Gray Havens Finest

I finished up the police officers the other day. I really like these models, my only complaint is they all have Corpral or Sergent stripes on the sleeves, and I had planned on painting one up as a Lieutenant to be the supervisor. I didnt notice this until I was sell underway painting. Oh well.

Two more buildings will complete this town, its taking me forever and I really want to get done.
Till next Time,
Papa Spanky

They're coming to get you Barbara...

I finished up my second round of zombies a few weeks back. There are 4 Zombiecide zombies and the rest are Mantic ghouls and zombies mixed. Everyone is painted the same dull tones as before, with exception for the Zombicide ones.Those guys will be "bosses" so I put a little color in these so they stand out a bit.



This is a group shot of all of my finished Zombies so far.

Tomorrow: Just where did these zeds come from anyway?

Papa Spanky

Watching the Detectives

I finished the Detectives minitures from Road Kill. They turned out pretty good considering they are marginal sculpts with horrible casting. However finding modern US police and detectives not kitted out in SWAT gear is not easy, so these are still a good find. They will also double as FBI or some other Gubmint agency in some games. I still have no names as of yet, so if there are any good suggestions, shout em out.

Papa Spanky

Dark Knight, Hunger Games minis

I got a few Dark Knight Clix models and several Hunger Games "Clix" models a few weeks back. The HG ones weren't really Clix, they were mounted on a pedestal but are the same figure wise.
Anyway, I re-based them and gave them all a wash of GW delvan mud and Presto! More fodder for the town of Gray Haven. I think they turned out pretty good for what they are and the time invested. I did have to add a hand swap on the big guy who is hunched over as he was holding this weird rock/ball looking thing in one hand and a sword in the other. Oh and that IS Bruce Wayne. As fodder. Yep.

Comments welcome!
Papa Spanky

Im coming (back), and hells coming with me...

or just a zombie horde. That look like hell. OK so they are not that bad, but I'm getting ahead here.
 Sorry for the lack of updates but when life goes up against blogging and hobbies, life wins, every time. It sucks, but that's the natural order of things. I wont bore you with the details though.
 So here it is, my craptastic first zombie horde:

To be honest, they are exactly as I expected them to be and I'm really actually happy with them. The craptastic part is the fact that they are made up of GW and WF zombies, and the GW ones were originally done a long time ago for Necromunda. Some of them still have weapons. (I let the one guy keep the second edition Ork pistol on purpose, he earned it)
 As individuals, most of the models are pretty bad. But as a horde, they make a great character. To me the zombie horde has always been the character, not so much the individual zed. I painted them (with help from my daughter)  with that in mind, sticking to 4 colors and a wash.

It also will help me differentiate survivors from zeds more easily, as the survivors will stand out more.

Speaking of survivors, I got  a few more to show ya. 

I didn't give these any names yet, and I dont think I will. These fellers will be part of my "catch all" group of models that will fill in when I need thugs, gangers, protesters or any other nameless fodder in a game. 

Till next time,

Papa Spanky

Streetlights, people (oh oh ohhhhh!)

Today I finished up some streetlights for my town. I originally was going to cast my own, but for my own sanity I decided to purchase and modify some of the plasticville ones.

 Heres what I did:
 I clipped off the plastic bases from each pole. After that I used a dremel to smooth down the rough edges left from the base. Once those were done, I went about epoxying magnets into each base of the lights (fortunately they were hollow). After they dried I drilled tiny holes in the sidewalks of the boards at predetermined areas, and glued magnets into those. This was the hardest part as you need to keep the orientation of the magnets correct so the don't accidentally end up repelling each other. A quick rusty wash and a dull coat finish and these were done.

I will cast several of my scratchbuild lightpoles to put on the main drag on the south end of town. I just thought the plasticville ones were more subtle and saved a ton of time!

That covers the streetlights; now for the people. Two more for the population sign.

This gentleman is Danny Ling. A retired army reservist, he has lived in Gray Haven since he was 7 and will defend his home from all threats- foreign, domestic and other worldly.
Another stock Foundry model, I hated this one at first but when the paint went on it really grew on me. 

This guy is Dmitri. Just Dmitri. I thought he might kill me if I asked anything else.
Another stock foundry with some birch seeds on the base. Made em from my own tree! Honestly I had trouble with a back story for him, so that's why his is kinda lame.

There was something else I wanted to show you guys, what was it...

Oh yeah I finished the massive Mysterious East building!

This an import- export business located right next door to the Hydracorp building, and it opened about 3 months after Hydracorp moved in. Coincidence?...

I thought this building/ business would do good to forward many pulp or horror story lines. Practically anything can show up in town from all over the world and now have a plausible reason. Sometime in the future I might do a basement to this building and have it connect to Hydracorp and an underground bunker/lab/facility. This would all be on a separate board of course!

The front office. clear acetate line the windows. 

The rear storage and shipping area. Frosted acetate back here so no one can really see in!

The roof is in two separate pieces, one for the front and one for the back. I made it that way because it was easy to build and now i can use it to hide the storage area from players if needed. 

The rear loading area. 

Those following along will remember this building was made from storage crates, like the Hydracorp one was. It was a bit more persnickety having difficult cuts for the L shape. 

 For my parting shot I give you Gray Haven in its unfinished glory. I added a few things that might become permanent for the shot. 

Don't stop believin'   

Papa Spanky

Girls night out... at the post office

V and Tia are a couple of Hip- Hop dancers who live in Gray Haven. They are saving money to move to New York, but in the meantime they post weekly dance instructional videos on their YouTube channel. Their Stamina and agility really paid off when they had to stake a 200 year old vampire outside of a Thortons on I-80 one night on a return trip from Chicago.

