Zombie of the Week #31: Private Maberry

Pvt. Maberry

Private Maberry had always considered the possibility of going home in a box.  He hadnt factored in a barrel.  He definitely didnt think that he would be still moving en route either.

Umbrella Archive Filing

Pvt. Maberry is another off-the-peg style spawn point in the same vein as Pvt. Molina from a few weeks ago and Pvt. Watford who goes up soon.  The zombies in barrels come from Eureka and were a lot of fun to paint.

Resident Evil Regenerators

Regenerators

Regenerators are one of the more memorable bad guys from Resident Evil 4.  They are the zombies that are animated by a number of Las Plagas parasites throughout their bodies (well they are called parasites, but I dont think that parasites inhabit dead things, do they?).

They were as creepy as all get out and required judicious use of the infra red sniper scope to surgically dispatch the various parasites that controlled it.  Regular damage to a Regenerator was inevitably… wait for it… regenerated.  They were great bad guys and according to the Resident Evil Wiki, they are the only true zombies in the entire game.  The rest of the bad guys generally being living humans inhabited by a parasitic bug of one sort or another dontcha know.

RE4 Iron Maiden (Regenerator Boss)

The Iron Maiden above is a boss version of the Regenerator.  As it is hard to find a decent picture of a Regenerator online you will have to settle for the boss version.  The only real visual difference is the spikes that protrude from the Iron Maiden.

The miniatures are Tortured Shamblers from Pardulon.  The figures are resin and the pair that I got had a lot of flashing.  As a result I had difficulty painting them, particularly on the legs which I had scraped almost featureless.

They worked out ok in the end although I would approach the painting differently if I were to paint them again.  They have that somewhat palsied look that is very suggestive of the RE Regenerators, plus they are quite tall: very zombie boss like.

Bandy-legged Rear Shot

Finally, here is a comparison shot of the Shamblers plus the Licker from a while back in comparison with some other figures for scale reference.  The Tickler is included just because it is the base figure used to make the Licker.

L to R: Horrorclix Tickler, Pardulon Tortured Shambler, Lead Bones not-Leon S. Kennedy, Licker (converted Horrorclix), Hasslefree Ray, Pardulon Tortured Shambler

Zombie of the Week #30: Doug

Doug

It looks like Doug is going to get another chance to enjoy his retirement… from life.

Personal Voluntary Exhumation

Personally, I like my living impaired to have been rendered that way by pseudo-scientific means.  This, in my opinion renders the zombification of buried corpses “unrealistic” 

On the other hand, a zombie bursting from the grave is a classic zombie image.  When an opportunity to make something fun like that comes along I dont like to let “realism” get in the way.  When Doug showed up in my Frothers zombie pack last January I put it to one side, knowing that he was destined for a cheesy looking spawn pont.

The gravestone is from the GW zombie sprue.  The grave is from a Horrorclix Jason Vs Freddie set plus some balsa scraps, flock and gravel.  I had to trim the bottom of it to get it more flush but it still sits a bit proud.  While I could have made a little more effort to get it flush with the base I was happy to leave it looking like disturbed earth caused by personal, voluntary exhumation.

I definitely should has taken more time with the “engraved” text areas on the tombstone however.

“C.Hi.M.P.s”

Something even more frivolous than usual today

Chimpanzee Hirsute Maglev Patrol

Officers Wilcox, Estrada, Baker and Poncherello from the

Chimpanzee Hirsute Maglev Patrol

are on the case.

I recently traded for a couple of sets of toy flying saucers from the “Planet 51” movie.  The saucers are pretty titchy and the only figures that I had that I thought might be able to squeeze into the cockpit were some space chimps.  And so, a project was born.

Judge Dredd supervises a sting operation in "The Jungle" by the CHiMPs. Perps Dr Fossey and Spank were apprehended.

The chimps are Mega Minis with cop hats from Heroclix figures.  I had fun painting these guys up.  As I still have a few of those space chimp figures I imagine that they may follow suit and form a small force of public servants.

There was also a pair of saucer Jeeps that came with the patrol saucers.  I hope to get a couple of apes into those too, maybe Eureka figures this time

Saucer Closeup

A close up.  I didnt really do almost any paint work on the saucers, just a tiny bit of tidy up to the factory job here and there (and as usual, when the photo is blown up to this size a few other minor issues become apparent).

I was tempted to add a few things like a shine to the various lights etc but I didnt want to take from the pristine, 1950′s, Car 54 Where Are You? look, so I left well alone.

