HOME | DD
NicolasRGiacondino — Archon's Fall
Published: 2010-08-31 18:08:06 +0000 UTC; Views: 38438; Favourites: 377; Downloads: 0
Redirect to original
Description
Hello again, watchers and watcherettes...This is an odd bit from me. Not because it is Warhammer 40,000 related, but because of the races involved in this terrible slaughter aboard a dying Dark Eldar ship.
I usually get a lot of commissions involving Imperial forces, so when this challenge came along, I was glad that I'd be stepping out of my comfort zone.
I've drawn Dark Eldar before, but I've never drawn many troops or an Archon himself, nor one of their ships' architecture. And, for that matter, I've never drawn many Traitor Marines either or Daemons from the Warp harvesting the souls of the living.
Thus, you get this piece, which is packed full of details, many of them mentioned above. I personally love the way it's turned out, considering my inexperience with these type of races. I'm particularly fond of the ship's brooding, Clive Barker-esque atmosphere, contrasted by the brightness of the Slannesh daemons and The Flawless Host Chaos Space Marines. The Daemonettes about to jump onto the Archon to deliver a killing strike.
There's a sense of total mayhem and impending doom as well as a close-up on a Daemon sucking the soul out of an Incubus. Everything part of this setting I'm proud to have produced.
I hope you enjoy this one, as many have asked me if I'd ever render more races in the Dark Millenium; here's your answer.
Let me know what you think, as usual and I hope to see you soon with more updates!
Nic.-
© Games Workshop Ltd. 2010
Related content
Comments: 61
Thank you!
Nic.-
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Karma at its finest.
Raid an entire world, get killed by Slaanesh-following Chaos space marines.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
yay dead eldar, fav part of this picture is the chaos marine about to crush the skull of the dark eldar on the right
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Great details as always! It always made me wonder though why would those two factions fight. I mean they both follow the same god... I mean i know he's a dick and finds Eldar souls yummy but come on!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I think a landscape layout might have served better in this piece. This tall format feels very restrictive in viewing the scene and initially made it hard to make out what is going on. Of course that might be what you were going for.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
It was actually the intention to make the scene 'messy'. Whenever I think of battle, I do not think of it in terms of 'Wow, how shiny that spear looks against the sunset!'. I try to go for a much more involved scene, one in which the viewer will feel as overwhelmed and dizzy as the actual combatant. I feel there's much more 'veracity' in such a work than one where everything looks stiff and posed.
Nic.-
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Damn it, man! After waiting four years for GW to update the Dark Eldar and having my enthusiastic optimism ("They've released another Space Marines update! Surely Dark Eldar must be next!") being greeted with nothing but silence and rumors, I finally managed to accept that I won't be seeing them reworked for a long time, if ever.
But now you come in with your fancy, pancy, stylish art and now my feelings for the Dark Eldar have returned, and there is still no update in sight.
Damn you and your artistic skill, you vile tormentor!
...
In all seriousness, great work. I really like what you've done.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I really like the fact that you chose to use the flawless host chapter. Nice to see the more peripheral and slightly obscure chaos marine chapters in artwork.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Wooooooow. 
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
A different piece but very nice, I really liek seeing more variety to the races especially when you have two dark races facing off agaisnt each other.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Beautifully put together buddy, one of your best.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
oh wow this is awesome, i love all the details and there is stuff happening everywhere on it carrying the eye around the whole image
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This is really nice, I think the designs work fine.
Not related to the art, but somehow I can never save your pictures by the name, it's always just the internal image code. And it's only for your pictures. It doesn't really affect anything, but it's pretty odd.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Holy balls of Zeus! This is amazing, Nic. Total surprise to see! You know I'm a big DE fan.
Fantastic piece.
DP
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Kind of took me a second to figure out what was going on but amazing work as usual, Flawless Host FTW
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Nicely done, some very different looking designs, although I'd like to see a bit more of the Incubi hacking through marines and daemons before they get swamped down. (:
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
OH DARN IT! You beat me to the punch XD
I was just debating doing a DE picture with some fellow artist 
(apparently September-November is Eldar/Dark Eldar months, lol)
By the by, I have finished a VERY good book called 'Path of the Warrior' and I must say that Gav did a fantastic job, I never had much particular interest in the Eldar but his writing made me a fan.
When I get a collection of books to send out to you I'll be sure to add it to the list ;D
And the art rocks my socks
Hopefully my little nephew and his momma are in good health
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I do love me the sight of some xenos about to get owned. Remarkable work here, something new is always a welcome sight from your forge of art.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
A fantastic pic, it has action and demons, and CSM... and that's my weakness on a WH picture xD
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Dark Eldar! YES! Pity they're the ones getting killed... oh wells.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Love it! as always you do amazing work.. can't wait for the rest of the Primarchs, especially Night Haunter..
oh, and i still want that Red Riding Hood piece.. if my finances will ever straighten out enough for me to get it..
