Sunday 15 May 2011

Corpses 02

And so I move on to part 2 of my look at figures of corpses to populate your board with when playing a zombie apocalypse game. Last time I looked at some of the commercially available figures, which sadly, weren't too many. This time, I'm going to show you the 10 figures that I have converted.
The first four figures on the top are very old Citadel Miatures 25mm scale zombie corpses. These came out in the early 1980s at about the same time as the two Citadel gangster corpses that I reviewed in part 1. The figure at the far left is as close to the original figure that I have. I only made one minor modification to him; after turning his head to face to the right, I sliced the top of his skull off so that it is hanging on by a slight piece of skin. The brains spilling out were sculpted by me using Millput modelling putty. To use a term from ATZ, he is Obviously Dead! No zombie could survive a head wound like that.
What I particularly liked about these figures is that they were made of soft metal (probably lead), which made them very easy to convert. Note how I have bent the left leg and left arm of the second corpse into new poses. Using Milliput again, I extended the left leg of his trousers, added socks and shoes and gave him a polo-necked jumper, to which I added a line of bullet holes, indicating he'd been shot by some kind of automatic weapon, like an SMG or assault rifle. The head has also been repositioned.
The third Citadel corpse has had a tattered shirt added, along with a pair of trainers on his feet. He was killed by a head shot to the right eye. In hindsight, I wish I had bought a lot more of these figures. They were a converter's dream!
The fourth and final Citadel corpse has had a tattered T-shirt added, as well as a sock and shoe put on his right foot. I cut his head off and glued it back on in a different position, so that it faced to his left. I also cut off most of his left arm and added Milliput to better define the stump. This corpse has had half of his face and neck chewed off.
The last figure in the top row of my photo is one that should be readily available to everyone. He is a conversion of one of the 25mm scale zombies from the Twilight Creations Inc. plastic figures from their Zombies!!! game. I cut his base and right foot off. He seemed to work best as a corpse by lying face down. So I cut off his right arm and remodelled it with modelling putty. In addition, I used Milliput to cover his torso on the front so that he lay flat without a gap appearing beneath him. Finally, I drilled a hole in his head to show how he died. It sounds like a lot of work, but it wasn't and it was a very easy conversion to do. Seeing as I have so many of this figure, I'll probably make more corpses out of them. Being made of soft plastic, it is so easy to cut bits off him to make unique corpses.
Moving on to the lower row, all five figures are conversions of Horrorclix 35mm scale figures. All are from the original set and apart from the last figure in line, all are converted zombies. At the far left is the Zombie Lawyer and he was, without doubt, harder to convert than any of the others! The problem is his basic pose is leaning forward with his arms stretched out, which makes it difficult to get him lying flat. I managed it by doing a lot of cutting and remodelling with Milliput. This is a conversion for experienced modellers only.
The Zombie Cop was much easier to convert. I cut off his head and arms and repositioned them. I also cut his back and buttocks, so that he lay flat. Any gaps in the arm and head joins were filled in with Milliput.
For the Shambling Zombie, I cut off the arm he was carrying in his right hand and removed his left foot. His head, right arm and right leg were cut off and repositioned. Once again, any gaps at the joins were filled in with Milliput. He was harder to convert than the cop but easier than the lawyer.
The Sorority Zombie was a doddle to convert. Her pose is very flat to begin with, so I didn't have to reposition any body parts. I drilled a small hole in the left side of her temple and drilled and modelled a massive exit wound on the right side of her head.
Finally, is the one Horrorclix conversion not based on a zombie figure. This figure began life as a Ghostfinder (not to be confused with Ghostbusters!). I cut a V-shaped notch at the back of his knee on his left leg and filled in the gap with Milliput. I cut off his left arm and resculpted it, so that it was tucked under his body, clutching his stomach. I removed the scanning device from his right hand. Finally, I drilled a small hole in his forehead and a large exit wound in the back of his head.
The Citadel zombies and the Twilight Creations Inc. zombie are a bit on the small size but are usable as teenagers or small adults. On the other hand, the Horrorclix figures are definitely oversized, but what the heck? They were all fun to convert and I'll certainly be converting more corpses and possibly sculpting some of my own.