Zombie of the Week #29: Private Molina

Pvt. Molina

Ronald Reagan was in power when Private Molina was unfortunate enough to be on covert investigative duties after Chernobyl.  While his family were given closed casket burial, the Privates body was stored in a barrel of chemical soup.  For many years since the same chemical concoction has kept the ex-soldier in a reduced mental and physical capacity, even for someone already “living impaired”.

Recent events have obviously rendered the chemical solution inactive.  As a result, Private Molinas mobility rating increases by the hour.

Necromantic Creme de Menthe

Like Dr Javad, Pvt. Molina is another zombie spawn point, rather than a zombie toy soldier intended for moving around the game table.

The barrel, crate and zombie motif makes up the basic structure of the my zombie spawn points.  As such, Private Molina can be seen as more or less a standard example of the eight that I have made up.

The zombie-in-barrel miniature is from Eureka, the crates and metal drums are a Pardulon piece and the biohazard (orange) and corrosive (purple) barrels are Fenris.

The Umbrella logo on the crate was a bit rushed.  That in combination with it being a bit awkward to paint on to the grain on the crate means that it isnt really very well done, but its within tolerances for me.

Dr Flint Leghorn

Dr Flint Leghorn

Dr Leghorns momma was one of the Standard Falls townsfolk but his pappy was a member of the Lab Rats tribe.  This gave Flint a unique perspective on life in and around the town and the wastes around it.  It has also contributed somewhat to his eccentric perspective.

Like Sir Reginald Beef Wellington O.B.E. (a close friend of the doctors), Leghorn doesnt live in the town itself but a couple of hours travel from it.  Nonetheless his unusual combination of tribal and scientific medical knowledge means that he gets visited by a lot more townsfolk then one might expect.

"Ahm afraid that there aint nothing ah can do. That there leg done have to come off."

Dr Leghorn is a Copplestone Casting from their awesome “Wasteland Desperadoes” pack, like Beauford X. Tinction.  Like every Copplestone sculpt that I have come across, it is of a very high standard.   I rate Copplestone and Hasslefree miniatures right up at the top of the industry standard.

I had some problems with the flesh tones on this figure, mostly because I decided to “fix” some of it while pissed late on a Saturday night.  After that less than successful evenings “work” the figure sat on my painting table for a few months while I painted other stuff, while I waited to find the enthusiasm to get painting it again.

Like the red stripes on Sir Reggie, I decided to try something that I hadnt done before on this figures trousers.  After doing a little bit of research into leopard skin print online I managed to get the pattern painted to a level that I was happy with on the first attempt.  Which was nice

Zombie of the Week #28: Dr Javad

Dr Javad

Dr Javads plan has succeeded, although he had not planned to martyr himself just yet.  That part was an accident.

The weaponised zombified test subjects contained in units Z7 and Z8 are already entering the first stages of reanimation and will soon strike against the infidels like the holy weapon of God.

Biological Weapons Containment (compromised)

Dr Javad is one eighth of my recent project to make zombie spawn points for my games.  As zombies show up during games they will be placed in contact with one or more of these spawn markers.

Each marker is a very small diorama or collection of bits and pieces stuck to a 60mm base.  Most of them are pretty similar in theme but I had a little more fun with a couple more.  I think that this marker with Dr Javad is probably my favourite.

The concept is that the two blue boxes are some form of high-tech containment unit for the transport of zombies.  These units are carried to their strategic destination by evil terrorist/corporate types.  Subsequently the containment units are opened by some prearranged signal which can then release these disease vectors right in the heart of the infidels/testing areas.

The idea is mainly ripped off from Patient Zero, a cheesy book that I read recently (reviewed here on Dawn of the Lead).  That book was in my opinion pretty trashy, although I enjoyed the non-fiction Zombie CSU (written by the same author and again reviewed here) significantly more.  All the same, like a lot of hard-boiled pulp fiction, Patient Zero contained a lot of inspiration for gaming.

The story in Patient Zero is that nasty terrorist types have created the Sief al Din (Sword of the Faithful) virus and are planning to release it throughout the US.  They used “big blue phone-booth-sized containers” to transport the zeds and that is what I tried to represent with the resin sci-fi crates from Fenris games.

Rather than just have a couple of the crates plonked on a base I decided to add a scientist to the base too.  As everyone knows that when scientists try to play God that everything inevitably goes South, I used a Wargames Factory zombie that I got in a trade to represent the scientist in a zombified state.

