Spotlight: Naval Officers
This post is part of a series of spotlights that covers the official info found in RPG material, novels, and general fluff produced by -or under license of- Games Workshop. Although the sources vary, from my years and years of obsession and research I can present at least the basic concepts that seem to be the stock and standard info that the GW design team has established and sticks by.
A spotlight on officer's equipment as well as filling out the fluff with my own creative material will be delivered in future blog posts. For now here are some of the main official images of officers that Games Workshop has produced. Some of these are taken from RPG game books produced by Fantasy Flight under license from Games Workshop, others are cover art for Black Library books. What they show is that Jez Goodwin's original artwork has developed and standardised.
The original Jez Goodwin designs, although black and white, describe the officer has having a blue uniform with "black leather jack boots", the sash is black with ends marked with rank stripes. It is hard to be certain, but it looks like there are rank stripes on the left cuff.
When Games Workshop released the Officer of the Fleet miniature they painted the official presentation navy blue with white arms and trousers. This colour scheme seems to have been picked up on in other official artwork. However, other artwork, and certainly those prior to the Officer of the Fleet model show officers with single colour uniforms and particularly darker, almost black, colours and this has been maintained for senior officers' greatcoats, which incidentally are reminiscent of commissar coats.
Note that on Jez's original artwork, junior officers have striped left arms which I think is a really nice detail that we haven't seen on later artwork or paint jobs. It doesn't seem to be a rank marking and don't seem to be chevrons, they run diagonally from the chest downwards. You can see that the stripes are found on other early pencil artwork.
A spotlight on officer's equipment as well as filling out the fluff with my own creative material will be delivered in future blog posts. For now here are some of the main official images of officers that Games Workshop has produced. Some of these are taken from RPG game books produced by Fantasy Flight under license from Games Workshop, others are cover art for Black Library books. What they show is that Jez Goodwin's original artwork has developed and standardised.
The original Jez Goodwin designs, although black and white, describe the officer has having a blue uniform with "black leather jack boots", the sash is black with ends marked with rank stripes. It is hard to be certain, but it looks like there are rank stripes on the left cuff.
When Games Workshop released the Officer of the Fleet miniature they painted the official presentation navy blue with white arms and trousers. This colour scheme seems to have been picked up on in other official artwork. However, other artwork, and certainly those prior to the Officer of the Fleet model show officers with single colour uniforms and particularly darker, almost black, colours and this has been maintained for senior officers' greatcoats, which incidentally are reminiscent of commissar coats.
Note that on Jez's original artwork, junior officers have striped left arms which I think is a really nice detail that we haven't seen on later artwork or paint jobs. It doesn't seem to be a rank marking and don't seem to be chevrons, they run diagonally from the chest downwards. You can see that the stripes are found on other early pencil artwork.
Comments
Post a Comment