Dammit Carl!

Work on my Zomtober remnants continues, as earlier this week I finished Carl:

He was actually finished Tuesday night, but life happened a bunch (Rolo Tomassi at Scala last night was fun) and so I'm only getting round to taking pictures and posting today. We were going to pick up a mini lightbox from Flying Tiger this afternoon after seeing one on a Gunpla Facebook group, but our local one didn't have it in stock, so these pictures were taken with my photo board balanced on an airer in the bathroom instead...

I'm fairly fond of Carl, unlike the majority of the internet it seems. I didn't follow the TV series for very long, which might have something to do with it...

This sculpt is absolutely lovely. Much kudos to Mantic for the quality! I painted his lower half as being incredibly grubby, but I liked how his hoody had come out so much that I couldn't bring myself to cover it up with a layer of dust!

Tally:

35 vs -46 = +81

What next? I'm down to two miniatures remaining from the batch that I had prepped for Zomtober, as well as a few half finished odds and ends that I've pulled out of the painting queue in an attempt to hit the 'have finished 52 miniatures by the end of the year' challenge I set myself way back when, but at the same time gee that Blackstone Fortress box game that GW are currently previewing sure does look apealling...

Survivember? Zomtober2: Electric Boogaloo?

Last night I managed to finish one of the figures that I'd originally intended to include as part of my submission for this year's Zomtober, but didn't quite get finished in time, The Governor from Mantic's 'Prelude to Woodbury' set:

Another rather lovely sculpt from Mantic! Detailed and characterful enough to be fun to paint and nice looking even with a fairly simple paintjob, which is always a winner in my book!

Now, my experience with the Walking Dead only extends as far as the comics (well, and the first couple of series of the TV show before we gave up on that), so I don't really know much about the pre-tyrant era Brian from the novels that this miniature is modelled after; I'm more used to this guy:

Maybe if I finish off all of the models in the starter set, I'll treat myself to an expansion or two and see if I can't pick up a model of the Governor once he's missing some bits...

Tally: 33 vs -46 = +79

Zomtober 2018 week 4

And so, we find ourselves at the final Sunday deadline of this year's Zomtober, surprisingly having not once missed a posting deadline (he types, tempting fate). Thus, I present another six zombies, three at a time (because the pictures get even worse if I try to squeeze them all into one picture), which I think takes me to having painted one of every unique walker sculpt in my Walking Dead starter box bar the zombified Rick figure:

These three are fairly plain, and include the Limited Edition 'Ronnie' walker (the lad in the shirt emblazoned with multiple letter M's). I saw a picture of the actual chap that the sculpt is based on this week, and have no idea why I'd envisioned him as a redhead. Ah well, I still think it rather suits him...

Three walkers that I'm infinitely more pleased with - the first I love for the dodgy freehand on the vest; the second is a lovely figure, being from the Limited Edition Clementine & Lee Booster; and the third I love because despite a slightly odd facial sculpt (having a face shape not unlike a Necron) and appearing to be draped in a bin bag there's just something brilliant about it, and I thoroughly enjoyed painting it. I also went all out on painting texture on the jeans on this figure that is pretty much unnoticeable in these pictures (and real life), but hey I know it's there [he weeps].

Here's another angle on the deer-munching figure, as his hunched pose makes it a little hard to see when photographed with his pals:

Side Note: I haven't played any of the Telltale Games Walking Dead games, so don't really know the significance of this figure. I probably should get around to it one of these days...

But what's that, there's more?

Not content with just painting zombies for Zomtober, I wanted to try and add another Spawn Point to my collection to go with the ones from a previous year, to take my total up to four, which seems a better number for spreading around a table evenly...

My plan was to make a Spawn Point inspired by the mounds of bodies that appear in a Walking Dead app that I briefly played some time last year (might have been called Road to... something. I forget). Several levels had these mounds of bodies that every so often would wiggle and disgorge more walkers, and I quite liked the idea of trying to produce something inspired by them in miniature form!

I grabbed a base to match my previous ones, and set about cutting some cork to make a mound (in order to give the piece some additional height without having to use more miniatures that you wouldn't even see in the middle of the pile):

A couple of round bases made the perfect templates to give a regularly rising slope:

Although when I posed a miniature next to it, I decided that maybe it needed a little boost and gave it another layer of cork for height:

I popped a weight on top to hold it down while the glue dried (I started with PVA, but added some superglue when that took too long to set), and once it had, I applied some filler to smooth out the transitions between layers:

It was at this point that I realised that I'd grabbed the wrong tube of filler, having grabbed a tiling one that is more rubbery that that which I would normally use. Taking a Bob Ross like approach of 'happy little accidents', I figured I'd press on and see how it turned out.

