Zombicide Completion??

My previous post had me painting up some of the final models in my Zombicide board game, and this may prove to be the final post on the subject.  If you’re not up to date on the subject, I spent a few months in early 2016 (can it really have been that long ago?) painting up a few hundred models for a board game called Zombicide.  That included a great deal of Zombies, but also what appears to be about 72 character models as well.

Last post I explained that my goal here wasn’t to try to paint these to a super high standard, but rather to get a reasonable color match so that you could easily discern which figure was yours during the game.  This time around, I wound up painting up the Snipers & Handymen, and I think I kind of failed at my original goal.

Granted, I think with both sets of figures, you can tell who they’re supposed to be.  The colors are roughly matching, but rough is the right term.  It was really the greens that did me in, because I tried to paint their greens with a custom paint I had made before labeled as “ammo can.”  My thought was that it was reasonably close and it would work as a color for fatigues.  Clearly, it’s passable, but it’s not remotely close to the right shade of green from either picture.

Still, I think you can easily tell, based upon the hats and models’ stances, which models are which.

The eyes on the handymen give them a distinctly Anime vibe, but I’m not exactly sure why that is.  Anime figures have large eyes, so that makes sense–but I had even larger eyes on the gunmen, and they didn’t have that same feeling to me.

So yeah, they’re not perfect, but these are glorified equipment cards for a game that rarely see the table (though we do play Zombicide with some level of frequency, these particular cards are a bit of a rarity).  They also served as a little inspiration to get me into painting again–and maybe as a gateway to playing 40k one day.  I think in that regard, I can call these guys a success.

Zombicide Progress: Companions!

With the release of new models for Chaos Space Marines, my friend Simon has been incessantly texting us with unbridled excitement.  At first, it was cute.  We looked at him as a kid on Christmas morning: so excited for Santa; however, it never tampered down.

He’s since picked up quite a few of the models and is painting them like crazy.  Still, the endless wave of texts grinds on.  With these texts, I can feel my sheer hatred of painting wasting away.

Not completely, mind you–but enough that I thought I might dabble in a little painting again.  Recently I wound up playing Zombicide with the guys and got harangued for having eight unpainted models in my collection.  If you recall, I spent a good deal of time in 2016 painting up several boxed sets of figures, but I stopped short of completion when it came to figures I’d never used: companions.  So, what better way to dip my toe back in the waters than to start with them?

Of the eight models, there are four poses.  I toyed with the idea of painting them slightly different so that you could tell which belonged to which player, but then realized that was pointless because they’re identical in the game.  I started off with the gunmen and searchers, for no particular reason.  Actually, I wound up starting up a little bit of a base coat on all of them, but eventually stopped that and focused on these two guys.

Overall, I’m happy with how they came out.  My goal wasn’t to paint these to a super high standard, but to approximate the quality I’d accomplished with the rest of the set.  Originally, I’d set forth the game as a means of testing my ability to color match things, and while I’m a little off here and there, I think you can detect who the model is without too much trouble.

The gunman’s eyes are definitely on the cartoony side (my micron pen seems to have dried up during my painting hiatus), and the pants ont he searcher are a little too blocky.  He also looks a bit like George Lucas with a bouffant hairdo, but I think that’s actually somewhat intentional.

I haven’t figured out what color to paint the bases though.  Gray seems appropriate, but I want them to stand out at least a little bit from the characters.  I’d considered a hazard stripe theme, or maybe gray with a hazard stripe around the base–but that’s going to draw your attention to what’s essentially a glorified piece of wargear on the table.  Got any ideas about what I should do?

We’ll see if I come up with something before I finish the other four models.

 

 

Zombicide Progress: Dags (the living kind)

It’s hard to believe after hitting the blog so hard with posts on Zombicide models for so long, that I just petered out at the end and didn’t post the pics of the final models I’d painted.

Not to confused with the unliving kind, mind you.  These are the genuine article: man’s best friend, if you will.

Dogs (or “Dags” as the pikey from “Snatch” would have you believe), are a pretty great find in Zombicide.  They give you additional flexibility in that they can search for you, scout ahead, attack for you, or supplement your existing assault weapons.  Plus, they’re loyal and do what you tell them (even if that means to run into the middle of the street and wait for an impending zombie horde to eat them up).

