So the new years resolutions are as follows: 1. Not to buy any miniatures (ebay or otherwise) apart from kickstarters unless said miniatures are funded by my own ebay sales. So far, so good. Have bought the one box of the old mantic space zombies conversion set and today I received a set of Wargames Factory Skeleton Warriors. Sadly this was the first version of them, with all the little minisprues, and there were supposed to be 77 minisprues and 30 bases in the box, to make 30 Jason and the Argonauts-style true-scale skeletons and leftover weapons. However, there were only 20 of the minisprues in the box, and no bases. Can barely make 6 skeletons with what arrived. Luckily, the dealer has responded quickly and says they are going to send me equivalent to the missing bits. So no harm done. I hope. and 2. Paint some minis every month.This one tied in nicely with the resolutionary painting challenge over on the reaper forum. Namely, to paint at least 4 miniatures during the month. Doesn’t sound too hard does it? Problem is, between Bordlerlands the Pre-Sequel (far too many hours playing that. It’s just so much fun!), the large amount of prepwork on the 10,5 kilos of All Quiet on the Martian Front wave 2 (That’s 10 kilos of 15/20mm scale metal infantry, light vehicles, artillery, resin tanks -and the Land Iron Clad) I will post about that at a later date) and the first wave of Shadows of Brimstone arriving (Cowboys and Tentacles! The Horror is Unspeakable!) (ditto). with all that prepwork, and the converting of space hurps-ridden zombies, I haven’t actually had time to paint anything beyond basecoats and playing around with zenithial priming with my airbrush.

The old Mantic Space Zombie set was a “expert level” conversion set, with some sprues of their HIPS plastic fantasy zombies and ghouls, and a pack of 10 corporation soldiers in restic to cut up and mix and match enough to make 30 in all! I also mixed in a few sprues of the new Mantic Sci-fi Plague Zombies (that actually are slightly larger and more “heroically” proportioned than the old ones). Suddenly I had around 50 or so shuffling around my table…

but I digress.

Here is the first four of the guards and workers that contracted Space Hurps, and have gone a little…cannibalish.

These are mostly fantasy zombie parts, with the two right ones having parts from the new sf zombie sprue. A restic weapon arm and soldier head was used on the two leftmost.

The paint job:

It is said speed kills, but I believe these zombies were mostly dead.

Speedpainting zombies: undeadcoated black, with zenithal light grey (basically airbrushed from an angle of about 1 to 2 o’clock and 10-20cm away, to get a preshaded effect.

Painted with a sandy beige skintone, then quickly drybrushed with a bronzed, then pinkish skintone. Pants and cloth in brown and bluegrey.  Military uniform bits in olive green. then some gore, messily “wetbrushing” (a variant of drybrush using thinned paint and that is not wiped too much off) with red and purple. Ginger hair for the one that isnt bald.

Slather in Army Painter Strong Tone Ink (not the dip). When dry, final details. A quick and very dry drybrush with greybrown, wetblend the visor in turquioses, blue in blue eyes (maybe thay are spice addicts as well?) and blacken the cursed sun hands and exposed feet for that gangrenous feel.

and then there is/was resolution number

3.  Try to complete a project / set of minis / squad before starting another. I am rather flighty, and have many different projects started that really are going nowhere…

For this one, I tried to do a lot of prepwork before christmas, so as to free up time to get some painting in. However this one is already broken. Too many Kickstarters delivered around New Year. First World Problems ahoy! Bah Humbug!

But I have at least made a great deal of headway in prepping both the All Quiet (which took a LONG time to clean up enough to start sticking things together) and both sets of Shadows of Brimstone. The minis are really nice, but sadly rather soft in the details.