Blog Scalenex's Paint Log and Fluff Piece Index

Well I’ve posted a lot of stuff on the Tactica forum but I haven’t spent much time on the painting forum…because you guys intimidate me. The overall quality of the things on this forum is very high and the quality of my models is far below most of yours. See I am barely beyond speed painting. I can’t let the Olympic athletes mighty accomplishments convince me not to lift weights and jog, and I can’t let the beautiful paint jobs here convince me not to paint. In fact I’m hoping that the Picassos that haunt this forum can give me valuable advice. Most of the gamers in my area have mostly unpainted models, so at least I can say I have painted models.


I painted several models in high school when sixth edition was new. Then I quite playing for several years and resumed playing in eighth edition. Then I went crazy on buying new models on e-bay in 2010 and 2011. In 2012 I slowed down on buying and took the painting pledge (and accomplished it!). I painted over a 100 models. In 2013 I’d like to focus more on the quality than quantity. Hopefully some constructive criticism will help me get there.


I've wrote seven fluff stories (and still counting) about the First of Klodorex and/or my Lustrian Themed Undead

After the Death of Sigmar, Merestar the Slann tries to take a more active hand in guiding humanity
The Fall of Turochitan (~5 pages)

A pair of outcast vampires journey to Lustria with the goal of drinking a Slann's blood
Count Renliss' Journey to Lustria (~21 pages)

Klodorex is in disarray after the Slann disappear forcing an unlikely hero to unite the city
The Orphaned Temple City (~39 pages)

A party of Skinks is sent on a mysterious quest.
Divided We Fall (~45 pages)

Dwarves and Lizardmen unite against Skaven and Daemons
New Alliances (~43 pages)

Watch the character evolution of an unusual Skink priest and his destined rival
Legacies. a novella (~61 pages)

Lord Renliss battles the lord of the Vampire Coast for supremacy of Lustria's undead
Dead Water (~25 pages)

Assorted Non-Klodorex Fluff Pieces
Skaven Short Stories I wrote
The Least Successful Dark Elf Invasion in History
Burn Face Tribe of Savage Orcs


So without further ado, let’s meet the defenders of the temple city of Klodorex.

I have three spawning of Skinks each with different roles, only recently have I had enough painted Skinks. Each with a different color scheme and a different purpose. Each spawning of Skinks has a Skink priest.


Worker Caste Skinks




My most numerous Skinks are the worker caste. They don’t take to battle naturally, and they don’t like to fight if the Kroxigor aren’t with them or at least nearby. They arose from the same spawning as the Kroxigors and have the same coloration. I’ve used old archer Skinks because that’s what I started with painted years ago back when Skink actually could take short bows. I still use them today because they are very cheap and rank up nicely. I saw n810’s conversion (Awesome Skink Conversions )and I really like them, but I’m not ready to undo what I already did to remake these when I have about 8,000 points worth of unpainted models.

I will try to convert a few archer skinks when I decide to do another batch of cohort Skinks. I plan to use some of my unpainted javelin Skinks to form the front ranks of my worker caste cohorts to give me a semblance of WYSIWYG.

I also plan to try some slightly darker shades of blue, especially for the next Kroxigors. I started with this shade in high school and painted my new additions to match, but I’m thinking robin egg blue is not that imposing. I currently have 46 Skinks counting two full command crews, 3 Kroxigors, and a Skink Priest. My plan is to eventually expand this to around 100 Skinks with three full command crews and 19 Kroxigors (though I may not make all my Kroxigors blue).



The above is a backside view of my Kroxigors to better reveal the yellow spot pattern I gave them. I originally only had one with the spots to represent my Kroxigor champion but A) I liked the pattern so much I didn’t want to confine it to one model and B) I barely ever use Kroxigor champions.


Sotek Caste Skinks




The light green Skinks bear the bright red crests associated with Sotek. Unlike the workers, these Skinks are recklessly brave and are willing to run right into the enemy’s face and attack. They are the least seen Skinks in my army lists because I haven’t worked out how to use skirmishers and chaff cohorts effectively, but they are available. They currently amount to 10 archers, 11 javelin Skinks, a musician, and a priest. My eventual plan is to get the total numbers of rank and file to around 40 with a full command crew. If I find some cheap musicians on e-bay I’ll add a couple more but for the most part I’m done buying new Lizardmen models.



