Zomtober week 4: the circle is complete

If by circle you mean the challenge, that is.

Week four is another survivor, from Hasslefree this time:

As always with a hasslefree miniature, she’s a lovely sculpt, even though my attempts at fixing her pupil have left her with an entirely black eye looking somewhat like the mother from Coraline... Which admittedly I don’t completely hate, so am leaving as is. I might go back and see if I can get some definition back into her shoelaces though...

She was originally bought one Salute for the The Last of Us project, as I like that she has a torch, but she can pull double duty fighting her way through zombie hordes if needs be.

Painting her brings the Tally to:

15 vs 27 = -12

and also draws this Zomtober to a close - not my biggest year, being four ladies and a cameraman, but expect something related to appear in the next couple of weeks (as unfortunately I just couldn’t get them finished in time for this post! Unless I save them for next year...)

In other news, I had thought that the blogosphere was dying out, but having dug deeper it seems that my followed blogs weren’t showing up properly in Bloglovin (the reader app I use), so I’d been missing out on a ton of people’s blog posts! I’ve been taking steps to manually rectify this, so hopefully I won’t miss anything else!

Zomtober week 3: once more unto the deadline...

I honestly thought I was making good progress on this week’s submission, but once again I found myself spending my Saturday night adding the finishing touches! Also, my usual plans for something bigger (like a previous big finish) for Zomtober have had very little work done on them, so we may end up with a week of Zomtober appearing in November, but I digress...

Another beautiful Crooked Dice survivor this week:

Colour scheme selected by the fact that my wife wants a yellow coat, and I thought it would be a fun colour to dirty up (spoilers: it was!). I really should grubby up all of my survivors, it’s very satisfying to do and looks better (and also can hide a multitude of sins)...

She has a water bottle, that underneath all the dirt and scrapes is a rather nice blue, as if pre-catastrophe she was probably a VSCO girl (hey I’m hip!)

Painting her brings the Tally to:

14 vs 27 = -13

So, three weeks of hitting the deadline! I’ll commit to finishing and posting at least another Survivor by next Sunday, and anything else that I manage will just be a bonus...

Zomtober week 2: this is the news...

Ooh, writing that title just makes me want to go and rewatch The Day Today!

So, week 2 and another post on schedule! Work has been a bit much this week, so I wasn’t sure if I’d have a post ready in time, but what else are Saturday nights in October for if not frantically trying to finish and photograph miniatures? So I present to you the Channel 7 news crew:

These two are from the Frothers Zombie sculpting competition winners set from about a decade ago, so I’ve procrastinated something fierce on getting them done!

I’m having a bit of an off year on painting faces currently, a trend which seems to have continued here. My glasses prescription changed, and I’m painting without my proper light (so that I can hang out near my wife), which might have something to do with it...

As ever, I turned to my wife to select a hair colour, and she chose a silver purple (as one does). She also suggested mixing in some silver paint to give it a slight sheen, but that didn’t really do a lot unfortunately...

In the set of zombie rules that I’ve part-written, I included some rules for these figures - they esssentially act as loot tokens, but if you get into combat they can be lost (or if you’re of a more callous mindset you might consider them ablative armour...)

And now a profile shot, to show off some shaky freehand (although not the only bit on show - as well as the presenters microphone, there’s also a shaky watch face on her watch!).

Another week, another shot in the arm to the Tally:

13 vs 27 = -14

Zomtober 2019: tiny wife 2: electric boogaloo

Ah October, the month where I reappear for regular blogposts due to the motivational power of a community project - there’s nothing quite like a public declaration of promised productivity to get me working until the early hours of the morning if need be! Plus, at this point in the year I tend to look at my total completed miniatures year to date, and then look at the total of miniatures I aimed to complete for the year, and the discrepancy between those numbers, and then get carried away trying to do something grand for Zomtober (like painting dozens of Wights or a zombie herd).

This year though, I’ll shoot for at least one a week, and anything else is a bonus.

So, week one 2019, an updated version of my wife in miniature:

Oof, try as I might I just couldn’t get a decent picture of her...

A post-apocalyptic survivor from Crooked Dice, repurposed as a zombie survivor (as I especially loved her trash can lid shield). I painted her extra grubby and weathered, as I figure if hordes of flesh eating monsters start roaming the streets you’re going to find yourself squeezing through some crumbling buildings to escape, and if anything it just means maybe I’ve just been inspired to make up rules for a box of washing powder as an objective or loot...

She’s also painted with a much paler skin tone than my usual, in part due to my wife being paler than the median tone of my miniatures, but also because a while back I bought a selection of paler flesh tones that I haven’t had a chance to use yet...

Finishing her brings the Tally to:

11 vs 27 = -16

See you all in a week!

Are you still there?

(Click this for the reference)

Ah, Spindle Drones, in my head they're something of a mashup between the turrets from Portal and a sinister, unknowable alien intelligence. I've not read the novel yet, so I can but hope that they turn out to be dorky and adorable pets...

This paintjob was another classic case of millions of layers that end up looking like far less effort has been put in, but that mostly comes down to failed experimentation. My initial concept for their colour scheme was to have the legs look non-metallic (to look more alien, less robot) while their 'carapace' would look metallic, but with an unusual sheen. I'd originally planned on just giving the metallic coat a wash, but then Contrast paints came out so I thought I'd give them a try. I toddled off to my local GW and grabbed a pot of Aethermatic Blue. I applied a coat of the Contrast paint over a bright silver base, and found the effect a little timid, so ended up going way overboard on the next pass, leading to having to take multiple passes trying to glaze it back to closer to what I originally had in mind. Obviously, this didn't go to plan, so I had to keep going back re-applying the lining separating the plates, then glazing it with Contrast again... Eventually, it came to a point where I decided enough was enough, and I moved onto picking out the details.

For the central eye I went with classic evil robot red (I imagine them patrolling with their eye a purple colour until they detect a foe, when it turns red, maybe a tiny alarm goes off), whereas for the cabling and lights of their leg joints I decided that the key colour of the alien nature of the fortress would be Privateer Press' Arcane Blue, to reflect the ghostly blue seen on some of the tiles.

Speaking of the tiles, I forgot to mention the basing in my previous post! They're mostly based to match the majority of my existing miniatures, but with the addition of randomly arrayed tessellating tiles meticulously cut out from plasticard:

that then got painted with Aethermatic Blue Contrast paint and Arcane blue, in order to tie them to the Spindle Drones and the aforementioned blue tiles that I may be misremembering as appearing on some of the tiles.

Completing these brings the Tally to:

10 vs 27 = -17

Blackstone Fortress completion stats:

Explorers: 0/9
Enemies: 8/35

What's next you ask? Well, you know what time of year it is...