Painted Zombicide Survivors, part III

Wanda and Phil, check!

Wanda isn´t exactly what I wanted partly because the mini didn´t have all the details (especially on the face) and I used too heavy basecoat and missed the remaining ones. Well, live and learn! Phil on the other hand came up great!

And again, group shot!

Sadly I think that I don´t have time to finish Amy before christmas games with my wifes brother but hey, we have played with unpainted models so I think it will be blast anyhow!

Painted Zombicide Survivors, part II

Time for Josh and Ned! Again, nothing fancy but I really like how these turn out. I first painted the bases concrete grey but thought that the characters would be lost in the zombie horde so I decided to painted the bases with the original base colors. This seems to work much better.

And here are the three finished survivors ready to smash some zombies!!

Painted Zombicide Survivors, part I

Although I have had some time to do some hobbying, there have been zero time to blog or write articles for the HCO. I hope that I can scrape few updates here and also to the HCO in the near future because I just started my christmas holiday and I need something to clear my mind from work related subjects.

Half of my Zombicide zombies have been painted and I thought that it´s time to do something to the survivors. I want the figures to be as close to the original paint scheme as possible because I think that the original survivors are really cool and it also helps me that I don´t have to figure out the colors. I want the characters to pop up from the zombiehorde so I chosed white basecolor:

 I decided to "sketch" all the base colors for the figures to get a overal feel of the miniatures:

I chose Doug to be the first one to be fully painted because he´s mainly black and white and so fastest to finish

Although I really don´t want to spend much time with the individual miniatures because there is still so much to do I really like how Doug turned out! I think that Josh will be next..

Patching things up..

Because I don´t play much these days my miniatures have been store in a big black box. This way it has been easy to move them around for example to the gaming weakend or relocation of our whole household. Although the minis are placed in a foam there have occurred some damage for the miniatures. Fixing these, like a lot hobby related stuff, has been a task which has been pushed and pushed further to the future.

When I scoured through my unpainted miniatures I decided that now was the time to do something. On the list were:

• New base for Sauron
• Reattach several warriors of Minas Tirith and their horse to the bases. Fix broken spears also
• Do something to the bases of Rangers of Gondor
•  Base the Charriots and fix all the broken parts

I started with the rangers because this was the quickest job. I just took some glue and  dark green grass from Mini Natur and placed the grass so that the rangers try to use it as a cover.

Then I fixed the Minas Tirith warriors. I always have hated the plastic riders because those are very poorly designed considering the attachment of the horse to the base. Because there is only one leg of the horse which touch the base, it brakes of very easily. This time I drilled heavy duty metal rod to the leg and glued it to the base. I hid the rod behind Mini Naturs green bush.

For the charriots I glued the wheels in place and used thin metal wire to make harness for the horses. It came out very well.

I did the same for the other charriot also and then used some glue and sand to base the base. At the same time I glued few plaster rocks under the Sauron. I think that I will paint some lava under the Dark Lord.

I´m pleased that I finally finished these small chores. I hope that the painting won´t take this long!

Noobs Quest For Ultimate Airbrush!

I finally bought my first airbrush and all the necessary equipments! You can read the article about my endevours from HCO now. Let´s see what I can cook up with this stuff!!

The new rack!

I have slowly upgraded my hobbyhut with appropriate equipments and now at last managed to get new racks for my paints! The material is metal so I think that these wont break any time soon.

Although this was a good thing it also ment an end of one era. I have had my trusted paintcase for  quite some time. It has lasted several relocations and been extremely useful when I have needed to set up painting session quickly. Because of the permanent painting place it´s time to let this old friend go.

Here is a shot from my current hobby set-up.

My stash and new side project, a Fellbeast!!

I decided to go through my unpainted mini collection to just see how much stuff I own. The amount of unpainted metal and plastic was suprising. I recommend to you all who buy stuff "just in case for storage" to do the same.

Here is the metal ones:

I also found several boxes full of miscellaneous plastic minis:

I think that I dont have to buy any Lotr minis for quite a while. Except just in case for storage ofcourse.

From this pile of possibilities one thing immediately got my attention, Witchking on fellbeast!! I remembet that I bought this to make a monster army but eventually ended up making a spider/warg army. This mini is one of the most intriguing piece from the "old", pre-War of the Ring, catalogue. It really has enourmous amount of character and serves Jacksons movies well. It's really a shame that this has been laying in some box unpainted for so long.