I finished off my 2012 pledge finish more then 100 by painting the finishing details than magnetizing these guys. I was literally working on these in the 1990s. They are the last thing I was working on when I drifted away from the hobby years ago. If Horned One Riders don’t come back in the next book and I can’t find many people willing to let me play Dogs of War, these guys are going to serve as Saurus Cold One Riders cleverly disguised as Skinks. Because they are magnetize I can easily swap these mounts for Saurus riders (I have an abundance of rider models versus mount models due to buying a weird lot of bits and trading my friend Cold Ones who wants to use them as a base for dragon ogre conversions). I can also field them riderless in Storm of Magic games (in fact I did that once).

At the time I started these, I basically modeled them after the box but I already decided my light green Skinks would be the aggressive Sotek caste of Skinks. Now I’m having second thoughts and wishing I went with a dark green color scheme. I saw a gila monster Cold One style on the forums here (I can’t find the thread again or I’d link it. I really liked them and think they would match well with my dark green beast master Skinks. I still can’t justify stripping the paint and starting over when less than a third of my total collection is painted. I have eight more Horned One Riders in my bits box. I think I’ll try the next seven with gila monster style mounts and dark green riders (the eighth is going to be a Skink priest on Horned One).


Beast Master Caste Skinks




My smallest spawning is my favorite. The Slann of Klodorex decreed that the Skinks of the dark green spawning would be trained as beast masters because they have very little sense of self preservation—I mean because they have a special kinship with the beasts of Lustria. They serve as crew for my Salamanders and Razordons which is a dangerous job indeed. They also fly my Terradons and ride the Stegadons (these models are currently WIP). During my first siege battle they prodded Stegadons to act like living battering rams and bash holes in the enemy fortress (they failed at this task but they looked cool doing it!).

The Swarms are the speediest speed painting I ever did. I basically worked on them while I was waiting for the stuff I cared more about to dry, also to pad my painting total for the 2012 painting pledge.



The Salamanders hold a special place in my heart, not only because they are overpowered now and were overpowered in 6th edition when I started, but because the female Salamander is the first single model I put special time into back in the 90s. I didn’t add anything to it after resuming the hobby in 2010 except for swapping the red eyes gold (I did that for every single 90s model) and adding Devlin Mud to make the fin more weathered. The first model I painted after resuming the hobby is the male Salamander. Which one is male and which one is female? Why see the Salamanders in my world are much like many species of birds. The male is brightly colored to attract attention and the female is earth toned to blend in and better protect the nest from predators.

There is no misfire roll for dinos other than Sallies, but I can imagine more Skinks die during peace time due to Stegadon accidents than anything else and Terradon flight school probably has a high attrition rate. To keep up the sacrificial theme going, whenever I make a list to give a Skink Priest the Forbidden Rod, I make it my dark green Skink Priest.

I have a whopping 12 handlers done now, All my WIP left over from 2012 are 4 Terradons and 1 Stegadon so my beast master castes will hopefully increase in number fairly soon boosting the number of beast master Skinks to 22 (it’s the old six Skink howdah, I feel obligated to use the extra bit for something). I have bits in my tackle box for one, maybe two more Terradons with sufficient green stuff. I also have a second unpainted old metal Stegadon assembled and a third in a box. Two plastic Stegadons will join the force eventually too. I have 27 more handler models, 4 Salamanders, and 3 Razordons anxiously waiting for me to paint them. I’ve toyed with the idea of making a pack of dark green javelin wielding Skinks for games where I want to use Skirmishers to protect my dinosaurs or give my dark green Skink priest an honor guard that isn’t from the Sotek or worker castes. Thus eventually my Beast Master Skinks will overtake the Sotek caste in numbers.

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

Saurus





8 green Saurus Warriors was the first thing I ever painted (later I boosted it to 12). To keep the tradition alive, when I resumed the hobby years later I made eight more green Saurus of the same style to see if my talents magically morphed into something better now that I was adult (they didn’t, but as an adult I found I could buy slightly nicer brushes which helped). I made 12 blue Saurus as a youth too (two didn’t survive ten years of storage though). I built up both units for my painting pledge. I like to think that my later generation Sauri were better than my early ones but the difference is too subtle to see with my crappy camera and I did some minor touchup on my old models.

