Got a JoyToy artist-proof Space Marine but realised it was so much smaller (12.8 cm) than my McFarlane artist-proof collection of a commissar, 2 guardsmen, a battle sister, and 3 Ultramarines (measured at ~18.5 cm).
A normal McFarlane Space Marine (7” scale) is roughly the same height as JoyToy’s Guilliman (6” scale), for reference. The weight is even greater. That was also the main reason why I returned a JoyToy Guilliman. Another reason was that the make of the Guilliman was not even near the quality of JoyToy’s 4.0 line, such as their Collector’s Edition Titus which I fortunately own. But mostly, I just thought it would be so awkward if my Guilliman was the same size as a normal Astarte.
Back to the topic, since I thought this little guy couldn’t join my collection, I decided I’d have fun with its paint job. I researched pride flag themes but eventually arrived at the canon faction of the Rainbow Warriors and happily went down a rabbit hole.
In short, I believe the Rainbow Warriors were inspired by the bombing of Greenpeace’s ship Rainbow Warrior, in an attempt by the French intelligence to stop Greenpeace’s protest against French nuclear bomb testing in the South Pacific.
You can learn more about the Rainbow Warriors of 40K from this video by Louise at Rogue Hobbies and her paint job (pic 1) is going to be my main reference.
These are excellent sources to learn more about the 1985 event:
- Attack on Greenpeace: France’s Nuclear Bomb (Ep 1) & (Ep 2) by The Rest is Classified
- BBC’s Docuseries Murder in the Pacific (2023)
I've only just started painting this one so I only have a photo of the disassembled figure to show (pic 2) (small note, the upper leg armour pieces could also be taken off, I later found), but hopefully I can post more photos later - if my ADHD brain could keep it together and not start a new project when I'm 85% finished with it.