Making a character look like a freshly made zombie

TSasha Smith · December 2018

I want zombie like creatures in my stories, but not all zombies are in full decay mode. How do I make a zombie who is still in good condition? What about different ethnicities, does different skin tones change how they look dead? I do not want a fully decade zombie, but either well maintained by luck or just converted by virus or what not?

felis · December 2018

I don't think I have any zombies in my inventory.

But my suggetsion would be to dial in a zombie morph but with a human skin, maybe with the zombie skin as overlay.

FirstBastion · December 2018

Just having some bloodied skin, a bit of zombie morph, a mindless expression, and a typical pose should get you there.

https://www.daz3d.com/ultimate-blood-n-dirt-for-genesis-3-female-s

algovincian · December 2018

Another approach is to dial in your character of choice (in this case Tchanun), add in a little bit of a zombie morph (in this case Markus), create a geometry shell, apply zombie mats to it, set the cutout opacity to something less than 1:

By dialing in more zombie morph and increasing the cutout opacity for all mat zones of the geometry shell you can control the amount of rot. Hope this helps.

- Greg

nicstt · December 2018

Miss Bad Wolf said:

I want zombie like creatures in my stories, but not all zombies are in full decay mode. How do I make a zombie who is still in good condition? What about different ethnicities, does different skin tones change how they look dead? I do not want a fully decade zombie, but either well maintained by luck or just converted by virus or what not?

Plan this first.

Consider your story; then design what sort of zombies you are going to have; you may decide that the only difference a new zombie would have would be blood around the mouth, staining the teeth and perhaps its clothes.

You may decide your zombies take on characteristics; they grow appendages, their skin becomes more translucent, or a different colour. Or all sorts of other things.

All you need to do is set it all down in writing first; once your happy, don't let your story change it - without exceptionally good reason.

There is absolutely no reason you should follow the herd. Indeed, there are reasons not to follow the herd.

... You do need to consider your target audience; will they accept a new type of zombie? I expect some will and some wont.

Personally the genre bores me silly, with World War Z being one of the few exceptions. It was, however, based on a book, so might be the reason it worked for me; it was planned, and not just another soap opera with corpses - although the human element is important of course.

IceDragonArt · December 2018

I on the other hand absolutely love zombie fiction and am always willing to read a new story whether its an old fashioned zombie or a new kind of zombie.

AnotherUserName · December 2018

algovincian said:

Another approach is to dial in your character of choice (in this case Tchanun), add in a little bit of a zombie morph (in this case Markus), create a geometry shell, apply zombie mats to it, set the cutout opacity to something less than 1:

By dialing in more zombie morph and increasing the cutout opacity for all mat zones of the geometry shell you can control the amount of rot. Hope this helps.

- Greg

Clever! I never wouldve thought about applying zombie mats at low opacity to a shell.

AnotherUserName · December 2018

Miss Bad Wolf said:

I want zombie like creatures in my stories, but not all zombies are in full decay mode. How do I make a zombie who is still in good condition? What about different ethnicities, does different skin tones change how they look dead? I do not want a fully decade zombie, but either well maintained by luck or just converted by virus or what not?

If you want to consider zombies in the classical voodoo sense of the word, I believe that a zombie was a living human who had just been robbed of their free will. In that case, they might just be sort of tired looking.