The Skink spawning have different purposes but my two spawning of Saurus have the same purpose: Saurus Warriors both have the same purpose, bludgeoning and stabbing the enemies of the Old Ones to death. The blue Saurus arose at the same time as the blue Skinks and Kroxigor (they share the same coloration as the Kroxigor), but that’s not really a separate purpose. In my upcoming fluff piece “The Orphaned Temple City” ( http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/the-orphaned-temple-city-complete-four-part-story.10285/ ), Kaitar is of this spawning and that kinship partially why he relates to Skinks so well. You can see here how well the color scheme blends my spotted blue Saurus to the spotted blue Kroxigor.


I thought about going entirely separate colors for my Temple Guard and Saurus Cavalry (neither of which have any non-primer paint on them yet), but I think I would be better off with fewer colors rather than more (since my army is already all over the place color wise and that’s almost a faux paux). At the moment I’m thinking of using the blue scheme for my Temple Guard and the green scheme for my Saurus cavalry but slightly darker in both cases.

I have 27 rank and file green Sauri counting the command crew. I have 22 blue Saurus with a champion alone. I plan to make a group of Spear Saurus of both blocks. My aim to have about 30-35 Saurus of each case with spears and about 30-35 Saurus of each spawning with hand weapons each with their own command crew (conveniently this will take my unpainted/unassembled Sauri down to zero).

I bought several 5th ed Saurus used. One of them had a 6th edition head on a 5th ed model and one had a 6th edition weapon on a 5th edition model. I decided to roll with the punches there. These became the champions for my green and blue Saurus respectively.



The next iteration of Saurus kit bashed Champions will be deliberately crafted by me. 6th edition heads and 6th edition oversized weapons on 5th edition torsos. My sixth edition models will have the crests cut off to better blend in with the older models (but the champions will keep the crests, since I decide that that is how Saurus champions in Klodorex they are distinguished). I am not sure what I want to do with my unpainted Saurus characters yet but I will probably paint them different colors. They are the last survivors of older spawnings after all and would have the colors of those spawnings.



I don’t have a command crew painted for the blues yet. Here’s a picture where my green Saurus Standard Bearer is a bit more visible. I like to think this Standard Bearer is a good example of the noticeable (though not jaw droppingly so) incremental improvements I’ve been making with my painting since I resumed the hobby a few years ago.


And the rest…




These are my test models. If I want to try something new I use a Skink archer to test it (they are dirt cheap). I thought an orange Skink color scheme would be good for Tettoeko’s honor guard (Tet is foreign so his guardians should have a foreign color scheme). I decided It probably shouldn’t be sherbert orange. I liked the idea in my head but once I saw it I was unhappy with. In addition to not being a great color scheme, apparently orange Skinks are related to bigfoot because every single picture I took from multiple angles came out blurry.

I plan to make a prototype albino Skink archer in the near future before tackling the task of painting my Saurus and Skink BSBs since I’m pretty sure I want my BSBs to be albino.

The other model in the above picture my prototype Chameleon Skink. I did like that one, so I made 23 blowpipe Skinks using the same color scheme, some of which are pictured below. If I feel like I want 24+ Chamo Skinks the Chamo archer even gets to play on the table!



My first Lizardmen conversion was Chameleon Skink Braves. I wanted them to have blowpipes and large swords. That means I had to convert a left arm to hold either a blowpipe or a weapon (as opposed to a dagger or nothing). I’m generally pleased with both styles, but I like the left handed big sword champion better than the two with the left handed blowpipes (which are held at a somewhat awkward angle). I plan to make more Barves with the left handed swords the next time I paint a new make a batch of Chameleon Skinks since I’m not going to stop making Chamo Skinks till I have an even 30 (they are going to be well worth maxing out in the upcoming map campaign I’m playing next month).