I first checked that I had all the pieces. I buy most of my stuff used and I have a bad habit not to check right away that I got what I ordered.

Because the mini is so tall I decided to reinforce the base with pins and also add more weight to prevent unwanted crash to the ground in the heat of battle.

These steps made the beast much more steadfast.

At this point I just had to put the wings in place temporarely and compare it with Arsgotn, the king of Gondor. The beast really is A Beast!!

Custom Catapult

After Cirion and Madril I scoured throught my unpainted collection and stumbled upon a broken Lotr Mordor war Catapult! I remember that I got it free when I bought a big set of used miniatures. It was in several pieces and seemed to lost a wheel. This opened my eyes for some conversion opportunities!

I forgot to take pictures during the project but here is where I ended up:

Because there was no wheel I decided that orcs figured to use some fallen enemies to balance the machine.

During this "repair-stage" the orcs found out that few were still alive and tied these unlucky victims to the catapult to get some cover from the enemy bow fire. I used thin wire and some cartboard to make arrows on to the humanshields.

The catapult also needed somekind of launching mechanism so build one from selfmade rope, balsa, balsa bits and some modellers chain. I´m quite happy with the result.

Last step was to add one warg rider on top of the boulder. It seems that wargs can´t get this orc fast enought to the batllefield so he uses different method.

Thats all for now but something is lurking in the mist of future because I got a BIG package today from the mail!!

Slowly starting up..

It really seems that I can finally find some time to paint and build some stuff now days. The time is very limited but hey, better than nothing!

Because I can´t really work on anything big, I decided to paint some Lotr minis that have been laying around for quite some time. This way I can slowly scrape away the rust that my hobby skills have collected for the past three months. First two minis that I found were Cirion and Madril, the stout defenders of Minas Tirith. Here is some rather bad pics (because I´m rusty I forgot to take my camera and had to use my phone) what I managed to do in about four hour:

And here they are with some company:

Nothing fancy but Oh lord how fun that was! This painting session reminded my about a) how much I like this hobby and b) how important thing it is for me considering my mental health! Because my two kids and a job take about 99% of my time it really purifies my mind when I can just sit and consentrate on something small. It was like to a religious enlightment!!

Holy cow! An update with Zombies!!!

Been quite busy with my normal life and haven´t really had any time for hobbystuff. So when my wife took the kids to see her parents I soon realized that I had few hours spare time. To the hobby hut!!!

It took a while to get my mind on the right frequency and catch up what I could do. The well was almost finished so I decided to lay basecolor on it first.

Because I was some how in a hurry I made an awfull mistake. This is what happens when you take too much time off from the hobby. I didn´t seal the surface of the foam and used spray to paint the basecolor! WHAT!!?!??! I have never ever made this mistake! Well live and learn. The end result was not a disaster. Because I had spread some woodfiller on to the foam to act like a chipped off plaster most of the foam was secured. The top and the front tiles took the most of the damage. Although now I think that those tiles really look old and worn. I hope that the second layer of paint will show the result better.

 When the well was drying I worked on one of the board hexes. This hex will be a raised platform to a house. I figured that it would need some kind of railing so I cut and glued thin plastic strips to the side of the platform. This will act as a base for the railing. I didn´t remember to took any more pictures so you have to wait the next update to see more.

Wait just a minute!!! A while ago I promised to show how the rest of the zombiehorde colored out. Better later than ever so here are some pics:

I wanted the runners to stand up from the horde and painted some markings on to the bases. It works rather good.

 Let´s hope that the next update doesn´t take too long!!

Standstill..

The blog has been and will continue to be little quiet for some time because we just got our second child, a girl. With her, my two year old son, a job, normal life and training the spare time to work with hobby stuff is nonexistent.

I have few pictures of finished Zombicide minis that I will post soon so there will be at least something in the near future!

First painted Zombicide figures!

Today I managed to paint about an hour and finished the first five zombies. Well, not completely because I will add later some blood splatters but almost. Nothing fancy with the painting but I think that these will do on the gameboard. Thinking also that should I add something easy and quick to the bases? Hmm..

Have to say that I´m really impressed with the amount of details on these figures. Although the plastic is little soft (not too much) these are really good miniatures. I have much simpler figures in my collection which doesnt have even half of the details what these have. It´s also too easy to dwell in to the painting of these details and loose alot of time.