The Old World Almanack returns for a second instalment of designers’ notes on Grand Cathay. This time we’re focusing on all the big kits: how did the Sky Lantern come to be, what magic underpins the Cathayan Sentinel, and how can the furious elegance of Miao Ying be captured in miniature form? We’re joined by designers Alastair, Giorgio, Nicholas, and Ray, and Dan from the ’Eavy Metal team, to find out more.
Sky Lantern
Alastair: The Sky Lantern presented a few interesting choices. As with the cannon, we only had one character reference for the Nan-Gau crew. We took the opportunity to expand the crew, adding a new facet to the army while having a bit of Warhammer fun.
Giorgio: There is a unique, roguish element to the crew, which hints at the activities of the kingdom outside the empire’s borders: trading and maybe even indulging in a bit of piracy.
Alastair: Before we could work on the crew, Ray [who usually designs the fantastic Warhammer terrain] had to design the lantern itself, ensuring it was at the appropriate scale – though we’re not really sure how it got to be the size it did…
Ray: I can’t quite remember either, there was a lot of back and forth! The Sky Lantern was a concept that we loved and had designed for Total War: Warhammer III, and it featured a lot in the cinematic trailer so we had a strong concept. The challenge was making it work from a logistical point of view: how do you make this into a plastic kit while making it look like something that could float? After that, the puzzle was making sure it was also something that could be assembled, painted, and fielded, all while fitting the whole thing on a pair of sprues with the crew!
The ratio between the gondola and the balloon was really important. The gondola had to be big enough to fit a crew that could operate weapons, but it also had to still look like it was practical to hang under the balloon. If you scale it up to accommodate more crew, the balloon has to get bigger, and then you’re using up more space on the sprue – it all knocks on. There has to be a line in the sand. And then you go past it once and decide: ok that’s enough, that looks good.
Alastair: For the crew, we could have done four crane gunners and moved on – but, like with the Grand Cannon crew, we sensed opportunity. These are people who ply the skies of the Warhammer world, armies clashing below, while they’re up here living a quite hectic and cramped life with black powder everywhere. They’re going to end up an eclectic, eccentric bunch of people, which is represented by the fact that they all share the same uniform but wear it slightly differently.
We decided to introduce the bombing frame option, with the bomb-throwing crew and short-range Iron Hail guns. It was quite busy fitting everything in, but I really like the vibe it has ended up with.
There was a lot of concept art for the Lord Magistrate and we realised he was a natural fit for the Sky Lantern. His table comes with a pot of tea and dumplings – he is not there to fight! That provided us with some space to have a different uniform and body shape than elsewhere in the range – you can even put him on foot with your ground forces. The Champion, on the other hand, has a completely unique design – he has a peg leg, an eye patch, and his own little bird. He’s quite roguish and a bit of a buccaneer, not a bureaucrat – he’s definitely throwing bombs, not dumplings!
Dan: All of the crew were painted outside of the balloon, as you might imagine. They have the same overall colour palette as the crew of the Cathayan Grand Cannon, tying them into the wider range and the House of Smoke and Powder – they have that symbol across their clothing, which gives them a place within Grand Cathay itself, and once more helps split them out amongst the range.
While painting the Sky Lantern wasn’t without its own unique challenges – the crew especially were a big job – the larger transfers designed for this kit were a new thing for our studio painters. Big decals are quite uncommon across the wider company, but these are fantastic transfer sheets, and they really let you flesh out your army with all sorts of details.
Longma
Nicolas: Longma are an established aspect of Chinese mythology, and they have connections to other vaguely equine mythical beasts like the tianma and qilin, so there was a lot to work from.
We referred to a combination of historical descriptions of all three creatures to make a uniquely Warhammer expression of the Longma. They are usually depicted as a horse covered in dragon scales – and sometimes with wings, as you see in our depiction. The qilin, on the other hand, has a huge variety of different regional portrayals throughout most of East Asia, rarely settling on one depiction.
We wanted our Longma to feel a little more slender and elegant than the traditional horse ridden by a mounted hero, even if it is larger. We intentionally used aquatic visual language, with scales that feel lighter than a dragon’s and that don’t cover the whole body, and whiskers reminiscent of a catfish. We wanted to create a creature that presented harmony between all the disparate elements – the wings, the body, and the head. Speaking of, there are two head options – one intended to be more masculine with larger horns, and a feminine version that has a horn on the nose, along with smaller horns on the head.
