Zombtober Week #3 - Four 40mm Zombies

Huzzah! The last of the 40mm Zombies are finished.

I went with a more contrasty, for me any way, style with these. I decided noy to do highlights on the pink robe after the issues I had with the flat surface of the survivors coat.

I hope the checks on the shirt work for you. For some reason I wanted to snazz him up, I think that is part of why I couldn't get anybody finished last week. I also played with a splatter technique. I feel like this one worked a little better than one I had tried several batches earlier, but I still need to work on my weathering technique.

I need to get cracking on so many things. Hope you paint flows and your brushes keep their points.

Paint Table Staurday (Friday Night) - You must WIP it!

Hi All,

Well it's Saturday in certain parts of the world.

I've been busy/mopey. Found out I'm going to lose my tooth and then they were worried I was on the verge of having a heart condition because of my left shoulder, side of face issues.

Clear bill of health, normal EKG, although there was an unpleasant conversation about the effects of Brain tumors on facial nerves. But we seem to be in good shape.

Sorry, your here for pictures of little men. Right!

Above are those 40mm zombies. I missed last week for Zombtober, seems to happen every time I start to assembly line paint. There are not finished,but are a wash and a couple of details away.

Basing gunk on the 20mm metal Lizard men and remaining 1/72 plastic goblins.

I decided to was on sprue the plastic 28mm GW zombies I got from Stevo. The are underneath a spreu of Gripping Beast Celts I'm planning to paint up as Thugs for my Tzeentch Warband.

I figured, while I had the tub out for the zombies I'd wash the High Elves and Skaven from the 8th Ed. WFB box set I bought awhile back. I thought it was a good deal for the figures and figured to capitalize on the purge due to AoS before these became "rare" and "OOP".

I also received my first big box Kickstarter in the mail today. Blood Rage. I'll show it off soon.

Another Cross Country meet in the morning for the boy. Wish him luck.

EDIT

I keep on forgetting to welcome Brummie to the blog. He runs Brummie's Wargaming Blog and is also running the Zombtober festivities. Go check him and the other Zombtoberers out.

/EDIT

Zombtober - First Survivor - Madonna with Knife

Hi All,

I finished this earlier today, but we had a shake out workout and then I was too busy watching Fear the Walking Dead to post.

She turned out alright. The Grunge wash is not quite where I want it to be. Somehow I didn't get the black portion of it right. But it still does the trick of softening my heavy handed highlights.

Showing you the back is mostly an exercise in self flagellation. I struggled with painting texture into the back of the jacket. The detail is pretty soft. I do like the detail I painted in her hair, the top and back of her head are smooth, only the curls are sculpted.

I have and Orc on the table as well, but couldn't get him finished for Orctober.

Paint Table Saturday 100 and Zombtober 2015

Hi All,

Just a quick one before Cross Country.

These are the last of the 40mm Zombies and Survivor that weren't qualified for Curt's challenge because they had already been started. The survivor I call "Madonna with Knife". She looks like the Virgin Mary to me.

She was done using the sloppy drybrush in successive layers that I decided I didn't like. The Zombies look like they got the first layer of grey.

So in addition to Orktober, I'm trying to participate in Zombtober (I may be the only person who includes the b). I think you just need to post a finished Zombie/Survivor every Sunday in October.

I also plan to do Orctober, but forget what the rules are.

Later.

Zom(b)tober 3

Well, it was actually yesterday but I got these three finished today with the varnish, gore and flocking.

Since the last time was sort of 1.5 there wasn't really a 2.

I tried to do three color style but I think I fell a little flat. I need to work on anatomy for these figures that don't have sculpted musculature. I also tried to paint on folds to the flat areas of the clothes, but it just looks like stripes on the bathrobe.

So I may revisit the glaze over grey again.

The other difference was I tried some splatter effects on them. Washes didn't work, watered down paint was better.

I also have 5 more orcs about 70% done but I didn't want to hold up the zombies any longer.

Sorry for the lack of posts, been busy with kid activities.

Zom(b)orctober 1

Well, I'm either a day early for the second week of Zom(b)tober or 6 days late for the first week.

Perhaps I used too much blue on the figures to use a blue background. I also reverted to no EV compensation, as I wanted a darker look to the photo.

I base coated these Burnt Umber using Liquitex Spray Artist Acrylic. I had actually started these with some Krylon and hated it. As you may recall I dislike spray primer as I feel like I almost never achieve full coverage while also end up covering detail. The liquitex had none of those issues and I would recommend it to anyone. It is expensive $11.99 per can, but if I can speed up my prep time it's worth it to me. Note to self - Don't spray prime at dusk. It is really hard to tell if you missed a spot.

