A Mixed Bag

Well, I finished reading "Among the Living", by Timothy W. Long and what a good read it was.  Even though it only dealt with the first three days of the "outbreak" leading to the apocalypse, the various ways by which the four diverse main characters deal with it in their own ways is interesting enough in itself.
The cause of the outbreak was a bit of a disappointment though and is only passingly mentioned towards the end of the novel; however the snowball effect of both the outbreak and within the actual story-telling makes up for it. The stories of the various main characters build throughout the telling of their individual episodes until the dramatic final few chapters when what had been a quite leisurely pop-corn type read became a real page turner !
Whilst this style of story may not appeal to everyone, as each of the main characters get a chapter then the story moves on to the next, I felt it made for a refreshing change to the "concentrate on the main character throughout" style.  I was kept wondering if any of them would ever cross paths.   I'll let you wonder about that too.
Suffice to say that I was impressed with this novel sufficiently so that I' looking out for the next one - "Among the Dead". I rate it as a "Well worth a read" and scored it on my 1-5 scale with a 4 !

Whilst I haven't  managed any major progress worthy of mentioning recently I did experiment with printing out a vehicle in black and white onto card rather than using my coloured printer  (I was basically idling on the "wrong" computer). I don't think that the final effect of what is basically a painted card photocopy isn't that bad and it's probably worked out a bit cheaper too. I won't be rushing to do anything similar in the near future though.

The figure in the photographs is one of the two dozen or so MegaMini Zombies that I've also managed to finally finish off, as can be seen in the photograph on the left..
I have taken the new-wave photography approach of having the picture slightly blurred and out of focus.
This style of photo seems to make the figures appear far better painted than they really are and suits me fine and has nothing to do with me rushing to get substance to this week's blog ! I'll try and get some better photographs of them in the near future. The right-hand photo is of yet another three MegaMini civilians and in my opinion, three of their more "interesting" ones. The first two figures are obvious enough, whilst the third is , as far as I can tell, the archetypical "Spiv".
"Psst -  Mister. Wanna buy a watch ?"

My final offering is another another of the Humvee wannabees that  I featured last week, though not quite finished, it's close enough and looks good if you squint.
it may not look it, but it has actually got wheels ! It was originally left to one side whilst I did the majority of the others as this one was a bit damaged.
 Let me finish off by telling you what I have actually been concentrating my efforts on:
I've been slowly building terrain boards for streets. I've got eight 600mm square boards that will fill my new table and a couple of 1200 x 600mm that will also be utilised, though I'm concentrating on the square boards first.  These will feature in a future blog of course, when I've made some real progress on them.

As "Looney Tunes" says, "That's all Folks".


As always, thanks for taking a look here, all comments are of course appreciated and if you're new to my blog and I haven't already welcomed you then "Welcome", I hope you've found something of interest here.

Humvees ? (ish)

A week or so ago I purchased these vehicles from a nearby "Poundworld" store (easily confused with Poundland, but virtually identical.)As always I was a bit dubious as to their scale, but using my  "Rule of Thumb" (- a large Foundry Street Violence  figure is about the size of my thumb from joint to tip), I thought they measured up quite well, so I took the risk and splashed out £1 (approximately $1.50) and bought a set. I figured that even if they were complete and utter pants then at least I'd have sixteen usable wheel and tyres. The photograph on the right shows that they scale in very well with foundry figures.

As can be seen from the next two photographs they are cheap rubbish.  They're made of  a soft(ish) type of polyethylene, but whilst for the most part they're malleable, they can also be surprisingly brittle and one or two of mine have minor breaks.

The stickers on them  were easily removed using a scalpel to lift up an edge.  Had they been transfers (decals) then I was well prepared with a bottle of acetate (from the same store), but they lifted off easily enough. I had no real reason to try and hold on to the stickers so they were binned.

Here's a photo of the model, reduced to its component parts. The internal silver seating etc. obviously had to go (I thought even a re-paint wouldn't be enough to save it.  The pull back and let go motor part would have to be left as the rear axle uses it .The solution for the internal detail would have to be the same as any solid model, there wouldn't be any ! The right hand photo shows the blank card I used to fill out the window spaces. The template resembled a box, but with angled corners.  I tried using superglue to fix the card in place (and to repair some of the breaks), but it seems that the plastic doesn't like it, so I resorted to UHU glue, which seemed to work just fine and hold the card in place.

