Deadites - Painted Ghouls [I live. Again...]

[Daeothar]

A little more progress; did the cape last night, in a dark, blueish grey. It's VMC Dark German Grey shaded into black and highlighted up to VMC Luftwaffe Grey. Many, many subtle layers involved and the result is pretty smooth, even though the harsh incancescent desk lamp and my phone's camera seem to conspire to reveal stage steps that are virtually invisible in real life.

I really need to invest some time into proper photography...



I'm also planning ahead and for the second unit of Skellies, I managed to bag an old Ral Partha Undead Ogre; basically a huge skeleton with some remnants of armor and a huge poleaxe. He'll look cool as unit filler and will add some visual variety to the units. Can't wait for it to arrive...

[frest]

I recognized that necromancer's head straight away, and that's a wonderful conversion.  The highlights are coming along nicely.

I feel like undead armies are the least visually disrupted by unit filler. Like, I recently saw a large unit of elves with some 2x2 or 4x2 fallen elvish statues as filler, and it doesn't give the impression of a large unit but rather of a disrupted smaller unit passing unevenly through terrain.  My friend uses a brass throne in his unit of chaos warriors, but they're so densely packed shoulder-to-shoulder that you barely notice it.

For undead, they're so shambly and hodge-podge (skeletons and zombies especially) that pretty much anything goes

[Daeothar]

Real life has been rearing its ugly head of late, and very little hobby stuff got done, but I still managed to prep and base the skeletal ogre I mentioned, for use as unit filler in the second block of skellies.

I simply glued 4 Mantic bases together for this one, and cut down the parts of the bases that would be covered by the integral base on the ogre first. This allowed the integral base to be sunk to just the right depth for me to simply sand the rest of the base and integrate everything together.

Here he is, in prepped, but so far unpainted, state, together with a smaller cousin for size. And yes; I also saw the abundance of mouldlines on the little one; that will have to be addressed...



The necromancer has been receiving more paint as well, but since that's not going according to plan, I will be owing you pics of him untill he's finished...

[The Voivod]

Groovy...

[Damien]

He looks really familiar, is he from Reaper? Either way, I can't wait to see him painted up.


Cheers,
 Damien

[Imp522]

Great skeleton ogre.
@ Damien you can get him from Ral Partha under the Armailion line.

[Damien]

Thanks Imp, I am going to look him up.

[DeafNala]

You've come up with some GREAT STUFF! I love the Army of Darkness look you've achieved through out. WONDERFUL WORK!

[Daeothar]

Today, I finally got the last ingredient for the zombie unit I've got planned for this army. We all know that when you go zonbies, you're gonna need lots of them. Lots. So, I plan on making the first unit 50 strong.

And since I went the Mantic route for the skellies, it was almost a given that I'd be looking at their zombies as well. Now, the Mantic zombies are nice, but not great. They're all wearing just a few rags around their waists, so are not very specific. And worst of all, there is but a very limited amount of parts on the sprues, meaning that even in a unit of 10, you'll be stuck with a lot of very similar looking undead. Luckily, they're fully compatible with the Mantic Ghouls, which I find to be much nicer, but of those, there are only 2 multipart versions!

So, I came up with a cunning plan, sir...  

I will be bashing Mantic zombies and ghouls with Perry 15th century European Mercenaries. The Mantic skeletons seem to be wearing remnants of 15th century armour, and there certainly are quite a few salet helmets in there, so the mercs will be keeping my zombies in theme, as well as providing some much needed conversion fodder. It would still be a bit of a long shot to see if the two ranges would be compatible sizewise though.

Through some interesting deals, I had already acquired 10 zombies and 20 ghouls, and today, during a visit to a well stocked game store in another city together with The Voivod, I got my grubby claws on a box of said mercenaries. It contains 40 of them, and together with the undead, I think this will provide me with enough bits to kitbash the 50 15th century looking zombies.

Obviously, not able to contain myself, I got started this evening, and I got 5 of them done in not too much time at all. The compatibility is good, not great; there are some minor proportion issues, but not bad enough to throw me off. It's mostly the still slightly oversized fantasy themed Mantic heads that appear to be just ever so slightly too large. Let's put that down to them being bloated because they're very recent dead...

These are some of the front rank. The guy with part of his right arm missing will probably be the unit champion and the guy with the pike is the banner bearer. A musician is still to follow. Rear ranks will be put on regiment bases. This will give me the opportunity to make them look less like they're walking in rank and file and more like they're just a mindless mob, as well as taking casualties away easier.