Oh yeah, I have a Slann too. Years ago I was so eager to field a Slann I painted one with little care and forethought. I never got around to finishing his Temple Guard throne bearers which is just as well because that would make the model too big to field in 8th edition. I debated not posting my Slann at all, but I believe in being brutally honest with unpleasant truths. The left is the Slann I currently use, on the right is the Slann I plan to use in the future. You can see I haven’t done much with the new Slann. The new Slann is going to stay in the box until I am convinced that I can paint him up to the high quality a general of the temple city of Klodorex deserves to be. I’m not even sure what color scheme and conversions I plan to do with it yet.

Issues I’d like to address in 2013

In general I’d like to up the quality of my work. This mostly takes practice, but I’m open to any suggestion for techniques. I am especially interested in shading of bones and spikes. I think it will add some depth to my WIP Stegadon here. I’m willing to accept any and all suggestions on how to improve this WIP pictured below:




I feel I shouldn’t even bother starting my Razordons until I get a good technique down for accenting spikes. That’s a shame because I’m including Razordons fairly often in my list now (I’m a sucker for things that other people write off).

-I like variety in colors but I feel I should make my soldiers more unified. Perhaps adding yellow spots or accents to models, I’m open to suggestions. Currently my units have red loin cloths and champions have purple loin cloths. This isn’t very noticeable though and has not given much visual unity to my army. I have a friend about to run a Mighty Empires style map campaign in about two months and I couldn’t answer his question “What two colors would you like on your territory markers?” I’d like to adapt my army to make it more cohesive, but I’d prefer not to get the point of stripping down half my army and repainting them. I have about 550 Lizardmen models and only 171 are painted, I would prefer not to take one step backwards to take two steps forward.

-I haven’t done my shields yet because I can’t make up my mind what color scheme to use on them. I’d like in some way for my shields to help tie the army together. I have an abundance of 5th ed shields which I bought because I really don’t like the sixth edition shields so I can easily give my 5th ed Saurus and 6th ed Saurus the same shield.

-I haven’t based anything yet. I’d like to do jungle ground for most models but swamp motifs for my Skink zombies, Chameleon Skinks, and Salamanders. I haven’t seen a lot of examples of either of those things. I could go with Puzskin’s tutorial but then my bases would outshine my models! (one example among many how you guys intimidate me)

http://mininatureart.blogspot.com/2013/01/witam-w-was-pierwszym-postem-w-nowym.html

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

My Lustrian Undead

I’ve been working on making Lustrian themed undead. I had my work in an old thread but I’m pasting it here so my PLOG is complete. I only have four zombies so far, but I am very proud of these four models.

Scalenex said:

My first four skink zombies. Each one had the eyes gauged out by the tip of a nail heated on the flame of a candle. The same nail gave each body small holes and gauges. I scored the crests with an exacto knife and sanded the scales a little.

This one has a good view of the skink zombie with the peg leg, second from the right



This is the least blurry group shot I have



The one on the left had half his leg replaced with the drumstick bit from a plastic Saurus musician. He is brandishing the point end of a javelin. His regular skink shield was studded with spikey weapon bits. The tail is mosly missing. I got it from e-bay that way and it inspired me to make zombie skinks in the first place. I also clipped the tip off the crest.

The one on the right is brandishing a broken javelin in one hand. The other hand is missing and a javelin point was inserted in the stump. I cut off about half the crest and warped it's face slightly with a hot nail.



I didn't bother attaching both arms to the one on the left. I didn't want him to have a clean stump so I partially melted the shoulder. I cut the hand weapon in half. The one on the right, I put it's head in the candle flame and warped the head. I think it looks close enough to skull like to paint it that way., so at least one of my test models has exposed bone.

Click to expand...

Scalenex said:

I got my four test models pictured here below.



Here’s a side by side with one of my living skirmishers. I took the same based colors that I used for the living skinks (Scorpion Green for the hide, Bleached Bone for the under belly, and Blood Red for the crest) mixed with a lot of graveyard Earth and a dash of Scorched Brown. Because I use Blood Red or Red Gore in most of my living LM models, I chose to mix the open wounds on the zombies with warlock purple/blood red. I painted the eye sockets black to make the gouged out eyes more visible. I didn’t tarnish the weapons or anything because the zombies are “fresh.” Most weapons are broken though, including the broken spikes glued on the one’s shield.



Both the guys below have half a limb replaced with a broken javelin. The one on the left has a blade for a foot and the one on the right has a blade for a forearm (the intact arm is gripping a whole javelin).



