Malifaux and Zombie Apoc update

Evening readers, small update time. 3 updates in the space of a few days shocking :P

The Wargames Factory zombies that Rasmus had sent turned up last week, I know a few of you were interested to hear my thoughts on them so figured I would write them up.

here are the 3 that he sent me:

Now Rasmus did warn me that he didn't think they would be salvagable, and he was very nearly right. The sculpt and cast quality is terrible, all the things I have read about the detail especially on their faces being shallow is completely true. I can only just make out the details of the face when they are bare plastic god only knows what it would look like when you have them undercoated.

another thing I have picked up on them is that some of the arms are completely out of proportion being either to short or too long.

Examples of this being the 2 zombies on either end. Their left arms which are cast on as part of the torso are too skinny and short. Then you have the zombie in the middle whose right arm is too long and just looks unnatural.

Now I was expecting all of this, I had chosen to get these zombies to use pretty much as armatures for sculpting my own details onto, and they work reasonably well for that, here is how I got on with converting one of them:

zombie compared to hasslefree model

Carved the face off completely and resculpted it, then resculpted parts of his clothes still need to attach and correct the other arm which is the one that seems too long.

over all here is a summary of them:

Pros:

• Cheap
• True scale 28mm so work perfectly with hasslefree zombie hunters

Cons:

• Terrible casts
• questionable proportions on some arms

my advice is that unless you are up for the challenge of trying to salvage them as I am then steer clear of them. As I think trying to paint them straight from the box, especially the faces would be incredbily hard.

I shall likely still be picking up a box to convert, Shall see how I go with these 3 first I think. But in all honesty although you will only get 8 for the same price as a box of 30 of these I think you would be better off getting Studio miniatures zombies.


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Now onto Malifaux, been getting the models cleaned up and ready to paint, for once I'm doing next to no conversions as I pretty much like the models as they are. The only exception being Rasputina herself.

I wasn't a fan of the top hat style thing she had so I cut it off and decided to make her a hooded cloak instead. Sort of helps to tie her to the December Acolyte model too. Heres how shes looking:

Pretty much done meaning she will be ready to paint soon, Though the first thing from the box that I shall be painting up is the ice golem who got basecoated today :)

With this warband/crew figured I would put some effort into the bases too, so after a chat with that foul Kiwi known only as Foot_of_Adhesive_tape I decided to give them cobble stone bases. To go with the winter theme they will get snow added but I wanted something extra so set about finding something I could use to make spike of ice.

Inspiration struck and after carving up some GW flying stands I ended up with this prototype base:

The bases and model will be painted seperately with the snow being added once the model is glued on. I'm actually rather happy with the Ice spikes.

well that is it for now, I shall have an update in a few days with some  progress on malifaux as well as the zombies :)

GamesDay 2011 the aftermath

Well Gamesday has been and gone, rather enjoyable day even if I didn't really pay to much attention to what was going on there. My main reason for going was to see some of my internet friends who I normally on see once or twice a year.

So I spent the day with Rictus, Schoolcormorant, Mr Feral and Dave aka Lavadude off Ammo Bunker.

The first hour of the day was spent trying to wake Schoolcormorant up as me, Rictus and Dave all stood in the lobby of his hotel phoning him. 25 missed calls to his mobile, 2 calls from the lobby staff to his room and eventually 3 security guys going into his room later and he was awake and ready to head across to the LG arena.

I didn't bother entering Golden Demon given that when we got there they were letting everyone in anyway. Figured it was less hassle that way.

So off we set to look around after getting seperated from SC and Rictus pretty much instantly I had a wander around with Dave checked out the Ammo Bunkers table:

The Ammbunker won best club contribution for the table

had a good look at the armies on parade stuff though forgot to get any pictures, standard was really high though.

New FW landraider

Very nice skaven conversion that caught my eye

The new Forge world rhino conversion kit

Not long after this we found Mr Feral and he joined our motley group for the day, after looking round a few more time and grabbing some lunch we decided to brave the queue for the sales stand which moved surprisingly quickly.

Here was my loot for the day:

only 2 things, one was the plastic nurgle lord which I shall convert to a plague marine character at some point in the future (Malifaux and zombies being my priority now) as well a pre release copy of The Gildar Rift, which I picked up as I quite like books with huron blackheart and the Red corsairs in (Check out Bloodreaver by Aaron Dembski-Bowden)

Managed to then get the book signed by its author Sarah Cawkwell as did Mr Feral.

All in all a very enjoyable day, as to if I'm going next year well that will be decided closer to the time when I know who out of my friends is going as really they are the only reason I went haha.

Gamesday 2011 plans

Evening readers, small update

tomorrow is Gamesday and I shall be in attendance walking around with the rather shady pair of Rictus and Schoolcormorant.