17 comments:

  1. Bryan - this is inspiring. Once more you lead the way. Fantastic conversions. The Heroclix ones are my favorites. Corpses are unquestionably on my to-do list.

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  2. @Adam. I'm glad to hear you find this inspiring. Heroclix and Horrorclix figures are quite easy to convert because they're made of plastic. Just take your time and have fun. Probably the hardest part of converting corpses is making sure that the figure lies flat. Manage that and you've got it cracked.

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  3. Really nice, the more corpses the better, I've already got about 10 for my new 20mm WW2 period, you really can't have enough for gaming even if it's just for effect, excellent work sir.

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  4. Very nice mate! I will have to have a look at the horrorclix line. It seems I am missing out on a whole world I can exploit!

    Erm...make use of....

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  5. @Fran. Corpses are like zombies - the more the better!

    @Johnny. Exploit, make use of? Same difference! The Horrorclix figures I showed in this post were ones that I had loads of swaps of, so making corpses of them was a good way to get rid of a few.

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  6. If you need to get rid of anymore then pop me a line and I will pay for postage!

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  7. Very nice, I like the machine gunned one!

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  8. @Johnny. No problem. I'll send you an e-mail and I'm sure we can work something out.

    @Ray. Dakka! Dakka! Dakka! Dakka! Dakka! Dakka! Dakka! Dakka! Dakka!

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  9. yeahh, good idea, bodies in the street like tokens

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  10. @Jhon Sebastian. I suppose if you had enough figures of corpses you could use them to replace a figure whenever it got killed. Somehow, though, I don't think it would work in practice as you's need LOTS of them. As a consequence, I just them as window dressing for my scenery.

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  11. I'm developing a game with simple rules which, among many other things, some survivors may have an ability to reanimate corpses of zombies or survivors killed in action as necromancers (Rob Zombie or Ash from Army of Dead) or scientists with a widget mechanical or chemical (Herbert West: Reanimator), but I thought it would be better not revive zombies, but a small horde of skeletons would be controlled by those who brought them back for a limited time, lol do not want to bore you more, I'll see what I can find in my box of remains of minis, Greetings!

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  12. Sorry, I forgot to comment you so that I would use the tokens of bodies, each time there is a momentarily killed in action represent the tab and then the removal from the board when there are no bodies to revive, then putting a skull base round with a skull and only when there fell a survivor, greetings and thanks for answering again!

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  13. Hey, Jhon, you're certainly not boring me. Anyone who takes the time out to send in a comment has my full attention. I suppose skeleton corpses ought to be easier to buy/convert than zombies. You mention a small horde of them. How big or small are you thinking of?

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  14. I just missed your 23.05 comment as it arrived whilst I was answering your previous post. I see what you mean about using the corpses as tokens. It certainly could work. Oh and kind greetings to you!

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  15. I like all of these corpses.

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  16. These are great Bryan. Its always nice to take a break and give it your personal touch. I wonder if the Wargames factory zeds have ome possibilities here. I have a ton of them and would have to have a lot of repeats. I am trying to convert a heroclix heroine into a crawling girl, someone did it a while back. I think it was John. Zombies stumbling, half fallen and trying to get up would be cool ideas, too. They are always falling over stuff in the books, lol.
    Again, thanks for inspiring me Bryan. Its helped more than you can image.

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  17. @6milphil. Corpses are cool... literally!

    @Roger. Converting Wargames Factory zeds into corpses is on my "to do" list. I, too, have a few spare sprues of them. They should work well as corpses and being made of plastic will certainly help in the conversion process. Incidentally, I've just converted another 5 Horrorclic figures, so expect a review as soon as I repaint them.

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