Monday Miniatures: Rats
This week we do another mass painting exercise, and try to finish off another bunch of vermin. In this case, rats. This mini lacked much in the way of details, but the posing was actually much nicer than I thought it was during previous examinations.
Zombicide 3 is up, and it has raised half a million dollars in the first six hours. I know several readers have backed past iterations of the project, and will no doubt back this one as well.
I tried painting these with a variety of different color schemes, but in most cases they came out looking simply muddled rather than varied. Still, some of them came out nicely. Small models like these really hit home what small splashes of color can do (like on the paws and eyes, for instance).
Magnus did a better job of producing a varied color scheme, though the jaundiced rats look just plain creepy. The stone also came out very nice.
Kylie did an outstanding job. She only had a couple left to paint after she painted most of them to accompany the swarms earlier in the year, but I love the albino color scheme. More information is available on her website.
Update:
Dirk presents us some really mischievous moon rats (that are obviously up to no good.)
Antonia on the other hand, presents a particularly gory death, as an adventurer is ripped to death by giant rats.
Teirdeleira – please send pictures to Caffeineforge@gmail.com by 2100 MDT on 7/6/14
Familiars – Paint your favorite, or two or three – it’s up to you.
Bat Swarm – I think this is one of the weakest minis in the entire bones collection. Let’s see what we can do to fix that.
TBD – What would you like to paint in August?
Caffeineforge 
Thanks for the compliments David! Just to clarify, I painted the swarms along with the white rats this past week. I painted the brown rats ages ago for a Pathfinder game.
I agree with you that a splash of colour (eyes, paws, ears) really does help bring the mini to life – particularly in a model like this where otherwise it be a little monotone.
I think your rats came out really well, David – a couple of lighter brown ones look like they have some really good highlights through the fur. If you don’t mind a small amount of feedback, I think your black rats would really stand out more if you gave them red eyes like the white one, to help separate it from their coat. I think they all look really good though 🙂
Magus – I like the variety in your group and each of them have really good shading in their fur. I agree with David, the jaundiced rats look creepy, not that is a bad thing, giant rats are creepy in my opinion!
Sorry for spelling your name wrong, Magnus!
Hello everyone!
After some busy weeks I’ve got time for a small posting. Nice to read you all! Everyone did well with their rats, interesting, how different the color schemes are, and each has its own “charme” (if you may say so concerning filthy vermin 😉 ).
David’s critters are the most classic colored ones I think, the muddy grey with one whitey standing out, Magnus’ browns fit well into a natural setting (could well be an abandoned farmhouse they’re dwelling in) and Kylie’s could either be used in fantasy or modern (horror) settings, since the creepy albinos bring a whole extra “mutated beast/escaped experiment” feeling into the lot!
@David: Did you get our submission? I sent it yesterday (early afternoon here, I’m not quite sure when it was in your time zone), so it would be great if you could add our minis later. I’m interested to hear what you lot think about our approaches! We went D&D (Dirk) and Splatter (me) this time 😀
Yes, I did receive it, but I threw my back out Sunday night, so have not yet had the chance to post submissions received Monday. I will make every effort to do that today.
Thanks, all! I figured they were rats and probably in the nastiest, filthiest areas of a city, so I went heavy on the brown washes and tried to vary the browns to give them a unified-but-varied look.
Kylie, your details look really great – especially the eyes! They’re so vibrant!
Wooha! Antonia went all out! I like it.
Thanks for the compliments!
Antonia – wow! They look stunning! The level of detail you go in all your presentations is amazing. How do you make the base? Where did you get your dead body?
I’ve been wanting to make some dead characters so players don’t have to knock my models over.
Dirk – I really like your conversion, I’m curious what you are using “Moon Rats” for. I’m interested to see your WIP finished. It is looking really good!
In regards to what to paint in August –
We are starting a Rise of the Runelords pathfinder campaign mid to end August and the first part, I am told, is goblins, goblins and more goblins. So I have been asked to try and get our goblins painted.
So I thought I might mention that to see if anyone else was interested, I was thinking the other pathfinder goblins (other than the war-chanter we have already done). It might be interesting to do as another mass painting exercise. Id be just as happy with the dungeon attack goblins.
@Kylie: I want to use the rats in a D&D 3.5th edition campaign as moonrats (rats that get smarter when the moon gets full(ish)) as “power behind”. So I converted some of them working on their rather obscure plans (with sewer plans, delivered messages, time keaping…).
@all: I second the idea of painting goblins. As I painted the dungeon attack goblins already alongside the goblin-eating Hydra I would like to paint the remaining pathfinder goblins as a unit for my war-chanter leader, so both would be fine to me 😉
@Dirk: Those sound like cranium rats from Planescape, where the swarm gets smarter the more cranium rats there are in an area…
@Kylie: I’ll second the Pathfinder goblins. I’m pretty happy with how my goblin war-chanter turned out, and wouldn’t mind knocking out the rest of the tribe one go. If I recall correctly, that would be 8 goblins.
@Arjen: I’m glad you like it – I’m happy it worked out so well, since last time(s?) I had nod enough time for decent basing work…!
@ Kylie: Thanks for your kind words! The base was modelled from Milliput modelling putty (way cheaper than greenstuff, more clay-like, not that fine in texture. Great to mix 1:1 with green stuff if you need better detail but don’t want to spend so much on putty!).
The dead body is a slightly converted Zombie mini from Mage Knight – I still have loads of pieces from this game, I never played it, but since the minis are sold in bulks quite cheaply on ebay, I use them as mass-NPC (for city watch, undead hordes, bandits in the woods…) and as bit and body donors for every mini project I can think of 😀
If you need ready-to-use casualties, I think Mantic Games has some extra on every army sprue (elves, humans etc), perhaps you can buy/barter some? I normally use whatever cheap humanoid mini I can find, chop some parts off, add putty for gore and intestines and cover with blood 🙂