Abomination | Dragons of Lancasm

The regular abominations seems pretty minor in gameplay now (we have the wolf abominations, two rat cards and two blob cards in our regular spawn deck), except when they show up very early in a game!

Two standard abominations ready for use.

Painting these guys was fairly straight forward – pale flesh, coloured in the rope & bits of clothing, and light brown ink for shading. I did try something different in the middle of this, after the initial flesh base-coat. I mixed a little green and grey with my flesh and mottled patches of the skin. It looked a bit too strong and overdone, so I went back over most of the exposed skin with a paler skin colour (called “fair maiden” – I use it mostly for pale ‘elf skin’, or highlighting) and that blended the skin tones nicely. The ink then darkened everything to a nice finish and I spent a little bit of time highlighting muscles and then teeth, eyes and blood on the fists and arms.

Abominations – Rear and slightly out of focus

Abominations – side view

The Ablobination has been the most annoying figure to paint of all the Zombicide miniatures.

Originally, I wanted to copy the appearance from the leaflet – a greyish flesh with purple tinges. I started painting this right at the beginning alongside the ‘rat, and it was the very last to finish (even after necromancers).

Ablobination – front

I looked at a few online versions and didn’t like the look of the one purple toned figure I did see. I didn’t like an all green one I’d seen either, but wondered if I could get something between the two that would look okay. I started with a light grey base coat and then some green shading – not happy. I repainted most of the skin in flesh tones and only felt that was a slight improvement. I could have gone the same style as the Abominarat (flesh, browns, etc – there’s spikes and warts!) but I wanted something with its own distinct colours. At this stage I was only happy with my brown leather/clothing scraps on the figure. My next thought was to go with a more fleshy style so I used a red ink over the entire figure. This replaced all the remaining green and gave me a dark shading which I didn’t mind. I then spent time going lightening the flesh and adding some dark pinks and red/browns to emphasise shading or detail the markings on the skin. The claw got a bit more red to suggest muscle rather than just stretched skin and my fair maiden on claws and the head. Some ink darkened the claws and helped pick out head detail, with a little white highlighting – trying to make the head as skull-like as I could. Black spikes, hints of yellow on some of the lumps/warts, and orange in the eye sockets with yellow pupils.

Ablobination – rear

That only leaves two Abominations to paint – the troll and the minotaur. Like the rat, these are very large figures, so they should be easier to paint, and I expect to have a lot of fun with the minotaur – probably something between my existing minotaur figures and the leaflet picture. They have been undercoated and I’ll probably start them during the week unless I get stuck into another project.

Next – assorted Necromancers!

It’s taken me a week (multiple attempts, time and lighting) to get a good set of photographs. The painting itself was over three or four weeks and has been some of the most enjoyable miniature painting that I’ve done. The largest figure is about 90mm high, making a wonderful change from trying to get detail on something like a 20mm halfling. I had a good idea of colour schemes for these figures – mostly following the published images/cards/rulebook. Most of them got used in a game before I’d finished everything and they’ve had plenty of favourable comments from friends over the last month. They’ve all had two solid coats of clear acrylic since I expect to continue playing Zombicide fairly often – and the figures get a lot of handling.

“A dire rat can grow up to 4 feet long…” (D&D 3.5 Monster Manual) By scale, this guy stands 13 feet high.

The first figure I really started with was the Abominarat and I had a ball! If I had spent that much time on anything previously I would have been really tired of the painting and just wanted to finish and get it out of the way.

I started with a base coat of flesh, then started building up the fur and trying a few different colours to bring out the skin folds, spikes, lumps, etc. Brown ink shading (I’m so happy to have been introduced to Army Painter Quickshade – thanks Azazel) darkened everything and brought out some of the detail. I slightly prefer the lighter flesh tones on most of the rat that I had before the quickshade, but to highlight most of the skin back to something lighter was too much work. I highlighted some of the fur and went on with pinks and yellows for all the growths, then spikes, teeth, eyes, etc. The ‘rat was impressive on the game board simply because of it’s size – with colour it really stands out now – as do the other abominations.

Abominarat – Rear view

Side view… I don’t think he has a “good” side.

As well as looking through my rulebooks & leaflets, I spent some time browsing the internet to see what other people had done and watched some YouTube painting video’s. There’s some very good stuff around. I’ve kept images of most of the abominations, necromancers and survivors to use as a guide. It’s easier to load an image on a screen than be peering at a card while painting.

You really don’t want both of these on the board at once…

I thought the wolfbominations (I’ve got two) might be easier to paint than most of the other minis so they came next. One wolf was base coated in light grey (mid grey fur) and the other in mid grey (dark brown/black fur) – and that’s most of the work done. White on ribs and teeth, a dark pink/red for exposed flesh and around the mouth, touched up after ink shading with bright red. A little bit of highlighting on the limbs, black on nose and claws and fluoro orange in the eyes. A little extra red for blood near teeth and on the raised claw.

Side and rear view

They came out very well, and I’ll use the same principles to paint all 24 of my wolfz later. They are already undercoated, and will be good to see how I go with a large group of multiple similar figures. I’m considering three base colours – light grey, mid grey and light brown. I don’t plan on painting all the general zombies (walkers, runners, fatties) but the wolf abominations were fairly quick and the zombie wolfz should be too. Plus, I don’t have any wolf figures in my general D&D miniatures collection and if I don’t paint the exposed flesh of some of the wolfz they can double as normal wolves in other games.