Spell Design?: Create Corpse

[Bruno]

I could see something potentially workable right out of Magic via Shape Stone and Stone to Flesh, actually. If a bit round-about.

However, your player isn't looking for a baroque solution, and I don't blame them.

My recommendation would be to allow him to research a variation of Zombie with twice the base cost to skip the requirement for raw materials, but only creates Zombies of a specific type for each version of the spell. So Create Human Zombie, Create Orc Zombie, etc.

After that use the usual cost variations to create a skeleton with a projectile attack based on firing bone shards, or whatever.

These Zombies would be Permanent magical effects, subject to destruction by Dispel Magic, or disruption by the anti-Creation effects.