Hopefully I will be able to find my painting mojo again soon and finish that necromancer...

[oldskoolrebel]

The Necromancer is amazing work; I also really like those zombies. Quite an unusual wee selection of bits you've used. I really like what you've done with the Mantic Skeletons- not my most favourite of models but you've definitely done them justice!

I shall be watching this thread with interest.

Cheers
Andy

[Daeothar]

Right, time to resurrect this thread...
(Sorry; couldn't resist that one  )

After a long period of inactivity (due to real life. You know; social obligations, work, my firstborn arriving prematurely, that kind of stuff...), I've finally managed to get some more hobby stuff done.

Firstly, there's two units of 10 ghouls. Now, because I had already decided to use my Mantic Ghouls together with their Zombies to kitbash my own unique zombies, I had to go shopping for alternatives. It's not that I don't like the GW ones, but to me, those simply do not look like the cowardly, wretched creatures I envisage ghouls to be, but look more monstrous. I really liked the Otherworld and Heresy ones, but those are not the cheapest options, and there are only limited poses available. Same goes for the Reaper ones. Plus, there is the fact that I would like them to be stylistically unified. One other option would have been the old metal GW ones, but I found those to not really fit with the rest of the army (too chunky), even though the look was ok.

I know, I know, but I'm just picky like that. Had I been a woman, this demandingness would most likely have focussed on shoes...

But fear not, because the answer actually lay closer to home than I had thought (almost like eventually buying your shoes at the very first store you walked into, after trying every other shoe store in town first ); GW's The Hobbit range has a very decent range of Goblins in it's Escape from Goblin Town box. 18 of them to be precise, all uniquely posed, single piece, and cheap as dirt on Ebay! I got one of those sprues on Ebay for GBP 9.- ! Not counting postage (about GBP 3,-), that comes down to 50p a piece. Not bad!

And they have exactly that inbred, canibalistic, mutated and deprived look I was going for too. After all, the Silmarillion tells us that Sauron's boss Morgoth created Orks and Goblins by doing exactly that; inbreeding and mutating Elves and Men, so Peter Jackson got these nasties exactly right. Well, I think so anyways...

As there are only 18 of them on the sprue, I'm presently 2 ghoulies short of a full deck, but I've already got the 2 captains from the same boxed set and Heresy's Ghoul King (yes; the naughty one) on their way to me, so I can finish the units.

Like I said; they're all one-piece sculpts, which makes getting the units ready really, really easy. The only cut and paste jobs I had were replacing some of the more obviously looted dwarvish weapons with sticks, bones and a shovel, and cutting them off their slots, as I have mounted them on reversed Mantic bases, to match the rest of the army. All in all, this job cost me less than 2 hours, including mouldline removal (which by the way were virtually nonexistent and those that were there were very cleverly hidden).

All there is to do on them, before painting, is waiting for the reinforcements to arrive so I can complete the units and then add the basing materials. And since the sprues are so cheap, I might opt to get me another one, repose the lot and double the size of these units. Hey; why not?

OK, and then there are the zombies...

I wanted a unit of 50, and with my chosen mix of Mantic and Perry ranges, while they're fun to do, they're also pretty labour intensive. I've added another 5 to the initial batch, so I now have the front rank finished. One of them will be moved back into the second row though, as I still have to convert a musician to go with the command group. Subsequent ranks will be on regiment bases and there will also be some unit filler bases. I'm sure they'll (re)die in droves once they see action, and that makes removing and adding them that much easier. Also, it will allow me to make the unit a bit more mob-like and less organised looking by modeling ranks 2 and back in a more haphazard fashion.

So 10 down, 40 more to go. I must be mad...

(By the way; pardon the pictures being at the bottom; my webspace got hacked and I presently have no place to host my pictures. The hosting company is still working on it.  )

[Doomhippie]

This is really going to be a special army. Very well done and a great idea to use these goblins from the Hobbit movie.

[dijit]

Some lovely conversion work there, and the paintwork on the Necromancer is up to your usual high standard, it'll be great seeing a whole army painted to this standard.

[Argonor]

^What they said. I'll be following this with much interest, hoping it will rekindle my dormant intent to play some Pike & Shotte & Zombies... 

[Chico]

Looking really good