Carly's Zombie Cake Topper: The Final Cut!

 Here is the topper for Carly's wedding cake, in all it's gory glory! The bride and groom top the tier, bravely fighting off the advancing hordes. Pretty much an apt description of any couple in today's economic culture, don't you think?

Carly has the prerequisite chainsaw, while Mike has been assigned a nice luger. He was going to sport a shotgun, but one could not be found! To make up for that loss, I made sure Mike had a kick-ass cutlass to back them up.

I tried to make sure that Carly and Mike look like they are pushing back the hordes, but I slipped my favorite zombie behind them... It isn't a good zombie scene if something isn't lurking!

Carly's Zombie Cake: The Bride!

Here is Carly herself. This figure is a hodge-podge of different figure elements; Ms. Marvel for the body, a GI Joe figure with the hair removed for the face, hand sculpted pony tail, sculpted bodice for the top part of the dress, and a hand sewn skirt for the bottom. I'm still on the hunt for a chainsaw!

Carly's Zombie Cake: The Fiance!

Mike here took about three months longer to get to than expected; After taking on the project, I realized that there really aren't many (if any) action figures out there of just dudes in pants and a shirt! I was painting some Grimmleighs one day, and I remembered the Indiana Jones figures that came out a few years back! If solutions have a name...

The basic Indy has a button up shirt on, but it's a safari shirt. I shaved off all of the straps and flaps, then sanded down some of the other details. His face was re-shaped with a razor, then I smoothed out the crags on the face with some Magic-Sculpt. Mike has pretty shaggy hair, so I sculpted his signature locks onto his head. I also sculpted a loose tie around his neck.

Paint was a pretty simple affair, mostly matching color to pictures of Mike from Carly's Facebook page. The pistols are just temporary, I need to find a good shotgun or riot rifle for him!

Carly's Zombie Cake: The Zombies!

Carly saw some pics of a super-hero themed wedding cake toppers I made a few years back, and asked about having a zombie cake made for her wedding in May. How could I say no? Carly wants a cake with her and her fiance fighting off some zombies. The hard part will be getting some sort of likeness of the couple, but I got lucky and found a few figures that came pretty close already, and should be great with a little tweaking!

The first thing that needed attention would be the zombies that are attacking the newlyweds. I wanted to cover a few types of zombies, and decided on a circus theme for the zombies (NO CLOWNS!).

The first zombie is the Strong Man. The figure was originally a Black Adam toy from the DC Universe action figure line. I didn't change much for him, just went at his head and chest cavity with the Dremel grinding tool. After gouging out some serious cavities, I went to work sculpting in some skeletal elements to make it look like he had been chewed down to the bone. The paint is a series of flesh tones, washed with a few custom glazes. The first glaze is a muddy brown, then a light Pthalo Green glaze followed. I finished his glazes with a very thin gun-metal grey.


The next zombie is the Acrobat. He was a stock Wrestling figure from the WWE line that I like to chop up for custom stock. Came treatment as the Strong Man, but I left the shavings from his head in place to really make the head wounds look nasty. The finishing touch on him was the Big Googly eye, which his a thin film of yellow glaze to help it look extra diseased.


The last zombie is the Animal Trainer. She started out as a Cover Girl GI Jow action figure. I Dremeled out the front cavity in her stomach, and sculpted in some intestines. The top of her head was hollowed out, and an open brain was sculpted in. I also added some nasty gnaw areas on her legs and arms, so she looks like she was really gone after!

My favorite thing on this zombie is the hair; Nothing looked right, so I unraveled some yarn and super-glued it in place. After setting, I used a couple of different shades of red glaze to make the hair look sticky and matted. The final result is grizzly as hell, and looks great!

Pictures of Carly and Mike are coming later in the week, and the final project should be up soon!

Carly has a great blog that covers just about everything under the Geeky Sun. It's a weekly must-read around here!

SDE! Bring on the Kobolds!

Just finished up a batch of Kobold Gougers for Super Dungeon Explore! So far, there are four sets of Kobolds for SDE. I have the Gougers and the Flingers, which are still on the work-bench. The Gougers are pretty much cannon fodder, the type of troop that you can fling wave after wave of at your heroes!

 With SDE, you have two sides. One side plays the heroes, and the other plays the Shadow Council; you know, the guy with the monsters. I've run a couple of quick games with my two packs of kobolds, and things get pretty nasty pretty quick. Of course, we're only playing with a Paladin right now, since my other two heroes aren't painted up yet!

