“Just what the hell are they storing in these things anyway?”

You know how sometimes you get an idea that just keeps itching away at the back of your mind, and won’t go away until you make it? Well a couple of weeks ago you might remember I built some 28mm scale crates out of cardboard and coffee stirrers and I mentioned that these had inspired me to make something for a “Zomtober” entry, well in the end I just couldn’t wait till October. So as all the stuff I required for this build was now in my possession (Including a new batch of coffee stirrers!), I decided to make them my last entry into “Scenery month” instead. “But what are they?” I hear you ask, well taking the last two broken Zombies from the group “donated” to me last year by Myles, I thought I’d create a couple of “Zombies bursting out of crates”.

So to begin with I needed a couple of crates (surprise surprise!), luckily I still had the piece of cardboard I’d marked up with the correct sized boxes from the last batch, so a couple more were cut out and glued together with the exception of the front flap, this was left loose for the moment. I also cut these front “doors” in half (like a stable door), giving me the hole the “Zoms” would be poking out of. I then clad the tops and sides of the boxes with cut lengths of the coffee stirrers as last time* (see link at the end of this post for details). I them painted then all over (inside and out) with matt black, and then the stirrer clad areas as before.

When it came to the “Zom’s” themselves, I began by cutting the arms off of the two broken figures I had left over from my horde (both figures had only one arm left, as one had donated his to the “Gravestone” markers I did the other week, and the other lost his lord alone knows where!). Both figures were then cut in half at about the top of their thighs, them the arms were re-attached in lower more downward facing positions. Then after trial fitting the “Zoms” I cut two short lengths of stirrer and broke off the top ends with the tip of a pair of pliers to give a broken, shattered appearance as if hammered open from inside. This was then glued in place in the middle of the “door” and painted as before. Greenstuff was then used to build up the gaps now formed around the new un-natural shoulder attachments on the figures, a blob of putty was popped onto an old “slottabase” and the truncated figures were pushed onto this, and left to dry overnight. As far as the painting went I followed the tried and tested technique I’ve used on all my other “livingly challenged” figures, in other words working from a matt black base coat I mixed stone green and coffee on the first figure (applying one then the other, then mixing them patchily together while still wet), and light blue, stone green and European flesh in the same manner on the other. Then when this was dry I added the cuts and rents in the flesh in dark red, then the eyes and mouths in black and white and some bright red was slapped about for some fresher “gore” they were then ”Quickshaded” and finally matt varnished so they would match in with their zombie brethren.

These then had to be fitted into the crates, and this is was more of the “two steps forward, one step back!” palaver that the rest of the build had seemed to be. First two large (marble sized) blobs of greenstuff were mixed up and set into the insides of the crates about two thirds of the way up and were then painted matt black. After this “doors” on the crates were glued shut and the “Zoms” were fed in through the gap and pushed into the putty, and left to dry. Next more pieces of the stirrers were cut and “broken” so that they would fit around the emerging horrors and some of the larger ones were painted black before being glued into place. Small pieces were then cut and broken to fit around the “holes” and the bracing “bars” were also added, these were then also painted black and then all of these areas were finished in subsequent dry-brushes of chocolate, butternut and coffee as before. Finished, I’m quite pleased with the end results though they turned out to be more awkward and time consuming than I’d originally anticipated.

So that dear reader brings us to the end of scenery month, in some ways it would have been nice to of waited until “Zomtober” to do these, but fortuitously I still have enough Zombies to fill out my four weeks of “Zomtober”, so…

Till next week, Cheers Roger.

• https://rantingsfromunderthewargamestable.wordpress.com/2016/07/30/packing-it-in/