Draconis: Spring Clean 2024 and onward

13th June 2024

I’ll try to keep this shorter.

I worked on the survivors in pretty much the same way as the Walkers  – just with less grime and gore.

They started out with the zenithal prime, then I laid down some basic colours on each (mostly mixes of contrast paints) so I could get an idea of where I wanted to go with them.

I gave Derek a logo on the back of his jacket, and gave Patrick some tattoos.

Carl’s hat started out a light brown, then changed colour a couple of times, finally ended up almost black.

Their shoes were a bit dull overall, so I gave some of them markings like trainers/sneakers to add some variety.

Then various finishing touches, adding zips, buttons, belt buckles etc.

For the basing I used the same sort of methods as on the Walkers.

For Derek’s base I made a broken sign post. For the sign I had a biohazard symbol which I glued to card and cut out. Painted the rim and back in metal, and added a red ‘Z’ to the front. The post was a bit of plastic rod painted in metal, with some rust added. Then I put some dirt and grass, plus leaves and a newspaper under it.

Patrick had a burger King bag added. For this one I found an image, printed it off side by side then glued it as a pouch.  Scrunched up a bit I think it works.

8th June 2024

Finished up the Walkers today – Here they are all together. I added some pink/purple wash to the eye sockets, to try to give them some more definition. Gore was added to some of the Walkers, but not all (maybe they haven’t been able to feed yet, or are newly turned?).

I may add more gore at a later date perhaps, if I feel that they need it.

I think that AL from Al’s auto’s is one of my favourites, and I am pretty happy with how the fast food and other rubbish that I scratch built actually came out.

Onto the survivors soon…..

Couldn’t fit this on the basing update, so had to be it’s own post…..

I downloaded images of real and fake newspapers and US money from the internet, then printed them off in roughly the correct size. I stuck the basic print to the ones with ‘front page’ images so that if I folded them over the wouldn’t have a blank page showing. These were then scattered onto a number of the bases, some as a single sheet, others with several sheets a little spread out. I only used the money on one base, in a small pile.

I made these by cutting up a real (thin) rubbish bag and making a small pouch around some used blister pack sponge. For the first couple I used super glue to seal it, but they came out a bit rough and a bit flat. For the last one I used some cotton to tie up the top of it, and once trimmed that gave the bag a better shape. In the end I only used two of the bags. The good one was put at the front of one of the bases (with cash close by), and the less good was put to the back of another base.

These were all using shop bought products. The leaves are some sort of seed pods. The grass I used sparingly on the bases where the scrub ground met mud areas, to replicate where plant life may start growing. Tufts were interspersed where they felt correct. The bases that were all ground texture I did apply some grass too, to break up the space somewhat.

I still felt like I needed some more detritus, so thought I would try to make some fast food rubbish. I started out by trimming an old sprue offcut, then sanding a curve into one side. Painted it up, and it seems to work as a discarded fries box. The brown bags were made from some old brown envelope, that I cut and folded over, then once the length was glued to form a rectangular tube I cut it in half to make two bags. I carefully folded over one end of each, then found some reference and painted them up with the off centre yellow M.

8th June 2024

My indecision regarding basing means that I have ended up going for four overall basing styles for these.

I have four that are going to be tarmac street, three that are tarmac with dirt/gravel, three that are scrub ground with mud and two that are full scrub ground.

I had initially just painted the bases in a sandy beige colour, but then overpainted several with a dark grey.

For the tarmac areas of the bases I started out with a dark grey. This was followed by stippling with a mid grey to break up the tone a bit.

Then I added some road marking with white and yellow lines. To break up the ‘newness’ I sponged on some of the original dark grey. After that I added some stippling (very light) with a mid brown and some small areas of a greenish streaking grime.

For the other bases that had either patches or complete areas of ‘dirt’ or scrub ground I applied some of my Ground Texture paste (only have orange though…) This was then painted with beige and highlighting with sand colours. The scrub/mud bases had Agrellan Earth added to the non ground texture areas, the Tarmac/dirt had the non texture area painted as per the tarmac bases.

7th June 2024

Well, the Walkers are taking longer than I thought – but perhaps in a good way…. As such though I thought I’d better post an update for the last few days work.

My initial plan was to just lay down  basic colours and use the Army Painter dip shade varnish (the one in the tins) as an overall shade and ‘grubbifier’ (?). However, when I went with the Zenithal spray I thought I would just use some contrast.

In the end I used loads of different paints for them.

Started out with the skin tones. I wanted a mix of colours. First up was basic Skeleton Horde contrast on a couple. Some were given a grey tone. Then the rest had grey mixed with either pinks, brown or green to make a variety.

Then it was onto the clothing. Using contrast and thinned normal paints I tried to give them a variety of clothing colours while trying to remain in a relatively ‘real world’ look. (adding a Flash t shirt too)

Rather than using the dip shade I gave most of the minis a coat of the army painter strong or dark tone washes.

Followed by a spray of anti-shine Matt varnish, but just prior I did add a few more details to some of them – trucker chap, and Al from Al’s autos.

Then it was time to consider the basing – wasn’t really sure what to do here, so took a mental break for a bit……

3rd June 2024

I played a bit of Mantic’s ‘The Walking Dead’ several years back, and my wife tried it out at a show as well. A friend had the Kickstarter stuff, so at club we played using his stuff, and went for a cooperative style of play which worked relatively well.

As I had fun with it I picked up the starter, then more expansions over time – but then play dried up in club and I didn’t get around to painting any of my stuff.

So, here we are – as a bit of a spring clean I am going to work on the minis from the starter set. This may well become a project of its own in the future, as I have quite a bit more Walking Dead product unpainted.

Going to start out with the zombies, planning to give a dirty/grubby look to them. Then I will paint up the survivor minis.

First step though… the clean up ☹

The plastic is a little awkward to work with, doesn’t scrape away quite as cleanly as sprue based hard plastic. But I will push through. During the cleaning I noticed some of the minis had a slight sheen in places, so I decided to clean them all in some warm water, just in case there was some release agent on them perhaps.

Then onto the priming…… went with basic zenithal again for these.

Black, grey, then wraithbone.

31st May 2024

After posting daily for our holiday, it’s back to less frequent posts.

I painted the warboss in the same style as I used for the madboyz mob.

However, I did add more detail in some places.

Started out with the skin, then blocked in the clothing and armour plates.

Then I decided to try adding a check pattern to the edge of one of the shoulder pads.

Started out by painting a black band, followed by two white stripes.

Then I used contrast black legion to fill in alternate segments of the white lines, that sort of then make up the checks. Although some are a little uneven, the overall look seems to work.

Then I worked on the various other bits.

For the chain axe I went for some rough hazard stripes, which I later weathered with scratches etc.

Worked on all the other bits, shading and highlighting teeth and claws, picking out metallic studs etc, and it was then finished….

Duplicate due to crash on upload