The other two are side by side below. The one armed guy on the left has the biggest exposed wound, All of them have little purple wounds in several places, but this is the only good view I got my crappy camera to show. The one on the left has the literally melted face (EDIT I actually stuck the head in a candle to see what would happen). I painted a spot on its head to show some exposed skull (barely visible in this picture).

Click to expand...

Here is the fluff piece for my Vampire Counts:

Count Renliss' Journey to Lustria

Someday I want to have an entire Vampire Count army with a Lustrian theme. My goal for 2013 is to have 600-750 points of units for a Storm of Magic pact plus some extra zombies for Invocation of Nehek and Raise Dead. I figure I want about 40-50 Lizardmen zombies is a good goal this year start out. I can use my Cursed Company models or regular Skinks as filler if I need to go higher. Eventually I want to branch out with Skaven, elven, and human zombies. I have begun work on 15 more Skink zombies and 3 Saurus zombies last year. If anyone has any good suggestions for making a porcupine Skink, I’d like to make a few zombie Skinks who used to be Razordon handlers. I’d like to make some former Salamander handlers too but I fear a burned or half-eaten zombie would be too hard to distinguish from an ordinary zombie’s damage/decay.

Next I’ll add a couple spirit hosts. There used to be a lot of the pictures I used on Carpe Noctem but most of them are no longer viewable for some reason. This link shows one of the few intact pictures with LM spirits in it. This shows a spirit host including a skink and a goblin. That’s the basic idea: take regular models with little or no conversions and paint them ghost style. I haven’t decided whether I want to go all Lizardmen spirit hosts or make my Spirit Hosts multi-racial (like the Cursed Company).

CN Spirit Host Gallery

To lead the ensemble I wanted Count Renliss to represent a gentlemen vampire forced to make due with what he could find and now wielding the oversized blade stolen from a Scar Veteran. I was expecting to need to do lots of conversion work to get an appropriate looking model. Then I found this guy!:

Count Renliss model

He’s pretty much perfect as is, so I don’t really need to convert it at all (if I could figure out some way to make the skulls more reptilian that might help but that’s a little advanced for my skill level). Mainly I’m intimidated about the paint job. I haven’t done a mammal of any kind yet.

If you read my fluff piece, you know Count Renliss is of course assisted by the Necromancer Modrek. The jungle has made him go more even more feral than his master thanks to another awesome Reaper miniature.

Jungle Necromancer

While Renliss is the leader, my capstone for 2013 will be Modrek and his corpse cart. The cart will be filled with Lizardmen body parts, pulled by zombified Cold Ones (I bought some of the older Cold Ones that look brow beaten and sickly, subpar for living Cold Ones but perfect for undead Cold Ones!) and directed by Modrek.

After that’s done the next thing I want to do with my the undead is to buy some Tomb Guard, paint them Mesoamerican style and use them for Grave Guard (aka the Maylar Guard). I’d also like to find a Mesoamerican looking witch (ideally a screaming witch) to be the banshee, Kayishen. Here is the back story for both Kayishen and the Maylar Guard.

The Fall of Turochlitan

I have some Cursed Company models that I can use as skeletons. Unfortunately, skeletons have kind of become the Razordon of the Vampire Counts army book (skellies aren’t bad but zombies are much better), so I doubt they’d see much use, at least not in a vampire army under 1000 points. I’d also like to make some dire wolf stand-ins out of jaguars. These would be great….

Cool looking cat models

….but they are WAY too expensive since I’d want 6-10 of them. My Cold Ones/Horned One riders are magnetized so I can use rider-less Cold Ones to be dire lizards for the time being. They might not be undead but they are mean looking and the right sized base.

My capstone project for 2014 will be a zombified Stegadon with magnetic bits to become a Black Coach or a Mortis Engine depending on my mood. Towards this end I have reclassified one of my unassembled plastic Stegadon boxes as a Vampire Counts item in my inventory and I bought the rib cage of a zombie dragon from Hoard O’ Bits. (See the Stegadon died from a cannon ball which ripped through its chest and exposed the rib cage!)

