Dark Alliance Zombies

Zombies depicted in early zombie films like White Zombie, and I Walked with a Zombie followed the traditional Haitian model of zombies as reanimated corpses under the control of a bokor.

The modern zombie as a sort of devolved ghoul originated from the cinema, starting with Night of the Living Dead. Their hunger for brains came from Return of the Living Dead, and the zombie "rager" came from 28 Days Later.

The Walking Dead started its run as a comic series about a year after 28 Days Later was released. The comic book was adapted into a successful TV series which has been running for five seasons.

Based on the box art for the Dark Alliance Zombies, I'm guessing that at least some of the zombies in these sets may have been inspired by the show (I can't say for sure, since I have yet to read the comics or watch the show).

Set 1 consists of 48 zombies in 12 poses. The first picture is of adult zombies. The final three figures include a nurse, a doctor, and a police officer.

The second picture consists of a teen zombie, and 4 child zombies.

There was a bit of flash on one of the figures, but otherwise, this set did not require much clean-up.

Set 2 also consists of 48 zombies in 12 poses. The first picture is of adult zombies, several of which would pass nicely for traditional Haitian zombies. The kneeling zombies at the end consist of a female zombie gnawing on an arm, and a zombie maid that would be at least 7' tall if she were standing upright.

The second picture consists of 4 child zombies, and one adult crawler. Three of the child zombies are creepy baby zombies.

The figures in the second set required a lot more clean-up in comparison to the first set, but after getting rid of all the flash, the sculpts are just as nice. The problem with the set however, is that there too many novelty figures. With four duplicate sprues, I could create a zombie daycare staffed by giant maids.

The final pictures are comparisons of Caesar (light gray; left) and Dark Alliance (dark gray; right) zombies.

The details of the Caesar zombies are not as soft as those of the Dark Alliance zombies, but there should be no issues with using zombies from both manufacturers together.

El Chupacabra

Sideshow banner at the 2005 Erie County Fair (New York)

The first reported sighting of the chupacabra came from the town of Canóvanas, Puerto Rico in 1995.

The original depictions of the creature is akin to that of a typical "grey alien", but with claws and spines running down its back. According to Benjamin Radford, this version of the chupacabra is a result of the eyewitness confabulating Sil from the film Species with reality.

Other illustrations show the creature as being more dog-like, due to the attribution of chupacabra attacks to wild dogs or coyotes.

These types of attacks have been reported since the 19th century, but I don't think that there was ever an eyewitness account of what the creature perpetrating the attack looked like until 1995.

In any event, Rebel Minis makes some 15mm Cabras (RMPC1) that are perfect for use as 1/72 chupacabra.

These chupacabra scale out to about 3½' tall, and are very reminiscent of the canine-headed chupacabra depicted on the Erie County Fair banner at the top of this post. Another similarity to the banner is that the spines along the back are not quills as seen with most chupacabra depictions.

I modified some of them by removing their daggers, to make them appear more like the typical chupacabra. Most were painted green, with a couple in gray, and one in blue.

One explanation that both skeptics and believers seem to have missed is that chupacabra are actually kobold vampires. How else do you explain blood-sucking dog-headed humanoids that sometimes have bat-like wings?

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Gelatinous Cube

I've always thought of gelatinous cubes as having smooth, regular surfaces like Jell-o cubes, as opposed to the partially-melted appearance that they are given with most manufactured and homemade miniatures.

At one time, I created a model that I was going to cast in clear resin, but I never got around to getting new casting materials after my last batch went bad.

One of these days I'll have enough sculpts built up to make it worth my while to create molds again, but in the mean time, I found a nice proxy for gelatinous cube miniatures: clear acrylic ice cubes.

These cubes are not an exact match for what I had in mind for gelatinous cubes, but I like them because they are optically clear.

The 4cm x 4cm cubes are roughly equivalent to 10' x 10' gelatinous cubes. The 2cm x 2 cm and 1cm x 1cm cubes represent gelatinous cubes that have been broken into smaller pieces.

These acrylic ice cubes are readily available on eBay, and are pretty inexpensive. The large cubes work out to be about US$1.75 each (though the problem is that I had to buy 16 of them), the medium ones about 53¢ each, and the small ones about 17¢ each.

One issue with the cubes, is that there is always one corner that is rough and unfinished. It looks like that corner is where the pour for the acrylic ended during the manufacturing process.

I tried to polish the corner with a flame, but it created a ripple effect on the surface. I also tried filing the corner down and coating it with Future floor wax, but some of the gouges were too deep to fill.

Still, the cubes are serviceable without having to do anything if you are not obsessive about perfection.