“Zom’tober…Alice in Zombieland”

It’s funny how sometimes life imitates art, here I am painting Zombies and I’ve felt rather like one all week too! A stinking cold has set in and I’ve spent most of the week coughing up things that wouldn’t look out of place in a George A Romero film, this along with being on the dreaded nightshift has not been exactly conducive to a high work rate as far as painting goes. So it was just as well that I had only picked out two figures to paint up this week, these were another of my Copplestone Castings survivors, and another zombie from Studio Miniatures. Now I have long been a fan of the “Resident Evil” movies starring the lovely Milla Jovovich, so when I first saw this young lady from my Coppleston collection I immediately knew that I would have to turn her into my (less that accurate) version of “Alice” the superhuman zombie killing machine from that franchise. Though her dress is reasonably similar to Alice’s iconic one from the first movie, it does have rather more cleavage on show at the front and in truth the figure is rather more “busty” than Milla, I did think of raising the neckline a bit, but in the end I just couldn’t do it! (I can live with it, I am a man after all). I could not however live with her lack of boots, but a little filing and “greenstuffing” soon put this to rights. While I had some mixed up I also added the exposed leg of her shorts (needed to retain ones dignity whilst dispatching the undead you know!), and I altered her hairstyle slightly moving her parting away from the middle and across to the side. Once dry both figures were based up on the obligatory tuppence and given a coat of black undercoat.

I began “Alice” in my usual fashion by dry-brushing her weapon with chainmail before setting to work on her signature red dress. This was firstly given a coat of dark red, then mixing some bright red into the dark red I highlighted her “frock” with this. Her flesh as worked up from a continental flesh base coat, which after her eyes were added was highlighted with the same mixed with a little pale flesh, For some reason I wasn’t happy with the end result of this, it was just to “pink” so I added some more highlights over this with my European flesh, much better. Her shorts and boots had been left black, but I mixed a little dark red and black together and the resultant really dark red (well what would you call it!) was used to highlight her shorts and her boots were highlighted with dark grey. That just left her hair, now the colour of this changes from film to film, but I used a base coat of butternut, then highlighted with a mix of my two sand colours and a touch of chestnut brown, and I don’t think it’s that far off.

My “Zombie” was begun with a mix of khaki and pale flesh mixed on the figure as I always do, and then I added his mouth and eyes in black (the eyes getting white pupils, and the mouth some cream teeth). His trousers were then painted chocolate brown before they were highlighted with butternut, and his other pant leg (the one on the leg he’s holding, I could make a joke about “Jake the peg” but that’s not really PC these days is it!) was undercoated dark grey and highlighted in blue grey. Then turning to his shirt a basecoat of light blue was applied and highlights of pale blue were then added over this. His hair was undercoated in chocolate brown and highlighted in chestnut brown. That just left some liberal “dolloping” about with the dark red, and bright red to “bloody” him up a bit and both figures were ready to be “Quckshaded”. This was followed of course by painting the bases in my own inimitable style (ha ha), and a quick blow over with the matt varnish finished them off.

Oh and before I go I promised to print a list of all the people who were taking part in Zomtober this year, well pinched straight from “Brummies” excellent blog, here is the full list…

Eclectic Gentlemen Tabletop Gamer – Leon
Four Colour Super Minis – Rob
Cheaphammer!!! – Kieron
Dead Lead Project – myincublis
The Lost and the Damned and the Stunted – Dai
Fantorical – Blaxkleric
28mm Victorian Warfare – Michael Awdry
Mike’s Random Wargaming Meanderings – Mike C
Minis by Finch – Finch
da Gobbo’s Grotto – Wargaming blog – da Gobbo Grotto
Rantings from under the Wargames table – Roger
Colgar6 and the Infinite Legion of Toy Soldiers – Colgar6
Miniature Mayhem – Terry
Weeblokes – Sam

Hopefully I’ll be feeling a bit more “with it” this week, but till them.

Sweet dreams…Cheers Roger.