Cheap Bugs!

I saw these on a blog last year and loved the idea - I've used toys amongst my wargames stuff in the past and with a bit of work they can look great. These are from a set which was sold in Poundland in the UK. The set contained ants, flies, maggots and spiders, but the flies, the spiders and half of the maggots were of little or no use. The flies and spiders didn't have much potential and the other half of the maggots were made of a jelly-like silicon, so would not retain paint very well. 

I assembled these last year, on the round bases that come on the Wargames Factory Male Survivor kits. As usual, I added pennies to the bottom hollow of the bases, to add a little bit of weight to the figures. 

I added some sand and gravel to the bases, spray-undercoated them grey, painted everything brown (Charred Brown from VGC) and then, put them to one side for a year. I found them whilst trying to locate another figure on Wednesday night and decided that it was time to get them finished. I drybrushed everything with tan and then stone grey, added flock and left it to dry overnight. For the ants I painted them a reddish-brown, washed them with Army Painted Strong Tone and then used a Tamiya Clear Orange (with a touch of brown) glaze to get the ant finish. With the maggots, I used thinned VMC Ivory and then once this was dry I washed them with Army Painter Red Tone.

Very happy with how these have turned out - only took a couple of hours to finish the whole bunch last night. I also have some spiders from Poundland coming up, as well as these irradiated beasts...