More zombies! Aaargh!

Hey guys,

even more zombies to show today. Same again, 2 male zombies from Studio Miniatures plastics and two female zombies from Wargames factory (okay, it's one and a half). 
Not much to say, they are all straight from the box (and probably last one like that, as I'm already converting some, more on that in one of the next posts!). I went for "formal" black and white colours. I've also put in another jeans as all I do is blue wash over white. I think lots of zombies will have jeans, which is odd as I don't own a single pair of those myself.

So, there is my least favorite sculpt there, the fit half naked male zombie and your ordinary office Joe. That has red on him and looks like someone everyone should know. There is simply no other way to paint a guy in a shirt and a tie.

Female zombies are a bit more interesting, one is a crawler and the other one is an office lady. Her right sleeve was actually painted on, as I've somehow glued a bare arm there. I got no idea, how I didn't notice that. It looks fine, however.
I've decided to put some extra blood on her for two reasons. First, Tamiya Clear Red is probably the single reason I enjoy painting zombies over painting anything else. And second, I figured it would look cool - is that a "smart" zombie, using an improvised weapon or the blood is old this woman was bashing skulls with her yesterday-so-important paperwork? Who'd knew!

In the background you can see some dollies as my moderns project is slowly gaining steam again.


Really nothing else I could say. I got a FOW tournament tomorrow. It should be a blast as I got my favorite army ready. It's not competitive and I haven't played in months but it has pionieres and Stugs, so I got that going for me! Can't promise any photos, but I just might take the camera with me for a change.

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

Zombies...gaah...

 Hello guys,

I was hoping I would post earlier, but I really didn't want to put in another filler post, so I have decided I would rather wait until I finish painting the four zombies (that took me way too long to paint).

What I am doing now is painting a couple of WGF Vixens and a couple of SM male zombies (thanks again Bryan :P) - so 4 zombies at a time. This will give me nice variety of male and female zombies and I will actually have something painted. Or at least that is the plan.

I went for red here, which is the worst colour you can paint your zombies in. No blood is visible! Then again, I picked red because of the bay watch zombie (that sucks).

 Not much to say, they are painted horribly, but I am happy I managed to finish them at least. They seem too red when they are together, but once they will be mixed with the rest of the "horde", that shouldn't be as visible. I went for missing arm on the Pamela there, as I would hate it even more if she'd be in a super man pose. The miniatures aren't too bad, honestly, very nicely sculpted. What I don't like is the shallow detail and limited options, so I have to admit the old WGF set is still my favorite. The sculpts are way worse there, but I somehow prefer them to any other plastic zombies I've seen so far. I might want to mention I like how WGF is listening to the comments, first they made females everyone wanted and when doing survivors, they've put a fat one in (is that offensive?). I don't like to have all models in my zombie horde.

One thing I didn't do was convert any, I'm pretty sure I've hit rock bottom on my hobby enthusiasm and I am pretty sure I will buy some cheap 6-10mm miniatures to get me back in, give me sometihng I haven't yet tried to try. I really can't decide on the period, so please do suggest some. I am currently inter debating between late romans (remember roman wall and that battle I was talking about?), WW1 (always wanted to do something about WW1 :D), cold war gone hot (pre-abrams, way more interesting. T-72 was a great tank once in the past!), sci-fi. I don't really expect to game with it, but I would like to do something. Something is fun :D. Now I just can't decide if massive red tide would look better than ranks of sword swinging hordes. I can't even decide between 6 and 10, tbh. But I would like to have a huge miniature town one day. For some reason.


Well, thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

Meet the old couple!

 Hello guys,

I've finally taken time to show you the old couple I've painted a while back.
They are from Hasslefree miniatures and I've mounted them on 20mm slotta bases.

They are a bit smaller than usual figures, which is great. I am pretty sure at least the old man is supposed to be medieval, but as you can see, they are both very universal.

I have to say, while it took me long to get to them, I really enjoyed painting them. The poses are just spot on. I was painting a certain vampire while I was painting those, so I've decided to just go with it and gave them very pale skin colour. Let's just imagine they just saw a monstrosity of a sort.

Not much else to say about them, the old guy is kinda darkish and the old lady is very brightly dressed.

 Below is the usual scale shot and I am still upset that my mat varnish isn't all that mat.

In other news, my other blog is finally getting some shape (I've got marked locations of over 100 bunkers, all in a walking distance!), and I've managed to sell my 15mm FOW german army. I am actually just making some extra barbed wire for the buyer, so I'll take some shots and I'll show the whole army in another post.

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

...and a happy New year!

Well, I didn't really plan to write this post at first, but I guess looking at the previous year is a post worth writing...if nothing else, it can surely inspire me to work some more on my hobby projects.

I have to admit the time is running past me so fast, I don't even have time to complain about wasting my life. So I checked my past posts to see what I've been mostly up to.

