Miniatures here from two different commissions - one for Wars of the Roses (liveried household billmen) and one for Italian Wars mercenary troops. Just goes to further show how adaptable this Perry kit is!
First up, some of the mercenaries. As with the pikemen (earlier post), I wanted more variety in colour than usual, and to allow for unit-splitting. So the block was broken down into sets of five. This group are in savoy blue, wine red, and white. As they are intended for a Louis XII era Italian Wars force, three have optional 'Renaissance' metal heads in soft hats. This is an interesting transitional period - from the widespread use of armour in the 15th century, to the gradual move towards unarmoured troops throughout the 16th and early 17th century.
Side view of the same unit. I've fitted the chap at right front of this picture (right rear of the base) with a leather jerkin instead of the bright cloth most have. Not sure how common they were on the battlefield, but they were certainly in use by agricultural and arboreal workers, as were the bills themselves.
Classic black and white with red details. I've used this colour scheme on everything from crusader knights to Space Marines, and it always looks striking. The red especially seems to jump out at you. Not sure about the white hat though... maybe I should have gone with red. Bit of hat-angst there.
Side view of the black and white guys. Some striped hose might have worked well here too.
William Stanley household billmen for the Wars of the Roses. I went with more variety than usual on the hose for this unit - even just the front row shows white / red / black / blue / green. The dominant red still shows which side they're on - even if historically nobody knew until the last minute...
Closer shot of the leftmost guys. When the client receives them, he'll do a much better job of ranking them up than I have! Chap at front left seems to be doing his own thing.
Another shot of the other six. This is just half of a unit of 20, half with weapons elevated (like the chap front and centre) and half with weapons levelled, so they'll look much better when correctly grouped.
Derby's men (the other Stanley), The tawny and green colour scheme has been combined here with lots of white in the sleeves and hose, and even one chap with a white quilted jack instead of his livery coat. The three colours work nicely together, like the Indian flag. The badge here is a simplified gold eagle's leg, put on by hand.
Side view.
Another side view.
Opposite ends of the Zombie exercise spectrum here, with my first four completed Fatties, and my first eight completed Runners;
The track suit Runners, finished in the four basic board game colours - as seen in numerous children's games. Finishing each miniature differently isn't just an aesthetic thing, it also helps during gameplay when trying to remember if this- or that- zombie has been activated or is being targeted. You can say "The Green Tracksuit Runner" and it's obvious to everyone which model you mean. I painted these four straight, so the next four can be converted / remodelled. I need at least one guy with an afro, one with a sock-hat, and one with a backwards baseball cap.
Runners in shorts. Slightly more thought went into the colour schemes, as there is physically less clothing on these so they're mostly grey. I made a mistake with the green one, and painted the lining of his hoodie green (I meant it to be a contrasting trim colour, as with the blue / orange dude). As with the other Runners, these were painted straight. The next four will have some conversion work - one idea I have is to convert one chap (possibly all of them) into footballers by painting the clothes in club colours, and adding a BB (suitably painted) as a ball. By "football", I mean of course soccer.
The Fatties - my favourite minis from the Season One game. These have been themed according to occupation. From left, we have a bin man / garbage guy, a gardener, a mechanic, and a decorator. When I get round to jazzing up the bases, they'll be themed too - with litter / weeds / oil / paint spills. I have conversion plans for the next four, including a 'Sons of Anarchy' biker mechanic, complete with beard and bandana. I also want to replicate the famous glamour calendar "Muscular Guy Carrying Tyres" pictures by doing the same with a glamorous Fatty. The remaining two will probably get basic conversions of afro hair and / or baseball caps.
Haven't posted any zombies in a while, so here's a few shots of some of the zombies I've completed recently;
A nice group shot of walkers staggering across the board. Mixture here of Zombicide, Studio Miniatures, and Wargames Factory.
A runner, photo-bombing this walker shot. The walker in the middle is painted up as a doctor, while the runner is inspired by an old but well-known martial arts movie featuring Bruce Lee (or, if you're younger, by a quirky martial arts movie in two parts featuring Uma Thurman).
