Antarchs

Welcome to the Zeo Genesis Concept Art Showcase, where we give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we craft new models and factions!

This series focuses on our new faction, the Orgh! Possessing advanced technology, vast intelligence, and an intense drive to conquer and survive, even a half-grown Orgh boasts the agility, durability, and destructive power of a zeoform. The faction consists of the dominant, lizard-like Orgh species and their many servitor species, who have become bound to the Orgh through history or conquest.

In this showcase, we spoke to Narrative/Worldbuilding Lead Gav Thorpe, Concept Artist Dan Morison, and Concept Artist Graey Erb about creating the Antarchs.

Antarchs - The Background

Gav Thorpe: Relatively fewer in number than the Neophids, the Antarchs are the older, core Orgh image. Right from the outset, we wanted an alien creature that was the equivalent of a medium zeo—a real big badass monster of an enemy. In fact, it is the existence of Orgh Antarchs that forced humanity to develop zeos in the first place, to combat these monstrosities in the first Orgh encounter about a thousand years earlier. 

Brutal and uncompromising in their violence, nonetheless we wanted to avoid the Orgh just being mindless savages. They have (or had, until they were forced to migrate) a culture and technology superior to humankind, devoted to science and artistic endeavor. They lost everything they had built due to their encounter with humanity and have become merciless, unrepentant conquerors to survive. 

We were inspired by creatures like the Kleggs in Judge Dredd, and a combination of the smart yet imperial Idirans with the delightfully barbaric Affront from Iain M. Banks’s Culture books.

Antarchs - Initial Concepts

Dan Morison: The Antarch represents the ultimate form of the Orgh race—hulking muscle mass, advanced cybernetic enhancements, hardened skin, and a ferocious, paranoid intelligence behind the four eyes and sharp teeth.

As the de facto leader, the Antarch gets first dibs on the best equipment—the most advanced armor and powerful weapons (not that anything serving under them could hope to use it themselves!).

Antarchs - Refined Concepts

Graey Erb: The Antarch was a fun challenge! It is a (quite literal) beast of a model and needed to embody the entire faction in a single model; this is the guy we wanted people to think of when they hear you play the Orgh. A lot of the design had been figured out in the early Neophid and faction decoration iterations, but now it needed to be scaled up to fit the big guy while not losing any detail fidelity. The crystal crests cemented their place in this round as a staple decoration for the higher-ranked Orgh (as well as being a fun nod to a certain favorite Kaiju),  and show up a lot more prominently in the armor and weapons from this point onwards. 

Since the Neophids had gotten a head design update, that needed to carry on to their aged-up versions here, albeit with a lot more scarring and cybernetics. It’s unlikely that an Antarch makes it this far without taking a couple nasty hits to the head!

Since sculpts had already been started, there weren’t many designs done with multiple views (called orthographic turnarounds). Due to this, I usually opted for paintovers of the current models to move quickly. This does, however, occasionally mean that you end up with blind spots that need to be filled later on, and the backplate on the Antarch was a classic example of a broad area that wasn’t really defined yet. Since this is one of the parts you will see the most when they are on the table, this is super important! 

Early on, I had been asked to avoid just slapping skulls on them to get a barbarian feel, but I wanted to see if I could work something similar into the designs because it’s such a strong symbol. As we worked through the faction, I landed on the idea of using a continuous tube to make shapes that evoke the headshape of the Orgh, with their bolted attachment points doubling as their unique four-eye arrangement. This seemed to work very well, and this backplate is one of the first times that the whole idea really clicked. From this point on, you will see it everywhere!

The second version of the Antarch is an absolute bruiser, and needed to look like it could go toe-to-toe with all but the heaviest zeoforms. We had some good armor shapes from the first round of iterations, but it still felt like the heaviest versions from that set still didn’t quite cut it… so here I pile on the metal and newly established decoration motifs. This guy is an ancient warrior who has seen a lifetime of combat and he needed the awards to match it.