Start Of The Week - The Weird Wild West

When I started blogging I was all about 15mm miniatures. Most of what I had done over the years has been 28mm but I was finding that I liked 15mm minis better. Then I started painting 28mm again for some games I was playing in or running myself. Which I how I got into painting stuff for the Wild West, specifically for Deadlands: Reloaded.

Back then I painted about a dozen of the figures I had before the game fell through. Since then they have mostly been sat around. Now I have the urge to paint some more oddball stuff again so why not cowboys and zombies. Oh and the Mexicans and Indians and eventually everything else. Maybe at some point they could be a project in the future.

So now for a painting plan. On top of the twenty wild west figures I have already done I have another twenty to do.They are a mixture of Artisan Designs and Wargames Foundry I think. I am going to look at doing them in batches of ten with the Indians and the few remaining western types to do. Then the next batch in some Mexicans and some harrowed/cowboy zombies. The plan is to stick with the first batch in the main, maybe work on the second batch a bit. If in doubt I have a background project which is a pretty mixed bag but mainly Wargames Foundry Street Violence stuff.

I will happy if I get ten figures done this week but I would hope to get more done which would be a bonus

Really Yesterday's Post

Having spent much of the day shivering and sleeping I thought it was time I posted what I did yesterday. Things planned for the week are now getting close to completion. So all in all I am feeling quite happy. Despite the shivering.

I am even getting close to finishing off the terrain. There are loads of bits to do, enough to do three linear feet, which has kind of put me off so far. Still it's there and and I want to get it done for a couple of game I have planned.

Now I thinking about next week. I have found eight figures that I think I purchased in 1992. This would be a nice thing to get out of the Lead Mountain. Not the oldest thing I own but probably the oldest thing I can find at the moment. They turned up a few years ago but there is one missing. I was hoping to find the missing one before I started but what the hell. If I do get round to painting them I have no idea what I will use them for. At the moment I just want to.

Early One Morning - End Of The Week, Well Almost

I work up early this morning and have been painting RPG and wargames miniatures since well before dawn. Getting up that early is unusual for me, let alone getting anything done. In terms of painting minis this is getting on for the most productive period of my life. If I could keep this rate up I could have a thousand figures done by the end of the year. Roughly the same output for the last three years. I think even my lead mountain would have run out by then.

Almost there

In terms of output, total number of figures and terrain, this is going to be a new record week. I have a little detailing on the skin to do on the Home Guard, do a highlight on the weapons and I need to paint a cigarette on one of them. Then they will be done. The cultists need much the same but there is much less of that to do. There are a few "more characterful" figures to do but they are mostly done.

I guess I have picked easy figures to paint this week although I hadn't figured on them being this easy. Now I am wondering what to do next. There appears to be no immediate chance of me getting any priming done because of the weather. Too cold or too wet for a while at least.

So far this week I have already done some scenery for my Monday night game and I have worked on some smaller pieces of scenery as the background project

Looking Forward

Everything is easier when you have a plan. Especially when it comes to dealing with the day to day "grind" of painting miniatures. My current plan for the "grind" is The New, New Cruelty. I am back at it and not just on the gaming side of things. It's not just gaming either. It works for other aspects in my currently interesting life.

The exercise is making me push on through. Figure painting is what I want to do so I am doing it. It would be a lie to say I am not enjoying it. Currently I am working through my lead mountain. Although I have brought a little bit of scenery this year I haven't acquired any new figures. So arguably I am now almost a hundred figures into my lead mountain. Part of me is thinking it's time to ease of the accelerator as I might actually start to run out of figures. I am already starting to think I am going to run out of figures I actually want to paint fair soon.

What I need is something to look forward to. Every year I have my plan. It gives me something to strive to much like The New, New Cruelty. Right now I am struggling to figure it out. Part of it is money but I suspect that this isn't a big part of what is going on.

Sooner or later I am going to run out of steam. When that happens the pace of my output will drop. What I need is something I am passionate about. Right here and now I don't have that. There are a few games that I have done a fair amount of stuff for. What I seem to be doing is my figures for other people's games. None of those games are currently running or appear to be running any time soon.

I need some pondering time...

Zomtober Week 5

It's the end of Zomtober, I'm watching Stranger Things and it's almost Halloween as well. Spooky. Even with the extra hour of the clocks going back, today has been a struggle but I have managed to get a lot more stuff done than I was expecting. Despite the dog, and kids and dinner and a hung over other half. There are still some details to do and the bases need finishing but I am a lot closer than expected.

