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"Would You Like to Learn More?" - Hive Fleet Klendathu - Mood Board

It's an ugly planet. A BUG planet! 
A planet hostile to life...
Ahhhhh! Help me! 

- Starship Troopers


Welcome to The Art of Caesura!

The only Warhammer 40k army that I have ever collected is Black Templars (so fervent is my love of these black and white marines that I have collected TWO armies worth of them - one from 3rd edition, and then one starting in 9th). But I have always loved BUGS!!

As I kid I loved, yuh know, real bugs. I would lie on the side walk watching the ants go about their business and I even owned a colony of Indian stick insects at one point. And I have always prefered the "bug" type aliens in Sci-Fi over the super intelligent "grey"-style aliens: the Zerg were my main in StarCraft and I love H.R. Giger's "insectoid" rendering of the Xenomorphs in the Alien franchise. I like how these types of aliens often have some kind of "hive mind" directing the swam. Like a sentient natural disaster. 

Likely because of this interests in insects, I have always been kind of intrigued by the Tyranids in Warhammer. I was really excited then, when they were revealed to be the big baddie of the launch of 10th edition of 40k. 

One of my favourite renderings of these type of aliens comes from Starship Troopers where "the only good bug is a dead bug!" When I finally came around to thinking about painting the 'Nid half of my Leviathan box, I decided to paint mine like the Arachnids from Starship Troopers. 


I was amazed to see that I was very far from the first person to come up with this idea, and even Content Creators as influential as Duncan Rhodes and Elminiturista had already lent their considerable talent to Hive Fleet Klendathu (the origin planet of the bugs in Starship Troopers). 


Here is Elminiaturista's breath-taking take on the Psychophage (click the image for a brief workflow from his Facebook page).



So, I set to painting my own test model for Hive Fleet Klentathu (the products of which you shall see next week). I used all of the images below as inspiration - a mood board of sorts. 




I love how the Arachnid warriors use the black, yellow and red triad so prevalent in real nature as a warning sign. It is fun to adapt this to Tyranid bioforms. However, in Starship Troopers, not all bugs are this colour scheme; some are the vibrant blues against shiny black carapaces and some (the brain bug below) are muted browns and pinks. It will be fun to explore how I could incorporate these into my Tyranid models. Obviously the Psychophage (above) looks amazing with the bioluminescent blues and greens, but I think this would work well for the exposed brains on Zoanthropes, Norn Emissary, Neurolictor and the like.  


I'm not as sure how I could bring in the muted browns of the brain bug, without just making a Tyranid model look drab, but I shall think on it. 


I'll see you next week on The Art of Caesura!


Reading: Parable of the Talents - Octavia Butler 
Watching: Cobwebs (Netflix)


Next Week:

Into the trenches...
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