I painted the first couple of vehicles using some old Humbrol enamels  thinking that the plastic wouldn't take kindly to acrylics. As I only have black and white glosses in enamels and I wanted more  of a  civilian-style colour, I experimented with a gloss acrylic red and it worked out just fine as can be seen in the photo. There really is not a lot of detail  on these models, so there is not a lot to pick out, which suits me fine. I've also never painted windows on a vehicle before, although I've seen it done and even though it looks pretty poor on close inspection, I'm quite pleased with the overall effect.

As a footnote, I was so pleased with these and knowing that I'd need a few Humvees for an ATZ scenario, a couple of days after purchasing my first set of four I went out and blew all my pocket money on another  3

sets.  Here's the results so far:









Next week's blog may well be delayed as my eldest son is getting married and it seems I'm obliged to attend. It means another 5-6 hours drive down south for the weekend, but on the plus side I may well be able to finish reading another zombie novel !

As always thanks for taking the time to look, all comments are of course appreciated and welcome and if you're new to this blog and I haven't already welcomed you, then "Welcome! ", I hope you enjoy your stay and find something to interest you.

Zees and C's Part 2

Here's the second part of my matching up the obvious civilians from the MegaMinis ranges, with their zombie counterparts.
This week I'm concentrating on the children.
One of the children that I've omitted (even though it's a very nice figure) is that of a child-ballerina, the zombie version of her is an excellent crawling figure though the human form has her in a full-on typical ballerina pose, which I though was less usable.
First off then is this rendition of a US boy scout, a quick look through Google gave me some vague idea of the colour of his uniform but in the end I went with what I felt like !

Next is the all American icon of a "football" player.
Don't ask me what's going on with his eyes (in his human form) because I haven't a clue, as always I'll blame the drugs and my poor photography skills.

It'll no doubt be obvious from just these two figures (and some from last week) that very little has been done to the human figure to "zombify"  them.

Most have merely had a limb or extremity lopped off and a few hacks made at maybe the torso or head.

Whilst this is really no bad thing if you want to instantly recognise one figure in its other form it does seem as if little effort has been made.

Again you can see that the human figure has had his folded arms removed. I think I'd have preferred it if the zombie figure had had the classic zombie  outstretched arms.  The figure is probably a skateboarder or BMX biker.
The human version has a few paint overrun problems, (especially his thighs), which I didn't notice until taking these pictures, I blame my failing eyesight (as well as drugs and lack of photography skills). The zombie figure doesn't fare any better, his apparently naked lower legs now seem to have grey socks ! Oh well...

 A roller blader who at least has two very different poses, although the zombie version (again) has no arms - not one of my favourite traits in zombie figures.
I really don't like missing limbs, after all I can easily hack them off myself.  It's the same with those zombie figures that have a hole through them, they don't do anything for me at all.
Given two identical zombie figures with arms, I can lop the arm (or arms) off one making it distinct from the other 



One of my favourite figures next, a paperboy.
He's a t least got all his limbs and he's in a sufficiently different pose to be interesting.

Again the human version of him has some paint run on his leg (I must have been  having a bad day the day I painted these).

Of course those figures with their paint problems  have all been re-assigned to the painting department, having failed quality control.

Again a little variation in the poses makes the zombie version a much more acceptable figure.

Whilst in human form she's carrying a box of some sort, in her zombie form she's carrying the predictable zombie fodder - a brain !

When compared to the efforts of other manufacturers' "before and after" figures these really are quite poor, but taken as individuals they're not really that bad.

Possibly the worst zombie figure in the whole of this group, is this girl, carrying her lunchbox.
If you can't make out the facial features on the zombie version, there's a good reason, I couldn't find any !
The human figure is a nice enough figure, but the zombie version leaves me cold and I put little effort into finishing it off - it'll be relegated to the back of any horde no doubt.

My final offering for this week is a skateboarder again in two versions, but I'll be obvious from the photo that we have in fact two figures here,  which although very close in appearance are not exact duplicates.

The zombie version is actually wearing a hat whilst his  human form doesn't have one.
I like this "version" of the skateboarder, though I'm sure they're not meant to be duplicates of one-another.
On reflection, whilst it's fairly amusing to be able to show "before and after" versions of figures in games, there really doesn't seem much point to me as the transition to zombie normally takes place "off camera", after the game.
With this in mind I won't be going out of my way to make any further "before and after" versions of my civilians.
Currently I'm going through the remainder of my Mega-Mini zombies (about thirty or so) and I have found a couple more possible zombie versions of civilians that I've already painted, but I won't be attempting to paint them as their supposed civilian counterparts.

