back to school! (sigh!!!)

I can't really complain as I have had a good summer holiday.  It has been quite productive in terms of painting figures, building scenery for my city and restarting my blog.  This last few days of holiday have been quite quiet in terms of what I have managed to achieve.  I have had to focus more on getting ready for work and my wife decided that the bedroom needed decorating before I went back!  Not the sort of painting I was hoping to do.
Anyway, all was not lost as I still found time to complete a couple of things for my campaign.
Carrying on with the Hasslefree survivors, I managed to complete another two.  First up is Katie, another child figure.  Armed with a baseball bat and a dustbin lid, she should be able to hold her own for a round or two if need be.  I painted her in a similar 'school uniform' colour palate to her brother ( see previous post for peter.)

 A nice, quick model to paint and a useful addition to the pool of possible encounters for my game.

 The second of my two new additions is Beth, another Hasslefree miniature.  Another nice, general figure but strangely not one that inspires a 'must use' character.  Still, I suppose she will turn up somewhere.

The other thing I managed to complete was another building.  This time it was the abandoned warehouse.  Quite a simple model and quite quick to build, and the best of all, it was a free pdf from Stoelzel's structures!!

 It is the type of building that will see a lot of use in an urban game board as many places have disused buildings.  I might even make another of them to create an abandoned area of town.

 The inside is very straight forward.  It is completely empty except a set of stairs.  I have to admit that I hate building stairs in model buildings!! :(

 first floor is pretty much the same as the ground floor, as in it's empty!

 The roof has an access way for characters to get up there and escape the zombie as undead can't climb ladders :)

 There were 3 different ways of constructing the building.  The option I chose was the layer method, which allows easier access to the bottom of the building for games.

Although I am planning more buildings in the near future (in fact I purchased some more files this week!!)  I am going to run into some storage issues very soon.  These are the shelves that the foam buildings are stored on and they are getting very full.  Might need to sort out another option soon!

I am thinking that I need to paint something other than survivors next as I am a little jaded with them.  I have a couple of figures almost finished and then after them I will paint a few other things, more of which, hopefully, next post.
Until next time....

more xmas Hasslefree minis

One of the things about being inspired by a project is that I tend to try and do everything all at the same time, which leads to having many things on the go but nothing completed.  This is particularly annoying when you have set yourself the target of blogging about your progress at least once per week!!
This week I have dabbled again in building stuff for my table, painted a few figures and started to play the next episode of my campaign.  This lead to buildings that are not quite finished, figures that were painted but not based and an unfinished game still set up on my board!! To make it worse, it is Wednesday, my midweek target day for an update!!!  The easiest to get finished was the figures as my modern basing is just sand, black ink and drybrushed.  Here are the results of this weeks painting.
Again, these are Hasslefree minis that I received for xmas - I think that I have another 6 or 7 to go before they are all done!
First up is Peter.  This is the figure I painted with the last batch but the pic was too blurry to use.  This picture seems a bit better.  I tried to paint him in a school uniform look as if the apocalypse overtook him on the way home from school.  It was the lack of children figures that prompted me to put in the order from Hasslefree in the first place.

 He is wearing just a general school colour scheme and I am quite pleased with how it came out.

 Next up is Alice.  A nice figure to paint.  She strikes me as being a little disturbed (and who wouldn't be!!) by the zombie apocalypse.....

 One of the things I like about modern survivors is that it gives you chance to use some of the paint colours that you never get the chance to in more historical projects.  I think the rabbit has the back of his head blown out.....

 I struggled a bit with Baker as in trying to make him a little drab, I succeeded to the point that I didn't really want to finish him and was considering stripping him and starting again!

 The turning point was putting white stripes on his jacket and trainers as it seemed to make him a little more interesting.  He will never be my favorite paint job but it will do.

I really like the figure of Clint, and from other websites I seem to not be alone in this! :)
He is dressed in sensible denim shirt and cargo pant.  Hard wearing and functional.  I felt that this common sense approach to the apocalypse suggested a maturity lacking in some of the other figures and so I gave him a few grey hair to go with the additional years.

 Even his choice of backpack is a no nonsense green.

Anyone reading my batreps will know that I already have one version of Lara Croft, from Copplestone miniatures if I remember correctly (another of my favorite sculptors!).  I saw no point in just painting her the same but she is similar.

 She is a nice figure one I could get the arms to stay on!
Maybe next time I will do a dance/disco version to be different decked out in dayglo colours.

last up for today is Lisa Lambaste. She is a cracking little figure and fun to paint.  She has an unusual choice of melee weapon in a big maul.  This suggests some background in martial arts and a degree of competency with the weapon beyond the normal.  Lisa could generate an unusual background and even a story line all of her own.

 I always find yellow a tricky colour to paint from a black undercoat but am reasonably happy with how she turned out.

Hopefully my next update will be a batrep, which as I have already mentioned is part way through.  School starts again next week so am a little apprehensive as to how it will affect my schedule but I will try and maintain the twice a week routine I have been working to.  I have to say that I am enjoying my zombie campaign so that in itself should keep me plodding along...
Hopefully see you all at the weekend :)

Hasslefree survivors

 As part of my 50th birthday present(Christmas eve so almost part of my Christmas haul but not quite), I got some Hasslefree modern survivors.  I am a big fan of these figures and even though I had to order them myself only for them to be taken from me and wrapped for the big day, I was still very excited to open them.  I was very pleased to find that they had included a few extras - something to do with changing factory buildings -  a couple were miscasts, although I could find nothing wrong with them, and one was zombie suzi.  I was particularly pleased with this!!!  There was also a bag of sweets inside.  All of this almost made up for the fact that they started a 20% off deal a week later!! :(
Anyway, I am over that now...all is forgiven and forgotten, and below is the figures I received (free stuff at the front)

 I have enjoyed painting some of them over the last week.  I have completed 5 but the photo of one was a bit blurry so I will leave that until next time.
First up is Kendra.

