Today, I want to celebrate my seven-year anniversary at Privateer Press with all of you, the Privateer Press community. Seven. Frickin’. Years.  Seven years of dealing with Matt Wilson trying to boss me around! Seven years of Ron Kruzie telling me what I did wrong over and over again.
I’ve told the story many times, but it bears repeating on this special day! (Or you can just scroll down to the pictures.)

Seven years ago…

…I walked into the hallowed halls of PP HQ for that first day on the job, super-excited to see what I would be working on, eager to see my first WARMACHINE concept art! As we all know, it was Aurora, Numen of Aerogenesis, one of the coolest concepts we have ever had.

And now I was going to screw it up.

I honestly thought I was going home after that project, I felt slow, and I didn’t think it looked particularly good.

Seriously, I thought I would be sent packing.

Ultimately, she worked out, and while I often say I want another shot at her, I—wait a second! I have been saying that, but then we did MiniCrate Aurora. So, I did get another shot at her. Oh, and this reminds me of a story about MiniCrate Aurora. I was talking to Matt Wilson about her, and he said, “Oh, you are going to be doing a lot of Aurora this year.” It was at that point I suspected she was finally going epic.

I reached out to my boss, Ron Kruzie, and he confirmed that Aurora was, indeed, going epic, and she was going to have some friends along for the ride…and they would all be coming to me.

Just like I wanted.

Archnumen Aurora, Prefect Hypatia, Negation Angels. I was super-pumped and didn’t know where to start. I settled on the Negation Angels as a warmup, and then I would go after Aurora, and lastly Prefect Hypatia (as I was not completely in love with her).

The Negation Angels were similar to the original Clockwork Angels with their slightly odd proportions, particularly the long legs. I used the original models as reference to get the scale close to the same. In the end, I was very pleased with the results! Below is a render of them. (Note, these are not final versions; production and engineering will still have some tweaks as needed!)

I mentioned not being in love with Prefect Hypatia at first. There were a few minor things I wasn’t sure about, but we were quickly able to work through them, make a few tweaks, try out a couple of poses until we settled on what I thought was great updates that made this super-solo look really great.

The last and likely most important part of this Insider and preview is Archnumen Aurora. My girl had gone epic in a big way, and I was as in love with this art as the first time I saw her seven years ago. She was elegant and deadly, and those wings were going to be a challenge. I was pretty happy with how she turned out, and I am excited to see her painted up and on the battlefield with an army of angels around her.

Thus, I present Archnumen Aurora. I hope everyone enjoys the end result.