For a Fistful of Undeads – Painting Zombicide ‘Undead or Alive’
Recommendations: 119
About the Project
As much as the Zombicide games now drop with the regularity of an overused, tired, Z movie trope, I cannot help myself when a new flavor presents its putrid face on Kickstarter as I truly enjoy the mechanics and convivial experience the series offers. Thus, when 'Undead or Alive' was announced, combining my love for the Old West (see my Dude City project) and that of Zombicide, I immediately put it on the future schedule for paint and play (I would not dream of playing with unpainted plastic). Strap you six shooter, grab you Bowie knife and call your faithful horse cuzz, there is some undead varmint to drill full of holes...
Related Game: Zombicide: Undead Or Alive
Related Company: CMON
Related Genre: Horror
This Project is Active
Surviving the Wild West Apocalypse - Undead or Alive Core Survivors - Part Trois
Henry
Hanna
Concepcion
Carl
The BFG...Surviving the Wild West Apocalypse - Undead or Alive Core Survivors - Part Deux
Molly
Meg
May
Kassy
Jeb
Surviving the Wild West Apocalypse - Undead or Alive Core Survivors
The survivors from the core box are pretty vanilla (no offense to those who like this flavor which I also appreciate, with a dab of chocolate sauce) but were fun to paint. I used contrast paints for the base and proceed to add highlights and metallics with hobby acrylics. Color schemes aimed at matching closely the box art.
Jimmy
Turner
Trixie
Thomas
Pablito
Undead or Alive Core Box Abomination
Last but not least of the baddies, here comes the melon hat abomination…
Zombicide - Undead or Alive -Brutish 'Beauty'
Almost done with the zombies, I painted the brutes, which are the fatties of Undead and Alive. They come in two flavors.
These guys are ex photographers, complete with tripod and old fashion cameras/plate sets. See my previous entries for suggestions on how to paint these creatures and keeping them as different as possible. For these particular miniature, I painted the pustules white and then used fluorescent paint (Vallejo) of different colors once it was dry.
Being zombified obviously had an elongating effect on these individuals' mandibular morphology. 
The other model is a bit more conventional while retaining visible mandibular deformity. They are also much easier to paint as they wear a convict 'onesie'.
Shambling Masses Embellishment
After the runners, I jumped to the deep end of the plastic horde and decided to tackle the walkers, both the male and female version. And then I started to ask myself, ‘why aren’t there female runners?’. I will ask to ask CMON…
Walkers were painted on the same principle as the runners and, rather than to be redundant, I will offer you a gallery and refer you to the previous post for general painting tips. For the walkers, I decided to add grime to the miniature by covering them with a thin layer of Army Painter Zombie Shader
The female walkers presented slightly more of a challenge as the dresses have fringes. The model poses are slightly more challenging to paint (limbs in the midst of the dress fold, hat/bonnet, etc…) and require more care that the men’s attire.
I wanted the more elaborate dresses to show their richer origin and thus used gold or dark silver colors for the layered edges, which I covered with a wash matching the rest of the dress for some of them. The gold was satisfyingly rich and i left it ‘as is’ for one of the green and red dresses. Of course, I covered the entire miniature with Army Painter Zombie Shader to grime it up a bit.
The Runners and General Zombies Painting Advice
Another flavor of Zombicide has dropped and I am once again in the business of killing waves after waves of zombies alongside my friends, this time, in the Old West. But first, these hordes of plastic need paint… First, the sempiternal runners.
The runners were zenital primed with black and white spray cans.
As the miniatures have two different poses, I strongly suggest starting with selecting 3 or 4 different skin tones to create diversity.,
You see here that, even identical miniatures acquire a different look with something as simple as a skin tone. With zombies, adopt a sickly set of options, from quasi normal Caucasian skin tone to whitish/greenish 'decomposed'.
The same goes for the clothes. In order to create a horde rather than a squad effect, never paint a model identical to another. Pick one color and apply it to different part of various model clothes/shows/scarves, then move to the next color.
When clothes and skin are painted, add blood parsimoniously. Unless you wish for a 'gore fest' look, I find it more appealing to add blood to some zombies mouth/hands while leaving others without blood stains/spatters, to indicate they recently rose.