That's all for this week, the civilian population grows, with another fifty plus on their way, coupled with the aforesaid zombies, my paint table is fairly overloaded, but at least I'm about three-quarters the way through painting them ! Couple that workload with the three shops I'm making (slowly), books to read, films to watch, blog to keep updated (and others to read) and no doubt you'll empathise with me that there
really just isn't enough time in the day.  Did I mention real-life keeps interrupting too ?


All comments are of course welcomed and appreciated as always and if I haven't welcomed you to my blog already, then "Welcome".

Zees & Cs

The title of this week's blog may seem a bit enigmatic  but it really only refers to Zombies and their Civilian counterparts from my MegaMini collection.

I've finished off another dozen civilians including seven children (they'll probably be shown  next week) and matched up their obvious zombie counterparts. They all come from either the Modern Civilian Range or as in the photograph to the right, their Thugs set.

The thug shown here is one of my favourites from the Thug set, even though he suffers slightly from the large head syndrome of a few MegaMinis.

As can be seen, in his "normal" mode, he's wielding a baseball bat, whereas in his Zombie mode, he's wielding an arm, although it's not very apparent from my photograph.  

 Next up is a female jogger.

Her Zombie counterpart is really not that inspiring, because I prefer the classic shambling zombie.

Like many of these figures, little has really been done to alter the figure  dramatically from its civilian appearance to its zombie format.

I suppose though, that too dramatic a change  and there is the chance that the figure wouldn't be recognised from one form to another.

I think this is the third or fourth jogger that I have and one can easily conjure up a scenario for them all to take part in (read "become zombie fodder in").

Another one of the Thugs and his zombie counterpart and once again little effort shown in the stance of the figure.

The clump of whatever in this zombie left hand is indefinable, so I just painted it up as some form of flesh, which hasn't actually come out that bad in my opinion.

He also suffers from having a slightly large head, but it's not that obvious because of his helmet and beard.

Last up from this particular batch is another of  my favourites in her civilian form, but I'm not that taken with her in zombie form. 

 The human version of her is actually eating a hot dog, a feature which I quite like (I have quite a few figures now, eating various forms of fast foods  - which will do them no good whatsoever come the apocalypse).  The other feature I like about this figure is the height and size of the figure, she's taller than some of the men featured here (though not by much) and she's obviously slightly overweight (all that fast food).

Her zombie equivalent however is not that  impressive.  The arm in her right hand is acceptable enough, but the missing left arm has seemingly had little thought applied to it other than to lop it off. I think I would have preferred an actual arm there in the classic "reaching out"  zombie stance.

These last two figures are both from Black Cat Bases and I've attempted to paint them up as identically as possible.

They will be used to represent the same person before and after the start of the apocalypse. The deadly clipboard making way for a more practical pump action shotgun as soon as possible.

The figure is of course meant to represent my alter-ego in my ATZ campaign, The shotgun, though not my weapon of choice, would be more practical than my preferred choice of an AK for me, as I'm not too bad a shot with one in real-life and I've never fired an automatic weapon in my life ! (Come the apocalypse though I'll soon learn).

I think my persistence in Photography 101 is slowly paying off as I've now found how to crop photographs! I hope its apparent from the photographs in this blog that I have indeed improved (at least a little).
Next lesson perhaps  - "How to avoid those unsightly shadows" !

Once more thanks for taking the time to look and of course all comments are appreciated.

Fiinally, as always, if I haven't already welcomed you then "Welcome", I hope there is something here to interest you.

Zombie Fodder (and a sore finger).

I'm the victim of a sore finger, brought on by over-enthusiatic card modelling.
This last week I've been cutting out windows for three shops (they're all joined into one street hence they were easier to do together). Total number of windows is about 64, but each has an inside and outside sheet and each window has two panes to it for a grand total of over 250 cut-outs.  This doesn't include the doors of course; what is it with modern buildings that they gave to have glass doors  - it was much easier when they were all planked wood !

When my finger returns to something resembling normality I'll be carrying on with my card-building exploits.  In the mean time I've been putting some finishing touches (on computer) to the design stage of my next card model project.
Painting continues apace; I'm still trying to finish off my MegaMini civilians of which another three are shown here on the right.  The guy on the left is from their Thugs pack, whilst the others are from one of their civilian packs.
I'm guessing that I'm about half-way through finishing off all the civilians from this manufacturer and currently I'm painting up their civilians and zombie counterparts.

The three figures on the left (again all MegaMinis) are all female, though the jury is still out on her to the right.
The two left-hand figures are both using mobile phones (cell phones for our friends across the pond), but due to my usual inept photography skill it may not be that apparent. 

The obvious shadow across the face of the centre figure is something I'll have to address in the future, but I'm still on Photography 101.