I deliberated on whether to sand the base now (in order to make sure that there were no missed spots, as there might be if I tried to apply glue into the nooks and crannies between figures) or after I'd applied the figures (in order to make them look like they were slightly buried), and settled on the former. I didn't take a picture of that step, oddly, but imagine a slightly sad tiny wedding cake covered in sand and grit and you wouldn't be far off.

Now, for the bodies, I sifted through several boxes of odds and ends and came up with a few Doctor Who Miniatures figures, some Heroclix, as well as a Mantic Walking Dead Walker that I have several copies of the same sculpt of (one of which you've seen earlier in this post - I got two in my starter box, and I think got a couple as a sample at a previous Salute), and then scavenged some left over limbs and other assorted body parts from sprues, everything from zulus to Frostgrave Barbarians!

I tried the old 'hot water trick' on the Doctor Who figures to try and make them lie more naturally, but they didn't seem to take to it as well as other figures I've tried it on, so I had to fall back on cutting and re-positioning limbs, cunning placement, and in the end an avant-garde approach to realism. I also cut out some short lengths of sprue that I sunk into the base (thanks slightly softer than usual filler for making it so easy to jab a piece in, then fill the resulting hole with glue to hold it in place) to look like lengths of metal rebar poking out of the ground and rubble - a few were positioned to make it look as if the bodes had come to rest on them, rather than having a limb mysteriously held upwards of it's own volition!

A couple of nights of carefully piling tiny bodies, and I had my mound ready for a blast of spray undercoat:

Then it was just a case of frantically getting it painted as the Sunday posting deadline loomed ever closer! I went with a fairly muted palette, figuring that it's more a piece of terrain than an eye catching figure, and went to town weathering everything with grimy washes, as well as stippling on various shades of dust and grime, before finishing with a healthy dose of blood effects:

Here you can see the detail that I added to make it a Spawn Point rather than just a macabre piece of blocking terrain, a zombie hauling himself out from under the pile of bodies made from a Wargames Factory zombie body and reaching arm with a Westwind zombie head (as the Wargames Factory zombie face sculpts are awful, and only really useful to fill gaps between corpses on the pile as they do here):

Here is a size comparison against one of my original Spawn Points:

And with a survivor:

Whilst taking the pictures for this post, I realised that the base for this one was noticeably darker than everything else that I've finished, so went back and gave it an additional Bleached/Ushabti Bone drybrush, so now it looks more like this:

The piece as a whole is much darker than everything else I've finished, but hey, it's a grubby pile of bloody bodies, that's to be expected! If anything, I should probably go back and bloody up the ground a little more...

So, with that included, here is this Zomtober's complete output:

Not bad going at all, I think! I just need to paint some Survivors and I could even try out the All Out War rules in order to procrastinate on playtesting my own...

Which brings the Tally to:

32 vs -46 = +78

Hmm, 20 more figures to paint in the next two months if I'm going to hit that 'average one painted figure a week by the end of the year' challenge I set myself...

Also, for the first time in the history of ever, I'm disappointed that it's a four rather than five week Zomtober this year, as there were a few more bits that I had on the go that didn't managed to get finished in time to get added to this final submission. Who knows, maybe I'll get them finished and have a bonus fifth week post next week; maybe my hobby focus will sweep on to something else and they won't see the light of day until next year's Zomtober...

Zomtober 2018 Week 3 - Make America Grey Again

Continuing the projected growth in output, this week I submit 6 walkers as my entry for Zomtober:

Ugh, my photography is bad this week. The Mantic walkers are actually quite nice sculpts, on the most part, barring some soft facial features like the chap munching on a handful of guts (which is an odd outlier - just compare it to the facial detail on the chap in blue!)

I had some fun adding a couple of little details this week (as hey, you should always at least strive to amuse yourself), like making one of the walkers a redneck in a 'Make America Grey Again' hat:

Or a floral shirt and heart marked cap:

Whilst freehand isn't my strongest skill (that honour would probably have to go to procrastination, or making overly ambitious project plans), I'm pretty happy with how the flowers on his shirt came out. Even if my daughter thought they were stars when I asked her to identify them.

I also continued my adventures into diversifying the skin tones in my walking dead, including using some flesh tones from Foundry, like on this guy:

This particular one didn't look too hot on first application though, so I played with my new pot of Athonian Camoshade to try and make him look a bit manky and gangrenous. It looks... OK, I guess. Sunday deadline hit though, so good enough is good enough.

The Tally took a hit in the other direction as well this week, as this chap turned up from eBay:

Someone posted on Instagram or Facebook that they'd recently unearthed this classic Marine Sergeant sculpt, which kicked off a wave of nostalgia for me, so off to eBay I went, and promptly forgot that I'd placed a bid until I got the notification that I'd won! I have vague plans to make him a Devestator Sergeant , as I'm fairly certain that I've got a box of them tucked away somewhere...

Tally

25 vs -46 = +71

Next week - a fourth post on time, I hope!

