ZOMBIE TYPE 1: PRODBLOG #2

Dawn of the "Type 1" Dead

Why did we decide to do a zombie "Mego"?  A few reasons.  There are no generic "zombie" action figures out there, especially not in the 8" scale.  Most of the zombie figures out there are either overly stylized or from a franchise.  We wanted to make a zombie that could fit in (or fight) with all the other Megos in a person's collection.

In addition, we wanted these zombies to come from our own intellectual property,War of the Dead.  WOTD spawned from the very first FearWerx product, a novelty item called theZombie Outbreak Survival Kit(over 25,000 sold and now out of print).  In the kit was a series of zombie

"classification cards", where we divided them up into seven classes, based on age, how they were ressurrected, what kind of damage they were capable of, etc.  (NOTE: click on the images to see super-enlarged versions in a separate window).

One of the reasons we retired the ZSK was because (I'm embarassed to admit) the art was outdated, rushed and goofy.  They were really just sketches I did in my spare time while I was trying to sell my last business, and if I had any idea the ZSK was gonna start a whole new business, I would have put more effort into them. So, when we picked which zombie "class" we'd make into a figure, we picked "Class 1", but it needed an updated approach.

Updating the "Class 1"

The sketch you see below still uses the basic elements of a "Class 1", a recently-revived zombie (or "post-mortal" as we call it in WOTD) that contracted the zombie "virus" by being wounded by another zombie.  The original sketch shows a zombie in hospital scrubs and bandages; the idea was that this was a hospital employee (doctor, nurse, orderly) who was attacked by someone who was brought in during an outbreak.

When designing the figure, we had to marry the original "Class 1" idea with the practicalities of doing a "Mego".  So, we were pretty much limited to what we could do with the head sculpt, hands and perhaps some appliques.  We went with a nasty throat wound (which has become a bit of a cliche in recent zombie films...almost like a nasty vampire bite...more on that later), and a hint of partial devouring in the abdomen and thigh.  We added a lab coat to hide bare arms that would have required more complex tooling.