Last of Us diarahma
Recommendations: 139
About the Project
I got two Hasslefree Miniatures that look like the protagonists in a popular computer game. I wanted to have a crack at kitbashing some of the blind and scary "clickers" zombies. The idea came that making a small diarahma would be interesting way of combining it all together.
Related Game: The Last Of Us: Escape The Dark
Related Company: Hasslefree Miniatures
Related Genre: Post-Apocalyptic
This Project is Active
All Mod. Cons.
I am keeping in touch with an old work mate who is a hobbyist too. We've decided to enter the Siege Studios Iron Skull painting competition. We set up a WhatsApp group with a few more friends interested in entering. I asked for suggestions on what I should add furniture wise and a rotten chair was suggested.
Used scissors to cut the shape of an old style comfy chair out of miniature storage foam. The grey foam inserts to remove to place your minis in. I then cut the suggestion of cushions into it. It has become very spongy and worried it may even look like a rough concrete finish.I painted it off white. Then painted it with Army Painter Dark Tone. Then added some Sepia Wash. The dying grass growing through it was from Gamers Grass. I added some Nulin Oil to really emphasize the cushion edges and a mouldy look and threw a line of blood spatter. Just to give the chair a violent past.
Then I added some onion skin leaves to cushions and across the floor to set the chair in its environment more.
Love the thinness and texture of onion skin as good leaves. Put through my green stuff punch they come out well and with plenty of PVA added they shouldn't rot.Building a wall
I found the box from a screen protector. The card is strong and takes paint and things are nice and uniform. The crease down one edge seemed like a good enough height for a skirting board and didn't need me to measure or cut anything too precisely.I painted one side with DeathGuard Green and one side with Corax White. Sprayed with just a spot of Dirty Town Dark Brown to knocked it back a bit and look less pristine.
I used green stuff to make vines / creeper plants on one wall. Anything that didn't look right on the base tile got covered in urban / rubble flock and flint or forest floor brown flock.Painting Clickers
I had seen some bold colours used, especially orange in my memory of clickers.
But when I started looking at some reference images I realised I had remembered wrong. Very few had the orange I imagined and looked far more rotten and grey and fungified. 
I also realised that just a clicker each seemed to lack drama. I knew I would need some furniture. I decided I would have them back to back in a door way. The diarahma started to take some shape in my head.Kitbash clickers
My original Idea was to have the heroes back to back, facing off against a clicker each.
The heads were from the Cultists 2 Frostgrave/ North Star box. I built some zombie cultists and had a lot of heads left over per sprue.
The Warlord Games zombie (Project Z) sprue was a impulse buy during a sprue sale as I didn't want to buy into the game. (I already had my favourite Walking Dead game and minis to play with.) the zombies came up a bit more true scale than the Mantic Walkers which put me off integrating them into that collection. I had occasionally decided to cut the helmet off of metal or plastic head and found that my clippers were a bit blunt / pinched instead cut and left interesting shapes in the disfigured head.
For my kitbashed clickers I used my GW clippers and cut the faces through the eye line just above the nose. I then added slivers of sprue as the disconcerting fungus that grow out through their eye sockets.
Where there was an exposed limb I added mushroom type bumps to nod to the grotesque way they have been malformed.
Dust trap
My concern with diarahma making had never been a lack desire to be creative in that direction. Initially I was worried that any mini not painted to play games with could be wasted money. And a big factor of where to keep the piece afterwards and whether it would just become a forgotten dust trap. Minis broken, scenery destroyed.
Then I realised that a clear box would be a good way of keeping things dust free. It also gave me a good space constraint to work within to tell a short story.The catalyst
It was the board piece that I photographed my minis on that inspired the idea of a diarahma.I preordered the Here’s Negan boardgame. When it arrived it had no minis. Just all the card components and rules etc.
I let Wayland and Mantic know and they sent me a complete set, rather than just the missing minis etc.
I kept hold of all the card stock because there were some great designs on the tiles and thought they would be good for terrain ideas or for expanding to bigger games of Here’s Negan.
Painting Joelle and Ellie
They were fun to paint.
Particularly liked the shirt design. It’s distressed and small, but the shirt design is faded and grimy in the game also.
I tried to use similar colours to the real game, but didn’t get too bogged down with it.
Primed black and did a heavy drybrush of Wraithbone and used Contrast paints to start. Then used more conventional basing and highlighting to improve the look. I think I had already committed to the idea of making a diarahma because I didn’t commit to any basing.