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

Scalenex’s 2013 Challenge Pledge

Declaration: I, Scalenex have only thus far done minor conversions thus far in my table top gaming career and I have done few relatively large models. I plan to make a model where nearly every piece is kit bashed or converted. A Corpse Cart to be the centerpiece for my Lustrian theme Vampire Counts Storm of Magic Pact Army. This will be a stepping stone to even bigger conversion projects in the future.

Plan: The Corpse Cart will have the basic chassis of the Corpse Cart but I will replace the wheels with crude wooden wheels, replace the corpses with converted Sauri and Skinks, replace the driver with witch doctor necromancer I found from Reaper, replace the zombies pulling the cart with zombified Cold Ones (the old school Cold Ones that looked ugly and brow beaten, perfect for the undead). I will paint the whole model in a nuanced detail oriented noticeably above the current level of my models. I plan to add other features as inspirations strikes me. To get me suitably warmed up for this project. I plan to boost my converted Lizardmen zombie horde from its current 4 members to something more substantial and make some similarly themed Spirit Hosts. In a waste not want not mentality, I will use the human corpses that come with the Corpse Cart to make a Charnel Pit. I’d also like to try to finish more models than I buy this year.

Here I will place WIP photos as I get gradually closer to my goal.



What I have right now is assembled bits form multiple sources: Everything I need for the basic modeling is right in this pile. My short-term goal is to have most of the Corpse Cart assembled and ready for painting by the time Spring rolls around in the Midwest and I can prime things once again.

As my for my secondary pledge: For 2013 I bought 59 new models (my reward for passing my 2012 pledge): The Empire Megabox set plus a grand master. I completed 14 models this year: 5 Horned One Riders, and 9 Skink Skirmishers.

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

I love the fluff that you are coming up with for the various cohorts and society that this army represents. Keep it up

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

Looks awesome! I particularly like the mottled look on the blue Saurus and Krox. My skink archers used to look like yours, only with a worse paint job, haha. (they are currently primed black) I stole that theme from the old GW catalog back in the late 90's.

Cool zombies too. I'd probably use my old Skinks for that.

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

I love the lengths you've gone to and the reasoning's behind your caste system. That's truly in depth! Your painted models look good and I bet from two feet away on the tabletop the whole army together looks fantastic.

In my humble opinion as far as touching the units up and making the whole army look a little better I'd simply just sort the bases out with a little sand and static grass, maybe even a chopped up plastic aquarium plant that has fine, brightly coloured leaves on it that will scale nicely against the miniatures. There's loads on eBay for relatively next to nothing. As for the models themselves, the new shades and washes that GW do can work wonders and raise any 'average' painter's work to much higher standards... Then again you probably don't need me to tell you that, I just speak from my own personal experience.

Awesome army mate.

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

Thanks for the comments everyone! I haven’t done much new to post yet, but I have got some new accessories!



I rolled them all that way till they came up as sixes (Sotek head) and left them that way so they know that’s what I want them to roll (except for ability tests, I hope my dice don’t get confused)

I updated my challenge post to show my proverbial square one.

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

I haven’t painted much lately. I’ve mostly been focusing on assembling the as much of my stuff on the sprue as possible. I’m sure my unpainted Empire and Saurus troops will not impress.

I have not forgotten my pledge to finish my Corpse Cart before New Years. I’ve been working my way up making zombies en masse without further ado: the next generation of Lustrian Dead.

Zombie Trek: The Next Generation



We’ll kick things off with my first two Saurus zombies. The one on the lef has a Goblin unit champion arm to have him holding a severed human head (I filed off a digit so the hand has four fingers), goblin arms are a surprisingly good fit for skinny Saurus.


Here’s a side view, you can see that they both have a leg replaced with a weapon. Left is a Saurus mace, right is a Skink javelin. Amputating the a leg was the ONLY way to fit a Saurus on a 20 mm base. I also had to severely truncate their tails so they could rank up with Skink or human zombies. The one on the right had his hand replaced with a spiked mace head.


If I want to actually use my undead in a SOM game, I figure I’ll want at least 50 zombies. In order to field my Lustrian Undead as a conventional army I want at least 100 Lustrian zombies. These are lofty numbers, and I have a plethora of extra 40 mm bases so I figured I should make some fillers. This is my first filler ever. I gave the three archer Skinks gauged out eyes which is standard for all my zombies plus a few odd ball wounds here and there with my drill. Then I cut away the bows and their bottom halves. I plan to paint the base like a swamp and have the Skinks rising from the muck.


