In much the same way as I’ve grown sick of painting plastic Gondor dudes over the past few months, I’ve grown equally sick of painting Skeletons. As the time counted down for April, I happened to spot a pair of Zombies sitting randomly amongst the painted undead out in the War room. I’d painted the pair one weekend last year after seeing them randomly sitting on my painting desk, partly-done. So with absolutely no randomness this time, I grabbed out a couple of Mantic’s Zombie (and one Ghoul) sprues, clipped a few off, cleaned up the bits, and then assembled them, attempting to build as many unique figures as possible while bringing the total to 12. Not all that easy, as the Mantic Zombie sprue is pretty limited. The parts from the ghouls aren’t a terribly hard kitbash, but I did find that the kits weren’t designed with inter-compatibility in mind when they were originally tooled and sculpted. Mantic weren’t all that forward-thinking at the time, I guess.
Now, we all know that a mere dozen Zombies isn’t all that many, even when reprsenting “20” on a regmient base. I reckon I’ll slowly build up a tarpit unit of Zombies, a dozen at a time over the course of whenever I feel like painting more zombies. I know I could churn out a ton of decent looking ones very quickly via “the dip”, but somehow I managed to really quite enjoy painting that first pair last year, so I decided to paint them via brush instead.
Having said all of that, the Army Painter Washes did most of the heavy lifting. After basecoating the flesh in various mixtures of Vallejo Model Air: Sand, Aged White, Duck Egg Green and AP Camo Green and VGC Off White for flavour. Then AP Purple Wash, Green Wash and some Lahmian Medium. For the rags I continued with the “army palette” of dirty dark grey to stand in for black, rather than a more realistic various shades of brown. Once again, I mixed up some greys, this time adding Sand for the hightlight mix colour, so as to avoid a monochomatic grey. Dark Tone AP wash to finish off.
Next up was painting in the exposed bone and various bits of exposed muscle and offal, then lightening or blackening the edges of some of the torn flesh as I felt appropriate. Did the “lunch” portions of those who have been dismembered by the zombies in slightly “fresher” skin tones, and then did a little work picking out teeth and eyes and hair. I added a bit of bruised skin via additional brown-purple washes on many of the models, though it’s a bit hard to see in these particular images.
Finally, I matt varnished them, and once dry, went in for a bit of fun with the Blood Effect paint. In this case, Citadel’s Blood for the Blood God.
I think the most surprising thing about these guys was just how easy and more importantly – fun they were to do. So much that I’m tempted to start another unit of 12, which I’ll them be able to combine with these guys into a horde.
Here’s the traditional regiment shots. Another use for these models is to use them for Zombicide Black Plague. I’m tempted, but the fingers on them are pretty fine and fragile. When I was clipping and assembling them I’ve already managed to break a few off – so I just painted the stumps bloody – fits zombies, anyway – but with the amount of rough handling the Zombicide models get, it might not be such a good idea to use these guys in the game…
Awesome – I do love a good zombie regiment!
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Thanks Alex. Hoping to get a second one up and running before I run out of steam and enthusiasm for them!
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Looking fantastic, man! The dismembered zombie steals the show though, what a great model 🙂
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Thanks! That one seems to be a real favourite of people’s. It is a nice little touch the way they added those parts to the sprue.
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Hmmm… Never really liked the look of the Mantic zombies but I think you’ve sold me on them. Nice work mate 🙂
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They’re pretty nice models, actually. After working with both Mantic’s Zombies and Skeletons/Revenants, I can safely say that the Zombies are much, much more fun to paint. The biggest limitation is the small number of torsos and legs (4 of each, not counting the stumps) so I end up doing a lot of simple conversions (arm snaps, chops and changes) to vary them. At least you do get a whole bunch of heads, though!
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I’ve been considering buying Mantic zombies. They look brilliant mate. You can never have enough zombies. The visual of a horde of zombies sweeping towards you is quite terrifying hehe
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Thanks mate, I’m currently constructing my second batch of them now. Not sure if I’ll manage to get them completed in May, but here’s to hoping! I think they’d go well with your crazy conversions, and there’s quite a few nice heads in the kit as well.
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From what I’ve found they’re quite good on price too. Is the scale good to go with GW?
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Yeah – they fit well with the newer GW skeletons much better than the old ones (and current/old zombies that date back a couple of decades).
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Im a big fan of the Mantic zombies. Like you, I really enjoyed painting mine.
Nice work. Great throughput here of late, very impressive. Keep it up Azazel!
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Thanks Cheetor. I’ve just managed to finish a second batch. No idea when I’ll get onto a third… might be time for a bit of a break from them now!
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