Saturday, September 20, 2014

Zombicide Season 1: Zombie Hordes!

I've completed my monochrome paint scheme for all the zombies in Zombicide's season one. I saw this paint scheme on this blog, and decided I'd try it for myself. I really like the results!

Witness the hordes of walking dead! (Click for a much larger picture)


These models appear to glow when grouped together, creating a wonderfully eerie feeling that I did not expect. I did these with a "damp brush" treatment and tried to vary tones for contrast. I picked out details but wasn't too careful with my paint job. Neatness was a "nice to have" rather than a requirement of this paint job.

Here are a few close ups of the horde. If you enlarge the pictures you'll see how rough the paint is.




 Totally all these models took about 8 hours to complete. Overall that's not bad when you consider there are 55 walkers, 24 runners, and 11 fatties. It's not often I can paint at speeds greater than 10 MPH (models per hour -- Doh!). I should also note that I added to the base set with the first "Walk of the Dead" addition. This basically gives you more of all the base set models.

Here's a line up of all the unique poses for all the figure types, in case you were wondering how much repetition is in this pile of models. (Again click for a larger picture)
 

I'm really pleased with the results. I think I'm burned out on painting zombies for now! I had hoped to get these Zombicide models to the gaming table but work interfered. When I do, I may take some pictures of them on the gaming table to post up here. I'm curious how these look against the full color games boards.

11 comments:

Dagreenskins said...

They look great Jerry and I need to play that game one of these days.

Tim Kulinski said...

Awesome work man they look great. We still need to get theis on the table again. I think we get Mike over for a game!

Jerry said...

Thanks Mike and Tim!

It's a multi-player game, so we should all get together one day to play. It takes all of ten minutes to learn the rules, so it's a perfect game for fun and relaxation.

speaksy said...

Hi. Really wanting to paint my zombie hoard like this but haven't picked up a brush in about 25 years. Could you run through basic notes on how you acheived this? I'm assuming a black undercoat, a fairly runny white and various shades of greys on top then a dark wash and highlight?
Hope I get as good a finish as you. Like I say, I'm a bit rusty!
Thank you!!

Jerry said...

Hey Speaksy, I did nothing too special. I actually learned this from the blog Carmen's Fun Painty Time. You can google it and see what he did, which was a 100Xs better than this.

Anyway, just primed black and dry brushed cool grays over it with a a heavy coat -- runny as you say. Then I added a bit of lighter gray. Finally, I just picked out details with the brush like giving a guy a white shirt and black tie, etc. Nothing too fancy. I never did any washes. Each individual model looks like crap, but taken together they look cool.

Speaksy said...

Good stuff. Will give it a go! Added advantage is that it shouldn't cost too much in paints as I'm having to start from scratch again!
I'm really shying away from painting them "properly" because I think it'll make the game board too confusing when actually playing, so the monochrome effect will be perfect for identifying survivors and zombies quickly.
I'll let you know how I get on!

Jerry said...

@Speaksy, Best of luck with it. You really can't get this technique wrong. As I mentioned the individual results will look poor, but taken in groups they look nice.

John said...

I absolutely love these. I'm definitely going to undertake a monochrome look for my zombie mini's thanks to this inspiration. Just so I have your process down. You:
1) Primed with black.
2) Did a "wet" dry brushing with a light/medium grey for the skin, leaving only the more pronounced recesses black (eyes, mouth, etc.)
3) Did a dryer brushing of a middle ground grey to get the clothing to lighten just a bit. Just 1 grey? I think I notice 2 different tones. One lighter than even the skin color you chose.
4) Finally, you hit specific spots with a small detailing brush with very light grey for points of interest or extreme highlights.

Thanks for any assistance and direction you can provide. This will be my first time painting miniatures.

Jerry said...

Hi John, That's really just what i did. I used a few different shades of gray. I use Reaper paints, and they have a warm gray triad and a cool gray triad. I think I used the cool gray, but that's just a matter of taste. I never used white but just the lightest value of gray I had, which is a near white, for shirts and other details.

Unknown said...

Hi Jerry,

1 more question. Did you apply a wash to these zombies? Or did the dark primer/base suffice for the shaded areas? thanks
John

Jerry said...

Hi John, No washes. The dark primer worked just great with the dry brush.