I have had these three under wraps since the beginning of the month. This is Lee, Clementine and the feature zombie (my favourite zombie in the range). Lee and Clementine feature in the Telltale games series games which is pretty much the closest the being in the show.

This is Carol and Sophia (in pre-zombified state). I like these figures because they have the vibe of scared people just after the apocalypse. The Carol figure confuses me. Maybe it's something to do with the TV show. I want to trim the knife off but I am worried about losing some value if I get rid of it.

Andrea and Amy are another couple of good figures. Andrea just looks like a plain clothes police officer whilst Amy does a good job as being a civilian or a victim. I have really rushed the faces on these two and I will come back and look at that again.

Neagan and Abraham shouldn't need too much of an introduction. I am not so sure Neagan's grenades came out okay. Abraham is a great figure and the fact that he is standing on half a zombie really makes it.

Lastly, this is Glenn, Michonne and Lori. Although there is some work on the bases still needed, I am reasonably happy with these three.

So The end of Zomtober 2017.  I have enjoyed the process. My painting plan, The New Cruelty, has had a good month. I am up about forty figures which is about a dozen more than I would have expected so that is a bonus. I have really rushed these through today. Not that I have ruined them but there is more work to do on these before they are finished.

It's been an entertaining month.Thanks to all the people who have been involved in Zomtober and to everyone who has stopped by. It has been a blast for me. For the first time in a while I have felt part of something on the web.

Getting Close To The End Of Zomtober

I am still doubting that the figures I have planned will be completely finished by the close of play tomorrow. That said, practically everything now has a base layer of paint. Putting a wash on shouldn't take too long. It is not an exact process. If I can get this done early enough, I will probably find time to do the highlighting.

I can't see the basing getting done but that hasn't happened much this month anyway.

Not a bad day all round. One step closer to sorting things out with my sister. Fun at the FabLab. A bit of time with my uncle. Now sat in front of the TV whilst my other half is out mentally scarring bar staff because it's halloween in a few days.

Some Progress On Zomtomber

I can't believe that I have got this far into the week and not picked up a paintbrush. Concussion and a birthday seem to have kept me away from the bench. Today I have managed to get back to it and things have gone pretty well. there has been a bit of quiet time away from the distractions which has allowed me to get on with things.

Figuring out where to start has been the hardest bit. The figures I showed the other day are not the only ones in the queue, when I went looking I found all these minis and the cars as well. It is still Zomtober but I am already thinking about what to do after the end of the month. There are plenty more to do but maybe some civilians are needed. One of the figures types I like a lot in the TWD: AOW range are the frightened unarmed civilians. I can see a few uses for these coming up.

Still a bit more work to do yet.

Happy Birthday To Me AND The Start of Zomtober Week 5

The day hasn't been too bad to me so far. The best gift was a copy of Terraforming Mars which is a game I have been dying to play for ages. A load of The Walking Dead: All Out War Stuff that I am going to have to send back. Amazingly a load of the minis were missing. I can't imagine what happened to them. Strangely I have a load of primed zombies and survivors on the workbench.

Anyway, this is the start of Week 5, the final week, of Zomtober. I haven't made up my mind about what I am going to do this week but I think pretty much everything is now primed and ready to go. There are a few specials, not on the picture, that I might end up painting. They have been on the bench for ages and are probably in the background of some of the earlier shots.

Zomtober Week 4

Again, not quite finished. The weather here has been way too bad to spray varnish the figures. It has been one storm after another here. But once  they are varnished I can play about with the bases and all should be good.

 The end of Week 4 already. Where did the time go?

50 Shades Of Decay Or How I Paint Zombies

Have you ever seen a body that has been dead for a while? I have. More times than I care to think about. I'm thinking about it now, so that last sentence was probably counterproductive. It is the stuff of nightmares. One of the last ones I saw sticks in my memory very, very clearly. I didn't eat a baked potato for about two years afterwards. Now I still can't face a baked potato with cheese. I always expect the cheese to start wriggling. Maybe you catch my drift, maybe not. No more details on that score but you are bright people so I guess you can work it out.

My early zombie cinematic experiences are of Romero films. These low budget epics used simple ideas. Most zombies were usually had light green makeup unless they were African American, then you got a kind of pale blue makeover instead. Feature zombies had a bit more gore, but if you were in the long shot you were green or blue. For the most part I still stick with this colour scheme. I use a number of shades of green to give each model a bit of variation. There is always a bit of shading but it is mostly ink and blood that I use for zombie effects. There are usually several tones of ink in there to give the skin a bit of variety.

