Flotsam and Jetsam

[tauster]

I've made progress with the styro stars, plus: I finished my fly bases!

I made three sets of stars:
- flesh,
- ice,
- shadow/glowing theme

As you can see, the spiralled wire can be drawn quite a distance away from the base (depends on how much wire you use). The advantage is that you can move your flying critter some distance on the battlefield without having to move it's base (which often topples other miniatures or battlefield deco). I've not playtested this, but I'm optimistc that it'll work out the way I think. The weight in the caps (see previous WIP posting) certainly makes them un-toppleable when you use light creatures - and these stars weight practially nothing.





Half of the bases got a little bush...



About 2 years ago, I bought two different bags of these pre-made grass bushes. I can't find the link atm, but they were not really expensive and it saves a lot of time if you can just hotglue a bush somewhere without having to place the grass individually.





The flesh theme came out a bit different than my previous pieces, but they're ok. The texture is great, it really looks like flesh that did burst open, leaving long, painful gashes.




Here are the ice stars. I'm quite happy with them, the colors came out as intended and the pearlescent finish really sells the icy look.




And finally, the shadow/glowing stars:





I did two different versions, one with the metallic green washed all over the surface and one where it's only in the cavities. Both look OK, but I like the left one a bit better.

I still have two completely black stars left, so I'll probably try a 'glowing' theme with different colors, probably purple. ...oh, and I still have firestars on my to-do list!

[tauster]

I made some progress with the ice walls: After letting them very thoroughly dry for a week, I basepainted them white and today gave them a blueish-turqouise washing.




I haven't decided whether I'll cover them in hotglue like I did some of the ice terrain piece or use acrylic gloss varnish, like some of the other ice pieces (both shown here). I tend towards the hotglue variant, even it it's much more work than the gloss variant because the angular texture of the hardened paper maché (newspaper maché has a subtly different texture than paper maché made of TP!) looks better when covered under a transparent layer of hotglue. If you just paint it with glossy varnish, you still see every crack very distinctly, while under the 'hotglue ice' it becomes a bt blurry - which somehow sells the ice effect better, at least to me.

Sorry if that sounds a bit confusing, but I can't really show these differences in pictures (I tried...). Just create some pieces with different methods and decide for yourself which you like better!

[tauster]

...finished!

  

Detail shot:




Covering them required about 7 or 8 long (20 cm) gluesticks.

It is very hard to see on a picture, but here's the 'iceberg' piece partially hotglued*.
* Now why doesn't Bono stop singing 'With or without glue' in my head?!?

[vestrivan]

These ice walls look incredible. Well worth the hot glue!

[tauster]

Sometimes the crafting gods really smile on you. For example when you are able to buy 35 bags of cast hirst-arts stones for a pittance (approx. 45 € including shipping costs, for 11 kg of stones).



This is enough for buildung a whole ruined city! *rubs hands maniacally*

The downside is, as always, storage space: Right now it all fits in a large box. Should I ever assemble all of these, I'll probably need a whole shelf. *sigh*

---

Here's another auction I've eyeballed,...

Blue Scribes of Tzeentch



click here for a high res version


...although I won't buy it: 20 € (+6 € shipping) is simply too expensive for one mini, however cool it might be...


This immediately sparks a lot of ideas: Imagine your party participating in a large aerial battle against other airborn monsters or NPC's! Tenser's flying disc or similar spells come to mind, or the drow's levitating disk (don't know the correct names for both...).

I'm no expert for warhammer minis, but I regularly find myself drawn to Minis of Nurgle and Tzeentch. There are tons of different versions of the Blue Scribes online, so I'll probably make a picture collection and let me inspire to do something similar. This stuff should be easy to craft - simply take a round cardboard base, texturize it a bit and place some stuff like small furniture on top (you don't even have to glue it down, so you can re-use whatever dungeon decoration you already have done).

[tauster]

I recently got some plastic parts with interesting shapes, but I can't come up with ideas what to do with them:





Some ideas (not much, but at least a start)
- use the large ones as pedestals or maybe 'end caps' on pillars.
- they have one round hole in the side, so if I could find a jewellery pearl with the right size, I could insert an 'eye' on the hole...
- the small white ones could make wheels on a trolley, think 'giant dwarfen mining railway'
- the small black parts fit into the white round ones, but I don't know if that's going to be relevant.
- ... and that's about it.