I then wanted to work with a modified grayscale technique. The idea was to build up highlights in gray and then glaze colors over that. I feel like the drybrush was not wholly successful as it got that powdery look, associated with overworked drybrushing over surfaces without much detail. I then was hit and miss with thinning the the paints. I also used two different blues on the male zombies that didn't look that different. The flesh was glazed with Italian sage, which is a light green grey. The female had a green skirt and yellow shirt. For the skin I did a modified grunge wash of 4:2:1 Green: Burnt Umber: Black wash. The rest was my standard Grunge was 4:2:1 Raw Umber: Burnt Umber: Black. I tried to be subdued with the gore. First I used a little Tamiya Clear Red mixed into some sepia ink wash. It was too brown and lifeless. I then reapplied the clear red over those areas and that helped it pop a little more. The matte varnish may have taken the shine off the clear red too much.

They came out okay but I think I will mix greys into my color palette to achieve the look instead of painting in grey and glazing. I was working on a survivor at the same time but the techniques weren't doing it for me.

Next are the Orcs.

I drybrushed up the skin on these guys and I don't think I will do that again at this scale. These guys are 1/72 scale from the Dark Alliance. Set 1 I think. As usual I played with Bronze, Copper, Gold and Silver on them, just to make them more interesting. The eye motif on the shields is my fall back. On the Bronze shield I did it backed by Burnt Umber, the steel shield is backed by black.

I also felt like trying out a little vignette with these Orcs:

Fladnag and De La Warre lead their men to fight off the green menace.

I bumped up the EV to +1 to make it brighter and adjusted the aperture to f16 to try and get the forward figures in better focus. I used digicamcontrol 1.2 to help take all the photos. I must admit to rushing this shot. I should have played with lighting and position more.

I'd also like to welcome the two latest followers:

Tiny Basement of Tiny Basement Wars and pw, who does not have a blog listed in his Friend Connect profile. TB is doing some fun Oldhammer gaming with his kids and has a great Comic style report of his Space Hulk Dungeon Bash mash up. And if pw reads this and has a link just let me know.

Hope y'all like the latest. More to come, I hope.

Otherworld Sale and updates

Hi All,

Just wanted to let you know that you still have time to avail yourself of the Otherworld Miniatures birthday sale. I saw a couple of posts about it, but the one I finally found was on Wargames News and Terrain. It expires on Oct 11th, type in 8THBIRTHDAY in the coupon code box at checkout and receive a 20% discount. I ordered the demon idol diorama pack and the discount essentially brought the shipping to 50p. Not too shabby.

I also finally got the Marauder Giant and Azhag apart. The Giant snapped of the base easily, Azhag I had to leave in the freezer for several more days. The only bad thing was snapping the peg off the plastic wing. Now if I could remember where I put the other wing.

I forgot to take a picture of it, but the wyvern has Marauder 1993 carved into his foot.

I also dug out my zombies for zombtober.

The plastic zombies and survivors are roughly 40mm I got them off Amazon (not this one but similar) and glued them to washers for the Analogue Painting Challenge last year. In the interim I knocked the box over and snapped them off the bases. It's the white glue, but I've set myself up to, in theory, back out of my basing system.

The metal zombies are the 20mm Elhiem zombie horde plus a duplicate casualty figure from the survivors set. I got these from Syr Hobbs who I wanted to give a shout out to for excellent customer service. When I placed my order they contacted me with a question about what to do for items that were out of stock. When the items did eventually come in they followed up with me. It sounds like standard practice, but so many get wrong. So I applaud them for doing it well. Their website is in transition right now but they are responsive to email.  There is a TMP post here about the delays.

Best to get basing. October 5th is the first deadline to post a zombie/survivor and in my case Greenskin as well.

Zom(b)Orctober

So I've signed on to do Zom(b)tober and Orctober this year.

I add a b because it's Zom B's!

I think I signed on to this last year, and then produced a big fat zero in the painted Zombie department. So I'm going to throw my hat in again and try to get something done. I think I saw it first on Eclectic Gentleman Tabletop Gamer and am listed 10th there, while I'm also listed on Brummie's Wargaming Blog where I'm listed 20th. I also followed Brummie's Blog today as it was one I thought I was, but actually wasn't.

I see that Brummie and EGTG each have their own logo image with the text tying it together. Using What Font Is I found it was Bloody. The only thing I don't like about FFonts is they try to get you to download their installer. I ended up doing the zip file after it downloaded the installer.

So in keeping with the whole make your own banner thing, here's mine:

I am also fully aware that I am the outlier in spelling it with a B.

Next up Orctober.

By Zhu Bajie

You can join in at Erny's Place and there looks like there's even a prize to be had.  Of course the real prize for me is actually painting all the stuff I've had lying around since 1992.

So throw caution to the wind and join one or both of these. Your lead pile will thank you.