As a whole, I've apprently planned so much I haven't got much done, except for the mid-year, where I can proudly said hobby really kicked it off.
Most of the work done has been related to Strange Aeons game of eldritch horror. I even played quite some games (shown it to two guys at my club at two occasions!), but none in a while.  I have really covered most of the profiles in the game and I had a blast. I really like adding my touch to my miniatures, so I prefer plastic kits, as they can be easily customised. I have done just about anything imaginable with my Mantic zombies. They were used for zombies (doh), degenerates, ancient warriors, some were used as part of other monsters and some turned out to be great ghosts.
I've also sculpted from scratch a lot and I'm really proud of what came out.

I have started major sculpting project of modern slovene infantry, but the project has bogged down since and I haven't done anything for it lately.
Looking at my posts, around october (thats also when I've defended my postgraduate tesis by the way :P) the enthusiasm faded and not much has been done since. That's odd, as I got all the time in the world now. On the other hand, I've mostly stopped buying hobby related things as I think I'll need my savings sooner or later if all this free time persists.  I've bought myself some thin wire for sculpting and I still got loads of miniatures to paint, so that's not such a bad thing. But I've found out income of fresh lead really kills me. Ever since I've painted my last FOW miniature, I have no joy playing the game anymore :D.

In April, I went to England. I have to admit I had no intention to ever visit it until I went to London two years ago. While it was nothing like what I've expected, I liked it. Being the guy I am, I had most fun in the museums. Anyway, this year I was saving money for another trip and I was decided to make sure I can attend Salute everyone talks about so much. I had some high flying plans about visiting multiple destinations, but I've eventually settled for a visit to Newcastle's finest and London, about a week each. It was a first time I traveled alone, but I have to say I didn't mind it too much. What I didn't like was the fact nobody was there to share my enthusiasm when I saw something interesting, but on the other hand, nobody ever finds things I like amusing. Being alone, however, means I do what I want. Which is always nice. I would like to thank for a millionth time to Bryan and Joe, as they've taken the time to show me around. I've seen all I cared to see and then some more. They even took me to the beach, ah! Salute was great, especially as I could meet other bloggers there, most notably Clint and Dave from the ZBA. I've also had the chance to thank Geronimo from Fenris personally for a nice miscast piece of a Sun stone he sent me earlier this year. I've even met the infamous Rejects Big Lee, Fran and Ray (or is it Ray and Fran?) and Postie himself :P.

Thinking back, I've been all over the place this year, as I was accompanying my dad on his "recon" trips to Prague, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and even Leichenstein. As I've already mentioned, I made lots and lots of planns for various projects and to be honest, its a good thing I'm only planning and not leaving them half done!

On non hobby front, I've decided to use my abundant free time in a spirit of my education, so I am now researching the interwar era fortifications around my home. Not much is left, as Italians were destroying them systematically, and most of them were never finished anyways, but I'm having great fun finding forgotten roads in the middle of the woods and just imagining how majestic it would all look like finished. I mean, visually. People that lived here back in the time were less enthusiastic about having a fortified front line running 200 meters from their houses.

I would also like to thank every and each of you who have taken time too read at my posts (or at least take a peak) and I really, really promise you, next post will have miniatures in it again :D. I am also painting 4 zombies (2 Studio miniatures males and 2 Vixens) at the moment and I plan do paint them in batch of 4 at least until all the vixens Bryan gave me will be painted. Once that is done, I think it would be time to test the Grekwood rules. That will probably be the minor project for the early 2014, but I plan on continuation of my work for Strange Aeons later in the year. I'd love to have scenery and miniatures for special scenarios.


Happy New year,
Mathyoo

Happy holidays!

Hey guys, just a short post to wish you all happy holidays, whichever you celebrate!

Also, thank you for all the comments and posts views, it does help the thing going. I sure hope I will restart my hobby enthusiasm in 2014...I got way too many plans not to work on any of them! Given it's a hundred years since 1914...will there be any better excuse to finally build some trenches?

Other than that, here is a photo of the "parkelj" or as you might know them, kramupus. They're way cooler than Santa (but I have to admit I hated those buggers back in the days!) and they're getting overly commercialised by certain nation across a certain pond :P. I don't remember them being that elaborate, but I certainly remember the noise they made with chains and the mess they've made with charcoal :D.

Those photos were taken by Andrej Vodopivec and more can be seen here. They were taken at the Slovene-Austrian-Italian Parkeljni gathering at Podkoren (Wurzen in Austiran).

Talking of Podkoren, just above it lies a mountain pass we call Korensko sedlo and Austrians call Wurzenpass. Its a border between the two countries since post war era and during cold war, Austrians were heavily fortifying that border. Below is a photo of a bunker with a Centurion tank turret mounted. You can see more here.