In the end, it may be called a Longma but it’s a Warhammer Longma, so it blends a lot of elements together to create something that fits Grand Cathay.
There’s a sense of nobility to the Shugengan rider, and a stronger idea of craftsmanship on their weapons and armour than on their troops’. The concept we worked from had an iron talon, which the kit still has, but we also added an ornate pistol as well as a sword and a larger lance, along with a bare and helmeted head to provide the options you’d expect from a hero kit. The detailing on the armour is once again more refined, with a large cape featuring luxurious embroidery.
Cathayan Sentinel
Giorgio: Once again the concept art was very direct and clear, and we have had the pleasure of seeing these come to life in the video game, so the challenge was about turning it into a miniature while remaining faithful. Warhammer is a little bit mad, but that madness is still grounded. It’s the concept of a Terracotta Warrior, escalated into a Warhammer sense – an ancient animated statue with a real sense of weight to it. It has three layers of armoured skirt, including the mythical mountain armour, and it’s quite complex because its size lets it feature all of the different armour textures from across the whole army in one place.
This gave us a good opportunity to tie some things together. There was nothing originally helping it communicate a sense of scale at a glance – there is no human presence or anything on it that could make it look handmade, because they are crafted from magic by the Dragon Emperor and his children! We took inspiration from prayer strips in real life, and applied them to the Sentinel, but never at a height beyond which a human could reach... though I’m sure children would climb these and doodle on their heads. Beyond helping sell the scale, these elements also help reinforce the Sentinels’ placement in the wider culture of Grand Cathay. It helps us relate to them, as we can imagine them as places of reverence before they march to battle.
The interior of the Sentinel in the concept was usually represented by an absence of space, often with glowing light, but for the miniature we added a source for this with the molten lava style texture than you can see beneath the armour. There’s a bit of an easter egg under the facemask with this too. As for the facemasks, there are two separate designs, so you can comfortably have a couple without duplication.
Miao Ying
Nicolas: Miao Ying is not only a dragon, but also a shape shifter, a reference to dragons in Chinese mythology. We wanted to represent that in her face, so it has a slightly feminine appearance to match the human form. As these dragons are immortal beings of immense power, and armour is perhaps something they don’t really need – they have scales for that – but it helps convey a warlike personality, and adds extra space for design language that ties it into the wider Grand Cathay range.
The biggest challenge was making her look like she was flying, but in a way associated with her abilities as a spellcaster. In part this was accomplished by having her clamber over these floating rocks, drawn from the foundations of the earth itself – at one point during the design process, we experimented with having more rocks, but a lighter touch felt better, to help give a sense of elegance and intention to the motion.
The miniature is in places a little more delicate than brutal, most evident in the fine scales on parts of the body. These were one of the more complex parts to sculpt, and they took a very long time – there was a lot of care taken about how they work with the underlying anatomy of the miniature, how they fit the form of the body, and I am particularly proud of how much subtlety we have been able to retain in the areas where the skin and musculature is flexing.
Alastair: This was one of the strictest briefs due to her front-and-centre presence in Total War: Warhammer III, but we had scope to be creative. Perhaps unusually amongst Warhammer miniatures, Miao Ying has no silhouette-changing weapon at all – characters are often pointing a sword or polearm at people quite menacingly to convey their power, so the challenge here was creating presence without that.
As a supernatural being and a dragon she is the weapon herself – she is noticeably larger than other human characters, and her magic is so powerful it's even pulling up rocks from the ground as she descends. This creates a nice design parallel with her dragon form, but also tells its own story – her posing presents her descending via magic after a transformation, the opposite of the dragon, who is floating upwards. Another link between both characters is the crown with the royal jewel on – you can safely assume this is the same crown between both forms and her magic is transforming it along with her body.
Dan: Miao Ying was a unique challenge to paint. Her dragon form is covered in scales, and if we had chosen to individually render each one to the same level of quality it would both take a long, long time, and also become quite visually dense and distracting. Instead we took a more volumetric approach, like you might see on a cloak, where areas that protrude are rendered with a more detailed approach.
Nicolas: It’s faithful to the mindset behind how it's sculpted, where the scales do not really hide the underlying musculature and flow of the miniature, but are designed to work in harmony with them.
Dan: It’s quite a different approach to how we may have traditionally attempted this kind of miniature, but the results speak for themselves.
Thanks so much for these insights guys. The armies of Grand Cathay are available to pre-order on Saturday this week, though you will have to wait a little longer for Miao Ying to join the fight.