 Hard to say which figure I like the best of all the ones I received but this one is definitely in the running. Her name is Summer  Such an awesome figure.  She will turn up in a game at some point, I am sure.

 Next up is Mad dog.  An interesting figure to paint.  I tried to give him y-fronts.  I think it sort of worked.  I just now need to build the model of a fire station I have for him to live in after the apocalypse!  I will put it on the list somewhere.....

 Last up is Kat.  Another figure I like.  I thought green and white was a little more unusual that the red/white scheme I originally considered.

 She looks more than capable of clearing out a few zombies!

I am hoping to get a few more painted over then next week but am getting a little distracted by the next episode of my campaign (played but not written up yet) and repainting some Arab buildings for a pulp Egypt game I am hoping to start at some point this year.  I will post pics of them when they are all repainted, along with some Artizan pulp figures I am hoping to get started on soon.

Another issue that has turned up is that now having started my 'All things Zombie' campaign I realise that I need a lot more terrain pieces to give it a greater variety so at some point(!) I need to start making more stuff, so expect that to start showing up soon as well.
This hobby is never boring :)

A long way home - the beginning

This is the start of my 'All things Zombie" campaign.  It is the story of three people a long way from home when the zombie apocalypse starts.  Here are the main cast members:

In the centre we have PC Sam Ford, a Police office from Birmingham, in the middle of England on a 6 month work exchange with the police department of Rapid City, South Dakota, USA. On the right of him is his wife Layla, also from Birmingham, and to the left of him is Penelope 'Penny' Black, a Londoner living in Rapid Falls for the last 3 years who is lodging with them and is Layla's best friend.
The two statuesque ladies are by Copplestone casting and were a joy to paint.  Sam Ford is by hasslefree miniatures. I enjoyed painting it so much that I have put another order in and they are wrapped, sitting under the xmas tree waiting until I am allowed to have them.
The idea behind the campaign is to plot their journey home - if they can stay alive long enough to get there....
Here is a map where Rapid City is situated

The Coast lies a long, long way to the right........

I am half way though the first game so I hope to post the first bat rep soon.

#insert your own city's name here#'s finest!

I have set myself the goal of getting a working 'all things zombies' campaign up and running by xmas.  It will probably be a solo game with occasional episodes played with others in my gaming group.  In order to do that I have a list of figures I would like to get and have painted before I start.  High on the list were police as they play a big part in the early games and I want to have figures for any random events that are generated.  As luck would have it, Ainsty castings were selling off  some of the street violence range at a reduced cost, so I bought a couple of packs of street cops (and the backstreet militia which have yet to be painted!).  Below is the Police dept of the yet to be named city.
One of the older members of the department

 After I had painted him I realised that he should have been brown skinned!  Oh well- next time I will paint him correctly!

 All of the figures are very characterful, especially this one, who has a coffee and burger from mcD's and the one eating a pizza.

 the figures are armed with shotguns or pistols and have a nice mix of male and female officers.

 time for a snack in between zombies

 I like the fact that the female officers are not sexualised and exaggerated.

 These last few are of the departments SWAT team - I have another team of 5 to do but not sure where they are on the list yet.

over all I feel that they worked out not to shabbily with the streetcops being better that the SWAT team.  All of the figures were fun to paint.  I think I need to get some non foundry survivors to expand the collection!

Some more potential survivors

Although still haven't quite decided on the basing yet, I have painted a few more survivors from foundry street violence and hasselfree miniatures.
First up is rollerskate girl.

 I'm really not sure the technicalities of using two firearms on rollerskates but it was a nice figure to pain as are most of the foundry figures I've attempted, historical or fantasy. I did have to try and find out how do do sunglasses simply as I was finding more and more of the figures i was painting were wearing them.  It turned out to be a very simple process but like most things easy when you know how. i have seen some very nice examples of sunglasses where they show the reflection of the horizon or cityscape in them!  Wonderful effects but beyond my abilities to pull off :(
next up is some street thug in his football kit.  His bullet belt shows tracers rounds as well as normal bullets.  I wonder if old zombies are more prone to catching fire once they have dried out a little?

 This figure is slightly more high tech as he has some form of body armour.  i think he is part of the hardwire troop

 i was trying to make this figure a 'study in blue'. using 3 different blues to paint her.  It turnee out ok but nothing special..

 I liked this figure.  Quite simple to paint and I am toying with the idea of getting some gloss varnish to paint her outfit to make it a more patent leather look

 Finally a hasselfree miniature.  I think this one is called Dionne.  She is a slighter sculpt than foundry so more care was needed. I liked the way her white body suit worked out.

I intend to start a zombie campaign when i get time but I get into an odd mindset that i can't start until I have all the options of figures I might need.  The two most obvious gaps in my figure collection for zombies were cops and military and so I finally got round to buying some street violence packs of cops and militia which I have undercoated but not started painting yet.  I will post them when I finish them.  They were from Ainsty castings who had a few blisters at a discounted price.  the discount covered the cost of postage for the full price figures. Worked out well, i thought.