As time as gone on, brown, especially baked potato brown, has come in, for obvious reasons. When I use green paint, I vary it with a little light grey or brown paint and mix it poorly. Red and black ink usually still feature highly and whilst I use sepia-ish inks in the main, the green and often red creep in there too.

One of the things I keep meaning to do is some fresher zombies. Ones with either healthy or healthy ish skin tones. The thought had occured to have some unarmed civilian types that I can initially use as a crowd. Then, well the players have got used to the idea of having them around, use them as zombies.

Zombies should look pretty badly hammered for the most part. I like Tamiya Clear Red for this. When it isn't varnished it looks like fairly fresh blood. Older blood should be much darker. Too much really doesn't work. When choosing where to put the blood I think in terms of where it would probably end up. Anything on the hands would probably wear off quite quickly but there would always be some there. Around the face is another good place. It follows that most of the blood is going to be on the front with probably more on the chest than on the legs. Rather than paint the whole front side red, I think it would be more splatter and drips. Little bits here and there across the front on the body, none or almost none on the back and some on the floor.

To give them a really shabby appearance, I use a lot of inks. Mostly I do a base wash in the right colour for the paint colour below. Browns help to make them look dirty, especially brown over black ink. Green give a real sense of decay but maybe not use too much of it or the skin will look wrong. High traffic areas are probably a good bet, ower arms, knees and backside are good place for green. A mix of reds, ruddy skin tone, purples but mainly green make a good range for skin tones but experiment a little. Red ink is good on facial features and around wounds done with Tamiya Clear Red. I am not a fan of the GW paint, Blood For The Blood God, for this kind of work.

The best advice is go and watch your inspiration, later Romero and The Walking Dead for me. Look at what they do for their make-up. Emulate that in a more simple form as you will have a lot of zombies to do. Get on with it and don't be afraid to experiment, because with zombies you can usually cover up anything you hate quite easily.

Zomtober must bring out the worst in me.

The Start Of Zomtober Week 4

The good work continues but this is going to be another hard week.

More Mantic The Walking Dead: All Out War stuff. Zombies from a variety of sets.

Zomtober Week 3

Really the title of this post should be Zomtober Week 3 - as far as I got.

There is still a few bits to do on the paint work. Across all the figures, there is plenty I am not happy with. There are also a few bits that are just not done. The basing still needs to be dealt with to. This is probably going to be put off for a bit.

The New Cruelty is not happy. I am not happy.

Well except I am. I have had a bloody good day, a nice evening meal in a restaurant and I have managed to put as smile on one of the lads faces on his birthday.

Next week...Zombies.

The Start Of Zomtober Week 3

The new week begins. More Walking Dead minis and a long way to go.

Zomtober Week 2

This week of Zomtober has been focus on the The Walking Dead's All Out War expansion, Days Gone Bye. It's another six figures, four survivors and two zombies. The zombies were getting tinkered about with last week and it is the survivors that I have been "concentrating" on. It has to be said that my focus has kind of gone towards the end of the week and there are probably a few details that still need addressing.

These are two of the most characterful zombies in the game. I love these figures and they are ones that are likely to feature a lot.

The four survivors, all from the Atlanta Camp have turned out okay. Some of the hands look a bit out but I think this is down to the moulding rather than the paint job. I am always a bit disappointed when I look at the pictures on Mantic's website and compare them to my paint job but I guess that the pro painted one are early run and have better hands and have fewer mould lines.

The shading on the collar on the figure in the red shirt has turned out really badly in the picture. It is better in real life but I will give this a bit more attention in time.

Anyway, the week ahead is probably going to be some form of the Miles Behind Us expansion. It's aither going to be the full box set or I might just try and concentrate on the Green household (with a couple of extra figures) and if I am feeling do the two zombie figures for the set as well.

The Walking Alive

There is not so many zombies of the bench this week, mostly survivors. Whilst one of the zombies is waiting for just a few more details the other needed a bit more work. The real work is on the four survivors. There is a good coat of paint for them ready to be highlighted. I did play about with the shirt of one of them. It's a bit more effort than I would normally put in but it is kind of what it looks like on the in house model. My reason for not doing more is that if it goes badly, it goes very badly and means a restart and repaint, which never ends well.

The colours seem quite bright at the minute. Part of that is down to me trying to emulate what's already on the web and part is I know they are going to get darker pretty quickly. Yellow is definitely not a colour I normally use for hair, but the one on the mantic site seemed to work out okay.

