Appearance of Orcs (and other Goblinoids)

[knightkrawler]

Pics, please. I have never seen them and would appreciate some pictures.
Google search spits nothing.

[Baylor_OgreBane]

I'll get my camera now and try to find them

[Baylor_OgreBane]

IMG_0537.JPG

[Baylor_OgreBane]

Here is a close up of them all.
I have had them since was a kid, they were originally painted with enamel paints, and then also got a few paint jobs by me, but I have taken off most of the paint again. They are from 1987.

[knightkrawler]

I think these are pretty close to MERP art and to what I imagined Orcs looked like when I was reading The Lord of the Rings, which was my second encounter with them.
HeroQuest was the first, go figure. The difference between both versions is basically the green skin vs. black hair/fur. The build and facial features are not too far apart.

By the way, you refer to

the old celtic folk lore

as a starting point for the literary evolution of Orc.
That is wrong. Toliken took the mere word "Orc" and tagged it to his completely invented race. So, the word "Orc" as in pre-Tolkien folklore is not attached to ANY interpretation or description of post-Tolkien fantasy literature.

Thus, the evolution of the Fantasy literature/game Orc begins at Tolkien's version.

Basically, there are two directions: the hairless, muscular, heavily caricaturesque version of Games Workshop (since ca. mid-90s), Rackham's Confrontation, World of Warcraft;
and the less extreme, more naturalistic heavily hairy, ape-like version of Tolkien, Das schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye), and Dungeons & Dragons.

Not I think I've written an essay like this before in this here thread. Well, I didn't look it up, so you can look for inconsistencies...

[Baylor_OgreBane]

Orcs from Celtic folk lore were an ally to the Formorain hordes that came from the northern sea to raid an pillage, but you are right there is no real description of them in Celtic folk lore, that I know of, they were probably raiders from Norway.
But what I want to see are more pictures and comments on how you think they should be?

[Goblin-King]

Pignoses? NO!
Any color but green? NO!
Hair? NO!

Now that's out of the way...

An orc in my book is taller than a human, hunched, muscular and has a big jaw with tusks and sharp teeth.
Orcs are evil minded, likes fighting and war but are intelligent enough to make battleplans and ambushes etc.

These models are nice enough, but too scrawny for my taste:



Then we have these guys. These are what I consider the quintessential orcs. Larger and more brutish than humans. Muscular and with sharp teeth:



Finally we have the "new" GW orcs. These are ridiculously exaggerated monsters. Almost double the size of a man. too many fangs to even close their mouths.
This orc is a psycho hooligan warrior who will punch himself in the face if no one else is around to punch!
And these are great! I love GW's orcs (especially the orKs of the 40k setting) They are funny, they are ultra violent. They are just great!
But they are very far from what I really consider a fantasy orc. There's a reason I prefer them in 40k. They've evolved almost into a new very distinct race.

I like both very much though.

The models are very nice:

[knightkrawler]

[Baylor_OgreBane]

I remember Orcs from 40k consisted of as many kids as you could fit into a GW all screaming "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGH!" as loud as they could!

[Goblin-King]

Also I'd like to imagine us all sitting in chesterfield chairs, swirling wine and discussing "what is an orc"...