Zombicide Invader: The Return

09.08.2022

After mechs last time I find myself returning to Zombicide Invader, but this time going the opposite direction of alien zombos and instead sticking to the mech-like blockiness afforded by gun emplacements wielded by robots.

Yet again I still have no idea about the rules that go with what I'm painting, but all that can come later and would just get in the way now!

I still have the goal of getting Zombicide Invader painted and ready for a potential game with Jer and Keith by the end of the year. All of the alien zombos are painted. All that's left is 28 non-alien zombos. I would say good guys, but those unread rules could come back to haunt me.

I picked the biggest things remaining to paint first. Some evil looking robot thingies, with guns and pointy bits. Like the Battletech mechs from last time, I didn't want to go too colorful to keep things from looking cartoonish. This also ended up being discovering that I really like Citadel Necron Compound for a metallic drybrush. For most of these I just primed grey, Nuln Oil wash, Necron drybrush, and then picked out some details to colorize. After the fact I might need to use some gloss coat to make the metallic parts stand out better, but I kind of like the dull look right now.

4 down, 24 to go.

Permalink gaming miniatures Zombicide Invader

The Final Trio

05.24.2022

It appears that painting 3 alien zombos takes a lot less time than painting 20.

The final 3 baddies from Zombicide Invader are done! 130. Done. Maybe not the prettiest, but done.

Although I painted this mold/pose previously, I wanted to try out a little of what I had learned over the past couple of months. My meaty-muscle paint scheme came back in. There was another Color Shift color I wanted to try out - Solar Anomaly, which kind of looks like glittery pale pink nail polish when you first apply it. For each iteration of these beasts I've had a hard time mentally differentiating between bone and armor, so I leaned toward more bone bits this time.

In the end, these 3 were more colorful than their predecessors. Maybe even on the verge of gaudy, but that's also when I remember that the purpose of painting all of these was to test out some color combinations and techniques, which "don't do that again" is valid. Gaudy, but good enough for an alien monstrosity.

Now on to the 40K minis I was going to tackle next. After the pin vise arrives. Magnetic foreshadowing!

Permalink gaming miniatures Zombicide Invader

The Biggest Batch of Alien Zombies

05.21.2022

In Feb I posted my first progress on Zombicide Invader. My intentions were (1) to use it as a paint test for some techniques to use on the (movie) Aliens I'd picked up, and (2) paint an "army" since it looked like a game Jerry and Keith might also enjoy. 127 Alien Zombos later I (1) finally tried out one of those painting things I aimed to attempt, and (2) know that I should never attempt to paint an army, especially if I'm making up my own color schemes.

My bane for this project over the last 3 months has been color choice(s). I do ok if I have a template or a picture to use as a reference. For the Zombicide pics, I was painting nothing similar to anything I found online. After all, these were practice for something else which I was wanting to hone up my skills and do a specific thing. I've never had much of an eye for non-human figures, and here I learned that it took a couple of batches of priming and painting details to discover what some of those details might be - muscle? skin? armor? other?

I got a little side tracked from my Aliens start to trying to get meaty-muscle colored right. I came close, and then would veer away. Muscle is red, with white strands of tendon and fat running through it. An easy concept to say, not so easy to pull off, especially without going through multiple layers of shading and highlights. I finally gave in that alien muscle is not red.

My final formula for the basic color scheme finally came together well enough that I'm not frustrated with the end result.

• Good old Tamiya fine primer (grey)
• Citadel Horror Pink - cover everything with the base for my "meat" layer
• Wash with either Citadel Orange, or Fleshshade + Yellow. It turns out close to the same either way.
• Armor/hard bits alternated with Vallejo German Grey or Citadel Contrast Black, depending on my mood.
• Wash those bits with good old Nuln Oil
• Just to make the heads different, I decided to go an old fashioned Skull route with whatever shade of white I grabbed, and then the 50/50 mix of Fleshshade and Sepia washes.

And that was the majority of my painting for the 20-odd minis that I cranked out. The only reason I ended up working on so many at once is that I would dollop some paint into a pallet (old fashioned, scoops to hold paint) and wanted to use what I had before it dried out. That's also why there's 3 Alien Zombos left to paint - pallet ran dry before I got to them.

