Last night saw the hobby butterfly effect take place, as I found myself drawn to a crazy notion: start another project! Personally I blame the sudden freedom after weeks and weeks of nothing but work and no play. Such a hectic workload makes one a very dull boy indeed.
So without further ado, I present Studio Miniatures' excellent set entitled Die Verdammten, or more easily understood World War II German Zombies. This set of thirty, yes thirty, multi-part Zeds in Nazi uniform come in a wonderfully retro video box. When you open it you are immediately over-awed by the sheer volume of hard plastic loveliness it contains. Or rather it once contained, because if your box is anything like mine, once you open it, the thing is so full the contents come spilling out. You have no idea how long it took to get everything to stay in place for the following shot!
The reality is that you don't notice this on the Studio Miniatures website because they have assembled them quite cleverly. Which shows you the variety of effects you can achieve with relatively so few alternative parts. My ability to emulate this or fail miserably in the attempt will only be apparent once I have assembled the lot.
And here's the view of my workstation just before the fun began. Don't ask me why I've a compass. Don't think I'll be using that in this project!
I'm really impressed by the distinct lack of mould lines on these models. I found myself hunting for some rather than simply admit there's hardly any at all. With only a choice of arms for this one, the model was cut from the sprue, prepared with the scalpel and glued together in minutes. Brilliant if you're in a hurry. Disconcerting if you expect some hard work to get a single model ready!
I used my rubble mix to fill the base and stuck it on with my dirt cheap eight tubes of superglue from poundland. Works perfectly for this kind of work. What's in the rubble mix? Simply a tub filled about 50% with sand (from one of those bags of play sand from the Early Learning Centre), 20% with Woodland Scenics fine ballast and 30% coarse ballast. Approximately, of course. I'm also using some Hornby bags of ground cork, fine and medium. These are placed around the base before the aforementioned mix is sprinked on. I'd already gone on to start undercoating this before taking any photos. Oops!
Before I go any further, I should add a caveat. If you haven't painted anything in a while, check your brushes! I hadn't realised how tired and worn mine were. Good job I was painting mucky Zeds and not Napoleonic uniforms then.
Personally I'm really pleased with the result. This model was completed from start to finish in a single evening. In the real world, this means you could comfortably have this lot ready in a month. Unless you start on 1st February, that is!
So without further ado, I present Studio Miniatures' excellent set entitled Die Verdammten, or more easily understood World War II German Zombies. This set of thirty, yes thirty, multi-part Zeds in Nazi uniform come in a wonderfully retro video box. When you open it you are immediately over-awed by the sheer volume of hard plastic loveliness it contains. Or rather it once contained, because if your box is anything like mine, once you open it, the thing is so full the contents come spilling out. You have no idea how long it took to get everything to stay in place for the following shot!
Its great to see a set of miniatures supplied with their own bases. The one downside to this set is that whilst you get thirty Zeds, you are getting fifteen copies of the same sprue. This means that you are only getting two different torsos in the set. Here's a shot of one of them.
Before I go any further, I should add a caveat. If you haven't painted anything in a while, check your brushes! I hadn't realised how tired and worn mine were. Good job I was painting mucky Zeds and not Napoleonic uniforms then.
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