Zombies Take Charge

Of my work bench at least...

Primed and ready to go

The eBay purchase of an All Out War Kickstarter box and Miles Behind Us arrived this morning. The day has been pretty much been all about that. I have prepped some stuff for Zomtober. The plan is to go through some of the box sets starting with The Road To Woodbury and moving on from there. I have done a few basing details on what I have started so far and made a fairly good attempt at the Brian Blake figure.

Birthday Money All Spent

Although I have managed to do a bit of painting I had to stop early. Recovery from a bug isn't easy and I have been extremely fatigued which has lead to me having the shakes. Too much blood in my caffeine stream I guess.

Whilst I haven't been too successful on the painting front, I did much better on the eBay front. I got an original The Walking Dead :  All Out War kickstart box and the Miles Behind Us  everything in one box set. For months now I have been trying to get this and it's gone for less than any of the others I have seen.  I think that brings me to around eighty to ninety figures to paint. This should make Zomtober harder work than I thought.

Still FabLab tomorrow. I have a few things prepped and ready.

End Of The Week - Miniature Painting Update

It's actually been a better week for painting than I was expecting. It started with having to finish off five Ratling/Halfling snipers. My urge is to say that they are finished but I am guessing this is not really the case. There is stuff that I can do on them but the truth is that I am never really going to be happy with them. For the time being I am going to keep them on the table and play about with them until I am happy with the final result.

This should really screw up my timetable. Last week I was supposed to finish them and move on and I set myself a goal of finishing them and do another five figures. At the beginning of the week I thought that there was going to be no chance of that happening. Then I started the dryads. I have a dozen of these and I was expecting to finish six of them so that I could be caught up with my goals. Instead I managed to get all twelve of them done, based, varnished and even managed to get some extra bits on the bases.

The week's work didn't end there. I have based and primed a load of figures including seven gnolls and another figure that I thought was a gnoll for a while. It turns out it's actually a beast crafter and to be honest, although I like the figure, it's probably of no use to me at all. There are a few other figures primed and based. There are a couple of earth golems and a genie ready to go too. These should be easy to get done.

I was a little unhappy with the way the bases on The Walking Dead Miniatures bases had turned out. As well as varnishing them, I put a few tufts on the bases to hide the worst of it. I'll put these back in the box now, it seems like a good place to put them. I was looking at the new releases for the game. There are another twenty four figures due out. Whilst very nice they work out at around £4 per figure. Now I know you get some other bits with them but they are not much use to me. Whilst I like them I am not sure I like them that much.

The Walking Dead: All Out War - The "Heroes"

Although I haven't quite finished the characters from The Walking Dead box set yet, I am about ready to call them done. There are a few details that need highlighting, like anything that is black or dark brown but that is a ten minute job. I will probably put a bit of flock on the bases before spray varnishing and then I'll put on a few finishing touches. That said, I have just looked at the pictures and I am thinking maybe there is a bit more work than I think.

Carl Rick and Derek

The only real problem I have with this is that I want the figures not the fluff but the game comes with fluff. When the game was coming out they were talking about producing around one hundred and thirty figures. I haven't worked it out but I am guessing the current figure is closer to thirty than it s to one hundred. So I am waiting for some more to come out.

Sandra, Patrick and Liam

I have run out of zombie figures from the game now and I'm unlikely to get any more until the next time I go to a show. I have a couple of quick projects that I want to do but I am thinking that I would like to do some more zombies. I have a few Cold War Miniatures zombies to do and some zombie crawlers from a manufacturer I can't remember.It has to be sad that I don't really need any more zombies but what the hell.

The New Cruelty is going well. I have to keep to it going but it's not proving too difficult so far.

First Batch Off The Walking Dead Zombies - All Out War Are Done

I have my six The Walking Dead All Out War zombies done so just a quick post today. I have worked on them a bit and I have made fairly rapid progress here and here. The New Cruelty dictates that I have to finish five figures a week. This is six miniatures down and with a bit of luck I will finish another six tonight. I will probably touch up the black of the bases and add some clump foliage when they have been spray varnished.

All Out War part 1: The boys

They look okay. Just to look at the original resin I would have said the detail was just a little bit soft but the end result says otherwise.

All Out  War part  2:  The girls

The obvious next project is the characters which is the next probably target. I got some Blood Bowl stuff this week. As well as finishing off the zombies I have been putting together the orc team troll but more about that in another post.