NINJA!!!!!
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2016, Fantasy, Frostgrave, Modern, Ninja, Sci-fi, Shonen Knives, The Foot Clan, TMNT | 27 Comments »
Public Convenience
Posted on 13/05/2014 by sho3box
A couple of years ago while I was working on a lot of zombie and survivor miniatures I bought a pair of miniature resin portaloos/portapottys from Fenris Games. These were planned for use as respawn/reinforcement points in L4D inspired zombie games. I never got around to painting them though. Until now that is.
Filed under: Terrain | Tagged: 2014, L4D, Modern | 15 Comments »
Running out of Patients Pt 3
Posted on 16/03/2011 by sho3box
A post regarding the authors penultimate batch of patient zombies, where a twentieth century attitude to the wearing of pink garments by men is revealed.
Although I am sure that many real life male patients are forced to wear pink/peach arse-exposing gowns whilst in hospital, I wasnt going to subject any of my male hospital zombies to that. They have been through enough already.
So as the Mantic zombie and ghoul sprues dont feature any double X chromosome corpses, I mainly used Studio ladies in this lot. I also added a disproportionate number of gender-neutral-from-the-waist-down (?) Mantic legs with bloody spinal cords, just to increase the amount of figures in this pink batch.
After painting these figures I played the Left 4 Dead “No Mercy” hospital based campaign on Xbox 360. Then I played the House of the Dead: Overkill “Ballistic Trauma” hospital level on Wii before I went on to the final batch of patients. Im all about the research.
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2011, Horror, L4D, Modern, Video Game, Zombie | 6 Comments »
Running out of Patients Pt 2
Posted on 09/03/2011 by sho3box
Back in mid December I put up a post showing my first batch of Studio zombies and Mantic ghouls and zombies painted to look like modern hospital patients. They went down well and encouraged me to finish the remaining twenty or so over the following period. I finished the lot at some point in February.
The first of the remaining three batches is zombies in white. As the zombie flesh that I have been painting is pretty monochrome, I felt that the gowns were blending into the flesh a little. To remedy this I added a thin wash of old GW Purple Glaze over the flesh tones on this batch.
Its pretty subtle, at least as far my painting goes anyway. I like strong contrasts that are visible at the distance from the viewer to the game table, rather than beautifully executed blending that is invisible at a distance. Still, the batch didnt turn out looking like Barney or anything, so it worked out fine.
I find painting white to be a chore and these guys were no exception. I think that it came together in the end though. There is a GW component used in the group shot above, which makes it the only non-Studio or Mantic component used in the entire “patient” project.
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2011, Horror, Modern, Zombie, Zombie of the Week | 4 Comments »
Running out of Patients Pt 1
Posted on 14/12/2010 by sho3box
Out Patients
I had two zombie miniature related problems. One issue was that the Mantic zombies and ghouls that I owned were going to be hard to make look like modern figures. The second problem was that I didnt have any figures that I had specifically designated for use as fast/rage zombies in games.
I decided to kill two birds with one stone by theming my fast zombies as hospital patients. That way the slightly odd toga like clothing could be painted to feasibly look like hospital gowns. Thematically, the idea that some sort of “cure” administered in a hospital could have backfired and had a negative effect that created a more hyperactive version of the infected works for me. You could call it the “running” out of patients maybe, but Id rather you didnt.
Having recently picked up the Studio Miniatures Big Zombie Deal I also decided to add the patients from Zombie Mob 5 who also fit nicely with my Patient Zero figure from last year. Hopefully the “proper” dead patients lend some authenticity to the Mantic stuff.
In keeping with how I am basing my zombies for gaming, fast zombies have a hex-base, while regular zombies have standard round bases and so on. Just in case anyone is wondering about why the bases vary.
As ever the figures are painted to a decent enough tabletop standard and definitely not as display pieces. This is the first batch. I have a few more batches coming up with similar skin tones but wearing different gowns and the like. There will be twenty eight or so when the sub-project is finished.
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2010, Horror, Modern, Zombie, Zombie of the Week | 12 Comments »
Penultimate Vanity Project #1: Modern Zompocalyptic Me
Posted on 27/10/2010 by sho3box
The inaugural Penultimate Vanity Project offering is modern era, zompocalypse survivor Paul.
Modern Survivor Me
I decided to start this series with the model that most closely represents what I actually look like. All further PVP entries (no matter how esoteric) can therefore be measured against this one.
The figure is Baker from Hasslefrees Adventurers range.