I replaced the scientists hands with hands from a Mantic ghoul for a few reasons: the WF zeds hands are tiny and shit and the ghoul hands are gangly enough to be crudely bent into a position that they could hold the laptop that I made from plasticard scraps.

The laptop was added for fun and to show that the scientist is likely to have had something to do with the containment units, rather than simply shambling past them.  The “hazardous” transfers plus the numbering and lettering Letraset help with the industrial scientific look I think.

Finally I painted a few of the recesses in the unit sides to look like status lights (Han Solo in carbonite anyone?).  Again, as with all dealings with zombies where anyone thinks that they can control them, one of the status lights is in the red.  Its only a matter of time…

Standard Falls: a post-apocalyptic toy soldier meeting place.

No photos in this unscheduled post, just a bit of blabbing about my upcoming post-apocalyptic/space western town project.  I will keep it brief.

I want to spend a significant chunk of my time this summer prepping some simple scenery.  I dont play a lot of “tabletop wargames” these days but I still get a kick out of the projects that they inspire.  So I want to take advantage of my study free summer to get stuck into that for a while (assuming that I can stay focussed for a while).

I want to build a town that looks like a run down version of Redemption (the town from The Quick and the Dead) if it were situated in the Cursed Earth under the shadow of Neo-Tokyo, visited occasionally by the Serenity and was located a quick V8 Interceptor ride down the cracked blacktop from Mos Eisley.

There will be shanty elements run by monkey mobsters, the saloon will be run by an alien and Crystal Canyons (the grand dame of the brothel) is already undercoated and ready to go.  That sort of pulpy, 2000AD sort of setting is what I am going for.

I have about 50 or so miniatures earmarked for the project, although I own many more that will slot right into the setting.

One of the main driving forces of the project is that it can incorporate pretty much anything that I feel like:

Space chimp miscreants? Check: zombie infested wasteland? No problem: RPM Power Rangers on a mission outside the domed city of Corinth? Get in gear: Tribes of natives a whoopin’ an’ a hollerin’ while they rob the Amtrak? Just waiting for (war)paint:  A Federation away team making moves on the green skinned ladies while wiping their arses with the prime directive? Make it so: Predators hunting lowlives in the alleyways? You got it MooOOthyrfooKer: Giant mutant bugs living in hives under alien ruins?… Well… you get the idea.

Crucially each of the terrain elements will be built rather quickly and with storage very much to the forefront.  They buildings will not be very fancy either, just rugged and practical.

So thats the plan.  Hopefully by October or so there will be a whole lot more around here about Standard Falls, in case you were wondering.

Sir Reginald Beef Wellington O.B.E.

Sir Reginald Beef Wellington O.B.E.

Sir Reginald Beef Wellington OBE lives on the outskirts of Standard Falls, mostly keeping to himself.  He has a few friends in the area, the most notable being Doctor Leghorn.  His eccentric and slightly peculiar nature keeps him at arms length from most of the the towns inhabitants.

"Top hole! And rather spiffing too actually".

Reggie is the first post-apocalyptic figure that I have painted for quite a while, probably over a decade.   As a child of the ’80s when post-apocalyptic movies were particularly in vogue I will always have a soft spot for the sub-genre.

Reggie is a classic sculpt by Mark Copplestone currently for sale from EM4.  There is something really great about the “stiff upper lip” gas mask and torn morning suit look that is very appealing.

Most versions of the figure that I have seen are painted to look like the figure is wearing a formal suit, usually black.  Just for a little variety I decided to paint Reggie in a “boating” jacket, for that Oxbridge look.   The figure always reminds me a little of Mr Bland (from Bland and Brass) in the Rogue Trooper comics from the 80′s.

Since I painted and photgraphed the figure I have tidied up the stripes on the back of Reggies left arm.  A few of them were a bit off.  I also put a teeny bit of lichen on the rear of the base, but thats really hardly worth mentioning.

I have a lot of post-apoc stuff in the pipeline, so more inhabitants of post-apocalyptic Standard Falls will be showing up here as time goes by.

Apologies for interruption of advertised broadcast…

There has been some scheduling confusion at Sho3box towers again Im afraid, with an embarassing republication of the L4D Jockeys post.  Sometimes I dont know how I sleep at night, I really dont

I blame volcanic ash as it seems to be the scapegoat of the moment.  Yep, its the ash that did it.  Bloody volcanoes (apparently “volcanos” is valid too, plural fans).

A replacement post regarding a recently painted figure that I really think has “it” (whatever “it” is) will be up shortly.