My second filler. Same basic principle as the first one but the one in the middle is standing on a log. He has his hands raised to his mouth. I am going to look through my human zombie bits to find a suitable arm or leg for him to be gnawing on.


These four guys all have crude prosthetics for their legs (or at least part of their legs). Left to right I got an javelin blade for a leg, a drumstick head for a foot, a javelin shaft for a leg, and a stone axe head for a foot. Because all my Saurus zombies will necessitate virtually identical injuries I do not plan to make many more. I’m thinking 10% Saurus, 60% Skink, and 30% human. If I can find some cheap Skaven models I’ll add some shambling rats to the mix, but they are so ugly it’s hard to tell if they are dead or not.


I need a zombie Standard bearer. I tried and failed to use a Saurus standard as a base but I couldn’t get it work how I liked after burning through two standard bits. Since I have a big bag of random goblin bits I decided to take a go with a goblin standard, tattered the batter a bit more with an exacto knife and replace the goat skull with a Temple Guard head. I like this look (and the mangled bitten look on the head) but it won’t stand up. I need to either weight the base or transfer my zombie standard arm to a Saurus zombie.


And the rest! No major injuries on this lot but everyone has broken weapons, various holes in them, mangled crests, nipped tails or something mishapen. A few are missing arms. A few I’ve put arms on so as to make them look misshapen. The one closest to the top is supposed to be a dead chameleon Skink (he’s trying to use his blowpipe as a club, a poor idea). I don’t know what color I should paint him, I’m leaning towards straight gray splattered with mud.

Qupakoco suggested I use my old Skinks for zombies. You can see I made a Zombie Skink from a converted archer (bottom middle). I don’t dislike it, but I doubt I’ll put my archer zombies up front. They are smaller than the newer Skinks and have no interchangeable bits so there is less material to work with for zombie deformities. I plan to use my extra archers mainly for filler bases, though I’ve begun converting some of my archer Skinks to javelin Skinks like N810 did. We’ll see how many javelin bits I have left over after reaching 50 zombies (javelin bits are my favorite material for zombie prosthetics so it’s a question how many I’ll end up with).

I’m working more towards speed with my first zombies and using power tools for my mutilations. The nice thing about making zombies is there is no such thing as “oops” only “check out my brilliant post-mortem injuries!”

This current batch (counting fillers as four each) brings me to 28 zombies—legal size! Next week my project will be to zombify some Cold Ones. This will serve as a trial run for my Lustrian corpse cart. I also figure zombie Cold Ones would make a fine Lustrian equivalent for Dire Wolves. I also have some actual GW wolves. I need to decide if I want to run with ALL Cold Ones for my “wolves” or use Cold Ones as unit champions.

I have not yet succeeded with my plan to make zombified Razordon crew. I was originally thinking a Skink porcupine look would be good but now I think one or two large spikes would look better.

Also I put links to all five of my current supporting fluff pieces on top of the original post. I got another one I’m working on too, I hope to have it up in a month or so.

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

Love it. Are you going to add a skink with an axe-prosthetic arm? Looking forward to progress pics mate. I'm also in an assembling phase, so my plog hasn't had action in awhile.

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

Old Mossy said:

Love it. Are you going to add a skink with an axe-prosthetic arm? Looking forward to progress pics mate. I'm also in an assembling phase, so my plog hasn't had action in awhile.

Click to expand...

My first two attempts at making prosthetic axe arms have fallen off easily. When I new batch of zombies I'll try again. Third time is the charm or so they say. Real world issues have gotten in my way for a while but I hope to finish converting some Cold Ones this weekend.

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

Wow i'm impressed! Zombie lizardmen? Who would have thought of that? I think you pulled that off quite well!
This is very creative and I can't wait to see some more!

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Newly Painted LM Zombies

Finally did some painting. Now my completed zombie family numbers 12 members. (Still short of legal size but I can field lots of unpainted zombies).



