Wayne England

I have some sad news to report. Wayne England died suddenly this morning. I am sure all of you will agree that his contribution to the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 (and beyond) was considerable. Thinking back on a lifetime of enthusiasm over his work, the front cover of White Dwarf 110 springs to my mind instantly. An inspiring and iconic image that launched a thousand marine armies in the 1980s. 

But then, Wayne England was an inspiring and iconic figure in the gaming industry. He will live on through his astonishing body of work. 

Thoughts go to his family at this time. 

Orlygg

Night of the Living Lead III: Wayne England and his incredible sketchbook

Good evening Oldhammerers and apologies once again for the sudden cut in transmission. Life has proved challenging in several ways in the last weeks, work on this blog ground to a halt and my painting station is now a sorry morass of unfulfilled potential. Still, there is always the work of Wayne England to bring a welcome bit of festive fantasy cheer and makes a suitable topic for a return to work for Realm of Chaos 80s. We have spoken about Wayne before and delved deep into his highly influential dwarf army from the late '80s. 

Those of you who attended the Oldhammer Weekend 2015 were probably saddened by the news that Wayne had fallen ill and could not make the event after all, I know I was, so it was with great pleasure that I finally got to meet the iconic artist face to face. Especially considering that his famous cover to White Dwarf 110 (the third issue of the magazine I ever bought) is my favourite piece of GW art, ever. 

Nothing said more to me about Warhammer 40,000 than that image. The marines were crazed, almost cybernetic killers that seemed, to me anyway, be lacking in any obvious martial code beyond the iconography adorning their armour.  And here it is, many years later, looking just as vibrant, exciting and most importantly (to me at least) unique. And to think it was done with crayons! 

I cannot easily begin to imagine the hours I put into just looking at that astonishing front cover, or the following pages from the accompanying Illuminations article. I have very fond memories of 2nd Edition Bloodbowl and the art that went along with it, not to mention the miniatures - but Frank N Stein, the Star Player, was the epitome of the 'feel' of the game for me. I can recall doodling a sad travesty of Wayne's magnificent artwork in the back of my Middle School dictionary, and thank the Ruinous Powers that it no longer exists too! 

Thankfully, we still have Mr England's fantastic original!

This battle scene also appears among the pieces of Wayne's work in the illuminations piece. I have always really enjoyed work like this - one of those cases of discovering something new every time you look. And it came as quite the surprise that there was another picture in a similar vein that, as far I can tell, was never released found in the collection of Tim Pollard - who, incidentally owns the magnificent front cover illustration from WD 110!

Chatting with Wayne was a dream come true and like many an Oldhammerer you are keen to meet the architects of the fabulous mythos we all so enjoy. He was full of amusing tales about the creative days of the famous '80s Design Studio and perhaps his most riotous story involved Bryan Ansell being responsible for the creation of Robot Wars - the once popular BBC show. Interestingly, Rick Priestley has mentioned the same project in a recent article which is well worth a look. Just clink the source below for the full article. 

“Bryan and I even had this idea for doing robots. You know those Robot Wars shows? We were going to manufacture robot kits where all of the electronic circuitry was built into their casings. They’d fight each other and the outer casings would be knocked off and they’d gradually lose their abilities, I thought it was a brilliant idea.”

http://unpluggedgames.co.uk

As he promised, Wayne brought along his sketch book and I had a chance to have a goof flick through it and took a number of snaps to share with you today. Of course, these images don't really do the artwork justice but they give to a great idea about how his style has continued to develop. 

To conclude, a huge thanks to Wayne for coming along to Night of the Living Lead and being so generous of his time. During one of our chats he mentioned the 'new' dwarf army he is working on, and hopefully, one day, I can bring you some pictures of that too!

Orlygg

Want to buy Oldhammer T-Shirts Designed by Wayne England? Last Chance to ORDER!

Roll up roll up! 

If you are not a member of the Oldhammer Facebook group, and at the time of writing there are over 3,000 of you, then you may not be aware of the event t-shirts for the Oldhammer Weekends that Wayne England has designed for us. 

Yes, you read that correctly - Wayne England! 

If his name is not familiar to you, I bet some of his work will be. He was one of the major artists working at GW during the Golden Age of the late 1980s and early 1990s. His works can be seen in many locations even today and his dwarf army (published in WD ) is still an enormous influence over painters and collectors. And by the way, he was the chap who painted that incredible painting on the walls of Bryan Ansell's home!

Not so long ago I published several images that Wayne had donated to help advertise the Oldhammer Weekends in the UK and the USA. During that process several people requested that the images be turned into t-shirts and Wayne dutifully obliged. 

And here they are! The first Oldhammer garments to be designed by one of the original GW design studio crew! 

As you can see, there are two designs on offer. The rabid goblins (my favourite of the two) and the longbearded dwarf. If you have a look below, you can see that these basic designs can be augmented with event specific wording.