These are the first models that I’ve painted up that are neither player characters, or zombies of any sort.  Part of me wanted to paint them up in a more generic scheme so that your eye is always focused on the figures that really matter: the players, but I couldn’t neglect these little guys.  Frankly, I love collecting them when we play, as each one gives you (at least) one additional attack.  Honestly, I’ve never used any of their other abilities (aside from the foreshadowed event where I did send my beloved mongrel out to the middle of the street to greet a band of unhealthy looking visitors–I never did see that dog again…).  Sure, it’s nice to know that they could do something if I needed them to, but generally I’m content with just giving me some extra attack dice.

When painting them up, I opted to do the german shepherds first because they’re just the easiest.  I did have a little reluctance because that style of dogs are the ones that came out the worst when I did my zombie dogs, but they’re essentially all black with a little bit of brown: how could I mess that up?

I’m happy to say I loved how they came out.  Like I said, it isn’t a terribly difficult paint scheme to pull off, but I think I did smashingly.  I even like the subtlety of the choke chain on their necks (the artwork on the cards actually show colored leashes, so part of me debated whether I should paint them to match, but the figure clearly has a metal chain around it’s neck, so I opted to go with the silver).  The dogs are quite similar in appearance, but I think it’s pretty clear by looking at each dog, which one is which.

For the pitbulls, the coloring is vastly different so it’s far more obvious as to who is who.  The layers of gray built up to white were quick and easy (it shows on the model), and I was a little taken aback by the brown spots on each because I didn’t think I was going to be able to wash just the affected areas.  Instead, I just skipped that part altogether and did some highlights with the underlying color mixed with a little bleached bone.  Again, I think it’s a pretty spot on color match for both dags.

As for the blue heelers (the name given to Lucien & Cherry’s breed), I honestly had no idea what kind of dogs those were.  If, like me, you’re confused, Wikipedia comes to the rescue!  A Blue Heeler is actually an Australian Cattle Dog, and they really do have the coloring and same mottled markings as the artwork on the cards (why would I be surprised?).  I tend to prefer the other breeds in the actual game–which shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering that I use them almost exclusively as attack dogs, but in a big deck, I’ll take any mutt that globs onto me.

Their bases were painted black, of course, because they all get extra activations.  Unlike the Zombie dogs, they don’t have innate activations themselves, but rather use up your own, so you could either move yourself three squares or move the dog.  The third option is that, if the dog is with you, you can move both you and the dog–so that’s a big reason why they’re attackers for me.  I don’t have to forgo my moves to usher a dog around the table if I just hang out with him all of the time.

In total, I’m happy with all six of the dogs, and they took just a couple of hours on a weekday evening.  With them done, I’ve literally 8 more figures to paint before my copy of zombicide is complete… Yippeee!

 

Zombicide Progress: Heroes – Volume 12 (Parker, Kyoko, & Amy)

Can it be?  Am I really done with this series?  It seems like I’ve been working on these guys forever, though I didn’t really start on them until January.  So, in the matter of three months I managed to paint up all of the figures in the board game (well, excepting the last few that are still outstanding: dogs & helpers).

Parker:

This is another one of those generic models that I avoided because I’ve never seen her used and because she frankly didn’t interest me.  The end result turned out pretty well though, but nothing in particular was overly complex or notable.  I like how she turned out in her human form.

Her zombie form, however, leaves a little to be desired.  In particular, I don’t like the way her shirt turned out, but I told myself that it didn’t matter because I was so close to finishing and she would rarely hit the table anyway.

Kyoko:

Speaking of unhappy, Kyoko fits that bill perfectly.  I think this is actually the model I painted instead of Maddie back in the day,  The model is obviously Asian in descent, but the artwork is a bit stylized and looks more alien than human.  I tried to paint her more Asian (read: use more yellowsin the skin tone), but it didn’t come out that well.  There’s no mistaking her for another figure on the board, but the tone didn’t work out.  Likewise, the skin tone of her zombie figure is off, but I do like how it turned out.