There are quite a lot of female figures in the MegaMinis range which is a good thing and they also probably have one of the largest ranges of children in their mix too.
The  photograph on the right shows three more of their civilians, although the left-hand figure is actually from their pack "Bureau". The figure itself has (had) probably one of the wierdest head positions that I've ever seen as can been seen from the  photograph on the left taken direct from MegaMinis site.  What she has in her left arm still remains a mystery to me, I had it as a bunch if flowers, a baby and a coat, but none of these fit closer inspection  of the mystery bundle.  Some judicious use of padded pliers put her head in a much more acceptable (to me at least) position.

Here's the last two of my finished MegaMini females and they are two of my favourites.
It's a pity that my photography skills don't do them justice, but it does help when covering up my less-than brilliant paintjobs I guess.
The figures themselves are self-explanatory, a shopper and a woman with child, nothing new there as these poses can be found in other ranges (qv. Black Cat Bases), but there are some features that I particularly like about this pair.
Firstly the disparity in height  should be fairly obvious and secondly the "build" of them. The woman on the left is probably what I'd call a "standard" type for a figure, medium height, medium build etc. whilst her colleague on the right is taller and more heavily built, which all adds to the attractiveness of the sculp for me.

My last two offerings are both Hasselfree miniatures,  a company, which sadly, I've never had dealings with directly, although my son has nothing but praise for them and their service. These two were gifts from my son to me along with several other figures.  When I was considering buying from Hasslefree these two would certainly have been on the list, along with lots of their other excellent sculpts.  However when I considered that for the price of these two I could purchase about six MegaMinis figures, I had no choice (being the skinflint that I am).
Again this is an excellent example of diversity in figure heights and builds (as with many of Hasselfree's figures) and in this case also of age.  Grandma will be a welcome edition to my growing collection of older survivors (read zombie-fodder).
The tall elegant starlet is obviously the survivor who trips on her high heels and having no lines to read, continually screams (read zombie fodder). I did have to make a very minor repair to my "starlet" as part of her left arm between her elbow and wrist was missing, hopefully its hardly noticeable now.

Soon I hope to have some actual zombies and their civilian counterparts to show but in the meantime I do of course welcome and appreciate all your comments.

If you're new to my site and I haven't already welcomed you, then "Welcome", I do hope that you find something to interest you here.

More Bits & Pieces

It's been another week of doing lots and finishing nothing, but the highlight of the week was receiving a parcel from fellow blogger Irqan over at Plastic Zombie.
 The parcel was the prize in a recent competition he ran  and contained all you see in the photograph on the right.
 There are zombies, both male and female and a zombie dog; a Buddha (on overgrown plinth) and a keyring.
The zombies, I think are from the game "Zombies!!!" and are 20mm (I think my eldest son has his eye on them as he has the game and all the add-ons).
The Buddha is an excellent piece of kit, eminently suitable for wargaming and a great addition to my Vietnam collection (again No.1 son is trying to inherit this collection too).  The lichen also came in the  parcel, probably as packing - but what a great idea as this stuff has been used by wargamers for years as bushes, trees etc. 
The key-ring intrigues me; it's basically in the form of a searchlight (torch) on a tripod, you can just make it out in the top-right of the photo and has got me thinking about suitable uses for it ! -Thanks again Irqan !
 Competitions seem to feature a fair bit on fellow bloggers' sites and it was only the second out of three that I've entered - I was robbed on the other two ! The first asked which single weapon would you favour in a Wild West zombie environment (won by someone suggesting two weapons) and for the third, the winner was declared before the deadline for entries !  Me bitter ? - Not really, it's all just a bit of fun.  I may have to run have  a competition of my own when I reach a significant point in my blogging adventure.

I was away last week-end, as I mentioned in a previous blog and with nothing better to do on the five or so hour's drive there and back (that's ten hours !), I read the third book in Mira Grant's "Newsflesh" trilogy. I've been looking forward to this for some time and wasn't disappointed.  As zombie novels go, it's top of the range and I thoroughly recommend reading the entire trilogy.
You'll not have seen it on my "currently reading" section of my blog as I really couldn't put it down once I'd finished "The Art of Zombie Warfare" and now I'm reading "The Infection".
I've updated both the Book reviews section and the DVD/Film section recently too if you want to see my scores and brief opinions.
A film that won't appear on my DVD/Film list is "Outbreak" (1995) which has a star studded cast and whilst it's a fairly old film I hadn't seen it until this week.  Taking the blurb from IMDb "Extreme measures are necessary to contain an epidemic of a deadly airborne virus.", which should sound familiar and is the reason why I mention it.  I enjoyed it immensely and it has many features relevant to the zombie genre.
It seem to be a trend lately both on the Blogs I follow and on "The Board of the Living lead" to show our workspaces and/or our gaming areas.

