you can tell us where the band name 'The Human League' came from.

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    2. Star Force Alpha Centauri! An easy one that!

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  2. These are the concept drawings for the Eldar Aspect warriors that GW did around 1990/91. And very cool figures and artwork they are

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  3. I've just dug out my copy of The gothic and the eldritch and these are in there along with some other sketches such as Eldar Titan crew and one labeled Eldar Assassin which looks like a design that was used for a scout in the end. There are also some designs for 40k Skaven which are wonderful and its a shame they never saw production.

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