So let's brainstorm together - what would you do with this stuff?

[dragon722]

May 2, 2014 18:06:33 GMT tauster said:

I recently got some plastic parts with interesting shapes, but I can't come up with ideas what to do with them:





Some ideas (not much, but at least a start)
- use the large ones as pedestals or maybe 'end caps' on pillars.
- they have one round hole in the side, so if I could find a jewellery pearl with the right size, I could insert an 'eye' on the hole...
- the small white ones could make wheels on a trolley, think 'giant dwarfen mining railway'
- the small black parts fit into the white round ones, but I don't know if that's going to be relevant.
- ... and that's about it.


So let's brainstorm together - what would you do with this stuff?

The big ones with the hole I would A: Build a birdhouse or lair for some small creature(s) B: Cut holes in the other sides as I see there are marks for other holes and make some sort of top to a watchtower or spire C: Fountain with water or something flowing from it D: statue base(s)....in the fountain lol E: Beehives F: got more ideas but got to get to work. Hope this helps alittle

[tauster]

Progress with the flying critter:

Basepainted blue




I really don't like how the Belly turned out. I gave it a wash with diluted white which looked rather ugly. Then another thin wash with light blue that didn't really improve things. Plus a light drybrush with metallic purple that shows only when you look really close - which is unlikely, since it's the monster's belly. ...well, at least nobody will see the belly as often as the top. *sigh*



Speaking of the top, here's what I did a few moments ago (light blue washing, drying atm)...



I'm not sure how to continue with the upper side... My ideas:
- highlighting the small 'mini-eggs' at the tail's base with a very strong color (but which one? dark red maybe? or bright green?)
- very carefully drybrushing with the same metallic purple
- the 'egg area' in the center requires another strong colorscheme: One color for the eggs (white or white-ish?), another one for the empty (i.e. hatched) dimples (fleshy/bloody?)
- no idea what to do with the 'eyes'...

Any ides & comments are more than welcome.

---

One of my regular 'sins' is my weakness for potato chips (no-name variant of pringles) - I eat this stuff regularly, and I always grumble that I have to throw away the cans. Heck, they even have a magnetic bottom! I just can't come up with ideas of things to craft for my campaigns. Sure, I could do towers and castles, but I don't need either. Most of my terrain is underdark-specific, but the cans a a bit too large for stalagmites, even giant ones.

So here's what I'm trying at the moment: Making a sloped giant rock pillar. No idea why this thing should be in a cavern, who made it and why - I just want to see how it looks when finished. Maybe then an idea strikes me what to do with it...

inclined cut...                                                                                     ...then covered in paper maché:
  

[sadric]

You could use the top and bottom of the can to build some round orc huts. Flat rof or make a cone out of cardstock and make gluegun lines for a thatched roof.

Such huts could even be build in a mushroom jungle in the underdark.

[dragon722]

May 6, 2014 8:40:03 GMT sadric said:

You could use the top and bottom of the can to build some round orc huts. Flat rof or make a cone out of cardstock and make gluegun lines for a thatched roof.

Such huts could even be build in a mushroom jungle in the underdark.

Ya cut some of the can too to the desired height and then build/scale how u want it to look. Great idea dude

[tauster]

I like the mushroom-hut idea! *thumbs up* :-)

[tauster]

After seing DMNate's jaw-dropping ice elemental, I immediately wanted to make one myself. It would be a great monster for my ice & snow terrain, but while I was whittling away on my hotglue stick* I found that a walking ruin (or ruin elemental, if you will) would be even cooler. Plus, I have a lot of ruin stuff I could use as building stones.

* doesn't that sound sick? *g*


Long story short - here's what I got so far (started 2 hours ago).

1) the wire skeleton
2) WIP #1
3) WIP #2 (the picture below)



Next steps:
- bending it so that the balance point is centered and it stand on it's own feet
- several coverings of whiteglue to strengthen it
- basepainting
- etc.


 ...so that leaves me with one walking ruin monster/elemental/golem as a WIP - and still no ice elemental. Guess I know what I'll do the next evenings!

[DMNate]

Super cool idea, friend! Make sure you post pics of it painted!

[tauster]

Just basepainted my walking ruin - which is right now doing push-ups while drying...