I bought the figure specifically to paint up as a modern version of myself for gaming with. Despite all of my recent talk about using certain heads, cats, glasses and the like to create a recognisable “branding” of my self-portrait figures, I didn’t do anything like that this time. I considered adding glasses to the model but didn’t for two reasons: the hood made it awkward and the miniature is so beautifully sculpted (as one would expect from Hasslefree) that I didn’t want to cover up the detail with some crude conversion work.
What I did do was paint the clothes to match some things that I wear in real life. The Sho3box Zompocalyptic Fall Collection consists of:
- Black hoodie with white piping – Dunnes Stores – €9
- Brown/Olive Drab jacket – Dunnes Stores – €38
- Green Incredible Hulk t-shirt with Lou Ferrigno detail – Unknown Online Retailer $25USD inc shipping
- Blue jeans – Penneys – €15
- Black and Yellow Gola Trainers – Schuh.ie – €25 (sale price)
The miniature is sculpted wearing boots rather than trainers. I don’t tend to wear boots very often so I decided to paint them up like a pair of my trainers anyway. For the delectation of all of you fashionistas out there the trainers and the t-shirt are shown below.
Trainers
28mm Trainers
Hulk T-Shirt
I got a bit lazier than usual when highlighting the jacket, as is quite visible in the shot below. As the viewers eye tends to be drawn to the face and bright green shirt I don’t think that it matters that much really.
Why am I only wearing one glove?
Although the real me is unlikely to behave in a terribly pro-active fashion in the event of the cannibalistic dead walking the Earth, I figured that some artistic licence was required to make a gaming piece that would be fun to use. Although obtaining a muzzle suppressed machine pistol in rural Ireland is difficult at the best of times, I nonetheless decided to unrealistically arm the miniature with the supplied ranged weapon rather than the crowbar (also supplied) as it would be more fun to game with. Miniature realism is a consideration, but I am not going to let it get in the way of my fun. For the record, I don’t own a set of knuckledusters either.
I like the way that the face came out. It looks close enough to my face to be acceptable, although as discussed in my project introduction post, getting a 28mm replica of any specific persons face is a tall order. The painting on the face came out quite crisp and the eyes didn’t end up too crossed, which is always a bonus.
Painting this miniature brought a few things to my attention:
- When fully dressed I look like a hundred dollars. Not quite “Derelicte“, but far from haute couture. A dedicated follower of fashion? Not so much.
- The photo is grainy. I really must up my miniature photo taking game one of these days.
- Putting photos of my clothes up on my gaming miniatures blog is absurd, but strangely amusing to me. I may do it with some other PVP entries as appropriate. Depending on feedback of course.
- By painting a somewhat recognisable wardrobe on a 28mm figure it is possible to get recognition factor. When I showed this figure to gaming colleagues they “got” it. I don’t think that if they had seen the figure on the table that they would have immediately known that it was supposed to be me, but when given the figure and asked “This is supposed to be a model of me. What do you think?” they reacted positively. This is encouraging for future, more ludicrous Penultimate Vanity Projects in waiting. As some of the themes used for these figures are repeated I hope that a visual shorthand will develop that will make the PVP miniatures more recognisable to the observer.
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2010, Modern, Penultimate Vanity Project, Survivor | 5 Comments »
Things that make you go “Boom” Pt2
Posted on 13/10/2010 by sho3box
Continuing on from a few weeks ago, here is another small post regarding some interactive little bits of scenery for my zombie game project.
Gas Cans
Players of Left 4 Dead or Left 4 Dead 2 will be aware of the various uses of gas cans in the games. Generally where a “crescendo event” is about to take place the players have a little bit of time to set up the area ready to receive a large wave of infected. There will usually be a few gas cans in the vicinity that can be arranged in such a way that when shot they will cover an area of advance for the mindless horde.
Good placement of these cans can barbeque a swathe of infected before they even get to the survivors. They are also a lot of fun to use well, so I definitely wanted to include them in my zombie apocalypse game.
Filed under: Terrain | Tagged: 2010, L4D, Modern, Video Game | Leave a comment »
Things that make you go “Boom” Pt1
Posted on 29/09/2010 by sho3box
A small post today, with a rather hastily taken photo too.
When making my Spawn Points recently I took the opportunity to put together a few other smaller terrain/scenario items, all of which fill the roles of the exploding barrel trope (is that the right use of that word?) popularised in computer games.
Butane tanks (coloured for local distributors rather than the white from L4D) and Fuel drums.
All of the above came from Fenris games and featured in the Zombie Apocalypse game covered over the last few posts here and here.
I was short a handful of gas cans, the sort that feature in L4D that are visible here. I have ordered a few from Ebay and they will feature in a follow up post. I bet that you cant wait.
Filed under: Terrain | Tagged: 2010, L4D, Modern | 3 Comments »
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