Expecting Space Marines? Nope! What then? MERCS? Warmachine? Mass Effect? Historicals?
Nooooope, ZOMBIES!
Trust me, we're only scratching the surface of my list of armies and projects... I'm giving my mate
Staz Matt a run for the title of biggest hobby butterfly lol.
Anyway, I was missing the joys of batch painting, after all these single minis I've been working on. That might sound strange, most painters hate the grind of batch painting, but I find it enjoyable, so long as the models aren't overly complex - pouches, belts and buckles give me nightmares.
Last year I backed Red Box Games' first Kickstarter project, producing a bunch of Tre Manor's amazing sculpts in plastic. Unfortunately the project turned into something of a disaster for Tre, who finished sculpting all the models last year, but couldn't deliver many of the rewards until the last month or so, due to the guy doing all the casting for him being slow and having terrible quality control. Not Tre's fault, and I at least was content to wait. My pretty plastic pieces showed up last month, and I've been slowly putting them together. Overall, the cast quality isn't great, air bubbles mostly, but there hasn't been anything a tiny bit of GS doesn't fix, and quite a few casts have no flaws at all. The sculpts, at least, are every bit as gorgeous as I knew they would be - Tre's models always have so much character and charm, his sculpting style reminds me a little of the great Paul Bonner's artwork.
So, wanting a fun batch of models to batch paint tonight, I cleaned up and primed one set of nine zombies. I got two of these sets as freebies with my order, and they're very nice minis. I highly recommend them for any fantasy skirmish/RPG that needs some brain munchers. 5/9 of the models are wearing trousers too, and could fit into a modern setting nicely.
The models are a little on small/frail side, compared to usual beefy warrior models, but this seems reasonable for the corpses of random peasants/villagers.
With painting them, I've tried to vary the flesh tones while keeping them looking dead. I'm very happy with how the flesh has turned out, let me know what you think of it. I didn't go too heavy on the gore, since I wanted to keep the paintjob largely intact.
Oh, and ignore the still-drying white glue on the bases. I'm impatient...
Now, enough waffle, time for pics. As an aside, the red robed dude is the village priest, while the beefy blue cloak is a blacksmith. Figured I'd add some character to the horde.
"The lowliest form of undead creature is the thrall. Animated corpses of the freshly slain, these soulless creatures have no intellect or willpower, and will mindlessly follow a necromancer's orders. They are not inherently aggressive, and if uncontrolled will often wander aimlessly until rotting away. When under the power of a necromancer, they form an unflinching wall of corpses between him and any would be attackers, though their dead hands and stiff jaws provide little offensive threat."
As always, feedback appreciated.
~ Alex/Magos
