Well, still working on the rules for this, but still painting up minis for a game that I hope to have working soon. Doing actual extent animals is tougher than extinct because you can't just make it up as you go. A Jaguar is a Jaguar and his coat has a certain pattern to it. Even if the pattern does change from animals to animal, painting multiples of the same type start to get to you. This project has me understanding why I dislike painting more modern periods of soldiers, as opposed to ancients and Medieval warriors. And why I love doing the American Natives for SDT (Song of Drums and Tomahawks), our FIW rule set. No set pattern to follow other than the war paint colors used and each pattern is different for every warrior. Much more satisfying in my mind, than doing 30 belts, then 30 cross belts, breeches, coats........ Just don't like them as well.

First up are the Zebra, almost bought two more packs of these not long before I started painting and glad now that I didn't. And that a few of these figures became early wild horses for the Americas.

Next three had me putting 4 and 5 back into the do later box. The three of them took as long to do as the whole herd of zebra had. (Not sure why the second shot is so much darker than the first.) Enjoyed the first one, but by the third was seeing little brown squares where I hadn't painted the lines in yet. And for both the giraffe and zebra, I base coated them and then painted in the lines. For giraffe it worked much easier that way, and for zebra and tigers was a must. I started one zebra and a tiger using a method I was told about years ago. Base coat with stripe color (black) and use overall coat color (white or orange) to create the stripes. That method drove me nuts, or at least more than normal. Like the guy had said small lines were easier and little slop over onto a stripe didn't show badly, but to get a nice white or orange coat color was taking 4-5 coats of paint and still didn't look quite right. Was glad I switched back to my original thought, which was easier to do. Paint the coat color as base then add stripes, much easier, good enough though not as nice as the ones the guy had using the other method.

Did not have all my chimp pictures turn out well, but the one below is good enough for now. Would like to find some more poses just to vary them up some more.

The baboon troop looks good, but would like a little more variety in the poses. Maybe I'll find some more of these as well.

The Ostriches are just a male and two females, had to rebuild the head on the one pecking at the ground. Not sure if it was supposed to have buried its head or what as is it didn't have a head and wasn't attached to the base. So just created anew head for it looking for food.

Oryx and Kudu, these are fairly common antelope on African plains. I thought they painted up nice and are another group from the Ral Partha/Iron Wind bulk box at cons. Looking for Some of the smaller types next, Impala and gazelle would mix in nicely. 

Not last by a long shot but the biggest, Elephants. These were by far the easiest to paint and came out fine. Would like a few more poses, but this works.