“It’s The Old Story….” (Zom’tober, Apocalypse Me & Advent Challenge’s)

Boy meets girl, girl tries to eat boy’s brains, boy blows girls head off!

So as I said last time, we are rolling back into the challenges again, next month we have the perennial favourite that is “Mo’vember” but more on that nearer the time, as this month we have a “two for one” in Zom’tober and “Dave Stone’s Apocalypse Me”. Now I’m sure you are all well aware of the rules for these by now but for anyone out there who isn’t or has suffered severe brain trauma recently the rules are basically thus…

For “Zom’tober”, you must paint up some zombies or survivors (it used to be one or more a week, but I’m not sure if that rule is still enforced, and it might be as many or whenever you want, in October), or some Zombie’like figures. Some people are now playing pretty “fast and loose” in terms of what counts as a “zombie”, Robot’s/Aliens/Plants and Skeletons have all been submitted, basically it seems any “shambling mass” is OK, which is fine by me, it’s just a bit of fun after all.

“Apocalypse me” on the other hand just requires you paint up anything post-apocalyptic, this gives you LOTS of options, be it “Mad Max” style fuel crisis, Nuclear War, Zombie (see two for one! 👍 Ecological, Time tunnel Dinosaur invasion, Pandemic, Tory government, or your run of the mill Alien invasion. The choice is almost endless. (Oh and if you want to paint up yourself as a survivor (or non-survivor I imagine) then Dave would appreciate that too).

But anyway to start the ball rolling, I have two figures from my “Advent Calendar”, (wait, that’s a three for one!!👍👍) challenge, so I give you…

No8   “Gallup” zombie survivor with guitar and shotgun.

No11 Zombie girl in shorts.

(These are both official Reaper names).

Now sadly “Gallup” (why he’s called this I don’t know 🙄) is not a great figure, in fact he’s the worst figure to come out of my calendar but quite a margin in my opinion, the detail is soft and the space between his gun and arm is filled in, in an obvious manner. Saying that though I’ve seen considerably worse figures by other manufacturers, it’s just I expect better from Reaper. Anyhoo’ after his black was touched up I dry-brushed chainmail over his gun and the strings on his guitar. Next I took the dark grey and painting in his sweatshirt that is tied around his waist, and also highlighted the pickguard and the neck of the guitar with this, talking of highlighting I then used mid grey to do this on his sweatshirt. His jeans were next my usual recipe of royal blue and blue grey mixed forming the undercoat here, with just blue grey highlights, and completing the lower half I did his “tennis” shoes in coffee and cream. Now I knew I wanted to spruce up his shirt a little, but only wanted a relatively simple design, now a few years back my eldest painted a “(DC) flash” design on a figure (and did a very good job of it too tbh), so thought of doing the same, however I try and stay away from too much red on Zombie related figures because of the copious amounts used on the “bloody bits” so instead I thought I’d do a “Green Lantern” themed one. So using “Tamiya” green for the undercoat I then painted on a black circle, then filled this in with cream, leaving a thin black line around the edge (I also added the collar and cuffs at this stage too). Next I added circle* in shamrock, added two small lines above and below this and highlighted the rest of his shirt, lastly I put a dot of white in the centre of the shamrock circle turning it into a ring. Chocolate brown next and this went on his guitars body, strap, and headstock, and his guns pump action grip and grip. The gun parts and head stock were highlighted in saddle, the strap in leather, and the guitars body in a mix of saddle, citrus orange and orange. Flesh next and as usual, I went with European flesh with the same with pail flesh added for the highlights after his eyes were added in white and black, his hair was also a tried and true technique undercoated in chestnut and highlighted in orange. That just left his hat, royal blue went over this and the same mixed with some ocean blue formed the highlights, then as I was at a loss as to what to add as the logo at the front, I just painted a white square and added a capitol “A” in royal blue.

So now we come to my “Zombie girl in shorts”, who I prefer to call “Penny”, mainly because what she is wearing and her hair reminds me of Kaley Cuoco’s character in “The Big Bang Theory” sitcom. But I digress, I started with her flesh, mixing dead flesh (of course!) with khaki, light blue and a touch of plum I painted all the exposed fleshy bits. Next I added her shorts in the same manner as “Gallup’s” above with the addition of a little touch of coffee along the frayed legs. Her vest was them painted coffee too this time with cream highlights and I added the heart motif in ocean blue with porcelain blue highlights (again I didn’t go for red or pink because of the blood I’d add later). Her boots (I think these are called UGG’s or something), were chocolate brown the I highlighted the boots with Eurasian flesh and also used this to undercoat the boot collars that in turn were highlighted with coffee. Looking again at her flesh, I wasn’t happy with the colour, it was too “beige”, so after I’d added her eyes and mouth in black, with white pupils and teeth, I highlighted the flesh this time with a mix of dead flesh (again) Khaki and what I think is a great “zombie flesh tone, stone green, this too me at least looked much better. Hair next and taking “Penny” as my inspiration I first went around edges in chocolate brown to give the impression of a little “natural” regrowth, then with in with the ECW buff as the undercoat for her dyed (or should that be died?) blonde hair and I highlighted this with sand, oh’ and the tie in her hair was ocean blue. I added a little pick burgundy around her lips, but I think the “gore” obscures most of this! And gore is what came last, I first went in with the dark red running this into all her various cuts, bites and rents, before slapping some bright red over these and running it down  and about, and she too was done.

Next was…you guessed it “Quickshade” time, a coat of Strong tone was used on both and once this was dry they were both finished off in the usual manner. So that’s my first two figures for Zom’tober finished, for the rest of the month I hope to concentrate on some more additions to my “Dead Zone” collection, so till next time….unpleasant dreams!

Cheers Roger.

• Circle is a relative term, as yes it is more oval😉