The Lady in the Daisy Dress. Most of the walkers from the Zombicide set were painted in plain colours, so I thought I'd ring the changes and do one in a flower print get-up.
Basic walkers, with desperate attempts to jazz them up (pink tie and red hair!).
Very bright blue suit on this chap. I promised myself I'd do the first 'try' of zombies as stock, and save any conversion work for tray 2. This miniature will appear again with an added pork pie hat, and piano keyboard tie, as a homage to Mystery Incorporated's Ska zombies.
Scantily-undergarmented lady zombies. Clearly, just before the zombie apocalypse, there was a sale on at Chanel, and they were getting rid of all their classic two-piece affairs.
More basic walkers. Again, when conversion time comes, look out for two of these three remodelled as the Top Gear team (with a Studio Miniatures Hammond, some 5mm shorter than the other two).
Studio Miniatures walkers pained up as office dude, jock, and loony old man in pyjamas. He's so crazy, I was too afraid to finish his base apparently. These chaps are a bit shorter than Zombicide minis, and not as dramatic or characterful, but being multipose hard styrene (like regular plastic kits) they are easy to remodel / convert.
Wargames Factory Zombie Vixens. I added the tray and drinks to the waitress, otherwise they're built as stock. The babe at left has a massive gunshot wound to the thigh, with bone visible. Ideal for the gorier minded player.
These three Wargames Factory Zombie Vixens look like they're dancing. They're meant to be a sort of pant-suited Jackie Brown, Marilyn Monroe, and a really clumsy jogger.
Not all the Wargames factory Vixens came out the way I'd envisioned them. The crawler looks pretty awkward, and would no doubt face-plant immediately if real. The cheerleader needs pom poms or something, and maybe a more glamorous head. To me, she looks like Jodie Foster in a stripey sack.
More vixens, this time with a Studio Miniatures Good Ol' Boy for company. The nurse looks the part, with Sigourney Weaver hair-do, and the hunter was great fun - what a fashion statement, with his choc chip camo top and tiger stripe cargo pants, fluorescent vest, and patriotic cap. The jogger in orange looks almost as bad in this picture as she looks in real life - not all heads go with all bodies. She appears to have been decapitated, and is attempting to stagger home balancing her loose head atop her bloodied neck.
Next up in this series is a 'unit' of 20 pikemen, intended for use as Italian mercenaries. To this end, they have no overall colour scheme; instead, i've gone for four sub-unit colour schemes, so that they can either be split into four (or two), or else all mixed for a more random appearance.
Firstly, a subtle blue and red scheme - unusually (for me) pairing two fairly bright colours, scarlet and savoy blue. As I often do with brighter schemes, a bit of neutral (in this case, off-white) helps to blance things out and stops them looking too garish.
Side view of the 'blue' troops. The red hat on one of the pikemen might be a bit 'too much', but it's easy to see why red / white / blue is such a popular combination for flags!
An even bigger departure for me here, as I tried with these chaps to be as 'un-uniform' as I could - though they still ended up with three red brigandines between them... oh, and another red hat.
Even with the matching brigandines, this grouping still looks much less organised than the others.
Next we have the troops inspired partly by a well-known Swedish furniture chain, and partly by a renaissance painting. This uses the same blue as the red-and-blue scheme at the top of this post, but this time teamed with a nice deep yellow.
Side view of the IKEA guys. I chose mostly heavily-equipped miniatures for this crew, as the blue and yellow looks quite expensive - perhaps suggesting long-service mercenaries, or perhaps a state contingent who could afford better gear.
Finally, a sub-troop inspired by the colours of the Italian flag - though this green perhaps owes more to pizza boxes than to an actual tricolore. Again, I've paired two pretty bright colours here, so there's some off-white and brown to reduce the impact a bit. But not much...
Side view.
More shots of Oxford and Derby's contingents;
Of all the troops I've done for this WoTR project so far, these Oxford guys are my favourites. As mentioned on an earlier post, colour pairings which are 'spectral opposites' can be very eye-catching. Blue and orange are one such combination (orange being made up of the two primary colours which are not blue).