Will be my first time entering Golden Demon though mainly doing it to get in earlier, as I stand no chance in hell of winning a thing in it haha. I shall be entering the Classic version of Ironhand Straken I painted up a while back as it is still my best painted model:

Might try and do a proper entry next year


After an unfortunate accident involving me rolling my office chair over one the them the Kill team won't be going to GD, haven't got the time to repair it :(

Today I met up with SchoolCormorant in Birmingham as he has come down a day early, and I finally ventured into Waylands Forge as recommended by Brummie. Left with this:

Looks like Malifaux will be getting started earlier than I expected haha. Planning on really pushing myself with the painting on these, but it wouldn't be me if GS wasn't involved so I shall be doing a conversion or 2 on them ;)

If any of you are about at GD come and say hello I will likely be with the tall geordie with Blue hair.

Shall get some pictures of what goes on to post up on here either tomorrow night or monday  :)

Zombie Survivor

Evening Reader, tis update time again

Project zombie has begun and I present a survivor:

Forgot I had this model, its zombie hunter Kev from Hasslefree with some GSed on hair and beard to make him into a metal head :P

Decided to paint his hoodie as a band one so had a look through some of my black metal CDs and decided on the front cover from 1349s "Hellfire" album as its rather simple design. I'm actually really pleased with how its turned out as I'm not the best with freehand.

The Albums artwork

Here he is with my other painted survivor the Jill valentine from Resident Evil 3 conversion:

Zombie wise my devious Danish friend Rasmus aka AWOL from Ammo Bunker is kindly sending me accross a sprue of wargames factory zombies so as I can decide if I like them before buying them :) actually quite looking forward to converting them.

Once I have decided if they will be useful then I will order both a box of them and the other hasslefree models I listed last post.

Running along side the zombie project will be a BFG Imperial fleet as I'm buying some cruisers off Rictus at GD.

There will also possibly be some Malifaux in the future as after much nagging Foot_of-Adhesive_Tape has finally talked me into it by showing me the upcoming releases for October so I will likely get this warband:

Some very nice models in there.

This will be the plan for the next few months, as I'm utterly bored of 40k and most GW stuff in general. I've had far more fun painting that zombie hunter than I have had painting the last load of GW stuff I've done, BFG will be somehtign completely different at least.

well thats it for now let me know what you think :)

Gamefest and Zombie Apoc ideas

Morning Readers, bit of a text based update here though there are some pics just not of models :P

Yesterday I headed down to the NEC for the day for Gamefest, pretty good day out even if some of the queues for things were utterly insane for example if you wanted to play Modern warfare 3 it was like a 3 hour wait :| madness

I did get to have a go on the following games though:

Resident Evil: Revelations (3DS)
Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D (3DS)
Soul Calibur 5 (Xbox)
Assassins Creed: Revelations (PS3)
Street Fighter Vs Tekken (Xbox)
Plus a few more

Assassins Creed being the only game I queued for mainly as my mate really wanted to see it, lost an hour and 40 minutes of my life to that queue :( .

Got a good look at Arkham city and it looks utterly awesome:

Managed to catch a few glimpses of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City as well and that looks really good.

I would have liked to have a go on it except the queue was massive and Capcom in their infinate wisdom only had 2 or 3 consoles with it on :| when the Demo of it was 5 mins long and you have about 60 people in the line in front of you it becomes rather dumb to even try and wait :(

So things I have learnt:

• The 3DS has really grown on me its good to see that it is getting some more adult games such as Resident evil. As for too long to me at least Nintendo has focussed on party games and kiddy nonsense theres only so many rehashes of Mario games I can handle before it gets really annoying.
• I might see if they drop down any further in price and might have to pick one up :)

• NEC food is still retardedly over priced, £5 for a burger £7 for a 9 inch pizza madness we refused to eat there and picked up food from Birmingham on the way back. On the plus side they were giving out free bottles of Mountain Dew all day so drinks at least weren't a problem :P

• I felt sorry for the Nuts Magazine girls, having to get their pics taken with sweaty nerds all day hahaha

And to model related things:

Planning out the initial purchases for zombie stuff :D

So far from hasslefree I shall be getting:

Hazmat squad
Mckenzie

The hazmat squad will be a military clean up team tasked with destroying the undead and possibly even survivors

Mckenzie will draw on ideas from the Film Battle: Los Angelles with her being an airforce spotter for bombing raids who has since been trapped behind the lines and can join up with some survivors. Want to try paint her in Digital camo as a challenge.


Zombie wise the Studio Miniatures ones though very very nice are a tad too pricey for my liking, so I'm thinking of picking up a set of the wargames factory plastic Zombies

These guys work out as better value you get 30 of them for the same price as 8 from Studio miniatures. I have heard that the detail on them is pretty poor  though this is no problem as I can simply resculpt faces, tidy up clothes etc. Will likely heavily convert some of them into female zombies for some variation.

