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Thursday 18 July 2013

Quick Zombie recipie

So yesterday I was bemoaning the fact that I didn't like where the zombies were going. Today I can happily say that an evening's work has rectified some of the problems and I now have 8 finished and another 4 nearly finished.


This lack of decent lighting setup (and a dead battery this morning) is killing me, but  you get the idea behind this lot anyway. The main tactic for these is going to be block colours, followed by multiple different coloured washes to give the right tones.

For example, the black trousers start off dark grey and get a black wash all over, with things like the knees wiped off before it dries. This gives a fairly basic shadow/highlight and generally darkens the whole thing. Then the knees and the bottom parts of the trousers get a secondary wash of brown for staining and makes it look a little more realistic.

The skin is a base coat of VMC Deck Tan mixed with a bit of white as this gives quite a pale, lifeless skin tone to start with. A 50/50 mix of black wash and devlan mud is then carefully painted into the eye sockets, mouth and any dark places like under the hands.  Next up thin lines of devlan mud are painted around some of the muscles, between the fingers and where skin meets clothing to provide some shadowy contrasts and remove the general flatness to things. By this point you'll be thinking that it's going to be looking a bit too healthy for a zombie and you'd be correct. This is where some careful application of purple and green washes to the eyes and cheeks start to bring an unhealthy glow back to the show. We can even add some bruising with a few dots of purple, green and black to the skin.

Once the base model is done, it's time to apply the blood. I've seen people splatter blood all over the place, but I like to be in more control, so I'm stippling on some VMA Hull Red first as this is a nice dark, dried on blood colour. As it is intended to be used in an airbrush it's about half way between a wash and normal Vallejo paint consistency, so on dark clothing it stains, but still allows some of the base colour to shine through; which is perfect. Over the top of this we then stipple a slightly smaller amount of Scab Red for some slightly fresher blood. Once you've varnished them (which I stupidly forgot to do last night before basing them on the acrylic), paint a bit of gloss varnish over some of the fresher blood for that extra wet gore feel.

I think now I've got that all worked out, I can try working my way through the rest of the horde!


The missing gaps represent models that are on the painting table; the right column contains the bonus model that I get to do once I have finished a row of zombies.Wish me luck!

6 comments:

  1. Nice recipe, looks like you're cooking up a Zombie cake. I do like the transparent bases, that's a nice touch.
    Ste

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    1. Thanks. I like the transparent bases as it means they work well in any situation, be it board game, snow, desert or woodland

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  2. They look pretty good to me, great recipe for the skin too.

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    1. The skin recipe is a very basic version of my normal skin recipe. When doing normal, living people you can leave out the green and blue, but the purple does add a bit of realism to shadows in the eye sockets. When I've got a better light setup I'll try and do a face walkthrough

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  3. Very nice they look to some great tips :D Now chop chop get the rest done so we can see the horde in all its glory!

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    1. This horde should be fine. It's the other horde from Zombicide's season 2 kickstarter that will kill me!

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