6MMRPC: Week 9 (Zombtomber week 4.5) - The horde complete!

Happy Halloween! Appropriately timing the completion of my zombie throng to terrorize survivors and government troops. I really rather happy to be finished this particular paint challenge. I've recently found that I am more productive when I can jump between projects as the whim possesses me. Focusing on things that have definite dead lines (pun intended) is a bit of a stress. Combined with my lack of inspiration for painting zombies currently it was pretty lucky I got this all done.




Lets look at what was finished:

12 hazmat troopers,
6 survivors
51 zombies (including 6 dogs)

I have a whole lot of picture below so you can have a better look at the rebel mini poses and my paint jobs. Note that rebel minis has about 3 extra zombie packs now for increased selection. If I want more I'd probably add one of each pack in the future.


The cruel eye of the camera lens makes me less happy with the results, but there are some learning items here.

Blood. I started with a red/brown, and then added the brown (more clotted blood). In hindsight, the brown should have gone first, larger, then the red. This would look like more like fresh blood spilling over older stuff, rather than clotting from the middle out. I contemplated some black, but with the size, and already some darkness to the figs I left it alone.

To the right we can spot the problem to a certain degree. I also like this pic as it shows my RCMP (Canadian federal police) uniforms. I had at least 4 of each pose, so it was tough at times differentiating them.






Skin. I tried 4 different recipes. A fair number didn't port well to the smaller scale.
1- Blobs of yellow ink on blue look far too big, and would have a big problem keeping smaller (or wouldn't be noticeable).You can see this on the RCMP zombie above. Yellow spots far too big.



2- The pale grey with touches of blue ink. This looked similar to the blue base, but better. Again, the blue should have been smaller, but tended to pool and make dark, relatively large, spots.


3- Green. This actually looked pretty decent, with the highlighting via a lighter green. I have to say, I'm not a big fan of green zombies, I can't really imagine why you'd turn green rather than a lot of other shades, unless it's a zombie lichen taking you over. So while it looks better, it's not my favorite shade. This can be seen on the secretary with the red jacked and purple skirt.

4 - I think my favorite coloration was a black/red mix.

It pops quite well and really helps highlight the sculpt/body parts. The drawback to this one is it can look too life like. I actually cut the recipe down, as I trailed it with a fat lady fig early in the month, and the later washes of black and/or flesh made it too dark (probably be fine at 28mm).

Once you splash red and brown blood around it starts taking away from the colour as well. This is, perhaps, why green zombies are popular.....the strong contrast with red blood.









A decent look of some of the various skin colours side by side.













Another couple of close ups of some of the sculpts I like.
I realize I missed painting the handlebar mustache on the firemen.













I don't get to paint orange much, so the bright colours of the chainsaw, and some of the splash was good times. I can't imagine that a chainsaw would be a wise tool to use, as presumably the infection is blood borne, and a saw is NOISY. But hey, great for pulp and cinema.

Some more questionable survivor weapons. I mean, it will probably be handy to have a character with a shoulder launched missile in another game, but zombie hunting? Impractical.

The big ladies on the same strip as the fast food workers. Is the outbreak related to improper food handling and pink slime? Is it a coincidence?  YOU BE THE JUDGE!

The business men mostly differed in their ties. I think that's probably accurate. Grey, brown, navy and black suits.

The disco divas have an eyeball that is popped out, as well as a bony stump on their right arm. 

Creepy children with their teddy bears. 

For some reason I quite like the slobby skate boarders looks. I probably should have spent some time on painting icons, or at least grinding damage, onto the bottom of their boards.

A bridge too far I suppose. I did manage to paint the exposed upper underwear edge a different colour from their hanging too low shorts though. 

 I am undecided if the ladies are wearing bikinis or just knickers.

6MMRPC: Week 8 (Zombtober week 4): Nearly finished

The slow slog/progress for Zombtober continues. I suppose it's appropriate considering it's zombies (baring the new fangled fast zombies which are way more scary). I think I'm on track here to have all the zombies finish at the same time (plus 1 strip of survivors). To stay within the theme I will attempt to finish them by the end of the month.

I've ended up doing 3 types of skin recipes to give some variability (and I didn't know what I'd like). Painting civilians are much more time consuming as I colour hop a lot more. There is also trying to decide what color normal people would match so they don't look like a clown, but aren't duplicates of other models. Possibly I put too much thought into this.

Outstanding action items:
1/. blood/gore (final step)

2/. bases (won't do this month) - I'm probably changing my basing technique, so will do everything later after some trialling

3/. Trim, ties, belts, boots - mostly just small items that will help pop the models & break up the solid colours.

4/. Hair - Hair is super annoying to me. I started to look at peoples hair when I was grocery shopping and realize a lot of it is black. Blond is not yellow, it's more like lighter tans over a brown base (platinum blondes not being spotted). Red is orange tint over brown. Etc. I think part of my annoyance is my brown selection is not all that great. Curses.

5/. Survivor garb...need to decide on some clothing colours that are reasonable. Two of the figs (slight variants of one another) look like they are in leather suits. It should be black....but that mostly looks like you haven't bothered to paint something without some clever highlighting that may be extra tricky at 15mm (and I've drybrushed everything white to see the mini better and try and avoid highlighting post base coloring).

I'll get some proper photos up after I'm done. I don't really feel like setting up a light box for incomplete figs.

6MMRPC: Week 6 (Zombtober week 2) - Hazmat troopers + Dogz

Another week of poor productivity. The new (additional) job strikes again....it's already time for midterm evaluations which are particularly hard when I've had less than 30 hours of contact time with 8 students.


Back to important manners.....zombies! I've had my tray of figs that I tend to use one colour and pick and choose models to add it to. I decided I needed a solid effort to deliver some figs though, and focused on painting up 3 sticks.



My trained zombie elimination troops. Since they don't need camo against mindless foes, they are marked up in some bright hazmat gear. I made a mistake when I painted two sets of colours on two sticks.....I grouped them in similar poses for ease of painting, so now the squads are, unfortunately, few very poses.

I saw one set of painted figs on another blog with the purple gloves, and quite liked them. I see them at the hospital sometimes (blue as well). Strangely the sculpts have a hood rolled down, but they are still wearing a hood.








I rationalized that they probably quarantine all their 'outside' equipment, and have disposable (or cleanable) inner suits.....hence the purple hoods and gloves (closest to the skin). Everything else stays in the 'dirty area'. I imagine it wouldn't be worth trying to clean weapons, armour, and battle harness every outing.




















The dogs were fun to paint, as I was trying to convey a few different breeds. Two of the small guys ended up looking too similar in my mind, but I couldn't be bothered to change it as there is still a mountain to defeat.









The ladies I painted with 2 different skin recipes. The greener one is super simple (2 colours), but I don't like it as much. The one on the end is much more involved..and one of the later steps detracts a lot (green ink, too light final skin tone used). I'll probably edit it a bit for some of the other zombies.




The blood was a mix of dark red/brown, with a bit of brighter red. I suppose I should add some extra brown and black bits, but I think it will darken the figs too much. These are the first zombies I've painted so input would be much appreciated.