Zomtober: A Zombie By Any Other Name...

As I mentioned in the last post, I'm returning to participating in the annual Zomtober blogging event in which participants paint at least on zombie or survivor each week during the month of October.

I'm hoping to do more that just a single model or even single post each week if I can and so this might just be my first submission of the week.

I've been known to stretch the definition of what qualifies as a zombie previously and so I thought that this year I'd back up my claims  with the Oxford English Dictionary, which reads thusly:

zombie
/ˈzɒmbi/
noun
noun: zombie; plural noun: zombies

1.

• a corpse said to be revived by witchcraft, especially in certain African and Caribbean religions.

• (in popular fiction) a person or reanimated corpse that has been turned into a creature capable of movement but not of rational thought, which feeds on human flesh."a world overrun by zombies"

INFORMAL

• a person who is or appears lifeless, apathetic, or completely unresponsive to their surroundings.

PHILOSOPHY

• a hypothetical being that responds to stimulus as a person would but that does not experience consciousness.

• a computer controlled by another person without the owner's knowledge and used for sending spam or other illegal or illicit activities.

2.

• a cocktail consisting of several kinds of rum, liqueur, and fruit juice.

As you can see, there's a fairly large amount of leeway on what exactly constitutes a zombie. So let's get on with the excuses.

So you'll have noticed that this large bat-like creature is a vampire, not a zombie. However, I would argue that a vampire qualifies as "a reanimated corpse that has been turned into a creature...which feeds on human [blood]."

No?

Okay, this one isn't a zombie, even though he's dead.

The miniature is from Crooked Dice and is one of the villainous co-stars in the Vlad's Army feature pack, which I'm going to get round to playing at some point, I think I have almost everything I need, although I might need to rebase some bats.

In terms of painting I kept things incredibly simple, just using Wyldwood contrast paint over Grey Seer and then giving it a gentle drybrush to highlight.

You might notice that the base is a little Venetian for the English countryside, and that's because I intend to give him a second life in my procured strigoi force in Carnevale as a monstrous Stryzga, which I believe is a vampire that has been fed only on lunatics and other vampires.

These next miniatures have been cobbled together using bits from various Frostgrave sprues after it dawned on me that I could use the sprues I had to create a few more models for my Freedom Force project.

I'm quite pleased with my ingenuity to be honest.

They were painted simply with Kantor Blue or Emperor's Children drybrushed over a black base and the skin was done simply with Skeleton Horde contrast paint.

They are actually my attempt at Dark Men, the mind controlled and disfigured minions of Shadow. The come in two varieties, Purple and Blue. Purple Dark Men have the power to disappear and attack from the shadows whilst Blue Dark Men add lightning bolts to the mix.

Do they count as zombies?

Well, due to being mind controlled they are not capable of rational thought; their shambling gait and pallid skin makes them appear lifeless; the attack as a horde and they live amidst a subterranean ruined (almost apocalyptic) version of Patriot City created by Shadow.

So they are sort of zombies. Metaphorical zombies? Zombie-like?

Well, they at least look enough like zombies to be used as such, so I'm saying they count.

I still might try to get a proper zombie done before the weekend as insurance. Not that the zombie police will be round if I don't.

Acquired: 83
Painted: 235
Lead Mountain: 450