Zomtober 2018 Week 2 - Necrotic Exponential

After last week's pair of biters, this week I raise the stakes with an offering of four:

Again, Mantic Walking Dead Walkers re-based onto 30mm DS lipped bases.

More shades of rotting flesh on display again, including a green that I daubed with splashes of Athonian Camoshade to look gross and rotten, like maybe the zombie fell in a river before dragging itself out to wreak havoc on the living...

Unusually, these were finished this morning (rather than the usual 'fifteen minutes before the post and the paint is still wet in the photos'), and so I got to take some pictures in natural light, which didn't turn out great, so here are some single shots in hand to try and give a better idea of what the colours actually look like:

Adventures in basing continue, including accidentally discovering a new method for making sunken concrete bases that I may get round to documenting later in the month - my advice is though, get a helper:

Tally:

19 vs -47 = +66

Zomtober 2018 Week One - I rise from the grave

And Lo, as doth happen every Summer, the sun shineth mightily, and there is a grand slump wherein I get very little painting done and produce even fewer blog posts.

However, I was determined to break free of such things with Zomtober, the most wonderful time of year, and thus present for your delectation a pair of biters:

They're from Mantic's Walking Dead All Out War game, rebased to match my other zombies, and took paint quite nicely! Apologies about the bases, they were a bit of a rush job to build last night in order to be able to finish up this morning to make the Sunday posting deadline... I decided to go for a cork concrete base rather than my usual sand and bricks (as appears on at least a hundred other zombies that I've painted previously).
Also varying from my usual rhythm is that with these zombies, I'm breaking away from my usual dusty grey flesh! I've been looking for a reason to do some different skin tones on my shambling dead for a little while now, so expect to see some more shades over the next couple of weeks!

Yes, I childishly gave the chap bright pink underwear poking through a hole in the seat of his pants... The waitress type also got some additional weathering on her clothing, as I noticed a spot that I'd missed with the wash, and then ended up having so much fun applying some dirt and grime that I just carried on!

Daughter also got involved 'painting statues' - here, she's going hog wild with red paint, telling me "his jacket is blood. And his face. And his stand". She later went back and painted it blue again...

Fun fact - I kept seeing this out of the corner of my eye thinking that I was bleeding, before remembering that it was just where I was testing out stippling on some blood effects...

And so, finishing these two brings the Tally to no obviously I've had more miniatures arrive in the three months since I last posted:

Mattblackgod had a limited edition mini made up to celebrate the PAW forums tenth anniversary:

Disappointingly, the guy behind the blog's name isn't Matt Blackgod, as it is in my head. I'm planning on converting him slightly so that he's holding an old length of pipe like a hiking stick.

Warhammer Conquest is a thing:

My wife grabbed me a couple of copies of issue 1 for my birthday (as I figured I'd like a set of 3 primaris Marines to build 'as-is', and another three to play around with trying my hand at making true scale marine), and I grabbed a copy of issue 2 as I fancied some Plague Marines and a pot of paint for a fiver! Haven't grabbed any others yet, but may nip into Games Workshop (or Warhammer as it's called these days) and have a nose during the week...

Then Uncle Johnny hit the Tally the hardest, not once but twice:

Finding himself in possession of a whole bevy of Rogue Trooper Norts, he decided that I should also be blessed with some. And then thought that they might need some backup, so gifted me some snipers too. I guess I should get me a Rogue to bash them in! Look at how lovely those snipers are though...

That's it for miniature acquisitions, which brings the Tally to:

15 vs -47 = +62

Other treats include this haul:

A buddy of mine is a manager at the local cinema, and opened a cupboard in the projectionist room that looked like it hadn't been opened since the days when cinemas actually used projectionists to screen films, and found this heap of old White Dwarfs, Blood Bowl Annuals, Catalogues and so on. Despite my attempts to lure him into buying Kill Team, he's not really an active tabletop player any more, so he gifted them to me...

I also finished this little chap:

CD Gundam Unicorn

(only the eyes use one of the (many) provided stickers, the rest of the detail is all paint)

Well, I say finished, I'm still waiting on delivery of a grey Gundam Marker to finish the detailing on his knees, and also his right hand pinged out of the clip I was holding it in for painting and flew across the room to vanish without a trace, but until either or both arrive I'm calling it done. More kits are on their way to join the backlog, but I'll be focusing on zombies with my usual laser-like focus for the next three weeks...

Daughter also got involved in Gundam, as I got home from work one day to find she'd used these two brand new panel lining markers to try and draw a picture, resulting in the nibless result you see above. I was more concerned that she'd managed to open a pack of spare scalpel blades though...

What's next for Zomtober though? As ever, I have an ambition and a back up plan. Worst case scenario, I've got enough Walkers prepped to finish at least one more a week for the next three weeks. If all goes well, though, I may be able to finish quite the little hoard, with accompanying survivors and even something using this little assortment of bits: