#13 - 'Dark Eldar 2.0', 30 MAR - 05 APR

This week's topic is courtesy of Schwager, in an indirect sense. The topics here and here have laid the groundwork for a series of "40k 2.0" topics that'll be scattered throughout the year, giving you the opportunity to reimagine and redesign the races and aesthetics of the 40k universe.

To begin with I didn't want to take one of the key, cherished races that pillar the 40k universe (such as Space Marines or Orks) but to ease us in with the Dark Eldar. My reasoning is that as they've been relatively ignored for quite a while, it's easier to meddle with them without feeling bound by what the GW design team has stipulated.

You have a lot of leeway with this topic. Take the concept of the Dark Eldar and feel free to manipulate, mould or twist them. If the 40k universe was yours, how would you design the Dark Eldar? You might look at making them more (or less!) similar to the Craftworld Eldar, or trying to add in more piratical elements. Perhaps their long seperation from the Craftworld Eldar might have introduced some evolutionary differences between the two species? Perhaps your Dark Eldar have moved closer to the gladiatorial stylings of the Wyches, or the up-armoured look of the Incubi? Perhaps your Dark Eldar utilise slave-warriors or the like.

Key elements you should consider in your work - try showing us an ordinary Dark Eldar warrior and some Dark Eldar weaponry. You can of course go much further, showing us particular elements of the Dark Eldar society such as the Incubi, the Wych-Cults, the Haemonculi, their vehicles or your redesigned vision of Comorragh. Equally, redesigning the vehicles of the Dark Eldar (such as the Raider, the Talos and the Jetbike) might be a key part of stamping a distinctive identity upon your "brand" of Dark Eldar.

Please be clear that this topic isn't to draw a GW Dark Eldar, but to identify aspects of their design that simply don't satisfy you - aspects you think that can be improved upon. It would be appreciated if you provided some commentary with your design(s) to explain your choices and what motivated your redesign. Try looking at the existing miniatures line for some inspiration.

Good luck with your entries, and I hope to see the imagination of the Illuminati unleashed upon the WSG!

- Mol.



P.S.:

As a final note, this topic is admittedly "40k-only", but it'll be the last one for a while. WSG14 will be a "lighter" topic to allow you to work on your competition entries, and then WSG15 will attempt to be something slightly different. I hope you enjoy this topic and find it something interesting.

Oh, Dark Eldar, finally something really in my vein... very good, I have quite a few ideas)) *crooked smile*

After seeing the Blood Pact character sheet you posted, I'm keen to see what you come up with. This is a challenge that I think you can do as much (or as little) for as you wish - you can just do a basic warrior with his rifle, or go all-out, showing us a number of different character types, vehicles and weapons.

Just a quick question about this weeks theme. Can we redefine them completely, like going so far as changing their history and basic ideals, or should there be a limit as to how far we go?

Okies, as lately I start off first. Here's a teaser for the soon-to-be sketch of an Dark Eldar coven member as of now dubbed the "Sadists".

As you see, I tried to tread a bit from the GW's armored look of units, and into more biomechanical designs, with weaponry fully redisigned and stuff. Of course, bondage and general S&M thematics, as often with my work, are present here - they, imo, suit the Dark Eldar a lot. More fluff, finished sketch and separate weapon sketches will follow.

Dazz - I think you could if you wanted. As the new head-of-Dark-Eldar, you're free to retcon and redesign them all you want, within the spirit of the topic. Of course, this isn't a fluff thread but a pictures thread, and fluff is important only insofar as it motivates your pic. For example, if this were a "Space Marines 2.0" thread, you might want to take them back to the original "criminal/techno-barbarian" ideal instead of the current "latin space knights" angle. So yes, I think you could twist the fluff of the faction if you wanted, but completely re-writing them might not be the best thing. It's all down to how you justify it, I guess?

K-U: As you say, you seem to be the quickest gun on Illuminatus when it comes to the WSGs! I agree that the biomechanical ideas do seem to fit with the Dark Eldar, definitely. Is this how you envisage the basic Dark Eldar warrior looking? Looking forward to your progress! (I'll go add your points right away.)