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This is probably one of the most frantically action-packed pieces I've seen from you. Brilliant work!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
really awesome. like concept art for dark millennium online. you can only hope that ship raids as awesome as this one will be included.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Awesome! I'm really diggin the Slaanesh flavored Fury jumpin out, about to wreak some havoc!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
It's good to have non-Imperial pictures - it's nice for poor beleaguered humanity to catch a bit of a breather when everyone's not ganging up on it.
It's a lovely picture as always, Nic, and actually very timely - the Fear the Alien anthology that was published recently has a couple of really rather good Dark Eldar-perspective stories in them (Archons in love!), to which this is good accompaniment.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Archon's gonna get surprise sex from those Daemonettes, he is. Sick fuck will probably enjoy it and then rip their faces off. Or something.
Messy and mayhem, like you aimed for. An unusual colour palette. There's enough yellow for the purple and red for the green though, so nothing really sticks out to me as messy in terms of colour. The muted darkness pretty cool, working well with the CSM's bright armour and the white-hot explosions.
You manage to get more space into your art than me, Nic, despite drawing cramped environs. So jealous
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I finally figured out that all Eldar are female. A friend of mine told me. The Eldar are cool, though.
But damn, this is cool. My friend would appreciate this, he's Chaos Marines all the way. XD
Have you ever planned to draw Tyranids? I'd love you if you did. XD
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
No they're not. They just look very feminine to human eyes. Eldar have male and females like humans and Tau.
I can only think of two all-female species in Wh40k, and even that is kinda stretching things: Orks and Tyranids. But that's just my Biology-fagging.
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
"I can only think of two all-female species in Wh40k, and even that is kinda stretching things: Orks and Tyranids."
*A passing Boyz-laden and gun-bristling Trukk abruptly jerks into a turn and screeches to a smoky halt before Belazikkal*
"OI! YOU! Iz youz sayin' that we'z gay?"
( 
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
GW's current stance on Orkses is that they're an algae/fungus/animal hybrid of some sort. Gene-splice by some ancient horror that even Necron's feared. IIRC Xenology correctly.
And as Orks are said to spread by spores... well, what I'm getting at, without giving a Biology lesson, is that anything that can reproduce is by default female. Of course, in asexual parthenogenic species male/female don't really matter. I'd still rather call them female than male. Or just Orks with the personal pronoun "it".
Sorry for the rant, but I love crypto-biology in Wh40k. There's so much room for mindfuckery!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Never heard of the entire species of lesbian lizards? [link]
It can occur in all male species, though. But I don't really want to call something that essentially produces egg cells, even if it is fungoid spores, male. It produces eggs, it's female.
...
Then again, Orks ARE part fungoid. And fungi have fucking retarded reproductive paths. I know of 5 different paths, there are probably more.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Just being a little bit xenobiology-nit-picky on my side, but if Orks spread from spores or they are all parthogenetic, wouldn't that made 'em hermaphrodites? I agree on called them "it" rather than he/she.
May the Ordo Xenos spare us from such alien heresy!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Good point, that. I've also been considering if Orks are all clones or if there is some form of genetic recombination going on? With the parthogenetic lizards, it's a case of a species of all female clones. There is practically no genetic recombination (though they still have to "mate" to lay eggs).
Alien heresy? Most of this weird stuff takes place on Earth already!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Maybe it's epigenetic factors that would influence the changes in Ork genome, explaining how they adapt and evolve so fast to populate any environment. It'd be similar to what Tyranid do by absorbing local species to improve their own. Maybe.
Then again, WH40k's xenobiology has this sinister "intelligent design" vibe coming from the Old Ones...
...The alien heresy thing was a joke attempt, as in what an Imperial Guardsman would say, being raised in this Emperor-theocentrism. I bet they don't get good Biology education.
But maybe it wasn't clear as a joke, I'm sorry.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Sounds plausible, but how does that explain Warbosses giving rise to squig-spores? Or is that a function of density of Orkoids?
Wh40k does have that nasty ID-vibe, yeah.
I'm kinda interested in how Kroot and 'Nids absorb DNA, on the molecular level. It would seem they have pretty much the same system, but the Kroot one is less effective.
No worries, I think I saw it and tried playing along, but my humour doesn't translate well into written media. I need my vocal inflections, dammit!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
| Next =>