The Gougers came three to a pack, and even though all three are the same model in the same pose, they paint up well enough that you can have some difference to the figures. The spears come as a separate piece from the main body, and glue on pretty easily. So far, I haven't seen very much flash on any Soda Pop minis, which makes getting everything cleaned up and ready for primer a pretty quick process! The Kobold Gougers sell for $14.95 for the pack of three, which might seem a little pricey at first. Considering that Soda Pop is a small, independent company, I think that the price is more than justified.

 Think about it this way; someone out there decided to go out on a limb and do something different. Someone decided to create a miniature game that might appeal to a demographic that doesn't reek of stale Doritos, Mountain Dew, and bad cliches. If someone decides to take a chance like that, really put it out on the line, then I think that someone deserves my support!

Here's a few shots of the Gougers I have finished up! I'll be back in the Motherland all of next week, after that I'll show some pics of the Elf Ranger and the Mage!

Custom Super Dungeon Explore Minis!

The finished version of Super Dungeon Explore won't be out until later this year. John Cadice at Soda Pop Miniatures says that there will be a full boxed version of the game, with heroes, monsters, and tiles. One of the great play elements of the game is that you not only have to wade through hordes of monsters, but you have to destroy the spawning points in the dungeon that they keep coming from! This makes the game feel an awful lot like the classic video game Gauntlet, but without the Green Elf shooting the food all the time!

I really couldn't wait until the full game release, and decided to hobble together some chibi monsters of my own! Being a huge fan of the undead, I decided to start there. I have about 5 bajillion skeletons and zombies from Warhammer, and thought that might work as a good base. The trick with anything chibi is that the body is pretty small, with tiny arms and legs, then a over-large head.

I started by chopping a good third of the length off of the mid sections of the legs and arms of the skeletons and zombies. Using really good plastic model glue, I re-joined the shortened segments together, and set everything aside for a day to bond. Then, I took a little dab of Magic-Sculpt and got to work making the heads. The skeleton was pretty easy, since we are looking for exaggerated features over realism. The zombie posed his own problems, since I didn't want to cross the line between cute and gross too far in either direction.

The final models turned out pretty cool; They're not exactly perfect representations of chibi style, but they'll work for the game in a pinch. I am making a couple of crypt markers to use as spawning points in the game, and maybe a custom vampire for a level boss. I'll post some pics when everything is done!

Super Dungeon Explore!

One of the great joys of semi-retirement is getting a few minutes to paint something for yourself! As much as I loved getting the opportunity to paint armies professionally, it took a bit of the love of the craft out of the picture for me. Lately, I've been able to order some new minis and just have some fun painting again!

Super Dungeon Explore is a new game coming out from Soda Pop Miniatures. Soda Pop is run by three guys who spent some time working for some of the biggest companies in the industry, and decided to go out on their own and make some fun miniatures. Super Dungeon explore is their chibi line of minis, each figure is (dare I say it) super cute, and a blast to paint. After years of painting Khorne Berserkers, it was a ton of fun painting up my Paladin!

The miniatures I ordered from Soda Pop got to me within a week, and each came packaged in it's own clamshell case. I ordered the Paladin, Mage, Ranger, and two separate packs of Kobolds. So far, I only have the Paladin finished, but he was a ton of fun to paint, and looks great finished! The sculpts are clean, and there wasn't a lot of clean up to do before base-coating and painting!

From Soda Pop Miniatures Webstore

The game mechanics are a work in progress, and the final game will be out this Summer. I interviewed on of the owners for Geek Show, and the passion for the hobby really shines through. Check out Soda Pop Miniatures  and see what I am talking about! Both of their lines are really cool. Super Dungeon Explore utilizes a lot of Chibi anime elements, with cute, super-deformed features dominating the line. Relic Knights uses more traditional anime themes, and isn't afraid to throw in a ton of fan service!

You can find the full assortment of Soda Pop Miniatures at either their website, or at several online games retailers, like Cool Mini or Not or the Warstore. Both of the Online retailers carry Super Dungeon Explore and Relic Knights figures, but I think ordering directly from Soda Pop lets these guys keep the funds at work in-house. I'll have some pics of custom Super Dungeon Explore figs later this week!

From Soda Pop Miniatures Webstore