[Zombicide] Hasslefree Cobra - Smith the Snake.

This week-end I had some fun with Cobra from Hasslefree miniature.
I've bough this mini as proxy for zombicide survivor Smith. Now, if you've growth during the 80's and you're a kind of nerd as I am, I'm pretty sure that you've catched the inspiration from Carpenter's Escape from New York. 



So my goal was clearly to reproduce the best as possible Snake Plissken. To be honnest, the mini gave me some troubles:
_ the scuplture is very nice but the mini is sold in three differents parts (the body, the left arm and the right arm holding the machine gun).

In fact, it's impossible to paint the mini once assembled because the machine gun covers the chest and part of the face. That's mean if you want to do a decent paintjob you have to paint the right arm separately... I hate to work like that because you cannot fix the gap with green stuff and so have the risk to find some imperfection once your paintjob is done. Actually, I've found a gap on the right shoulder when I've assembled the two parts. Dammit!

_ I've struggled a lot also with the color scheme. Because excepting the 80's zebra trousers, everything on the mini should be black, gun, belt, shirt, gloves, boots, knee protection...a hell of black!.
If you paint yourself you've understood the issue. Not only black is difficult to paint but it's also a pain to create contrast between the different elements of the same color.
So I had to use different techniques for each black parts to simulate different type of textures.
Black metal for the gun and the protection on tibias.
Extreme white highlights with black armor washes for the leather on the boots, the gloves and the belt.
Soft grey highlights for the quilted knee protection and the fabric of the shirt.
It's not very visible on the final pics but I've achieved to obtain a different rendering of black for each part. ouf!

No, Cobra wasn't a so easy painting as I though, but the I'm happy with the result. He looks like Snake, good point.   


Bob Hauk: We'd make one hell of a team, Snake!
Snake Plissken: The name's Plissken!