---

I recently saw someone on ebay selling 'unpainted parched earth' terrain. Even while the price was reasonable (about 2 € iirc), it's ridiculously easy to make yourself: Just roll out clay on a piece of drill* as in the foto (you can use baking parchment or something else non-sticky), wait for it to dry, break it down and paint it. I haven't tried it myself so far so I don't know if there's anything difficult about it, but I don't think so.

* not sure this textile is really called 'drill'; might be 'mesh' or 'gauze' in english... the german word is 'Nessel'

[tauster]

I just stumbled over this...

   





There's an almost step-by-step documentation in the link below. Check this:

johnsontsang.wordpress.com/2013/12/25/work-in-progress/


I am absolutely, positively floored. 
While I kept scrolling, my mouth stood open several times without me realizing it.

It's different from what I (or most of us here) do of course. This is gorgeous, stunning art. It is lightyears beyond what I do with whatever materials I come across. This is totally beyond anything I could achive today (of course!) and no matter how much time I'll be able to invest in this hobby, no matter how much and how fast I'll make progress with my sculpting skills: I'll probably never come anywhere near this.

While this might sound depressed, I'm not: I'm happy to have found yet again something that will absolutely motivate me to hone my skills. When I turn my head around right now, there's a giant purple worm standing that one year ago I would never have dreamt of being able to create. Yet I did. There's a giant walking ruin in progress taking shape over the last few days, waiting to be finished soon(ish). There are several dozen small and larger projects I've done that I am quite proud of. So knowing that there is always someone out there how is better isn't bad - it's great.

...nuff said.

[skunkape]

That looks fantastic!

[vestrivan]

Absolutely amazing! Great find Tauster! He is light years ahead with his skill... just WOW!

[DMScotty]

Love this thread.

[tauster]

I had 'flocked' some parts of the ruin's body with rock chips (porphyry) and after the whiteglue had dried, added another generous layer of glue which does a great job of keeping the stones from crumbline of.




Then I basepainted these parts black again and drybrushed the whole creature with several shades of grey.

I forgot to take a shot of the result, but I decided that I didn't like the uniform look of it; after all the creature is comprised of many different materials: rocks, building stones, weatheres bricks and pillars, large tree trunks, etc...

So I painted over some parts; here's how it looks so far:




I stippled the right leg with two shades of green to simulate plant growth, other parts will get traditional green flocking.
The arms are made of crumpled aluminum foil (lids from food containers), painted with DMG's 'wood' color scheme and washed with a light brown. I'm not completely convinced with the result, so I might experiment with it a bit more...

[tauster]

Some random stuff I tried recently...

1) twist-off caps as stands for magnetised stuff

The best magnetised dungeon decoration is useless without something to stick it on... I made some stands, mostly with little metal rectangles cut out from twist-off caps gluet to some construction-sanded & painted underground. but I don't have enough. I wanted to try a very simple way: take lots of screwcaps, basepaint 'em black, add 2-3 layers of grey sponge-stippeling and a final layer of white. I like the result very much:



I wanted to see how they look whith a final layer of clear matte acrylic varnish, so I took three of the smallest caps. The upper one is without any finish, the lower left with clear matte acrylic varnish and the right one with dried whiteglue. Turns out that whiteglue is absolutely identical to the varnish - only much cheaper!




2) Using the artificial snow as pouring compound

A still have almost 1 kg of natriumbicarbonate (the stuff I used to make artificial snow, mixed with acrylic white and whiteglue). I always wanted to use it as cheap pourable compound, similar to plaster... I added



I always wanted to use the artificial snow as pouring compound, similar to plaster. So I mixed natriumbicarbonate with whiteglue and added some grey color (to save me the basepainting later), and poured it in two different caps looking like pedestals. It took several days to dry and the hardened material is very crumbly, so I coated the right one with whiteglue (but I'll probably have to add another few layers). If you don't need them to be very hard and durable, this is a fast way to mold some stuff. Heck, sometimes it might even be good to have crumbly stuff, for example if you want to make crumbly ruins anyways...

3) Pouring large rocks with aluminum foil
I used the same mass as above and poured it in the aluminum foil of a giant Kinder surprise egg, after I crumbled it a bit.



The dried & hardened result really looks like a large rock...



...but it needs some reinforcing because it's a very thin layer that would break apart in game. So I turned it around and added some paper maché for durability. Even after two days it hasn't dried, so I can't say if it'll suffice. Another way would be adding hotglue to the inside...