Wednesday 1 August 2012

Assorted Media Figures 01

The media have a tough time reporting the news at the best of times, but in a zombie apocalypse their job becomes a whole lot harder. I thought I'd showcase my media figures in this post. In ATZ, there are three media types that you can meet - the Anchor, the Reporter and the Cameraman. All three are reperesented below.
The woman at the far left of my photo above and below has appeared twice before on my blog. The first time was when I reviewed my Frothers UK set of zombie hunters way back in February 2010. The second time was when Team Vampifan met her in an ATZ scenario called, appropriately enough, Meeting the Media. She was called Jenny Tyrell and she was a Rep:3 Reporter. I really like this figure but sadly, she is no longer available for sale. You can tell from her size when compared with the other figures in the line up just how small she is. That's not a bad thing in my opinion, as females tend to be shorter than males.
The rest of the figures shown above could also be Reporters but I think they work better as Anchors, given how smartly dressed they are. The woman in the grey dress and jacket is from EM4 Miniatures. She was originally a Grenadier figure sculpted by Mark Copplestone, but when Grenadier folded, EM4 acquired a lot of Mark's sculpts. Her beautifully coiffeured hair is outstanding.
Mark rescupted a lot of his old Grenadier figures for his Copplestone Castings' Future Wars range and you can see many similarities between the third figure in line and the second. The heads are the obvious differences. To accentuate the difference even further, I decided to paint her as an African/American. Both figures are much bigger than 28mm.
The fourth figure in line was a Ral Partha Shadowrun adventurer. I say was, because she is now long out of production. Originally, she was holding a flashlight in her left hand but I cut the head off it and with a piece of modelling putty, I converted it into a microphone. Now I use her as Lucille Carter, anchor woman for Channel 5 News.
At the far right of the group is a unique figure. Yes, she is one of my sculpts. She is based on a reporter found in the Cyber Rogues supplement of the Cyber Space RPG. I never played Cyber Space, but I did use it to cadge ideas from for my Cyberpunk 2020 campaign that I ran in the early 1990s. I liked Tanith, but a few of my players positively hated her, due to her cropping up at the most inappropriate of moments - usually at the end of a gunfight that my players had been involved in! Tanith is definitely a Reporter. In my Cyberpunk 2020 campaign she was fitted with state of the art recording implants in her eyes and ears. Nowadays, she'd just be a gutsy woman relying on her wits and street smarts. What I like most about my sculpt are her hair and her smile. What I least like about her is she is too wide. She should be slimmer.
Moving on, we come to the Cameramen and women. Once again, we start of with an OOP Frothers cameraman. He appeared alongside Jenny Tyrell in my Meeting the Media scenario for my ATZ campaign and he was a Rep:4 Cameraman called Simon McQuarrie. It is such a shame that no one has picked up the moulds for Simon and Jenny as they truly deserve to be appreciated by a wider audience.
Next to Simon is an EM4 Miniatures' Handycam Operator. He is another ex-Grenadier figure sculpted by Mark Copplestone. The logo on his back shows that he works for Channel 54.
Looking very similar to him is a Copplestone Castings' News Team member. It is basically the same figure but with a different head. Note his spectacular quiff! He works for WNS - World News Service.
The female, fourth from the left, is a RAFM figure - Paige Fox, reporter of note. Although she holds a compact camera in her hands, RAFM have got it right, she is a reporter not a camera-woman. She is the tallest figure in this group and makes a mockery of RAFM's claim that she is a 28mm scale miniature. Even so, she is nicely sculpted and I quite like her.
To the left of Paige is a figure that I converted from a Horrorclix Runaway from the basic set. I cut off her right arm holding a severed head, the knife in her left hand and her beanie hat. I resculpted her right arm and added a camera, which is slung around her neck. I also resculpted her hair. She is called Sarah Barstow and she is based on an NPC from the GURPS Illuminati supplement. She is a freelance camera-woman.
Last in line is another unique Vampifan sculpt. Meet Andy Halloran, an NPC who appeared in the GURPS Autoduel Characters supplement. He is just one of many characters that I made from that supplement. He is also a freelancer. I think he should be slightly slimmer, but other than that, I'm happy with how he's turned out, especially his video camera.
I should point out that anyone who wants to use a media team in ATZ should check out the ATZ Supplement, Haven on pages 28 and 29 for full rules on how to play them. You can even play them as part of your team, although their conditions for advancing their Rep differs from the main rules. For them, getting interviews and video footage is more important than killing zombies.
It is rather sad that out of these 11 figures only 5 are currently available for sale. You'll find the Copplestone Castings Anchor woman and Camera-man in the Future Wars set FW3 News Team and Minders, which contains five figures in total for £8.50. The EM4 pair, 0036 Female Reporter and 0037 Handycam Operator, are available separately for just £1.50 each. Finally, RAF02819 Paige Fox costs $4.95 from the RAFM webstore.

26 comments:

  1. Some great looking news crews there Bryan. Always out and about poking there noses into things. Great paintjobs and the ones you sculpted yourself look fantastic great job.

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    1. Many thanks, Simon. They do have a tendency to poking their noses into things, don't they? I'm glad you liked my own sculpts. It's not that easy to do.

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  2. You forgot John the photographer, from Black Cat Bases :-) ; he's still in production. Though to be fair, you didn't claim that this was an exhaustive list of 28mm news people.

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    1. There's a good reason why I never mentioned BCB's John the Photographer, Colgar6. I don't have that figure! And no, this is not an exhaustive look at 28mm scale media figures. It's a subject I will come back to in the future when I add more media types to my collection.

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  3. A great looking set of news crew. I really like some of the OOP models. Shame they're not available anymore.

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  4. The female on the far-left is smaller than the others, but would make a great high-school reporter or teenage news-blogger figure. As would her counterpart with the camera.

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  5. Beautiful job on these Bryan, great paintjobs and conversion. I like your original sculpts very much. I think my favorite of the lot is Sarah Barstow. If you hadn't said she was a conversion of the clix Runaway I'd have never been able to tell.

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    1. Cheers, Joe. Sarah looks very different to the original figure. I'm very happy with her conversion.

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  6. You've got a lovely selection there, some I knew and have but others like Andy are brilliant...love him the best!

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    1. Why thank you, Fran, for thinking one of my sculpts is the best out of this bunch. I'm truly flattered!

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  7. Great looking crews. If you can find one, Pulp Miniatures also did a good not April O'neil, but sadly was a limited ed that was hard to find last time I checked. Would fit in nicely though.

    http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j51/InvaderLarb/Pulp%20City/PA060253.jpg

    Seeing 'em all together give the interesting idea for a scenario with each player controlling a team trying to photo so rare (and dangerous) cryptid, like giant alligators in the sewers or something.

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    1. Dammit, Carl, I wish you hadn't shown me that April O'Neill figure. She's gorgeous!

      I like your idea for a scenario centred around media types. It could fit to so many genres.

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  8. Funny how best minis are always those that are OOP

    Great review!

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  9. Those are some pretty cool figures. My fave has to be the guy with the totally aweosme quiff!! hehe

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  10. I'm sure that's Vanessa Feltz on the end!

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  11. Nicely done. And very fun to have in a game. Several ideas spring to mind including a game where the players control journalists trying to get interviews with zeds!

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    1. That's actually not as daft as it sounds. If you give Smart Zombies the ability of speech it could work. Of course, the big problem comes in identifying which zombies are the smart ones!

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  12. Very nice work and review, Bryan. A unique part of the zombie world. You are filling it in quite nicely.

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    1. Thanks, Roger. Some of these figures reviewed here are very old, going back 20 years or more. But they still work today.

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