Zombicide Gaming Night #1 and #2 Survivors “Kyoko” (Lucy Liu as Alex Munday from Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle) & “Thiago” (Mike Myers as Austin Powers)

Zombicide Gaming Night #1 and #2 Survivors "Kyoko" (Lucy Liu as Alex Munday from Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle) & "Thiago" (Mike Myers as Austin Powers)

Is this my longest post title yet? We’re certainly right up there, but it’s descriptive so whaddayagonnado?

I haven’t posted for awhile because, well, let’s just say “life happens” sometimes. I have been painting when I can, and so now I present you with day 1 of 5 that will each feature a pair of Zombicide Survivors. Why not post them all at once, you ask? Because I generally like to do ’em in pairs – easier for me to find later on using search – and I finished 10 of ’em…

Zombicide Gaming Night #1 Survivor "Kyoko" (Lucy Liu as Alex Munday from Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle)

Kyoko is an interesting figure. I had seen someone reference this one as based on Lucy Liu sometime in the long distant past, but I simply put that down to a lot of players habit of trying to attach every Zombicie Survivor to some sort of celebrity, so I kinda ignored that and went with the artwork.

Well, I did manage to match her skin tone in the artwork pretty much perfectly. I was dubious at first, though I do like to vary my flesh tones on models a fair bit so I gave it a go, but it was preeeety yellow. So much it looked like either Hepatitis Flesh or Cartoon Racism Flesh. I wasn’t super down with that and noped right out – I mean, that sort of base looks fine for an undead zombie, but maybe not a living human –  so I returned to the interwebs and did some more googling and found the above image. “Fuck me dead!” as various people used to say as a slightly odd exclaimation. The model with this rather unliklely combination of clothing and weapon was actually based on ol’ Lucy.

Zombicide Gaming Night #1 Survivor "Kyoko" (Lucy Liu as Alex Munday from Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle)

So with that I decided I was going to repaint the skin tone with a similar saturated tone, but leave the red pvc rather than repaint it in black – both because I felt the red added more interest than another all-black wearing survivor, and because I felt it looked decent and I didn’t want to repaint it.

Zombicide Gaming Night #2 Survivor "Thiago" (Mike Myers as Austin Powers)

The second model is a pretty “mid” one, as the kids these days say, and is based on Austin Powers. Possibly on his bright orange outfit from the third film which I have not watched. Makes sense, since the Not-Beyonce Zombicide Survivor and her outfit also comes from the third film, but I felt like the blue velour suit was more iconic for the character, even if the model didn’t have a large flamboyant cravat.

Zombicide Gaming Night #2 Survivor "Thiago" (Mike Myers as Austin Powers)

I went with a different take for the glasses with the white lenses, trying something different. Not sure if it worked that well. I also tried to represent Austin’s janky dental work on the Survivor miniature as well.

Well, that’s all for today – I’ll be back tomorrow with the next pair of survivors!

Shadows of Brimstone Forbidden Fortress: Gateways Into Madness – Japanese Gateways (Torii Gates)

Shadows of Brimstone Forbidden Fortress: Gateways Into Madness - Japanese Gateways (Torii Gates)

Several months ago I cracked open the box for this Shadows of Brimstone: Gateways Into Madness set, mostly so I could knock them out quickly and make some space by disposing of the box. Naturally, the whole plan backfired. The Organic gateways have huge gaps in them that will need filling as well as lots of mold line trimming. Basically, a huge pain in the arse to get ready for painting. These Torii Gates I primed and started painting. In brown. But they looked pretty mid, to be quite honest. So I decided to repaint them. Later.

Shadows of Brimstone Forbidden Fortress: Gateways Into Madness - Japanese Gateways (Torii Gates)

Scale shot showing a variety of model types.

A couple of weeks ago, I started working on them again in the background, motivated by Dave Stone’s current Season of Scenery Challenge. Got the reddish brown happening eventually, and then due to lack of enthusiasm took over a week to paint in the lantern-windows with a somewhat glowy effect.

Finally this last weekend I got them all done finally. Getting reddish wood on this scale to have effective highlights and shading was actually pretty difficult, but the finished product fits pretty solidly into the category of “good enough for the tabletop” for me.

Shadows of Brimstone Forbidden Fortress: Gateways Into Madness - Japanese Gateways (Torii Gates)

A I was getting to the last stages of getting these done, I realised that I could use these in Marvel Crisis Protocol for a Japanese-themed area – whether that be a park, or a village or city, or a “Little Tokyo” cultual enclave in a Western city. So I may actually have a reasonably likely use case for these pieces. Huh!