It’s again been a good while since I’ve finished any of my Zombicide Abominations, and so in September I forced myself to finish a couple of the models that had been sitting on the desk since the end of the Monster-themed challenge months. Sure, I could have finished them in October for Apocalypse Me, but it’s not like I’ve got any shortage of other qualifying models to get painted, right? 😮
Cthulhu was actually the second one of these to be completed, as The Mummy was much further along – but since when does Cthulhu give second billing to anyone?
For Cthulhu I once again more-or-less followed the cues from the official artwork. The “something-under-thin-translucent-skin” effect of it’s head was something new for me to try and play with, so that suited me as well, and added a nice splash of colour to a model that could just be painted nothing but green and fit into Guru PIG’s Venn Diagram.
I also ran with the contrasting colours much more than indicated in the artwork (stomach and wings) by continuing to add more warm tones through the palms of Cthulhu’s hands, elbows, and then some glazing elsewhere on the body, shoulders, etc. I also extended the cold tones from the head-sac further down the head. And of course, more blue veins on thick appendages! 😮
Both of these models were sculpted by Jason Hendriks, who maintains a blog sharing his WIP progress on many of his models, including Cthulhu and often some design thoughts.
The Mummy was a fairly straigtforward model to paint, if a little busy with the bandages loosely draped over the mummified flesh underneath.
With The Mummy, I took the cue of grey flesh, but just went with whatever felt like it worked after that as far as colours go. As long as the model matches the art broadly, I’m good, and we’re not overrun with overized mummies.
Once again, Jason has an entry for The Mummy where he mentions that CMoN didn’t particularly want an Egyptian theme to this model – which explains the more ragged appearance of this sculpt.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I do like the way that they leaned into various cryptids and other mythologies and mythos for a bit of a different flavour to these stretch goal abominations. It certainly gives you more of an interesting variety of models to paint. Berkeley and Not-Clint here provide scale reference for both of these A-Bombs – as you can see, they’re hefty models for this particular game and put the regular zombies to shame!