The vibrant colours on this unofficial Warhammer Lizardmen Blood Bowl team aren’t works of pure fantasy; they’re inspired by the wild colouration of real world lizards. Blood Bowl fan Immaterial Creations has been sharing pictures of the gorgeous models on their Instagram since February 26.
The brilliantly coloured models show off the variety of real-world lizards. The chunky Lizardmen Saurus is painted as a Ground Agama (agama aculeata). Only one of the Lizardmen Skinks is painted to match a real-life Western Red-Tailed Skink (plestiodon gilberti rubricaudatus) – the rest are made up of different species of Agama, two leopard Geckos (one a ‘leucistic’ or albino colour-morph), and a Bearded Dragon, inspired by a friend’s pet.
Although the paint jobs are fantastic, these are just test models. Immaterial Creations states in an Instagram post that they ordered a 3D printed Lizardmen team off Etsy, but “the prints are the worst I have ever had: crazy brittle, huge layer lines, loads of broken parts, holes… even fibres coming out of the resin?!” The exotic paint schemes were chosen to help them “learn how to airbrush”.
Blood Bowl went unsupported with official products by Games Workshop for around a decade, before its relaunch in 2016 and the updated Blood Bowl Second Season Edition in 2020. The fandom didn’t drop away during that time, and many independent companies made compatible miniatures. That tradition has continued into the 3D printer era even after GW rereleased the game.
We recently wrote about ‘Eavy Archive, a fan project collating paint recipes, to help you paint miniatures from your Warhammer 40k factions and Age of Sigmar Armies so that they match the box art. Immaterial Creations’ approach is about as far from that as you could get – you can see the rest of the lizards and more of their great work on their Instagram.