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Monsterpocalypse – Spitter – Alternate Colors

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Its good to be back after some time away. As is usually the case when I skip a week, there’s a bit more to talk about than usual as a result too.

First up, I guess I might as well explain why I was gone. To celebrate my 40th birthday, I went to Omaha, Nebraska with my Dad and brother to check out the Henry Doorly Zoo. If you didn’t know it, you might be surprised to learn that one of the best zoos in the US is located in Nebraska. Omaha is not a particularly large city, its smaller than just about any city with a professional sports team as a matter of fact. So what makes Henry Doorly one of the best? It is massive in size and has some pretty unique features. There is the Lied Jungle which is a massive, indoor rainforest building that features many monkeys. There’s also the Desert Dome which is even more impressive because the “basement” also contains a very large nocturnal house. Henry Doorly also has a herd of African elephants which is also very uncommon in the US. It took us two full days to see the entire zoo and the one day we spent outside, since the weather was nice that day, ended up being about four miles of walking. I took some pictures on the trip which I’ll share below. I wanted a camera that could take nice photos of miniatures and when I travel and I think it helped me accomplish that task. These are by far the best animal photos I’ve ever taken.

Outside of the trip, I have been doing some hobbying though its been slow going. I’ve started working on something I need to complete but my motivation has been lacking. So as a way of avoiding that miniature, I decided to try and paint up another Spitter for Monsterpocalypse in an alternative color scheme. I took inspiration from some Cthulhu: Death May Die miniatures I saw online but ultimately, I’m not overly thrilled with the alternate scheme.

The white and blue did not work the way I wanted and the blue is much too bright. I tried using Kantor Blue but it is quite warm when mixed with blueish-gray. I should have gone for Drakenhof Nightshade instead but I don’t want to use washes for these minis for reasons I’ll explain in a bit. I do think the tentacles look better because I painted them a bit rougher with different sized lines or folds in the tentacles so I will try and emulate that on the rest of the miniatures, if I can. Ultimately, I may have to go back and touch that part of the miniature up but that’s easily done.

At this point, I think I know what colors to use and I can paint the next big monster for Monsterpocalypse whenever I’m ready so that’s nice anyway.

The miniature that’s giving me trouble is a very rare one and a surprising one at that. I need to paint the long out of print and hard to get, alternate Goblin King miniature for MESBG so that I can sell off that “army” in the future. GW did a special run of this miniature a number of years ago and I bought it and never made much progress on it. Part of this was because my interest in MESBG dissipated but this miniature is also a bit rough compared to the plastic one. Here’s a look at the plastic one I painted many years ago now.

I painted him pretty well overall, I reckon considering my skill level at that time. The problem is that I used washes (thinned down quite a bit) to get the purple shades on the skin. Truthfully, I also followed what GW did with their version pretty heavily and I think the contrast on the mini is too low when I look at it critically now. The problem with washes is that they don’t always go where you want them to. If they pool too much, they leave white spots that have to be fixed too. This makes painting some miniatures an absolute pain and I’d much rather layer paints or glaze to get smooth results instead. That makes the goblins really hard to replicate and while I’ve tried a couple of times on the Goblin King, I ultimately can’t match it exactly how I did it because I don’t have the patience for it. I just want to get this guy done so I can sell them and I think him being unpainted will diminish the value of the lot.

My painting style has obviously evolved a lot since I painted this five plus years ago too. So I’ve had to accept that this one will look a bit different. I’m not going to sweat if everything is perfectly smooth like I normally would because just getting this far on the miniature has been a real pain. Its been slow going but I’m hoping that showing off where I am will get me motivated to finish this miniature…

I haven’t touched the back yet so there’s a lot more to go… We’ll see if I can persist with this or if I have to work a little bit and then take a break as I did this last week.