The first print run has already gone out but Wayne says that there is plenty of time to do a second. So if you are interested, contact Wayne on his email account.

wayneengland@aol.com  

Prices: £20 each or £35 for both

all payments via Paypal

Available in charcoal or black

Wayne is happy to supply you with you t-shirt at the Oldhammer event at the Wargames Foundry or organise postage to your location. Just get in contact with him. 

Last chance to order is 15th July

Future print runs are possible if there is interest

NOTE: XXXL size ONLY available in BLACK

Acceptable in the '80s: Wayne England's Dwarf Army: Part Two

Last month, I posted an article about Wayne England's seminal Dwarf Longbeard force here on the RoC80s. If you missed that post, or are keen to read it once more, it can be found by following this link. Now Wayne's ears must be burning once more as I have heard from the Wargames Foundry that there is a very good chance that he may be attending the event on the 1st and 2nd of August. I have a little rudimentary post set up detailing this years extravaganza already, and shortly I shall be updating it with this exciting news and moving it to my pages section on this blog. 

In celebration of the news, I have tracked down the further reference to this very early '90s force from across the expanse of the internet (ie - followed the links I was sent by other fans) and have shared them here once more. The images shown here come from issues 144 and 148 of White Dwarf, so right from the end of our Third Edition period, and are really an enjoyable read if you are a fan of these models. 

So let's have a look at things in detail, shall we?

First up we have this new unit of clansmen with absolutely excellent shields. The white and black contrast on this iconography works extremely well and is ultimately highly inspiring. You may also notice a clever conversion or two, most notably the dwarf siege weapon crewman with this large spear replaced with the pole of a standard. A very simple conversion to execute on a model that is still extremely easy and cheap to get hold of. I shall be trying that one at some point for sure. Something else worth considering here before I move on is the presence of TWO standards in the single unit. This I really like and will again be stealing this idea. The thought that units would only wave one banner is rather silly now that I think about it. The more the merrier!!

This page chronicles the force in a little more detail and shares with us a rather rare sight, even in the glory days of '80s Warhammer: a dwarf wizard! Now many of you will know that the short ones were not famed for their magic casting prowess, preferring to excel underground with mining and tunnelling. If you scan through the simple list here you can get some idea about how Mr. England was structuring his force. Its nice to see a well painted version of the dwarf bolt thrower too!

The original article goes on to share so detail about how the units seen here were put together and include a marvellously painted unit of Marauder spearmen. As we know, these are some of the finest dwarf models produced by anyone anywhere - and its fantastic to see them painted up so well and in Wayne's collection. What you will probably have noticed that the colour scheme has changed from blue, white and black once more. This time green is the scene!

This colour scheme trend continues with this page published (I believe) in White Dwarf 148. Here we can see that old stalwart the Dwarf Flame cannon in league with a Bretonnian cannon to give this dwarf army a little more punch. 

And to leave you... Two images (again from WD 144 and 148) showing Wayne's army in action - back in the days when the Warhammer World had reasonable looking trees!

Acceptable in the '80s: Wayne England's Dwarf Longbeards

We draw near to the end of my long series of posts chronicling the history of Warhammer Third Edition. Our gaze must now fall upon White Dwarf 135, which was the last issue I bought if memory serves, as I switched back to Zzap!64, and later Amiga Power.

Warhammer coverage had been in decline for some time and this was a trend that wouldn't reverse until the publication of Fourth Edition in issue 150. We also now know that Bryan took nearly the entire painted collection of '80s style miniatures with him when he left and you will notice that older Studio miniatures do not occur very often from this point onwards. Even Marauder, long the 'official' designer of Warhammer miniatures, reduced their output in the magazine to 'army deals' rather than new releases around this time, though regular releases would return.

Still, there was to be a last hurrah for the edition in the coming year. A series of articles that many of us remember fondly and of which are still much discussed. Instead of new models and background, we got to see (for pretty much the first time) the actual armies of GW stalwarts published in the monthly mag. 

The first, and perhaps the most well known, were Wayne England's Longbeards.

What is interesting about this article, is it mentions some of the armies that were kicking around the Studio at the time. We can infer that these are most likely personal forces rather than the official armies we grew used to in later years. Stephen Tappin, the artist whose work we looked at a few posts back, crops up as contributor to the huge dwarf army that was being planned, but to my knowledge, this is the only time we get to actually see any of the miniatures.

The unit looks spectacular, and just goes to show how far some very simple techniques can take someone with artistic flair. The beautifully designed Perry dwarfs help too. When each sculpt is an individual character and not an identikit clone, the resulting unit feels much more like a swirling mass of boozy stunties and looks superb when photographed.

I love the sense of movement on the converted standard bearer too! 

Reading through the text, its evident that Wayne wanted to get a lot of miniatures painted up quickly and wasn't too concerned with winning a Golden Demon. In fact, you get a crash course in how to quickly paint up a great number of models and get them on to the the table, fast. 

If Helen of Troy was the face that launched a thousand ships, I really do wonder if this article launched a large number of dwarf armies. Though they were most likely not as beautiful as Helen, I am sure that in the eyes of their owners, they were every bit as remarkable.