I also rushed her red because, like above, I was ready to be done with the lot.  Keep in mind that I painted her a full five figures before, so that tells you how long I’ve been agonizing over finishing the lot.  It’s no surprise that she didn’t come out as nice as I’d hoped, but I have had friends tell me specifically about this figure that she looks pretty good, so maybe I’m my own worst critic…?

Amy:

I ended things up on Amy because she was pretty easy and I think she might be one of the core characters.  Plus, with the fishnets, she’s easy, but has a little uniqueness to her that made it a good finishing model.

I avoided her throughout the time because, well… I don’t know.  Maybe the issue was that she has that pasty white skin and I didn’t know how to pull it off (what I ultimately did was a mix of bleach bone layered up to pure white and then used a purple wash–vaguely reminiscent of the old GW cultists).

For fishnets, my micron pen had died on me earlier in the process, and though I knew I could just go buy another, I made due with what I had (which was another Micron 05–roughly twice as big as the fine detail one).  The lines are relatively straight, but are far too big…

It’s better than what I did with the zombivor–I messed up her tights in several spots where the lines just jumbled on top of each other.  It doesn’t look too far out of place though because she’s a zombie and they weren’t in good condition on the original figure…

So, it’s great to be done, but I’m sad to realize that I still have dogs and helpers to go.  In order to meet my original deadline, I have four days left to knock out six dogs and eight helpers.  That’s pretty aggressive (especially considering that I have a dentist appointment and an after-hours meeting, plus work all four days this week), but I’m still optimistic I can meet that deadline… wish me luck!

Zombicide Progress: Heroes – Volume 11 (Cathy, Adam, & Jeff)

The last six figures I have to paint for Zombicide really come down to the models I didn’t want to paint for one reason or another.  Well, I should clarify that these aren’t necessarily the last six models, but the last six characters (There are still some dogs and helpers left after this).  I won’t even go out on a limb and say they’re the last that I’ll ever paint for the game, as I’ve learned from painting my Tyranid army that there’s really no such thing as ‘the last model I’ll ever paint…

As for why these particular models got pushed to the end, I don’t know… maybe they were ugly or time consuming or boring?

Cathy:

Cathy falls into the boring category.  There’s nothing offensive about her, but there’s nothing particularly exciting about her either.  As a whole, I pushed her off because she just failed to excite me.  As a finished model, I’m very happy with the way she turned out.  Something about her shirt and her hair makes it seem like I didn’t paint this model though.  The stark contrast in the shades on her shirt isn’t my style, but I really like how it turned out.

Her hair though is a shining gem.  I’m not sure why I decided to take more time on this particular model’s hair, but I did.  Perhaps it reminded me of a girl from high school who had all sorts of colors in her hair?  Or maybe it was because the model had depth of color in the artwork and the sculpt just didn’t lend itself to painting with washes?

Yup, now that I think about it, that was it.  Oh well, I’m really glad it didn’t, because it gave me a chance to build up the yellow with layers and layers of strokes.  Sure, it flies in the face of painting them quickly, but I managed to put in about five layers of different color strokes for her hair, and I think it turned out great.  In fact, I think she might be in the running for my favorite paint job from the set!

Adam:

Adam got delayed because of those paints and that tattoo.  As both are fairly amorphic, I didn’t think either would be exceedingly difficult, but honestly they proved to be amazingly easy.  The only camo I’ve painted before has been for my space marine scouts (I’ve been really remiss about getting pictures of my space marines on the blog–I’ll have to fix that one day, but you can see some pics of the scouts’ cloaks here).  Anywho, in my normal pattern, I have a fairly distinct way of painting the scheme, but this was just bubonic brown with a reddish wash, and clumps of other paint on top, and I think he came out fantastic.

As for the tattoo, I just mixed some red, yellow, and blue with the flesh tone and painted it on his arm.  Not quite as successful as the camo, but not a bad end result either.

Jeff:

Jeff reminds me of a cross between Miami Vice and Ken Jeong from “The Hangover.”  Oddly enough, when painted up, the figure lost all sense of Asian ancestry and looks like a boring white guy (with overdone white-rimmed glasses–I mentioned before that my skill on them lacks any subtlety).  He looks ok for what it’s worth, but neither the art or the model inspired me, so I didn’t do a particular good job on him.

And then there were three.  Are you as excited as I am?