I took quite a bit of time working on these two, I especially like the way V's sunglasses and MARPAT BDUs turned out. (my first attempt at both) Both girls are modeled with thongs peeking out, so I had to paint them. 

Sammie Mattews loves fashion, shopping and social media. So when zombies invaded her favorite mall, she accessorized a black SMG and an oversized bag (for extra magazines and lip gloss) and went about her business.

ShooterSam@twitter 

#Zomapocsales OMG Aero is offering 50 off to anyone who helps clear out the z's from the store security gate. I hope they still have that pink top in my size!

I painted this one based off my daughters request for a model with purple hair. A yellow dress then seemed the best choice for balance. all three of these girls are from Copplestone Castings "Babes With Guns" set.

And now the post office:

As promised- finished shots. There is glass in the windows and doors (plastic sheet actually) but you cant really tell in these pics. The interior was detailed with post office posters I found on the web and boxes from Tommyguns paper terrain. The floor is patterned scrapbook paper. 

Thanks for looking, Q and C welcomed!

Papa Spanky

More Residents for Gray Haven

Hi guys,
As promised, here are a few more residents I painted up.

Helen Larson is a divorcee mom of a two. Her daughter is in college, her son is home from college on a early release program. (read as kicked out). A product of the 80's horror genre, Helen knows just how to investigate dark rooms alone, run upstairs instead of out the door, and to turn your back on the bad guy you just knocked down because you know like, he must be dead.

This model is a heroclix I got from the flea market. I'm pretty sure she was sci fi because of her pants and boots. (her pants have a thick "seam" in the from and back.) I wanted her to be the 40 something mom who tries really hard to still be a hot and hip teenager. To that end, I painted her pants to look like jeans to hide the seams, and I tried to make her boots look like Uggs. The Vickies Secret half shirt finishes the ensemble. All in all, not bad for a Heroclix model.

Franklin Jones moved to Gray Haven 3 years ago. A quiet man, not a lot is known about him. Some think he did time. Some say he moved here to escape a tragic past. And still others think hes some sort of government agent. Whatever the case, when trouble shows up in town he tries to avoid it. And it still usually finds him. Too bad for trouble. 

This is the stock Hammer - Biker model from USX modern day heroes. Fun to paint, it ws my first attempt at a shaved head model. 

Thanks for looking, please drop some comments if you want!

Papa Spanky

Fear the Full Moon

A while back I was looking around for a few things that go bump in the night for Gray Haven.  I happened upon the Bones section of Reaper miniatures, where I found this Guy.

Here he is in a a couple of shots all painted up.

Hanna makes a stand against the werewolf on the roof of her shop.

Now I'm going to do a review on this figure, because this model was really a treat. As I said before this is from Reaper minis in their Bones section. First off, this mini was $1.99. Yes that's right, $1.99!!! But wait a minute. On their site they advertise this as some sort of resin that you don't need to prime. Bah. I thought this was going to be some kinda finecrap, so I didn't get my hopes up. At a buck ninety nine though, I had to give it a shot. 

I received the the mini with a bunch of other things I ordered a few days later. (I should note here that this order was from FRP Games, not Reaper. )

I quickly opened the package and gave the model a once over. It was very nicely molded with zero mold lines and no visible bubbles. I then noticed it wasn't really a resin as it was kinda squishy. So did the next thing that popped in my head and dropped it on the concrete floor. Round 1 to the wolfman, as it survived without a ding. So then I threw him about 20 ft, landing him on a throw rug over concrete. Round two to the wolfman as he survived this also and I gained some respect for this miracle material. Did I mention that he was $1.99?

A few weeks later I washed him up for painting. No priming necessary is toted on the package so I didn't. Before his proper paintjob was given I tested a few materials. Everything stuck. Paint, washes, watered down paint, inks, dry powders, Everything. While painting him I noticed another great thing about the flexibility of the material, and that was I could move things like his arm or tail out of the way enough to get at the hard to reach spots. I really like this stuff!

Ok so let me sum it up:

Price- 10  ($1.99!! nuff said) 

Material -  10  (maybe I had a good batch but this stuff is impressive)

Availability- 8 ( yes this model is readily available, but the bones line is limited to fantasy so far and I really want to see the chronoscope line come out in this stuff. Really. Really. Badly.)

Let me know if you've tried Bones and what you thought. Questions and comments welcome as always.

 Thanks for reading, this was a wordy one. 

PapaSpanky

First Gray Haven resident

Hey followers!
Sorry for the lack of updates, but its been busy, busy, busy. I spent some of March and all of April making sets for my daughters school. She was in the play of "Once on This Island Jr." and I put pictures of some of my work on my other blog. You can find the link on the side if you are interested.

Right then, Ive been bangin' together lots for the town of Gray Haven, painting buildings, getting stuff ready to cast, etc.  More updates will be forthcoming. Doing all of this work did show one flaw with my town. It had no residents! I decided to paint some up, but since the last 28mm I painted was nearly two years ago (!), I started off slowly.

Meet Hanna Jablonski (aka Hanna Fury)

Hanna is the 30 something owner of N.E.R.D. games. When zombies, vampires and other creatures  started showing up in town, Hannas secret wish had come true. Donning last years Gencon outfit and picking up twin PPKs, super hero Hanna Fury was born.

This is a Heroclix mini I stripped down and re-painted.  I wasn't really invested much in this mini so that why I warmed up my painting fingers on her, in case I bombed bad I wouldn't miss much. I think she turned out pretty good for a warm up.

Questions and comment welcome!