And that's about it for today. Not that I'm overly busy, but if all goes as planned, I won't be back before 2014! :D

Regards,
Mathyoo

T-90 and other projects!

Hello,

not much going on hobby-wise here unfortunately, but I can't say I've been too busy overall. Following the post about bunkers, I've started a project that was my first idea for (very elaborate :D) master's degree. I'm outside a lot, marking the ones I know about. The map I will get as a result will then help me pinpoint the locations where more might be. Using this dead simple approach, I've managed to find a couple of bunkers that Italians actually didn't blow up - for reasons unknown as those two are in the middle of the forest as any other and all other bunkers next to them are blown up. I am setting up a separate blog, but there will probably be no posts before 2014 - even less so in English. But once something will be done, I'll certainly let you know!

Other than that, I've put together a sprue of Zombie Vixens I've got from Bryan way back in April. I will hopefully paint them before New year to get me back in the hobby! My ultra modern sculpting project has came to a halt. I have bought some new thin wire (yes, those are the gifts I am buying myself :D), but  I haven't yet used it! Again, I hope thing change soon, as I would like to have weapons finished ASAP. 

To at least do something modern, I've put together a T-90 I've got a while back. Brummie, thanks again for picking it up for me!
It's a Zhengdefu T-90 russian tank. It is made to fit a motor inside, which I didn't dare assemble. I don't need it and it all looks like it might blow up. Which reminds me, according to the internet, Zhengdefu or "Ki-tech" is a Chinese company that steals other company's old plans and makes their tanks. Even box art doesn't show the exact model that is inside (I'm not sure that was the case with T90).

Set up instructions were horrible, so I had to improvise a bit here and there. Somewhere, I've deliberately done some changes, to make the model more sturdy. In the end, I was left with some leftover plastics (like extra 6 couples of smoke launchers for some odd reason) so it's all odd, but hey, I won't complain for a 1.7 GBP or somewhere along that price.

All in all, it's a nice russian looking tank that will have to represent anything from T-50 to T-90 and in between. I am not demanding, it has somewhat low profile (for a tank) and a round turret - so it's good enough until I can find a similarly great deals for other tanks.

 So, here it is:

 The smoke launchers I was talking about. I've set them to rest on the tool box, which made sure they won't fall off every time I'd rotate the turret. The machine gun, by the way, is all weird.

 Front of the tank with turret facing backwards. Nothing much to say that would be of any great importance, I've broken the lamp guards and glued them on regardless...who's gonna know, right? There are some cameras or sensors all over the hull that I shouldn't put on, as you can see.

 A size comparison photo with a humvee I've done way back in the summer. You can see T-90 is enormous, yet smaller than it's western counterparts.

 A close up on the turret. I really wanted to have the commander's hatch opened as I like people peeking out of my tanks, but as it opens forward, he couldn't really reach the machine gun, so I've decided to close it instead.

Well, that is it for today, I hope I'll manage to get some sculpting or painting done at least every second day from now on!

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

Mechanic revisited!

Hey guys,

after I've shown you the photos of my so called WWW2 mechanic, I've decided it needs improvement. I've thus slightly converted a miniature, I've sculpted gloves and the side cap.

I have also finally got around to watch the infamous World War Z after reading Vampifan's review. I was in no hurry with it as I kept hearing negative reviews, but my younger brother said the movie was great. Now, I am no film critic and I apparently got an odd taste as I don't really like the Walking dead series (I do watch them and I have to say it is getting better :P) and I have even quit watching Game of Thrones, which everyone loves so much. Now, I've watched it very open minded and I've came to following conclusions:

Film is good as any other they make these days. I suppose it's a lot like Prometheus or Avatar...a great idea that went wrong. Or something. There is one thing I loved, all those zombie hordes shots, just amazing. Really nice. And the rest was shit. Climbing walls of Jerusalem included. The whole film has no story at all, mr. Pitt just flies all over the world and everything is happening so fast nothing actually happens. They mention Cardiff, so that's a plus, I suppose. I have no idea what was the point with that israeli soldier gal. I've noticed the lack of blood Vampifan mentioned...that was really odd, it was all so clean. And by the way, gawd fast zombies make no sense. I loved 28 days later, but fast zombies are still not really my thing. Also, an ending is just...ah...
Anyways, I'd still say it's not THAT horrible if you watch it as a film about some infected someones (that can only be put down by a head shot) - zombies are fiction anyways (sorry Bryan!), so they are entitled to their own version..no matter how inconsistent they made them. I mean...there are tons of zombies climbing walls of Jerusalem, but the roofed road leading to the city is zombie free. But oh well...I was putting together my zombie vixens while watching, so I might have missed an important detail or two. I rate it better than that zombie movie with a tiger in it!

And that's it for today,

thanks for looking!