My new zombies use the light blue base with dark blue back scales and yellow spots of my worker caste models. I used the same colors but mixed them in with a fair bit of graveyard earth. They eyes are black. I used a mix of purple and dark red for the bloody wounds. It’s hard to see with my blurry camera but a few of these have bits of dark green algae on them. At first the algae was my way to paint over a rough spot but now I started trying to put in that affect deliberately.


Non-Reptilian Zombies


I got a bunch of human zombies for cheap. I want to use mostly non-human zombies, I figured I’d break out the humans only when I wanted to field CRAZY big zombie units, but a few preliminary attempts to rank up my growing zombie masses shows me that sticking a human between two Skinks, the models rank up better so there is a utilitarian reason to include them.


Most of my human zombies are built with the included variations in the GW kit (so they aren’t worth posting a WIP photo for), but these four were all converted. Left to right we have a zombie impaled by a Saurus spear, a zombie with a Saurus axe for a hand, a zombie with two javelin point hands and a zombie with a pitch fork hand.

EDIT: Removed my blurry pictures of my Empire conversion and Goblin and Skaven zombies

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

Keep it up. I appreciate that you are driving yourself to getting better each model at a time and holding some models hostage (Slann) until you are ready to paint them.

The look good. I look forward to your Razordons

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

Where is your new years resolution corpse cart?!

I want to see it :i

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Last year's New Years Resolution was a failure. Real life got in the way and I didn't do much modeling last year. Practicing different zombification techniques was as far as I got.

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

I borrowed a decent camera and displayed my blue zombies on a white sheet of paper, so people can actually see them. I plan to replace most if not all of my blurry pictures with decent pictures over the next week or two.

Two of my best friends just started Warhammer Fantasy Armies and we are having group painting/assembly sessions so that will serve to motivate me. Now I should be adding new entries a lot more often.

This post is doing more than mentioning something I did six months ago. I am working on getting a small diorama ready for the Skinkathalon.

After the contest, this is going to be a unit filler standing in for four zombies. The scene I'm trying to convey is Skink zombies rising out of a swamp. One of them is chewing on soggy arm.

After to going to town melting and clipping parts to make post-mortem damage, I greenstuffed a few patches to make algae and hide some items I wanted to remove and tried to make my piece of sprue look more log-like.




It's too cold and wet where I live right now to prime anything with a spray can so I base coated this the slow way. I got it about half painted yesterday. I plan to finish painting it tomorrow, then I plan to use the NEXT weekend to give the model a nice swampy base. That should just barely let me get this done for the Skinkathalon. More WIP photos will follow shortly.

My unofficial resolution this year is to not to have too many plates in the air. A box of sprues doesn't bother me much but a half finished project stings my eyes. I have about twenty Skinks and Saurus in half-painted limbo to work on next. I also have two Skink Priest conversions that are half finished and of course my Corpse Cart is little more than a ziplock baggie full of handpicked bits.

Oh yeah, I recently finished a new fluff piece, it was added to the links on my top post. Check it out if you don't mind novellas.

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

That zombie skink is cute!

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

Are your zombies going to be bursting ravenously from the earth or the water?

If water, how will you do the wet effect? I'm thinking of some water for a diorama too, if I get around to it.

Re: Scalenex's Paint Log

I had a very productive day yesterday, I got my model completely finished.

I bought the new basing paint called Lustrian Overgrowth. Then I mixed it with some blue and brown for a more swampy color. I applied two coats to get a swampy texture on the base. Then I applied more gloss than I ever thought I'd use on a single model to make it look wet. I like the swamp base so much I think I'm going to apply the same technique to my Salamanders' bases soon, perhaps my Chameleon Skinks as well. Now I need to come up with a "dry" jungle base that I like so I can base the bulk of my army.

Problem is, my attempt to make a show-quality photograph failed miserably. I got two weeks to figure out how to present all my hard work. MAYBE enter some newer zombies (I have a new post-mortem damage concept I'm itching to try) or a Skink Chief/Skirmisher Champion (because I need clear champion models) in the painting contest, but time may not be on side for getting it done.

I'm also working on getting about a dozen Sauri and Skinks out of half-painted limbo. That's not very exciting for this thread since they will look almost exactly like the Sauri and Skinks who came before them but it's good for me since I'll be able to field armies with slightly less filler.