Project Cornetto

With the tiles complete, I moved back into buildings and modern models to suit the setting.

I picked up a shop and construction buildings from Sarris Precision. Using standard grey spray and some white, I primed both the models. I chose to make the small shop a local UK mart of a USA mart, however I made a magnetised sign to swap out on demand. I chose the UK location to be Tescos as this is quite recognisable in the UK. I didn’t mind gluing Tescos poster as it didn’t really matter if I swapped the sign out to a Walmart or whatever.

I gave the roof a layer of grit and sand to give it texture and then added the thin clear sheets to make windows on both the store and construction site. I added posters glued on from the inside with PVA.

I managed to pick up some more body bags from Antenocitis before they closed down and spread them out in the mass grave.

I have plenty of bin bag piles from both TTcombat and Debris of war. I painted most black but also painted a few piles as hazard bags for the grave site. To enhance the bin backs, I used the clear study card sleeves to group scatter together with an invisible base.

I made myself some custom A4 pages full of posters, newspapers, shop signs and rubbish to print of cut and glue to add depth and trash to the bags. The effect was very pleasing to the eye.

Following the recommendation from the Solo Wargamer, I picked up some wood beams around 40mm x 40mm and scotch tape to make cheap Hesco barrier.

Oddstv.minaitures on Instagram also gives instructions on how to build the Hesco barriers.

I used custom posters made by the Solo Wargamer to stick on quarantine signs to the barriers. I then put it all down with some cars and building to see if the product will look good mixed together. I was liking how this looked, it was really coming together.

Having picked up lots of Uk street scatter, I got to painting all the small bits and the terraced houses/shops.

I kept to the same paint theme for the Winchester to match the houses with a base of trench brown and standard grey on the roofs. I hand painted in the window frames and doors with just whites and different coloured doors.

I used the thin clear sheets on the windows and glued on the inside lots of newspapers to show that residents were trying to hide away in the apocalypse.

I turned the UK shops into local recognisable locations. It was only natural that the coffee store was Starbucks and the food shop was Greggs. I made the other store a hardware store as the sign came with the 3D model. I again used clear sheets for the windows but had to a lot more measuring and cutting to ensure they fit into the grooves and gave the appearance of glass in front of posters.

To note, the coffee shop was an old TTcombat model I had laying around, but Starbucks works for both USA and UK.

With the buildings and scatter done at this stage, I moved onto painting some models for both modern warfare situations and Walking Dead.

Not long after painting the Winchester, I had an inspired idea to customise some of the Walking Dead models I had and paint them to fit the theme of the board. So I painted some NHS paramedics and using head supplied from 7TV, I painted up some construction workers.

 I bought up a bunch of extra Walkers from the core game and chopped and changed a bunch of head to keep the visuals fresh. I started work on painting the 150 walkers I now had each in various stages of being painted. I put this on hold around January and didn’t return to the Walker until start of December this year.

I did start painting up modern models for if the world were to end that day or just for modern set games. I picked up some Police officers and firearms officers from Antholonica Blue Light range. I did some head swaps with 7tv Police wearing custodial helmets.

I picked up some riot models from offensive minis who I eye up every year at salute. My partner bought me them for Christmas last year. I also picked up riot vans from ebay. They are just Police vans but they look suitable as Police Riot Carriers.

I really enjoyed these models but the piers de resistance came with an etsy page called the Meeplesmith. I am sad to say this page seems to have gone so maybe he shut shop.

The meeplesmith had 3D prints of Shaun and Ed. I made enquiries to scale and if there was another option to Shaun’s head as he was wearing the tie both on his shirt and on his head which made me itch. Meeplesmith came back to me to say he cant change the head due to the files, but he could rescale to fit the Walking Dead bulk. He did this for free for me, which I was very grateful for.

The models arrived not long after The Winchester and I had to get some paint straight on them. I hand carved off the head bandana, but this did give Shaun a funky head. I didn’t mind though, the models still looked great and scaled perfectly to Walking Dead.

Once I had finished the models, I had to get them into the City which gave me the idea to turn one of the terraced houses in Shauns place and customise it with a few little easter eggs like the Shed in the garden. I even researched the colour of the door as mentioned in the history post.

I then finished my modern warfare models. This encouraged me to continue work my on own rule set and the shopping mall models.