My grandson is turning 4 next month and has discovered the game Plants vs Zombies. I had mentioned to my daughter, a huge zombie fan, that I happened to have a spare set of legs (originally to be used for the Typhus model), and that maybe he would like a friendly zombie figure for his birthday. It was then I was introduced to the phenomenon that is "Plants vs Zombies. I googled the site, took photos of the images and printed out some to help with the modelling and these are the ones made so far. The zombie figures stand about 140mm tall, I'm not too sure how the others measure up in correct size relation to them, but I doubt that a 4 yr old really worries about such things. He has assured me that he knows that they are models and not toys and that he would really like to start a collection of his own. Normally this would be crazy talk for such a young kid but I know the type of household he lives in and I believe he certainly would know how to treat them.
Above are some of the pages in my sketch book which allow me to come to grips with my subjects. I was using this modelling project to practice mould making and casting in resin to a greater extent than I have before. I could see the zombies in particular have a great range of forms and I did not want to have to make totally new ones every Christmas and birthday, or for as long as the interest reigns.
This meant the modelling of certain parts of the body - a generic head, two sizes of eye, torso, a right and left arm and one dual purpose leg. I figured that casting two legs and grinding the hip area to be either right or left was easier than making two masters.
Here are the masters modelled in Apoxie Sculpt. Note the angled shoulder and hip areas and the basic form of the hands. I tried to simplify the shapes of all these masters so that any changes made later could be as painless as possible. Addition of fingers (so important in the' grasping at nothing' of a zombie) would have made the moulding very complex, as would the gums and teeth.
Once the figure was posed, the clothes had to added in their many combinations based on what character was needed, so a great deal of detailed modelling was not going to be avoided in any case.
These pictures show the masters, moulds and castings of the main parts of the zombie body against a scale for reference. My dad would have been proud of me - engineer's son and zombie maker!
Some of the moulds gave problems. The leg mould did not allow the resin to get around the ankle turn and a cavity formed which had to be filled with putty. I did not think the large head could be done as a single item (the face had too many undercuts), so I poured it in two halves, to be joined after fully curing.
As usual with silicon moulds you can see the registration knobs/ holes and the two cuts in the rubber, one for resin, the other for air to escape.
Here are the halves of the head as well as fingers on the hands made in two different ways. They really gave me a problem as Apoxie is not that good at sticking to a skinny finger shape. I came up with about four different ways to make a zombie's finger and probably used them all.
This is what faced my wife on the dining room table the morning after - cute eh?
The joys of casting. Suddenly there's more than one! These little guys have legs joined (twisted foot and all, for one of them), gums and teeth inserted but no permanent arm poses as yet. I thought that the main clothes, shirt and jacket, would be easier to add without an arm being in the way.
The eyes, seen here with inserted wire handles, were being prepped for airbrushing after a session in a power drill spinning against sand paper to thoroughly round and smooth them. The wires were also useful in rotating the eyes while being sprayed a nice gloss off-zombie-white.
A selection of hands with attached fingers. The first one, on the right, was pure putty and took forever - method rejected. The others are variations of plastic tubes bent in a flame and inserted onto a wire drilled into the hand. I even cut the tubes into small sections so that the curves in the fingers could be followed - third from the right. Anyway they were all used, I mean a zombie's fingers are the body parts most likely to fall off on a daily basis aren't they?
What a fine body of body parts. You can see the zombie head joins as well as the bent arm, (made easy by cutting the arm at the elbow and filling the subsequent joint). Different poses are easy to achieve with a slight adjustment of where an arm or leg is attached. The large heavy heads meant that the models couldn't stand on their own two feet and they needed to be attached to a larger base - these were all made at the same time by pouring a plaster slab and dividing it between them.
In this photo can be seen two individual 'angry gourds', three cast mushrooms and three peashooters. By the photos at the back you can see the variety of characters using the basic zombie body.
This is the standard form of the Peashooter, one of the zombies' main enemies. I decided to make two forms, the all green, and the bright blue 'Ice' shooter. Both had their cast heads mounted on a curved wire attached to a Games Workshop plastic figure base. This base was then surrounded by four curled leaves on which the plant gets around -very Triffid like.
I couldn't work out a method for casting these leaves even though 12 were required, so I just made a simple production line of putty, cut flat into a leaf shape then laid on pieces of plasticine grooved as per a leaf. Left overnight they cured hard and could be cleaned up and mounted around each stalk's base.
The problem with putty is that it's not as robust as resin.
A very angry hot pepper and a really dumb bulb of garlic were two of the other plants made this time round. They have yellow eyes here because they are being undercoated together and the yellow is Play Dough doing service as a paint mask. I used pearly plastic beads bought at Spotlight in a large string of many different sizes so there will be no eye problems for a long time to come.
The pepper has no visible means of support so it needed a place to call home. A little corner of the garden would do and this was knocked together quite quickly with scored and distressed plastic sheet.
The 'Ice' Peashooter has special ice crystals growing out of its head and these were made from cured putty sections, ground to points on the sander. All the colours were either Citadel or Vallejo acrylics airbrushed to give a good even coat, then gloss coated with floor polish.
One thing I made sure of,especially with these peashooters,was that the eyes were consistent in shape,size and painting method. To ensure this,I made a stamping tool to impress into the soft putty.
The three little mushrooms didn't pose a problem but just as much care was taken to get the eyes in particular, correct.
The Jalapino
I really like this guy, he's so angry and Red! You can see the use of the pearl bead for the eye here and the string hole even makes a perfect pupil. I was going to paint this hole black but then had the idea of using a short piece of plastic rod (painted black) and inserting it in the hole. Perfect! Even better was the idea to round this plastic rod in a flame to a mushroom shape and stick that in the hole, more perfect (if that's possible).
Meet the tough boys, and one idiot. They were all made using the foil core wrapped in gourd and garlic shaped putty - I love them! That shiny, pearly garlic colour is Vallejo's Metal Medium, one of my favourite paints. Garlic's little stalks are made of inserted, cured putty, but would have been stronger if made of flattened aluminium wire. That is a concern of mine, that the pieces made only of putty, if thin , are subject to breaking in the post. The main ones I'm worried about are the Peashooter's leaves.
To conclude, the three Zombies. Points of interest are the hats,- a traffic cone which is a casting in resin and the bucket, which is a truncated cone of thin card, covered in Liquid Green Stuff and painted Citadel Leadbelcher. They all should have those stray hairs but the hats tend to flatten them as they are thin inserted copper wires. I couldn't help myself and put a friendly neighbourhood slug on the wall, which by the way is only there to cover a lump of lead that acts as a counter weight for bucket boy -he leaned over so far that he kept falling onto his fragile fingers.
If there are any more in this series then they will be the invention of my grandson, so anything's possible!
