We're off to see some zombies, some horrible zombies oh god!

A day late for Zomtober but a day early for Halloween... I was aiming to get this posted last night (when the miniatures were painted!) but when it hit 11 and the pictures were still uploading I realised I wasn't going to hit that deadline, and so am now writing this post on an iPad stood waiting for a train [and then some more sat at a station hours later waiting for a different train...]

As should come as no surprise given the content of the last few Zomtober posts, I've finished Dorothy and Toto from the Studio Miniatures Wizard of Oz set:

Please note my attempt at painting gingham as a reference to the film. Just don't look too closely. Maybe squint, too, if you wouldn't mind.

 
And here's the back of Dorothy:

There aren't any more pictures of Toto, as he didn't come out as I'd hoped - I tried giving subtle variations in colour on his fur, aiming for a grey brown like the original, but it just didn't come out right and I ended up settling for a flatter finish. His fur was very smooth, so my attempts at drybrushing were somewhat foiled...

The back of her jacket also contains some terrible freehand and squiggly approximations of text - as I was lying in bed Saturday night/Sunday morning wondering whether the clocks had gone back yet (after having fallen asleep earlier that evening putting my daughter to bed when I'd originally planned to finish painting these minis), I was struck with inspiration- what if I painted a biker back patch on the back of Dorothy, with a little cartoon witch head with crosses for eyes and the slogan 'witches get stitches'? This is my attempt at that. Unfortunately, her back is absolutely tiny compared to its size in my late night/early morning memory/imagination, so I had to go with an approximation of the text, but I quite like it nevertheless...

And here they are all together! Which, technically, crosses another challenge off of the list:

2017 Challenges:

• Finish 5 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (5/5)
• Finish 10 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (10/10)
• Finish 15 miniatures from my WIP drawer before starting anything new (16/15)
• Finish something years old
• Finish something SUPER old (as in, pre-blog old) x2
• Finish a piece of terrain x3 
• Empty out my stripping pot
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
•  Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
•  Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)

I think when I'd set the 'complete box' challenge, I was trying to bait my future self into painting up my Joker starter for the Batman Miniatures game (as I've had it since before there was a rule set, and they're now on their second edition), but I'm counting it!

But wait, there's more! Not content with just survivors this week, I've also finished a zombie!

Side note - I can't find my current pot of TCR anywhere, which turned the 'five minutes' I told my wife I'd be finishing up these before Sunday night games night into ten minutes of grumpily searching drawers and boxes before giving up and trying to use Blood for the Blood God as a substitute, which doesn't work quite the same sadly: 

(As I tend to mix in inks and whatnot to get different 'shades' of blood - more black for zombies etc - and TCR goes pleasingly thick when mixed with inks, which behaves very differently when painting to runny BFTBG, hence the larger 'splashes' of blood rather than my usual 'flecks')

Despite that setback, I managed to finish this chap:

Another of the Horrorclix zombies that I got as part of my initial foray back into the hobby proper, and I think the last remaining sculpt of the batch! He's a fairly hench sculpt, that I'd been considering basing and using as a 'brute zombie', but while he is bigger than most of the horde, he doesn't have the same mass as the other 'brute' zombies I've painted, so he gets to be an ordinary biter.

And so, that brings another Zomtober to a clo-

What's that?

Additional bonus entry you say?

After watching the latest series of Game of Thrones, after seeing the zombie polar bear (spoilers, btw) I was inspired to add something similar to my project to go with last year's offerings:

While I didn't have a polar bear miniature, I did have a Horrorclix Zombie Reindeer in my bits box - as such the original sculpt was impaled with a hunting rifle, but a few minutes with a scalpel and a pot of liquid green stuff saw to that!

Ah, fur with detail deep enough that you can actually use drybrushing and washes to build it up, I don't miss you until you're gone...

The hand was painted in the same fashion as my wights, as a little inside joke reference to the hand taken as proof of their existence at the start of the book series...

Finishing these brings the Tally to:

37 vs 40 = -3

Well, being back in the black is tantalisingly close isn't it? Now, what shall I paint next?