Other than that, I’ve been playing way too much Resident Evil: Village on Steam. Ever since I played Resident Evil: 4, I’ve become a huge fan of the series as it delivers some of the best action in video games. The games are scary and whacky all at once. Who can forget the little person who dressed like Napoleon in RE4 and taunts you constantly throughout the game? In this game, you have Lady Dimitrescu, who is a nine foot tall vampire. You can’t make this stuff up! Resident Evil: Village delivers everything an RE fan could want and the achievements have been somewhat hard but rewarding as well. I had to beat the game no less than four times to get them all. I’m working on beating Mercenaries now to get the final achievement and it is really hard but fun too. The Mercenaries mode which debuted in RE4 is the perfect arcade style gameplay. It takes a good reflexes, strategy, and a bit of memorization to really get good at it. In some ways, I almost enjoy it more than the main stories of Resident Evil but only just. There isn’t another game I can think of where getting weapons, upgrading them, and then blasting monsters is more fun. Resident Evil would make a really cool miniatures game but I could also see myself getting the Resident Evil 4 board game whenever that is finally released by Steamforged Games. Heck, I’d consider buying a Village one if that were to be released as well.

29 thoughts on “Monsterpocalypse – Spitter – Alternate Colors”

  1. I definitely prefer the purple tones on the spitter over the blue. Great progress on the Goblin King, a lot more contrast than your original painting.

    Some great photographs from your visit to the zoo, and sounds like you had a good time.

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    1. Me too. The second attempt just wasn’t as good as the first, unfortunately. Had I executed it better, it might have been a closer race though.

      Thank you for the kind words on the photos and it was nice to get away. I haven’t travelled much in recent years so it was meaningful to take this trip.

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  3. happy birthday! I’m from San Diego which has the World Famous Zoo so I get the appeal. 😀

    Good luck on the Goblin King. Even more good luck getting a good price for the war and, as I don’t think the hobbit ones are in demand.

    I was thinking of you actually recently. As I’m currently splitting my hobby time between playing Minecraft and painting, and consequently the painting is much slower and I thought “ I wonder how Jeff does it?” 😀

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    1. Thank you! I haven’t been to San Diego in far too long. It was probably 25 years ago when I went last and I’ll have to see if I can find a way to get out there as I know it has changed a lot.

      I think you’re right on Hobbit miniatures not being in demand. I’ll be patient and hopefully somebody will pay what they’re worth.

      Let me tell you, Stew, it takes a real commitment to slacking off and ignoring responsibilities! 😀 Its certainly not for everyone haha!

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  4. I had forgotten about that Goblin King sculpture, get him painted and see if anyone wants him.

    Interesting news about the zoo, Seattle’s zoo has got rid of their elephants which I understand the reason but still miss seeing them. I went to the zoo in Sydney in the spring and they were transferring their elephants also. I hope the zoo in Nebraska has a good environment for them. When you mentioned that you took your dad to that zoo I wondered if they had a pangolin there.

    Resident Evil video games are a lot of fun, I find myself playing #5 once in awhile. I’m also in the minority that enjoy the movies.

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    1. I can’t decide whether to sell the King separately or as a whole army. I’d imagine separately will get more money but it takes more effort so we shall see.

      It seems as though zoos are trying to expand the space offered to elephants or to get rid of them out of wellness concerns. The space Omaha has is huge and the Cincinnati Zoo recently opened up a huge yard for Asian elephants (which are smaller than African, of course) and its massive too.

      Funnily enough, I did see a pangolin this past week for the first time but it was at the local Brookfield Zoo. It was sleeping for the most part and is in a nocturnal exhibit so its impossible to photograph well. It was neat to see one in-person for the first time though!

      Resident Evil 5 is very good. Not as good as 4 in my estimation but still very good. All of the remakes they’ve done are really good and quick to play so if you get a chance to play them on PS4 or PS5, grab ’em. They’re cheap to buy and will provide entertainment!

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    1. Forget the Bears, how about the Mariners! They’re going to the World Series, I think. In all seriousness, the Bears are finally showing some improvement which will likely get people invested in football here again.