Might be more hassle than just getting the studio miniatures ones but it works out cheaper.


any thoughts on the zombie plans are much appreciated :)

Games Day Kill Team : Test Scheme

Afternoon readers, small update time :)

managed to get a test model from the Kill Team painted up:

Hes come out reasonably well, needs some tidying up on the highlights of his armour in particular. He shall do though, the camo came out better than I thought it would as I normally hate painting it haha. Just need to get the rest of them painted up now.

Speaking of which here are a few better pics of the conversion work on some of them:

only got a little GS work left to do mainly shoulder pads and gauntlets so shouldnt take much longer.

Think after these are done I shall have a break from GW stuff for a bit, its beginning to bore me if I'm honest. I thought the Space Marine game would boost my interest but it hasn't, so theres a choice between possible projects:

Either Zombie Apocalpyse so painting up some survivors and zombies, more as a paintign project really as I doubt I will ever Game with them.

or 15mm Sci fi which would let me make a little terrain too.

At the moment I'm leaning more torwards the zombie stuff as it could be fun to  paint and I have plans to make more versions of Resident Evil characters plus some from Left 4 Dead as well :)

Welcome to new follower Lorenzo Calvi too, cheers for the support dude :)

Thats it for now shall be back when I have painted up a few more of the KT

Games Day Kill Team progress

Evening readers, small update time

Been working on the Kill Team for Gamesday a little more, they are getting close to being ready to paint with it just being arms that I need to finish off as well as a heavy bolter conversion:

These guys are coming out pretty well, the GS work isn't up to my normal standard but they needed to be done quick instead of taking an age on the details of each trooper.
Colour scheme wise I'm thinking of black armour, with the visors painted a nice blue and urban camo fatigues, the bases will be metal to tie in with the other Kill Teams that have been produced for the table.

For those interested you can see the table here: Spiders Web an AB Gamesday table

Focussing on these has meant that my inq28mm and hierodrule have gone relatively untouched, I have however been adding some details to the hierodrules base going for a urban ruins look:

In other hobby related news my Zombie Apoc stuff might be on the go again soon mainly thanks to Brummie and his blog, hes been working on a load of copplestone castings models and supplied me with a link to their store, some really awesome models on there especially in their future wars range and they are pretty reasonably priced too. Getting close to ordering some :)


In other news another artbook that I ordered turned up today this time the DC and wildstorm works of Jim Lee:

Massive beast of a book but utterly awesome think it was quite a bargain off amazon.

As well as that keeping me busy I've also downloaded Bloodrayne: Betrayal off xbox live after seeing some previews of it from E3. pretty ace game very much like Castlevania or Metroid, got a really cool artstyle too, which is what drew me to it really. Well worth checking out even if you only download the demo :)

so given that I've been playing that and that I havent done a quick sketch to put up for a while I though I would draw bloodrayne:

quick and simple sketch, hands are a mess hate trying to draw them on a tablet always come out messy :(

but there bit of a change from the normal pics of models :P

Also welcome to new followers Adam and Drkmorals cheers for the support guys

Thats it for now, shall update in a few days time with the pics of the full finish Kill team conversions :)

Something Big and Gribbly

Evening readers, random update time :D

After having a chat with Rictus on MSN the other night about how all the updates I seem to do are GS based I decided I would find something to paint. After a bit of a search I stumbled upon my old Tyranid Army that have lay in a box untouched since 3rd edition.

Amongst them one of the few Forge World models I own a scythed hierodrule. I have left my nids for all these years with the hope of one day returning to them and doing them proper justice, problem is that bringing them up to date with the newer plastics such as the carnifex, genestealers and so on would cost a small fortune :(

So for now I shall settle on repainting the Hierodrule as a break from constant GS work, who knows might lead to me bringing out more of the nid units to re paint :)

progress so far:

Mainly focused on getting him reundercoated and the base coats down, the carapace will be black and his "Skin" blue I chose black so that if I ever do decide to repaint and update my army it would make things far quicker haha.

I have however got side tracked with the mouth as I wanted to try a sort of dripping saliva effect on him, which I achieved by heating up a clear flyign stand with a lighter and then pulling it into a thin strand which was then cut to fit and super glued in place.

Messy and fiddly yes but I'm rather pleased with the results :)

In other news my signed J Scott Campbell art books finally turned up :

really happy with these, and plan to buy a few more art books likely an Adam hughes one and possibly a Marko Djurdjevic one (if he has done one that is)

also given teh blog a bit of a face lift, more subdued blue seems better, less in your face than the orange one. Took off the scrolling blog lists too as I couldnt figure out how to fix the problem with how they displayd in Internet Explorer :(

Well thats it for now as ever let me know what you think :)