I used a darkish blue edged in white for the badge, and have echoed this blue in some of the sleeves and hose. Dark blue is a good utility colour - it seems to go with almost any other colour (except perhaps the greens and some brighter reds), and means I don't always have to resort to black / white / grey / brown to avoid clashes. If you're wondering what I mean by clashes, try painting something in green and red, or purple and red. It looks awful. So if I'm using a very strong colour which is deep (purple, wine red, dark green) I usually pair it with lighter neutrals (khaki browns, light greys, white). Conversely, if using a bright strong colour like yellow / orange / scarlet, I will tend to pair it with darker neutrals (panzer grey, black, chocolate brown). Not a 'rule' as such - you'll see plenty of exceptions, especially among my medieval subjects.
Derby's men showing their 'green side'.
This shot shows the yellow eagle's leg badge, where it has to cross both livery colours. It works much better against the green. I wish some of these WoTR commanders had consulted me before choosing their badges and liveries. Gold with green and tawny? No... he should have chosen a strong geometric badge in bold white. And don't get me started on the whole "My sun with rays looks nothing like your multi-pointed star badge. Unless it's foggy on the day"... what were they thinking?
More views of the rear of Derby's archers.
These chaps are not intended to be identified with any particular force, so have no livery or uniform at all.
As you can see, there's a real mix of colours here - two blues, green, yellow, white, black, wine red...a colourful bunch indeed. Two of them even wear coloured hats!
I don't really like this much variety in a unit, despite it most likely being historically accurate. I do like some of the combinations though - yellow and green look great together, and the dark blue / wine red looks very classy. I use the same two colours for WoTR Yorkists. Not all the combinations work though... clearly the chap at front left is unmarried, as no wife would let her husband wear green and yellow hose with a sky blue jacket!
Next time I do a batch of 'non-liveried' troops for this era, I'll use mostly / all armoured bodies. That way, the troops can have all different hose and sleeves, but the metal effect will tie the unit together - as I do them all the same way.
These form part of an ongoing project - armies for Louis XII and his allies / enemies for his Italian Wars. These are Italian handgunners, which (for variety) I have selected from three different Italian states;
First up, the bold men of Siena. Deep yellow with small black-and-white badges on either sleeve or breast. As with other bright schemes, I've tried to pair the bright yellow of the jackets with duller hose colours. Sadly, as I paint the rms before final assembly, I didn't notice until too late that three of the gunners have more or less the same pose... Hopefully the different bodies / heads minimise this.
Side view of the men from Siena. Two of the gunners have optional Perry 'Renaissance heads', metal accessories to allow more variety in your armies. They're a useful way to make the troops appear later than the kit intends, as the move into the 16th century saw more cloth and less metal on its fighting men.
The Florentine contingent. A general red and white theme here, with red fleur-de-lis badges (they look better in real life than in the pictures!). With mostly white clothing, you can afford to go bold with colour in places you normally wouldn't - hence the chap at the back scoring for a red hat, and two of the troop sporting red hose.
Side view of the Florentines. Again, some of them are equipped with metal heads in hats, rather than the kit heads with (mostly) helmets. Slightly higher proportion among the Florentines than the Sienese, reflecting Florence's wealth and modernity.
Papal States this time, as the white badge on red contrasts nicely with the red badge on white of the Florentines. A slightly duller red was used, with plain hose colours (though I wish I'd not used green on one of them, black and white might have worked better).
Side view of the Papal States troops.
The traitor Stanley! Boo hiss. Much as I've hated the man since childhood, there's no doubting he's got a great livery. I chose a slightly darker / duller green than I've used elsewhere (for Henry Tudor, for example), as putting two bright colours together can make the miniatures look a little garish.
As the archers turn left-on to loose at the enemy, the dull green makes them almost camouflaged. Appropriate for a turn-coat... ahem. I went with dull or white hose for the most part, again to offset the orange / tawny of the jackets.
Badges are again a departure from Citadel Six. The gold eagle's leg is done in two shades of ochre, and works better on the front (dull green background) than it does on the back, where the ochre sort of 'disappears' against the tawny.
Usual mix of poses, as I try to show the front rank 'loosing' and the rear rank nocking / shouting / standing around.
