I have two nephews (brothers), who have birthdays very close to each other in the same month and so we tend to give them their gifts at a date between the real days. They each have a particular favourite animal - the older one likes Pandas while the younger likes Meerkats. These animals have been the subjects of small collections over the years and so I decided to add to their numbers with a couple of special scratchbuilt models, zombie style.
I decided to use the previously made casts from' Plants vs Zombies', ( made for my grandson), and see if they would translate into a panda and a meerkat with a bit of muzzle addition and some ear action. As you can see from the above, the standard round zombie head, with added putty (marked in red checks), can be made to do the job as two different animals quite well. At least it looked like there wouldn't be that much extra work, until I actually got started. Always the way isn't it?
This is the panda in its raw form with special zombie' reaching' arms. The main deviation from the original z's were the arms of the two newly resurrected animals, as their attitude to z'hood is defined by what they are going to do. I decided that the panda was going on a shuffling "where bamboo?' rampage, while the meerkat was just on z.watch, waiting for the clan to arrive before hunting some poor innocent cobras or something.
Here are the moulds for the legs, eyes and arms. I decided not to use the cast arms as they did not suit the final forms I had in mind for the models. I must have had some heads and torsos already made and that did save a bit of modelling time. One of the main things about a zombie is its eyes, usually vacant and madly staring, but also often of different sizes. A panda actually has quite small eyes ( the black fur ring around them giving the impression of large size and hence "cuteness"), so I would retain the one huge bulging eye but use a smaller bead painted red for the 'real' eye. The meerkat would get both crazy eyes from the original zombie men because it looks more like a weaselly little man anyway.
Work has begun on the new boys and they do indeed look like their sketched pictures. I had to change the mouths quite a bit as the original ones just did not suit their prospective owners. There is a lot of cream coloured resin visible here but this would change and both bodies would have to be covered with a lot of putty before the end. So much for my short cut idea.
Pandas are chubby and a newly zombified panda needs some padding in the form of an aluminium foil body suit. I had some thinking to do about the hands so they were left till the end. The 'pigeon-toed ' stance was planned as it adds to the ridiculous nature of the whole exercise.
The bases are really one piece of plaster split in half, super glued for sealing and ground flat for stability. Making them out of the one piece sort of unified the look of the models and of the gifts in general I felt, as they would be presented at the same time, in the same box.
More of the additional putty work can be seen and the modelling of the meerkat's jaw and teeth. Also this shot shows the cast legs put to good use, remembering that it is only one basic leg, ground at different angles to fit both sides of the body.
The line on the head is the junction of two separately cast halves as the moulds didn't lend themselves to a single mould pour.
. All the extra putty is on, areas of bare flesh have been ground out through the fur, the bases have been surfaced, fangs have been inserted (as well as bamboo) and claws have been glued in place.
The meerkat's head is turned to the left but his paws are in that typical, "I'm on guard and I can stay like this all day"pose.
The main thing this shot shows is the texturing that I have added to the fur.
These are the tools I used to scrape the fine lines into the putty to simulate fur. I used a thin cutting wheel in a motor tool to cut tiny teeth into two different knife blades. The rounded blade allowed me to follow contours on the models more easily.
Undercoated in all their glory but without their eyeballs which have been painted and glossed separately.
The finished models, painted ready for boxing and presentation to the boys on that 'between the actual birthday, day'. I used Citadel acrylics as well as their Shades (washes) and made sure the bare skin was painted a suitably dead colour to contrast with natural fur colours - easy in the case of the Panda but tough in the Meerkat. For a seemingly drab desert animal, it has a surprisingly complex coat.
I think the crazy red eye works well on the Panda don't you?
I couldn't pass the chance to put all the zombies together and here they are. Pity most of them are with a certain grandchild because they missed one hell of a party!
