Safe House 2014 Bonus Content - Characters

In the wake of such an overwhelmingly positive response to the Safe House 2014 batreps I thought it would be nice to give you all a closer look at some of the miniatures used in the campaign.

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A.J.

First up is one of my own survivors from the campaign.

A.J. is an experimental conversion I did a day or two before the event. His legs and torso are from the upcoming Bridges and Zeke figures from Project Zeke Miniatures as is his backpack, available now as part of our new Survivor Gear Pack. 

A little modelling putty and a head I had lying around from a Horace 'Action' Jackson from Reaper Miniatures and A.J. (geddit?) was ready to bust a move.

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Jake

Jake is another conversion using the body of "Herb" by Rogue Miniatures, a Travelling Tweedy Head from Crooked Dice and a MOLLY pack from The Assault Group to complete the 'survivalist' look. This guy is actually my personal favourite...even if he's not one of my sculpts.

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HANK

This next fellow got a fair bit of play time throughout Safe House but it occurred to me that there weren't really any good pictures of him in the reports. So allow me to present Codename: HANK. 

This is another converted PZM mini that I did last year using a P-Sec body with the silencer trimmed off the weapon and a simple head swap for a US Gas Mask Head from West Wind Productions.

And he bears a certain resemblance to a beloved video game character of mine. No prizes for originality for me.

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Spec Ops

Last up is the Spec Ops character that appeared very briefly at the end of Act 3. He was originally intended for use as the chopper pilot but I scrapped that idea and only found a use for him out of sheer happenstance. 

However, even though he played virtually no part at all in the campaign, I thought I'd take the opportunity to shamelessly show off another simple P-Sec conversion possibility. 

Using a different model to HANK, I trimmed the silencer again filed down the rim of his helmet. A couple of rows of holes were then drilled into the sides to finish off the tactical helmet look. Lastly, I added another PZM backpack and got painting (connoisseurs among you may appreciate what I was attempting with the face mask). I really want to do some more of these.

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That's it for another day but there will be more Safe House bonus material coming your way in due course. 

Catch up on all of the Safe House action below:

UPDATE 01, UPDATE 02, UPDATE 03, UPDATE 04, UPDATE 05, UPDATE 06, UPDATE 07

Intro, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, Act 4

New Products for July 2014

New Products!

from Project Zeke Miniatures

With Safe House 2014 now safely in the rear-view mirror it's time to get some new products out on the shelfves.

The first three new items may be familiar to some of you. Here's what's new for July:

Rusty Wreck

Some of our Rusty Wrecks were used in our ATZ:FFO demo games at Conpulsion 2014 and they are now retailing for £3 each.

Urban Detritus 

The Urban Detritus set was also seen at at Conpulsion 2014 and they are on sale now for £1.50 per set.

All of our scenic products are cast in high quality resin.

Survivor Gear Pack 

The Survivor Gear Pack is a collection of our backpacks cast in white metal. Perfect for kitting out your band. Each pack of four individual sculpts is on sale now for £1.50 (models shown for scale only).

Available now!

How to Use Your Backpacks.

"It's the end of the world, man. Who cares where I keep my beans?"

As a bit of an easter egg for our customers, all PZM products come with a free random item of luggage. Whether it's a holdall, military kit-bag, hiker's ruck or the teddy bear (as modeled by Eddie above), these free treats are bound to find a place somewhere in your apocalypse.

I mean, where else are you going to keep all your loot?

Although this is not strictly a tutorial, I thought I should give everyone a little example of a free backpack in use and tell you what I did to make it look legit.

Apologies in advance that I never took any pics of the work in progress (I may remedy this soon) but at the risk of telling you how to suck eggs, I'll detail the steps I took after cleaning and preparing the bare metal model.


Step 1: Cut two thin strips of card.

I used a standard index card but the thickness is entirely up to you. The width is really up to you too and will be dictated by your preference and the back pack you have. I chose to make them quite thin for this model as novelty stuffed animal backpacks tend to have very basic, nylon straps barely worthy of the name.

Step 2: Carefully superglue the ends of the strips to the back of the model where they would normally attach to the backpack.

Now this is where some WIP pics would have been handy, eh? Sorry! Anyway, I'll do what I can to make this clear.

I began at the bottom, on the lower sections of strap and worked my way up. Once the ends of the strips were fixed in place, I carefully "painted" superglue onto the strip's inside surface (the one that will be in contact with the miniature) using a small triangle of plasticard - it doesn't matter what you use though - then pressed it into position until it stopped just under the arm (fig.1). Once that had set, I trimmed off the excess card, leaving a nice clean strap. As a final step I painted a fine amount of superglue over the strap to seal the surface of the card but PVA will work just as well (just not as quickly). Repeat this step for upper sections of strap and the other side.

You will see in fig.2 that I trimmed the excess card off at a steep angle where the straps disappear under the armpits.

 fig.1

fig.2

Step 3: Stick on the backpack.

Err...just stick on the backpack.

And that's it! This is by no means the definitive method but it is the simplest and least fiddly approach for consistent and realistic results. However, if you are experienced or feeling brave, I would definitely encourage you to sculpt the straps on using your choice of putty as this will give you far more options for details like buckles, padding or whatever else.

Enjoy!