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    1. I’m glad to hear it. I meant to explain this in more detail but I was tired when I wrote this and forgot. I think Lovecraftian monsters should have dark and sinister looking color palettes. The white/blue part was supposed to look sickly and instead, it looks bright and happy which is unfortunate to say the least!

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  8. Heyyy welcome to the 40s club my friend. That zoo sounds incredible. Elephants are one of my favourite animals, so majestic. The spitters look cool but, I’m curious, are there swallowers too? Haha. The Goblin King was on my Wishlist for a long time

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    1. I’d say its well worth a visit but probably not from Oz! I don’t even know how to answer your question other than to say, get your mind out of the gutter, mate, haha!

      I reckon you’d do well painting up the Goblin King. He fits your grubby painting style perfectly 😀 Its a shame he isn’t an Orc or you could even paint him this month!

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  9. Nice pics from the zoo, Jeff, and good work on the minis! 🙂 I like both Spitters myself!

    And a belated happy birthday! I can’t remember being 40 now, but at least it means I’m a) old enough to be properly addressed as “you old git” and b) likely to have forgotten I’ve been addressed in such a fashion after about 20 seconds!

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    1. Thank you, John! 🙂 I shudder to think of how old one has to be to forget their 40’s. I’ve heard that immortal people live so long that their memory goes so maybe that’s what’s going on here! 😀

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  10. Lovely photos of the zoo trip! Nice to see cameras get use outside of miniature photography. I know mine mostly serves that purpose these days!

    I like the new wormy thing, nice colours and nice differences with the first.

    Finally that new goblin king is shaping up excellently, excited to see where you go with it. I’d forgotten they did a resin version of the model, I’m so used to the starter set version.

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    1. Thank you, Nic! I don’t use my camera a ton outside of miniature photos but I’m really happy it can handle zoos and minis alike.

      I’m glad you like the new worm as well. I think the purples won out but its been nice to know people like both of them all the same.

      I might be wrong on this but I think GW thought the Hobbit era minis would sell better than they did. They planned to release this resin version alongside the plastic one but it ended up being made in very limited quantities and retired before they did an extra run on it a number of years ago which is where I got my copy. I think the Goblin King has rules for throwing goblins so its a very thematic sculpt in that sense though it is inferior to the plastic version in terms of overall quality sadly.

      I may or may not have been doing some internet searching for Tomb Kings and you wouldn’t believe what website kept coming up in the results. Some website known as Lair of the Lagomorph! If people go looking for stuff about the Egyptian undead, I think they’re likely to find your work like I did 🙂

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      1. Yeah I think the hobbit minis in general did do less well. Not sure if that was because the the movies were less popular or the models more expensive than the Lotr ones.

        Good to hear the blog is popping up in search results! Always nice to be able to reach audiences outside of the WordPress circle 😉

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      2. I think the cost was a factor and Finecast was also a problem of GW’s making, unfortunately. If I remember correctly, they weren’t doing well as a company around that time too.

        I’d say you’ve got the Tomb Kings market cornered at this point 😀 I was trying to find some Tomb Kings/Egyptian basing bits but had more difficulty than expected! Is there any chance you can recommend anything that isn’t 3D printed?

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      3. Interesting question! There’s bits and bobs on the tomb kings sprues you could use (maybe eBay/bits sites could help there if you don’t have any) otherwise the North Star range for Silver Bayonet Egypt has a few other cool pieces including a very cool sarcophagus. That’s about the extent of my knowledge here though.

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      4. Neither of those were on my radar so that is helpful! There are a couple of others that I’m aware of Scotia Grendel is 25mm so just a bit small and Scibor has a few pieces as well. I’m thinking the latter is probably the best bet, if I decide to take up a Tomb Kings project, which I might! 🙂

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      6. Thank you! I have a somewhat fresh take on the Tomb Kings so there’s a good chance I’ll paint one eventually 🙂 It doesn’t hurt that I’ve always wanted to paint them since Warhammer 6th Edition and never followed through too!

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