Zombie Base Tutorial 2

So, following on from last week's ramblings, and without further ado, this is the method I'm using to base my Zombies!!! Bag O'Zombies figures. I may also use it to base my Wargames Factory Zombies, but I haven't painted any of them yet.

Equipment needed

The following items are required to make these bases:

• textured plasticard
• 25mm craft punch or compass cutters (something to make the circles)
• 25mm MDF bases
• glue - superglue or PVA and polystyrene glue
• Lego bricks and scrap of plain plasticard
• very good clippers (I use Xuron side clippers)

Making the Lego form

Lining everything up is quite tricky, so I made a form from three Lego bricks taped to some plain plasticard with double-sided sticky tape

This keeps the bases lined up while they're being glued together and also means that fingers aren't near superglue.

Making the base toppers

Simply punch circles from the plasticard using the craft punch, or use a compass cutter. The punch is quicker, although it struggles with plasticard much thicker than 0.5mm.

I made a paper template for the punch, which lets me line it up close to the previous hole and minimises waste on the plasticard. Removing the punched "frames" from the plasticard sheet is done using a scalpel or scraper. The compass cutter has neither of these issues, but you do end up with a hole in the middle of your base :-)

Building the base

Glue two 25mm MDF bases together using the form to position them. They can be glued with either PVA or superglue. Superglue is quicker and can be cheaper (I bought eight tubes for £1 from a local PoundLand. I'm not sure it's the best quality superglue ever, but is fine for this project)

Glue the topper to the MDF bases. It's easier to use superglue for this, but PVA would probably work.

The side of the MDF bases should be sealed using PVA glue. This gives a better surface to paint on, as the plain MDF is just soaks up paint. It also helps to disguise the join between the various parts of the base.

Preparing the Zombie

Take one plastic zombie and carefully remove him from his base. This should be done using the best clippers you have, as you want to keep as much of the feet as possible.

File down the feet to try and make them flat. There's not much surface area to glue, so the flatter the base, the greater the area in contact with the plasticard and the better the bond. Glue the zombie to the new base using polystyrene cement and leave to dry.

The finished zombie on its new base. This can be decorated with rubble if required, although I haven't bothered with the ones I've done.

The final painted figure next to the original one and a Studio Miniatures zombie. The base and figure will never win any awards, but they make for an acceptable, if basic, zombie, and height-wise, they're much closer to the 32mm figures.

Future plans

I have a 50mm craft punch and picked up some 50mm round MDF bases recently. I plan to use the above technique (although probably only one MDF base deep) to make some horde bases.

I'm still not sure how I'll paint all the figures in a horde; do I attach them all to the one base and try to paint them en masse, or paint them separately and move them from their painting bases to the horde base?

I am wondering about using a paper punch to create small painting bases from the 50mm horde base. These could then be dropped back into the larger one when the figures are painted. However, it's still early days on these thoughts and I think some experimentation will be required.