These two photographs show what passes as my current "work area", though to be honest the only use I've really put it to is computing and storage.
There really is not much to say about the photos really, but the left hand photo shows a huge piece (about eight foot long) of polystyrene above head height.  This was intended to be the Tartar wall in Peking (sic) circa 1900 for the boxer rebellion - another project, started but never finished (one day though it will be - "Honest Injun Guv").  Top right of the same photo you can just see one of three pirate ships I scratch built, each about two foot in length, yet another unfinished project, but one day...

These next two photos show my old wargames room, taken from me in my prime (my children seemingly needed somewhere to sleep too), but it has now been reclaimed.
Originally I had a folding table-tennis table (9 foot x 5 foot) in it, butted up against a wall, with just enough room to squeeze around it. My current plans for it are to have a more modest 8 foot  x 4 foot table (that's the size the sheets of wood come in that I'll be using). It's taking a long time to get organised because of health, money and time restraints, but the move from the "cupboard" to my new/old room is underway. Perhaps its just as well I'm a patient sort of guy.

 These two final photographs show the MegaMini figures from their set "The Bureau" that featured in last month's blog.
As I've mentioned on previous occasions, they may not be the best sculpts in the world, but their price is right .


As always, all comments are welcomed and appreciated and if you're a new follower and I haven't already welcomed you, then "Welcome"; I hope all of you, follower, lurker, or browser find something to entertain, amuse or interest you.

Home State Bank

I came across this building (and several others) whilst looking for suitable buildings for what was an on-going gangster project of mine. This and the others have of course now been ear-marked for use in my Zombie Campaign Project.

It is  a free downloadable card model  from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.
http://www.illinoishistory.gov/ps/construct_mainstreet.htm

There are quite a few suitable models for download, other than what they call the "Main Street Buildings" of which this bank (one of two banks) is one.

It's at times like this when my inept photography skills come in handy hiding many of the mistakes I made constructing this.
This photograph shows the left hand side of the building, at slightly less than half the length it should have been and about 3 cm short of the height it should have been

The stepped parapet of the roof should have had another 3 "steps" on it.  I went for a shorter building even though I had the printed sheets for the total length, which would have been a massive 13" instead of the 7.5" (about 19cm) it currently is. Measuring and cutting the right hand side from the front and the left hand side from the back (Doh!) meant I also had to lose an inch or so from the height. Which in turn meant the walls didn't match up with the false front of the bank. The front of the Bank is just over 6" tall (15.5cm), whilst the back of the bank tapers down to a mere 5" (12.5cm)  , which is still pretty imposing for what is purportedly a single story building.

The back of the bank has what appears to be a giant door, but it's an illusion caused by the skylight above the door; it could well have been a little smaller, but not much. The feature that interested me was the height of the windows, implying that the interior had a raised floor.
I had decided from the outset that this building would have no detailed interior although I had thought of making provision for one if at some future date I decided to build one (I won't), but I did  concede to making a lift-off roof.

You can tell from the photograph the many problems I had getting the roof, the parapet etc. looking anything like remotely acceptable.
The roof itself is meant to be sloped, from front to back,  however because of the fore-shortened  sides the back was now too low and of course the reduction in height of the side walls also meant that there would be  a gaping white mass behind the false front.
All of these problems were compounded by me wanting a flat roof, rather than the sloped one - another schoolboy error as the sides now would also have great swathes of white card showing !
So, the roof and parapet sides were patched with brick sections from  the cut-off side walls.
It was all a sort of learning experience though, not to rush into things without thinking them through thoroughly as I'd normally do.

A few other random bits of information.
The footprint of the building is 6.25" x 7.5" (about 16 cm x 19cm), the models are approximately H0/00 scale and I had to scale the downloads. I scaled them to 150% of the original size, which may have been a bit too much.
There is no photograph of the right-hand side of the building as its pretty much a blank brick wall. The left hand side could just have easily been brick too as its real-life counterpart sits between two other buildings as can be seen from the photograph at the top of the page.
The figures in the photos are all MegaMinis and are from their Modern Civilian range entitled "The Bureau"; they're not the best, even by MegaMini standards, but they'll still get used. All the standing figures are well over 30mm tall when measured from the bottom of their bases to the top of their heads.


Comments, as always,  are welcomed and appreciated.

It is of course always nice to see new followers and if you haven't already been welcomed, then "Welcome",  I hope you find something to interest you.