Deadzone Painting has begun

Begun it has: in a week I’ve finished the five human Stage 3 Plague models from the Deadzone boxed set. Next week I hope to paint the two dogs and the three Stage 2 Plagues. I had a good time painting these models. Aside from the guns, a strange collection of greebles infrequently seen on real-world firearms, the sculping and details were good. Mostly likely the Enforcer models will fare the worst from the casting issues I have previously mentioned.

The first five Deadzone miniatures I’ve painted. I tried for a dead flesh look rather than Mantic’s pink plague. Painted by Tyler Provick.

As I said I painted these guys in just over a week. I cut a lot of corners and the finished job is much rougher than what I normally aim for. I had planned for this since the beginning. My goal is to get painted miniatures into play and not to prove how good a painter I am. I’m happy I made this decision now that I have the models. I wouldn’t want to be pouring my heart and soul into this quality of miniature. Like the paint job, they are gaming pieces, not showcase pieces. It shows, but it also shows in the price so I can’t complain.

Because I was painting five miniatures at the same time I didn’t paint my normal flatting coat. Instead I worked on each area, completing the basecoat, shade and highlight before moving on.

First I painted a scratch coat of my midtone. This didn’t have to be a perfectly even coat and I kept it to a single coat when possible. After this I painted in the shades being rough and not worrying if I shaded an area that was going to be mid or highlight later. Then I went back a painting my midtones before finishing with my highlight. I moved quickly, using loose strokes and didn’t worry too much about blending. Each area received at least two coats of paint so I was able to achieve full coverage while saving a few steps on the basecoat.

For colours I planned to do a blue-tinged flesh colour. Unfortunately it mixed up as a pretty saturated green. I used the same blue to darken the shade and the flesh colour for the highlight. It’s green, which is a bit of a theme in my painting, but I like the look.

Any wounds and the dorsal spikes were painted a brownish red before a couple of glazes of the same colour were added to blend these areas into the green. I used the same glaze on the shoulder and forearm spikes. I painted the dorsal spikes a bone colour but left the other spikes as if they hadn’t yet pierced the skin. The red accent made an excellent finishing touch and I like the models much more with it than without.

Anyone painting any Plague models? Leave a comment and tell me what colour you went with.

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