It's been a while...

So it has come to my attention that I haven't written a blog post since December when the "Zombie & Survivors" rules went online (which are still free by the way!). So I thought it was about time to write a blog and do a little update on me, the business, and aliens....ok, less of the aliens!

Business Stuff:

On January (25th) we (my dad and I) went to Crusade Wargames Show/Convention! We originally bought a 12' table, but the guy next to use didn't turn up, so the guys who run the show gave us a free table! We now had 18' of table space. We already had out display almost set up (it was about 30 minutes before opening time), so we had to re-juggle everything to make it work.

Anyway, the whole day was a success! We had a turnover which was almost 3 times that of our first year (last year) and we had double the amount of orders. We were able to meet new customers, and existing ones (which is always good!), so overall it was a great day.

Future:
Currently I'm looking at bringing some more minis to the UK from outside of Europe. There are roughly 100 figures all from one company. The minis I am going to stock have been around for a long time (some not so long but the majority a long time), but I like some of them, and my dad likes some of them, so why not stock them and have a set for ourselves! I'm mainly hoping that some people are unaware of them. But even if everyone has them, there will always be new customers and our website gets to grow even further. I plan to sell them cheaper too...that's always good...right?

Personal Stuff:
Nothing much is going on with me really (I'm boring!). I have started making a long leather coat (it's not real leather). It's meant to be like the one "Killian Jones aka Hook" wears in "Once Upon A Time" TV show. It's cool, so I thought I would try and make one. Maybe even sell them if I find it easy enough. Below (left) is the WIP so far (with a dodgy photo of me pulling a face for no real reason).

Also the Mass Effect armour is coming along nicely, but I lost my "mojo" with it a bit, so I need to get back to finishing it off... But here's how it looks at the moment (right):

Apart from that nothing is really happening with me. Just plodding along doing this and that, and shouting at the xbox when I get shot on Battlefield 3... Good times...

Anywho, cheers for reading, and I apologise for not getting around the blogs much at all. I do most of my online stuff through Facebook!

Painted Zombies and Armour

I finally finished painting the new costume zombies. I decided to base them on clear bases/counters as they interfere less with the scenery and overall look of the gaming table.

CLICK TO ZOOM

Click to ZOOOM

Speaking of counters/bases, I decided to buy in some transparent coloured counters/bases, as I thought they might be useful as either coloured bases, or markers/identifiers in games. They can easily be painted on, or scenery can be glued to them, so they can be customised to whatever you want.

Personal Armour!

I have been busy building my Mass Effect armour. The frame for the mannequin was built using plastic tubes, and then a stand for it to "stand up".

Below are two photos showing the progress! I have made the 2 bicep pieces, chest piece and the cod piece. and the second photo shows the detailed back piece with spine detail which was difficult to cut out.

Apart from that nothing much is happening. I haven't really done much business stuff this week as it's been fun making the armour...

Anyway, that is all for today I think,

Hope you enjoy!

New Zombies, Painted Zombies, Armour, and a Manikin.

Hi everyone,

I've been a bit quiet around here so here's a large-ish blog for you :)

Miniature Stuff
The "Costume" zombies are now available on the website!! Yay! I was excited when sculpting these as they were kind of fun. I'm currently in the process of painting some up for the website, and here is a WIP photo of what I have done today :)

I have also been painting up all of the WGF zombies over the past few weeks (I haven't touched them in about a week or so), which were also fun to make up. Below are images of the male horde and then the zombie vixens. The male horde come with tiny bases, so they have been based on 30mm to in-keep with our zombies.

A nice colourful bunch I think you would agree!

Personal Stuff:
I have been building some Mass Effect Armour for fun using a combination of EVA foam tiles and "funky foam" sheets.

I found some templates, so I resized them, and cut them out. I then carved out some areas and covered them over with bits of funky foam (dark black parts) to give more detail.



Once everything was cut out, I used a soldering iron to burn lines into the abs area and chest pieces (the dark lines).

I then used a heat gun (purchased for £15 from Tesco), to heat the foam. It becomes "soft", so I was then able to press it against my body until it cooled down a little. It cools after about a minute.









Finally... Kate (my wife) helped wrap me up in duct tape. That is me in the photo, but I covered my head up with that of Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect games...as my face looked weird. However, I chose an equally weird face to cover mine up with (it's been comically morphed...not by me..).

This isn't some weird fetish, I am making an Mannequin/Manikin of my body so I can easily fit the armour onto it.

It's a simple process:
You wear old clothes, you wrap yourself (or get someone else to wrap you up) in duct tape. That person then cuts your clothes off and you struggle/slide out of the "duct tape skin".

You can see in the image that we cut from the ankle to the knee. and from the wrist to the elbow. We also cut along the spine down to the "tail bone" area.


Now I have to build a "skeleton" so that it can "stand up". Once that's done I can pack it full of stuff (newspaper, old clothes, whatever you want), until it is all "tough". I will make a blog of the next steps :P

Once this is done I can continue with the rest of the armour.

Alrighty then, that's all for now!

Cheers for reading as always :)