Heresy & Heroes

Awww, yeah! Everyone, I’d like you to meet my very own Original 1991 Noise Marine! After looking for this miniature for years, I finally found it on Ebay, and after a torturous week-long auction, he finally became mine. And when it came to painting it, I couldn’t think of anything better than a slightly updated version of the original paint job to do it justice. Let’s take a closer look, at the miniature that I have always wanted to paint.

First of all though, let’s take a look at the original Eavy Metal mini from all of those years ago that I saw in the colour-section of the 2nd Ed 40K Rule Book. Here it is alongside the above image:

I saw that guy and it sold me on Slaanesh, Noise Marines and 40k in general. I was in love, but I never saw it in a store all those years ago. If memory serves, he was only ever available for a couple of years back in the days of lead miniatures. So when it came to redoing it, I wanted to do a very similar job with just a couple of updates. Firstly, starting at the bottom, I gave him a slightly more grimdark base. The rock acts like a little stage for our axe-man, and there’s even a skull that looks like he’s singing along down there.

I made the leopard print a little more leopard like, put a bit more shadow into the hair, added a Slaaneshi symbol to one of the shoulders, and used a more modern Noise Marine backpack – the old Chaos packs are hard to come by, and they don’t look great in all honesty. Other than a few tiny changes across the model, I tried to keep it as faithful to the original as possible.

After painting more sombre, earthy tones on recent miniatures, it was a joy to go nuts with all the paints at my disposal. I swear at one point, probably while I was doing the hair, I got a headache from all the colours (though that may have had something to do with licking the paintbrush and this being a lead miniature, but whatever). I think this is what’s called an eye-bleeder.

What I think is really weird is that this miniature, to me at least, doesn’t look totally out of place. Yes, he does look ridiculous, but he’s not so ridiculous that you couldn’t see him blasting people apart with his guitar-gun. Ok, now I hear it. But whether he looks suitable for the grimdark or not, he does look cool (provided your definition of cool is an up-armoured member of the rock band Poison) and that’s all I asked for.

Regarding the backpack, it’s kind of the good thing about the current Noise Marines being such an old sculpt, is that it fits in with this even older sculpt. And the demon head speakers definitely lend themselves to the heavy metal feeling of the overall miniature. That being said (presses play on the broken record player) some new noise marines would be nice (anyone from GW reading this, take note).

The leopard print is done using a method I’ve used several times before, and regular readers will recognise it from older projects. I’ve had a couple of requests over the years, and if I get the time, I’ll do a short tutorial piece on how to achieve the look. At some point. No promises.

And that’s that done. I can’t tell you how much fun it was to paint this miniature, or how happy I am with the result. If I had an army of these guys, I’d be in painting heaven, though I now feel the need to get on an do something a little more sombre, but I want to retain some of the flamboyance from this work. Let’s see what happens next.

It’s always good to bring in the new year with some fireworks, and nothing has more colours and craziness than the original Noise Marine. I think I’ve done him justice, and if someone asked me to paint another one, I wouldn’t hesitate (though it might take me a while to find another guitar-wielding lead miniature, so bear that in mind). I’m off to go listen to AC/DC and WASP, while I cover my head with a whole can of hairspray. Onwards!