The grainy web-rescued images below are not only close to my heart, but in some small degree a marker in the evolution of Games Workshop’s Warhammer range of undead.

Undead armies were always cool, having Heinrich Kemmler, Mikael Jacsen and the original Skeleton Horde plastic box set (until recent years the ultimate plastic kit!), as well as some really nice late-80s representation at the Derby Games Day WFB tournament finals.

Although largely ignored through the late-80s and early-90s, the Undead received a welcome boost when Richard Gunson’s (one of my Pantheon of “sensei” and influencers) superlative undead army was featured in White Dwarf 142.

A few years later, I was lucky enough to purchase Richard’s undead army and was for several years its custodian before relinquishing the honour to another.

At this time I was still in high school and dreaming of “graduating” at 16 to get hired by Games Workshop as an ‘Eavy Metal painter. Strange as it may sound, during that childhood period I was actually always in fear that Games Workshop would work their way through all the Warhammer races and that there would then be no more need for miniature painters at the studio!

I’d eagerly pour through my monthly White Dwarf, brimming with excitement at each new release, but also with an underlying dread that it was all hurtling towards an end that I’d never participate in.

Luckily, that wasn’t how it worked.

Upon arriving at the studio in January 1994, some of the earliest miniatures I was set to work on were the (at the time) new range of Undead by Gary Morley.

These weren’t a total revelation as several early miniatures from the range had been revealed in White Dwarf back-cover spreads prior to my joining the Studio, but the range stalled for a while (various online interviews and articles with or about Gary allude to the stop-start nature of his early experience on the undead range at Games Workshop) and then happened to get its second wind around the time I arrived.

I painted the infamous blue and red ghosts, and the plastic skeletons for the box-set reboot were perhaps the fourth assignment I received.

Keeping in mind that these miniatures were already legendary it was no short order… My paint jobs were as rough as army surplus boots and the shields (a perpetual weakness) best not mentioned. They were deservedly, and in short order, put to shame when Mark Jones painted the creamy skeleton chariot box cover update.

Anyway, the skeletons were an early challenge and although not exciting in the ‘new miniatures’ sense they got my work onto a box cover sooner than later.

I was next set to work on a zombie command group. These were a second round of miniatures from a line that Gary had sculpted during his very early days at Workshop, that had been painted by Stuart Thomas (also in his early days).

Shortly after (and although not illustrated her), I worked on some of Gary’s much improved second round of ghouls.

Looking back at the photos, these were shockingly poor paint jobs, but they scraped through at the time. I felt that I’d done nothing to improve upon the original Skeleton Horde box set, and that my shield work would be the end of me…

The Zombie banner turned out to be my initial step on the ‘Eavy Metal learning curve, after which banners became kinda fun. As for the zombie musician clad in Ultramarine blue shorts and hoodie…

The ‘Eavy Metal pages below are also interesting in that they show the very early Gary Morley sculpts and some later (but by no means once he had hit his arch) output, as well as painting by Stuart Thomas (the wights and zombie troops), Neil Hodgson (the Vampire Lord) and myself.