Rookies...

One of the recurring character types in Judge Dredd are the white helmeted Rookie Judges, with many stories written about their final real world test on the streets with a Senior Judge deciding whether they should receive the black helmet and full eagle, indeed Judge Dekker first appeared as a Rookie in the pages of 2000AD.

Mongoose produce three Rookie Judges but whilst not too keen on the pose of the third I love these two models. Using similar painting techniques to Dekker below, the biggest problem was researching the correct paint scheme.

Whilst the Judges uniform has undergone some variation over the years, that of the Rookie has seen a ridiculous amount of versions drawn. Sometimes the helmet has a red stripe around the visor (like the Judges helmet), sometimes the knee pads are yellow... In the end I went with the more recent look and I think it looks really good.

As miniatures go they are probably more useful than first meets the eye. Aside from final assessment test, the Rookies get sent on the Cursed Earth "Hotdog Run" as part of their training and invariably get involved in any major city threatening event such as The Apocalypse War so they are worth collecting.

I have accidentally ended up with duplicates of these miniatures as I misunderstood what was coming with the Kickstarter, but they are easy enough to convert pose wise so I will soon have another two Rookies finished, ready to hit the streets...

Judge Dekker...

Dekker is the first of the Justice Department figures from Mongoose that I have painted and as such is the learning curve where decisions have to be made and techniques worked out.

The first major decision is what colour are Judge's uniforms. Over the decades artists in 2000AD have painted them anything from black to a royal blue. After some pondering I have gone with black as not only is this the colour Dredd designer Carlos Ezquerra colours his on the comic strip, but it reinforces the hard pseudo-fascist nature of the Judges.

I also had to make a decision about the eagle and shoulder pad. Metallic gold or non-metallic yellow, are both the same (yes with most artists but no consistency in the comic strip!). In the end, as you can see, I went metallic gold, using an ink wash and silver/gold drybrush to add depth and highlights.

The model is mounted on a resin industrial base, part of a set I picked up off eBay but for the life of me cannot remember who from. Whilst the base is grungy industrial metallic, I added a splash of leaking chemical gloop for a bit of colour contrast.

Overall for my first attempt at a Judge, I'm quite happy with how Dekker has painted up.

It was interesting that Mongoose picked Dekker as a character to release given her minor status. She appeared as a Rookie in four episodes (Progs 370 to 373) before reappearing in Muzak Killer (Progs 746 to 748) before being killed off in Judgement Day (Progs 786 to 799). That said she seems to follow a fairly standard look of black haired and brunette female judges and can be used as other characters such as Judge Hershey.