Season 2 zombies...

This little horde is the remainders of the Berzerk zombies (25), with two toxics that I'd found in the bottom of a box. These mark the end of all the Season 2 zombies. With Season 3 delivery looming, it's quite a relief to have this lot done, even if it did kill my drybrush. The poor thing is a tiny, worn down stump of a thing, useful only for weathering powders now.

Last night's entries (some Russians and these zombies) to the Painting Challenge saw me manage to breach the second points goal this year and exceed last year's total, so I'm now staring at a 1500 point goal. With under a month left on the painting challenge and various uncompleted projects still floating around, I can't decide which thing to work on next... finish the gladiators, finish the Not-Ogryns, start the second War of the Roses force for Lion Rampant, or start on the fantastic Vikings my mystery Secret Santa sent.

Alternatively... Not sure if you remember, but way back in the dim distant past, I traded my painted season 1 set with a friend when I decided to go from full colour zombies to this black and white version. This means I have another 65 zombies sat around waiting to be painted (if you don't count the extra boxes of Toxics and Berzerkers).

This isn't Acacia Avenue, but...

Bananaman!

 When the zombie apocalypse hits, you need to be ready. You need to be armed and you need to be properly dressed in order to outrun the enemy (or at the very least, your friend… it depends how many zombies there are). The day things went to hell, Robbie was working at his local food shop, Morry and Sons, advertising their fresh fruit. He’d known for ages that the zip occasionally got stuck, but he’d been assured that it had been fixed. Turns out… not so fixed after all. Robbie is now stuck inside this damn suit and can’t get out. Not even if his life depends upon it, which it kinda does!

It is a fun model, though not the best painting I've ever done. I had to have two attempts at sending it to Curt... the first time I sent it I hated the photos, so had to have a go at adding some more detail tot he figure. Second time looks much better, but there are still problems with it, like the label on the banana looks a bit wonky in places. As far as you're concerned, it's just a cheap costume, so the printing is dodgy and I'm perfectly recreating the budget printing process where the shadows and highlights on the fake label don't line up properly ;)

Santa Clause survivors

I promised to put up a photo of the wonderful present from Anibal Invictus.

Thanks again, these will be perfect for Zombicide and 7ombieTV games. You can never have enough survivors for games

The chainsaw warrior

 

Not really *the* Chainsaw Warrior, though I did play the iPad game of that recently. Grindlock is wielding a Stihl chainsaw... what other make would you go for really?

Toxic-city

After a sudden spurt of activity (and a fair bit of tedium) last weekend I managed to finish off the Toxic zombie borde. Rather than showing just the new additions, I've taken shots of all the toxics... but the new additions include 9 walkers and 6 runners

D-Ed

Any resemblance to the Nick Frost in Sean of the Dead is purely... on purpose

I think a retake of this one is needed for the overview page as it's a bit dark in places... still. You get the gist

Escape from Zombie City

One of my favourite survivor/zombivor pairs from last season was the Snake Plisken one. He's a grumpy looking man.

Rather than go for the Escape from New York costume, which was just black with a touch of black thrown into the mix, he's got camo trousers

Who took the wine?

The world has gone to hell, the dead are coming back to life and a madman is on the loose looking for a tin of baked beans and a bottle of cheap plonk...

Once again... not happy with the colours in the photo. I did an experiment the other day comparing the uploaded photo I was moaning about with the version on my desktop and there was a visible difference... it was nothing to do with the monitor calibration. It looks like Blogger is unhelpfully trying to "enhance" the photos... thanks a bunch!

Uncle Honk

Uncle Honk is from the Kevin Walker artist box. In it's original *bright* orange plastic, it was one of my least favourite models. It looked garish and undetailed.

One coat of paint later and he's now my favourite character as all that detail was hidden behind the blinding plastic. Do not mess with the clown!

Elsa, the Cat Burglar

Elsa came with Toxic City Mall. In the artwork she's wearing black clothing, but this was going to push her too close to the zombie colours, so she's now wearing dark red instead.

Not the best zombivor face in the world, so I may need to go back and redo that later. As with the other zombivors, the colours are slightly darker and desaturated to move her towards the zombie state 

Rob, the nearly-dead Security Expert

Next up on the survivor/zombivor combos is Rob, who is supposed to be Sean Connery, but looks rather like George Lucas at this scale.

Bit of a boring one to paint, but he was quick and ups the painted counter. You also can't see much of the blood that he's covered in as it's over his black body armour.

Thaissa, first of the Zombivors

The other day I posted a picture of the finished Thaissa. Now she's accompanied by her completed, rather messy zombivor.

Rather than go for exactly the same colours, I'm trying to make the zombivors a step towards the zombies by desaturating some of the colours, except the blood of course!

Why oh why do the colours of these look so different on this monitor? On my mac these were bright images with a near white background... I'm beginning to suspect that Blogger is messing with the contrasts when they get uploaded. I'll have to have a look at these properly when I get home!

Speed painting

It seems that when you're on a roll, you can do quite a bit of work in 2 hours and a larger brush!

The other day I broke down the list of remaining zombies (see right) into their respective types to see what I need to work on. The answer is actually quite a lot still, sadly. So in order to give myself a little boost, last night I decided to try and finish some of the smaller groups.

We have the two Berserker Abominations ready to kill and maim.

The second Toxic abomination is now also finished, which means all my abominations are now finished

Finally we have the last three toxic fatties

Making things more toxic

Well, Season 3's kickstarter gets going tonight, so I'd better get a move on if I want to finish all these here zombies before more turn up. I should start a zombie/survivor counter to keep me on track...

It was pointed out last time I posted some toxic zombies that they were too subtle to stand out in a crowd, so the green has been brightened up to an offensive level with some VGC Foul Green (which really is offensively green btw) and toned down a little with some GW Athonian Camoshade wash. While I preferred the old colours, they were too tricky to spot quickly, so this is the next best thing. They are still the trickiest of the zombies to spot so far, but it's better.

I also found a rager fattie buried under the painting table clutter that I'd missed basing last time

We also have three more survivors finished to cull the growing hordes

Starting to survive

With the zombie horde growing, I thought it was about time to start on a few of the characters. These three seemed like a pretty good starting point. The dog is from the Salute 2014 model. I love him so much and hope he survives the zombie apocalypse! Oooooh Yes.

 

And here they are, fighting off the hordes... do they survive? Will they come back from the dead? Who knows!

The angry, toxic dead

With the large project now launched I've had a chance to do a bit more painting, so the zombie horde grows by a few more bodies. The aim is to try and get as much of the unpainted masses done before the forthcoming season 3 (which starts next week) gets delivered.

It's not many, but it's a few more for the growing shelf of dead

And the horde keeps on growing...

A day off ill has given me plenty of opportunity to expand the zombie horde somewhat. I'm now 50% of the way through the horde... I'll try and get better photos later.

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!