Um, no. It's a redesign of the Grotesques. Or better say, a mix of Grotesques with Haemonculi.

The dark eldar are rather hard to redesign for me, had a drawing ended up as another craftworld lookalike...

KU-I love your work dude, its so detailed! It looks like probably another dark eldar did this upon a rival haemonculi, causing him to be like this.

here's one of the ones I sketched up. I'll upload more tomorrow. I need to go look at potential houses to buy, now.

Ok, So not a great deal of responses on here, I was really looking forward to seeing how diverse people were going to make the Dark Eldar, as personally...I hate the look of them. ESPECIALLY THE VEHICALS. So that was my main focus.

A little background (this will be brief as I don't know much about the GW Dark Eldar)

After seperating themselves from the Eldar the Dark Eldar fell on harsh times. They were hunted and seperated in coutless directions, only finding shelter on some of the more primitive and wild planets in the galaxy.

The dark eldar used descreet modes of transport and encrypted transmissions to keep in contact with their distant numbers. They designed their culture to look inconspiqious to those who still sought them, turning to a form of piracy in order to keep themselves alive.

Over the millenia through selective breeding they managed to change their appearance. looking more docile than before and seemingly by accident, growing a tail. Embracing their new appearance and way of life they developed their tales to become as strong and as useful as having another limb. They refitted their vehicals and ships to include extra controls, sacrificing speed and power, for manouverablitiy and armour.

They slowly began to rise again in the universe. large hulks of ships would appear from feral planets like mountain-as beasts still out manouvering any vehical in its class and using their toughened armour to pound into the enemy ships and swarm with boarding parties.

The Dark Eldar became feared again, but this time, not so easily put down.


Apologies for the brightness

K-U and Striogi I'm waiting the other sketches you were talking about.
And Dazz, finally something different. Nice.

---

Warning: throwing a punch of pics here. But hey, because someone has to, right.

I had to make little research and form a firm opinion about the present dark eldar. And the outcome is this, (please, don't take them too seriously):

And this


Off with the too many, impractical, 80s-like spikes, helmets, ym. (because they just look so stupid. sorry if I offend someone who likes deldars but this is only IMO. )
I doodled all kind of stuff but really didn't come into any good ideas. Maybe if I'd spent some more time with the subjetc, there would have been better pictures. And dark eldars without their spikes would be just eldars?

Here are some of the sketches:




That last one may be the only serious pic.

I like that last pic of yours tau's'ar'aww, looks kind of like a mix between a dark eldar and a necron, but losing the millions of spikes I think is the key here.

Plus I need to comment on the last pane on your first pic...COMEDY...GOLD!!! love the big heads and tiny body look, and the way they just look like they're scrambling around. Brilliant.

this is my submission for this week, I cannot stand the current model range, they seem to lack the refinement of their current fantasy counterparts, i decided to portray a warrior on a life or deasth hunt on the streets of Commoragh (sp?)



unfortunately time has been of a premium this week, so haven't had the opportunity to develope this further.


Calamity

Tau's'ar'aww, your serious one looks actually very neat. It succeeds to look quite sinister without GW's characteristic 'bad guy spikes'. "Off with the spikes" was also my base where to start to generate an ideas of Dark Eldar 2.0. For 'deldars' have always been my least favorite faction, both by their appearance ( at least miniatyres tend to look disproportionated with those helmets that have huge spikes/blades slapped on them) and background. IMO they could be easily dropped off from the general fluff since the only role they seems to fulfill is that of random villain...

Anyway, I thought that since the counterparts of stereotypic fantasy dwarves were cruelly terminated from 40k universe, the dark eldars could occupy the position of greedy, materialistic master craftsmans, at least in addition to being sadistic soulthieves.

Here's a bonesinger and a smith



And a ( bit rushed and ugly) sketch of 'basic' dark eldar warrior that I tried to make distinct from craftworld eldars without making it all prickly.

Here's the second set of sketches I did: I had started in on the jetbikes, as they seemed the best way to exemplify the dark eldar raider philosophy. I wanted to add in some Reaver elements from Firefly/Serenity... so here it is: