The other day I showed my finished Cardboard Tube Samurai promo/limited model from the original Zombicide Kickstarter that I picked up recently. I also managed to get a few others at the same time, including the Zombie form of “Nick Walker, Bad Cop” – a character that’s pretty clearly based on Bruce Willis’ John McClane character from the original Die Hard film. Completing the CTS model then kicked off getting to work on a few other models so we could run some other promo survivors from the original as we have the Character Cards. We have a few layers here…
Firstly, we have “Ivy”. Going by the original line art, we can see that Ivy has a pretty strong resemblance to Angelina Jolie’s character from Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Not an easy model to find a proxy for, as it happens. What I did find some time ago was a model from Kev White’s Hasslefree Miniatures – Gina.
Now Gina appears to have what I’m sure is an entirely-coincidential resemblance to Tricia Helfer’s character “Number Six”, from the remake Battlestar Galactica series from a while back. The hair is a little different, but the distinctive cut/shape of her dress is the giveaway.
Now Marouda and I placed a new order with Hasslefree for their Halloween sale, and while looking through the wares on offer, I saw this model. Mutant Willow, which I thought could be a workable proxy for the Zombvivor version of Ivy.
I feel like Mutant Willow is pretty obviously inspired by the Witch, from the viodeo game franchise Left 4 Dead.
So in the end, I have a model originally “inspired by” Tricia Helfer proxied as a model to represent a model “inspired by” Angelina Jolie, with the Zombie counterparts using a model “inspired by” L4D’s Witch” representing a different model “inspired by” Angelina Jolie. I wasn’t going to try bending her arm or resculpting anything, but I did have a hunting rifle to more or less match the artwork in one of my Wargames Factory Apocalypse Survivor kits, so I added that to her left arm – I think Warlord games purchased all of these, but not sure if they’re still available in any form these days.
I highlighted “Ivy’s” black dress through a dark sea green rather than the usual greys of dark blues, and painted the Witch pretty much as in L4D, with warm greys for the skin tones, and dirty off-white underwear. if Angie does get infected, she obviously had a change of clothes before turning – much like Heisenberg/Spencer before her… The Witch model isn’t part of December’s output – she was painted on Sunday 15th January, so she’s part of January’s output that I’ll be able to start sharing shortly…
Our second model for today represents “Nick Walker, Bad Cop”, which as you can see is “inspired by” Bruce Willis in the original Die Hard film. I got the official Nick Walker Zombie figure alongside the Cardboard Tube Samurai and a few others, and already had the other model “Walt” from Studio Miniatures. I feel that Walt is a bit of a mediocre sculpt to be quite honest, especially with regard to his singlet, but it’s overall decent enough for boardgame purposes.
We watched Die Hard as our Christmas Movie this year just past, and so how could I not finally paint up the Studio Miniatures model alongside the Zombicide counterpart? In the film, Bruce gets more and more dirty as the story goes on, so I’ve given him an amount of grime that fits the point where his bloody feet are wrapped up (though he wraps them in the remains of the singlet he’s wearing here!) but then again, this model isn’t a documentary on the film, so it’ll pass!
Non-Zombie Angie was painted before the 26th of December, but the other three were painted post that date, so chalk up three more for for Dave’s latest Paint what You Got challenge!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Great find on proxy models mate, the conversions you did add to the effect, and wonderful painting throughout, nice you’ve been able to add in these characters to your collection.
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Thanks Dave! It’s always good fun to add more player-character options to the game – we have a big deck of player cards so we each draw three randomly for each game unless the scenario calls for a specific survivor character.
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Very nicely done! 🙂
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Thank you, John! 🙂
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‘Ivy’s’ dress looks superb – I’ve started highlighting Black with Electric Blue, but I like the more ‘velvety/satin’ look that the Sea Green gives. Gonna give that a go, thanks.
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I really like “one note” models like the two Ivys where there’s really just one main thing to paint on them, so you can put a bit more time/care/concentration on the one aspect of the figure (dress/undead skin in this case) – and then it’s pretty close to done.
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I know where you’re coming from there, though I’ve never consciously thought about it like that. I just sort of get on and paint when really I should take a little more time to actually think about what I aim to achieve first. Thanks Azazel😃
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No worries – a lot of the “modern adventurers” type models (some zombicide models, Cthulhu-ish investigators, etc) fit into this kind of category where it’s really mostly one or two things to paint aside from the skin tones and stuff like belts, shoes and maybe a weapon or something else in their hands.
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Nice work on these! Just so happens that I rewatched Die Hard around Christmas (while recuperating from COVID19, no less!). It’s still pretty fun. Back when Bruce was on top of his game. Rickman really steals the show though. The film was so smart for its time, and it’s too bad the Director/Screenwriters never made an equally good film. Must’ve been some magic in the water. Wait, there are some minis here, haha! The Not-McLane looks good, though I can see how the sculpt would’ve been tough. The explanation of the proxies for Angelina made me feel like I was rewatching Inception. But that could be A) Lack of caffeine this morning B) Lingering Head Cold/Fog. The dress on her looks amazing though. I’d swear you used Reaper paints to get those nice vibrant highlight colors, but probably no. Probably straight up VMC or AK?
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You’re right on the money about Alan Rickman and the movie itself – It really is a special film in so many ways – there’s a good video on YouTube I watched the following day after rewatching it – pretty interesting stuff about the production.
Short version of the Angelina models is simply “damn, what can I find that looks close enough to this?” “oh, this tribute model for an entirely different actress/character might work if I paint it just so.” 😀
The paints here are I believe all a mix of AK3G, VMC and VGC with a touch of the old Army Painter (from back when their warpaints were good paints) Tanned Flesh in the fleshtone mix for both living heroes. For whatever reason I don’t use my Reaper paints much, nor my Pro Acryl (actually, I know why – my tabletop space for paints that are “out” is limited!)
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Yea, I’m cutting back to the two main lines of paint. It’s too hard to keep track and space sucks. I’m also finding that Reaper makes a crap ton of paints, which makes it even harder. I still like them, other than the bottle nips. Thanks for linking that YouTube video, I will definitely give it a watch. The film came out when there wasn’t a lot of behind the scenes stuff (unlike the dawn of DVD, where they often went overboard with behind the scenes crap). So it will be interesting to hear more about DieHard. Cheers!
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I’m getting flashbacks to years back when a frieend of mine told me he’d just bought the big set of Vellejo and had thrown all of his Citadel paints away! What a waste!
Not that you’re asking for it, but if you’re going to go along brand lines my painterly advice would be to still keep (and keep using) the special cases where a specific paint from whoever does the best job – regardless of the brand. (Like Ironjawz Contrast, Model Air Silver-metallics, Metal Colour, etc)..
That YT channel has some pretty interesting videos, despite the stupid channel name (thet prevented me from giving them a watch for ages when they kept showing up in my recommendations). Hope you enjjoy!
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Your philological research between cinema and miniatures in search of “who inspired whom inspired whom” is truly commendable. The quality of the painting is at the usual high level and gives its best in the different fabrics of the clothes and in the skin tones.
If Walker didn’t go very well, in his undershirt and without shoes, Ivy did much worse, since she’s only in her underwear after the zombification…but probably for an undead this is a negligible problem, right?!
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Thank you! Though you make it seem grander than it actually is! 🙂
As you point out, the zombie form probably won’t have to worry about catching a chill – though neither of the living forms in this post are all that dressed for anything outside of warm weather this time. 🙂
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Really nice work yet again Az, tremendous planning and thought went into these. The execution however is – again – sublime. Hasslefree ought to hire you!
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Haha thanks Mark! Kev White, the sculptor for Hasslefree just recently got hired by GW’s Forge World, so I believe that the very small business is now being run by the other three people previously involved – Kev’s wife Sally, Artemis Black, and Arty’s wife. If they wanted to use my painted models on their site they’d be welcome to, though. 🙂
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Excellent – I love these little pop culture references 😊
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Thanks Alex – there’s no end to them for sure! 🙂
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Nice work on all these, mate. Its awesome how you can get your favorite actors and characters into Zombicide. I suppose you could do that with any zombie game but it seems like they make it as easy as anybody, especially if you add some third-party sculpts into the mix!
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Yeah, Zombicide really evolved into a pop culture vs zombies game (at least for the KS backers with all those promo “tribute” figures) – which is fine by me since it doesn’t affect the game mechanically and makes it a bit more silly fun if you feel like leaning into that aspect on any given occasion.
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Great work again Az.
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Thanks mate! 🙂
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