The final stretch looms - the next update should be the final piece. Here's a little taster to whet the old appetite as I need to spend a couple of evenings building a world for D&D (if anyone's interested in that I can talk about it here - I'm basically turning the Heptarchy into a fantasy world).

Here's the sculpted tree in position on the undercoated vignette base.

 And here's the undead horde:
 And here's the wittyly anachronistic Ainsty Castings gravestones

 Last few compositional experiments before settling on the final layout:

 The most annoying thing is that on these photos I can again see mould lines that I missed. I must take more care on the prep next time. Thankfully the next project is a couple of single miniatures so I'll be forced to concentrate on the details rather than the overall effect.

Oh - and this post marks another Milestone: I've just passed 1000 page views. Thank you all for your continued support.

It's true what they say; no idea you have after midnight is a good one. I performed surgery on the thumb with a pair of snips. Although this restored some movement it did give me a few more issues.

However, the most important point was that I was able to move my digits about enough to crack out the sculpting gear.

I've never been a particularly good sculptor - the Top Secret Filler Project will amply prove in a couple of weeks - but it's nice to see the techniques come dribbling back. So what did I need to do?

The cut and shut and method of the conversions on the walking dead was fine for tabletop use but for a diorama it's worth going the extra mile.

So this chap had some hair added to cover the complete lack of neck and to help blend the head into the existing shoulders. I also added a couple of tears and rents in the material of the coat - fairly simple musket damage.



This chap needed some raggedy bits of material and flesh to show where the leg had been ripped off (sorry about this poor photo)



As to leg thief this one wasn't a conversion so much as an issue with the original miniature; the Zombie sprues, although excellent, sometimes go from rotting corpse to skeletal too quickly depending on the choice of pieces and so it was with this chap. So a bit of torn material added around the shoulder joint helps sell the transition.

I actually forgot to take a picture of him, so you'll have to take my word for it.

Finally, this fellow needed some extra attention. As he'll be leading the charge and so will be the most immediately visible of the horde, he needed a little extra attention. The zombie arms did not really fit well with the ECW body, so the jacket was extended and torn to help blend the two pieces together; at the same time I added some tears in the trousers and jacket to make him look a bit more beaten up.



I also decided - based on rewatching Mark Gatiss' Horror Europa at the approach to Zombies in The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue - I'd like him to have an obvious cause of death; so a quick edged trauma to the head was added.



These chaps, along with the gravestones and a couple of bits for the Top Secret Filler Project, were undercoated today; so my Half Term Plan is to crack on with the painting tomorrow.

Incidentally, you can see in the background there the ridiculous amount of greenstuff I bought off ebay by mistake. I thought I was ordering 6'' and instead got 36''. Still, I'm not going to run out any time soon, eh?

The thumb is about healed enough to do some carving today; painting and sculpting will take another few days, I think.

So, where did we get to? I've actually spent a very Cooper-ish evening watching Twin Peaks, drinking coffee and eating pie and then shining my shoes to a mirror finish. Inbetween episodes, I've managed to more or less finish the basic terrain and play around with some composition:



I quite like the progression of the tombstones to draw the eyes up. The gravestones are from the wonderful Ainsty Castings; full of detail and character. I'm quite looking forward to painting them up.

The view down the hill to see the shambling mass:



The view up the hill to see our noble heroes.



So assuming that I can bend my thumb properly the next step is to slap some filler on the ground and then sculpt the additional bits on the undead horde. Following this, painting ahoy. So expect to see some progress over half term.

*watching Twin Peaks has got me asking two questions. 

First, does anyone make a 28mm Not Dale Cooper?
Second, how hard would it be to paint a floor like this?

A bad week of parents' evenings and marking has severely cut into my plans for the week. As it happens, I only managed to get the base cut from some offcut MDF at work:

before this evening sitting down to some cutting and sticking. Once I'd got the base in front of me, it rapidly became apparent that my original sketch included too many of the vitally challenged.

A quick rethink led me to these fine chaps. They are constructed from the old faithful Games Workshop Zombie sprue from the turn of the century. Lacking the more outre design elements which came to plague later GW sculpts, these are incredible fodder for conversions, offering arms, heads, bodies and legs which can be mixed and matched to your heart's content.

In order to help anchor the period I carved up a couple of the Warlord Parliamentarians so that some of the foul undead horde would be dressed in a slightly more formal fashion than the run of the mill peasants that the rest of them represented. The Warlord sprues also furnished some headgear which helps give the shamblers some character.







Why is this chap crawling?


It might be something to do with this chap's choice of blunt instrument...


So tomorrow will probably be terrain building and greenstuffing on the brain hungry mass with painting on the schedule for weeknights next week.

And so we begin with the second one.

As any general will tell you, detailed planning is the key to a successful operation.
So here we have my detailed plan.



Stunning, I'm sure you'll agree.

Our stars for this project are the Warlord Games Parliamentary Infantry; phenomenal value as this box cost me only £12 at a show. That's £12 for 40 miniatures. I'm just going to say that again - £12 for 40 figures. Now I know the usual RRP is £22 - but that's still around 50p per chap. As I say - incredible value. Three of them will be forming the main body of our gallant heroes whilst the rest of them... ah, well, that would be telling.



The sculpts on these seem to be better than the British Line Infantry used in the last project; there are fewer soft areas and the details are generally crisper. The faces, as with the other Warlord plastics I used, are a particular strength; full of character and emotion. I just hope the painting does them justice.

Poses are a little limited as the bandoliers and apostles limit which arms and muskets and can arranged on which bodies. This could well lead to a lot of repetition if you were building a proper wargaming force; for limited use in a vignette, there's no concerns really.

The only lead addition to this is the Rabble Rouser I bought the pack for; indeed, the whole concept of the piece hung on finding the right figure in the right pose, so I was happy to find this chap. Here he is with his comrades.



So tomorrow will be the construction of the Opposition; this will require a trip into the depths of the garage as I pretend to be Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Lead Pile. After that will be the start of construction on the scenic elements. This all works out quite nicely as I'm teaching the Wars of the Three Kingdoms at the moment and so can pass this all off as research if I talk fast enough.

In other news, Lion Rampant has caught my eye with the thought of cobbling together some Low Fantasy, semi-historical stuff but that's on the back-burner.

I must resist the Siren call of Shinybloodyitis.