There was 1 last trick I finally got around to trying out. On the more cockroach looking aliens, I added some (Green Stuff World) Color Shift paint. This is the paint I wanted to test for (movie) Aliens use, albeit a different color. It was a good test, as I learned you really have to glob this stuff on to get the color shifting effect. Globbing on works well for smooth surfaces, but not so much for intricate or detailed areas. It also looks a little weird when sealed with matte varnish - kind of an old, tarnished metal, but a follow up layer of gloss shines it all up.

There are still 30 minis left for Zombicide Invader - 3 aliens, 27 hero/human/robot thingies. I'm planning to take a little break and switch over to some prep work for Blood Bowl, which Jerry and I have been threatening to get in to. Jer's even purchased the base set, which has set the virtual pun-laden ball in motion.

Permalink gaming miniatures Zombicide Invader

Glossy Alien Zombies

05.11.2022

Let's speed paint the whole Zombicide alien game, I said. It'll go quick, I said. It's all basically the same.

3 months later....

Ok, more xenomorph monster zombies painted. This time there was a better tweak to meaty flash - Citadel Pink Horror (plus glaze medium) atop a grey primer seems to work. I added Citadel's crimson wash, which after the fact makes is all too dark & purple. To try to give the meat a wet look and armory-bits a hard/metal look, I added a gloss sealant instead of my normal matte. And boy is it glossy.

Close up, well, these don't look too good. These are definitely table-top quality. Far, far away table-top. I'm not sure why I'm consistently having a hard time getting a decent paint job on the minis for this game.

I keep all of my minis in Feldherr boxes. There still 31 aliens left to paint after this batch, and I think everything might fit into 1 box.

Along the way has also been some desk optimization. All of my art/hobby pens and brushes are now easily accessible and not as easily forgotten. I came across 22 paint brushes that were still affixed to their Hobby Lobby hanging-cards. I've also got a spot for sanding sticks so that I won't keep forgetting that I have them. All of this is thanks to a new desk I got from Amazon that features an extra 10" of desktop length, plus it's 24" deep instead of 21". I'm much more excited about the desk/layout than getting these minis painted.

Permalink Zombicide Invader

Zombicide Invader: The Next Chapter

03.29.2022

In the latest chapter of Zombicide Invader painting, we've got a dozen.. uhm... they're...

Ok at some point I'm going to look at the rules and see what all of this stuff is called. "The bad guys from the Dark Side expansion" is the best name they're going to get right now.

Back to the painting, as this was a time more of seeing what I could salvage. I was first trying for a "meaty" exposed muscle look. A red base coat was too dark, and I quickly abandoned it. A pink base coat was better, but too pink. Adding red/crimson wash helped - but it somehow skewed the pink basecoat to purple. A thinned down Blood of the Blood God helped to ease the purple into a little more of the red zone. By this point I knew it wasn't going to get any better, so I just stuck with what I had.

I found a pic of armor that I liked - black with a dark blue drybrush, and then some metallic highlights on top. You know, seeing a picture doesn't mean I can do what's in the picture. The first time my blue drybrush was WAY too bright. Then a 2nd attempt managed a lot more coverage than I meant with my drybrushing. I went back to a safer approach with grey + metal drybrushing, as I saw this going the route of the red-purple meaty bits of frustration.

There is 1 special mini that thinks he's Iron Man. The main reason this one is different is he's got 3 coats of primer after being the unfortunate test subject for all of these failed color attempts. Even the Iron Man scheme is a failed approach, but honestly at this point all of the details on the mini were starting to get covered up and I decided to just go with whatever happened. Since the meaty bits were redder than the rest of the troop, I decided this would be the special stand out of the troop and get some different armor. I tried some yellow contrast (on white primer) and then hit it with some metallic drybrush, but the yellow wasn't even enough. Gold drybrush for all of those yellow bits! Ok, the gold was way too... gold. Clashingly gold. The old standby of hosing it down in Nuln Oil helped.

There's still 40 or 50 common fodder minis from the expansion left to paint - the remainder of my bulk-priming party from the last post. I don't really have high hopes for how they'll turn out. I think I'm just a human(oid) painter, and all of these alien zombo monsters are giving me fits.

Permalink gaming miniatures Zombicide Invader