Zombie of the Week #52: Barry Cotter

 

Barry Cotter

Unfortunate resurrected Trick or Treater or former wizard school pupil turned evil necromancer?  You decide.

"Entrailium, reinserto!"

A fun figure from MegaMinis this time.  Although the sculpting is a little crude the subject matter is recognisable and funny enough to make it worthwhile.   The figure is quite small (thats a 20mm base) as can be seen in the comparison shot below.

L to R: EM4, MegaMinis, Frothers

I painted Barry up very fast over an hour or two in front of a dodgy movie on TV.  The school uniform and in particular the tie make the figure very recognisable and especially appropriate for a Halloween post I think.

Penultimate Vanity Project #1: Modern Zompocalyptic Me

The inaugural Penultimate Vanity Project offering is modern era, zompocalypse survivor Paul.

Modern Survivor Me

I decided to start this series with the model that most closely represents what I actually look like.  All further PVP entries (no matter how esoteric) can therefore be measured against this one.

The figure is Baker from Hasslefrees Adventurers range.

I bought the figure specifically to paint up as a modern version of myself for gaming with.  Despite all of my recent talk about using certain heads, cats, glasses and the like to create a recognisable “branding” of my self-portrait figures, I didn’t do anything like that this time.  I considered adding glasses to the model but didn’t for two reasons: the hood made it awkward and the miniature is so beautifully sculpted (as one would expect from Hasslefree) that I didn’t want to cover up the detail with some crude conversion work.

What I did do was paint the clothes to match some things that I wear in real life.  The Sho3box Zompocalyptic Fall Collection consists of:

• Black hoodie with white piping  - Dunnes Stores – €9
• Brown/Olive Drab jacket – Dunnes Stores – €38
• Green Incredible Hulk t-shirt with Lou Ferrigno detail – Unknown Online Retailer $25USD inc shipping
• Blue jeans – Penneys - €15
• Black and Yellow Gola Trainers – Schuh.ie – €25 (sale price)

The miniature is sculpted wearing boots rather than trainers.  I don’t tend to wear boots very often so I decided to paint them up like a pair of my trainers anyway.  For the delectation of all of you fashionistas out there the trainers and the t-shirt are shown below.

Trainers

28mm Trainers

Hulk T-Shirt

 

I got a bit lazier than usual when highlighting the jacket, as is quite visible in the shot below.  As the viewers eye tends to be drawn to the face and bright green shirt I don’t think that it matters that much really.

Why am I only wearing one glove?

Although the real me is unlikely to behave in a terribly pro-active fashion in the event of the cannibalistic dead walking the Earth, I figured that some artistic licence was required to make a gaming piece that would be fun to use.  Although obtaining a muzzle suppressed machine pistol in rural Ireland is difficult at the best of times, I nonetheless decided to unrealistically arm the miniature with the supplied ranged weapon rather than the crowbar (also supplied) as it would be more fun to game with.  Miniature realism is a consideration, but I am not going to let it get in the way of my fun.  For the record, I don’t own a set of knuckledusters either.

I like the way that the face came out.  It looks close enough to my face to be acceptable, although as discussed in my project introduction post, getting a 28mm replica of any specific persons face is a tall order.  The painting on the face came out quite crisp and the eyes didn’t end up too crossed, which is always a bonus.

Painting this miniature brought a few things to my attention:

• When fully dressed I look like a hundred dollars.  Not quite “Derelicte“, but far from haute couture.  A dedicated follower of fashion?  Not so much.
• The photo is grainy.  I really must up my miniature photo taking game one of these days.
• Putting photos of my clothes up on my gaming miniatures blog is absurd, but strangely amusing to me.  I may do it with some other PVP entries as appropriate.  Depending on feedback of course.
• By painting a somewhat recognisable wardrobe on a 28mm figure it is possible to get recognition factor.  When I showed this figure to gaming colleagues they “got” it. I don’t think that if they had seen the figure on the table that they would have immediately known that it was supposed to be me, but when given the figure and asked “This is supposed to be a model of me.  What do you think?” they reacted positively.  This is encouraging for future, more ludicrous Penultimate Vanity Projects in waiting.  As some of the themes used for these figures are repeated I hope that a visual shorthand will develop that will make the PVP miniatures more recognisable to the observer.

Zombie of the Week #51: Eoin

Eoin

Unrecognisable as the accounting technician that he once was, Eoin came to his bathrobed end when he was bitten at the health spa.

 

 

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Eoin is another eighties GW zombie painted in 1998 or so that has seen a lot of action.  I heavy handedly ladled a whole load of gore on in 2009 to help the figure to fit in a little better with more recently painted zombies.

Penultimate Vanity Project Starts

I have started another ongoing miniatures project that spans most of my other miniatures projects.

More info here.

Zombie of the Week #50: Marjory

Marjory

Marjory crawls from the depths of the sump only rarely, when her hunger cannot be sated by sump spiders, ripper jacks and milliasaurs.  On those occasions her rotting frame can only be sustained by those hivers unfortunate enough to be in the wrong part of the underhive at the wrong time.

Giant Mutant Frog Zombie

Marjory is a resin figure from the old Leviathan tabletop wargame.  I cant remember what the figures title was but it essentially filled the same role in the game as a GW Great Unclean One of Nurgle: a vast rotting zombie demon thing.  The Licker to the left is included for scale.

Marjorys paint job was simple and fast.  A few different layers of greenish drybrushing.  As is always the case when I look at miniatures that I painted a long time ago I would approach it differently now, but that doesnt necessarily mean that I dont like it fine as it is.

Marjory was originally pulling intestines and the like from a small lizard/dinosaur/dragon thing that featured in Leviathan.  This wasnt suitable for my uses as I painted Marjory up to be used as a boss zombie in Necromunda “It Came From The Depths” sort of scenarios and the lizard thing was a little too fantasy for my tastes.  I filed the lizard parts to look like a rock or piece of masonry.  I left the intestines in Marjorys hands as they were too hard to remove and fit with my vision of a Necromundan zombie sump monster anyway.

Marjory was varnished to a pretty glossy sheen.  While a gloss finish isnt to everyones taste, I am reluctant to matt Marjorys slimy look as I think that its quite appropriate.

Marjory has been used in zombie games, sci-fi games and fantasy games.  She gets around.

Things that make you go “Boom” Pt2

Continuing on from a few weeks ago, here is another small post regarding some interactive little bits of scenery for my zombie game project.

Gas Cans

Players of Left 4 Dead or Left 4 Dead 2 will be aware of the various uses of gas cans in the games.  Generally where a “crescendo event” is about to take place the players have a little bit of time to set up the area ready to receive a large wave of infected.  There will usually be a few gas cans in the vicinity that can be arranged in such a way that when shot they will cover an area of advance for the mindless horde.

Good placement of these cans can barbeque a swathe of infected before they even get to the survivors.  They are also a lot of fun to use well, so I definitely wanted to include them in my zombie apocalypse game.

Zombie of the Week #49: Clayton

Clayton

Clayton never has to worry about keeping up with the Joneses again.  She ate the three of them a couple of months back.

Faded Catwalk Chic

One week later than planned todays ZotW is a gender indeterminate 1980s metal GW figure.  The skin was drybrushed and the crude but functional layering of the raggedy clothing was done back in the late 90s.  The gorier areas were made to look like that in a revamp of my older figures performed last year.

Clayton was deliberately bought because s/he was a generic enough looking figue to fit in with almost any setting that I might game in , fantasy, modern or sci-fi.

Back Next Week

Due to some real life stuff I wont be updating this blog this week.  The next post will be on Sunday October 10th.

Talk to you then.