Maciek's undead - Zombies! (88 points)

Rank & file month #4

When the dead don't die... "this is all gonna end badly... " :-)

No undead army is complete without a contingent of brain munching zombies. My April, entry is a regiment of 20 zombies ready to dance walk into a local village and snack on empire citizens and unsuspecting travelling heroes.

The regiment is composed mostly of the characterful Heresy Miniatures zombies. I opted for a limited palette and muted colours to complement the rotting flesh. The models are quite gory already so I opted to stick to the "clean" painting style of the early 90s army books.

The zombie halfing bard (Mekill Hacksaw) is just such a cool little parody, that he had to be the unit champion. I painted him in the signature red and black leather outfit as seen on the "Thriller". I had no luck sourcing the classic zombie standard bearer from eBay so I kit-bashed my own (also wielding a big cleaver) using the Fireforge living dead. But the standard is old-school, painted based on the classic campy horror designs of the 4th edition Undead army book.

I dreaded the prospect of mass zombie painting. I've been warned they take longer than skeletons (thanks Lissanne), so I limited the colour palette and simplified highlighting on non-key areas to speed things up. These models are mostly exposed flesh so should be fast, right? Well, no. I hoped to paint 25, but managed to do 20... and only just. While this output is below the target objective, I found I really enjoyed doing the all gory details and the necrotic flesh so the extra time per model was well spent. It is still a huge improvement compared to my glacial pre-OWAC painting rate (thanks OWAC!). So it did not end so badly after all.. ;-)

 

Next month will be a wildcard month - I still have rank & file models to paint so May will be the month of the ghoul and the screaming skull. Possibly other things if time allows.