Blog Old Mossy's paint log - Some terrain and lizards (and OnGs!)

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 23/10: Making my own flock

Cheers n810, definitely re-invigorated to finish it.

That base of arrows belongs to my mate who plays Wood Elves. It represents the Hail of Doom Arrows, which I have come to know and love. That thing comes out so often it now has its own sound effect.

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 23/10: Making my own flock

You have my sympathies

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 23/10: Making my own flock

i know i will sound like a jerk but... why would you bother making your own flock? its not very expensive, and the colors you made seem pretty standard to me. should be able to just buy it

i like the temple though. especially the heads on the stair. looks a lot like sharks. very cool

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 23/10: Making my own flock

haha, true, flock isn't that expensive ($5 a bag for woodland scenics?), but these cost me about $1 each in paint (you could do it for a little cheaper). I'm wanting to do a lot terrain soon, so if I can flock it for $6 instead of $30, I'm happy. Also, my nearest game store is more expensive than I really care to pay, and didn't want to wait for delivery from somewhere else. But all that aside, I usually just prefer to do things myself ("I'm not paying for painted sawdust! I can make that easily. ... Now let me go buy the tools")

However, I'm not entirely happy with the results I got. I'll post more when I've done a proper test, either tonight or tomorrow.

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 23/10: Making my own flock

Well, I'm happy enough with how the flock came out. Probably a lot coarser than I wanted in the end, and a few too many pebbles for sure. I think next time I'll just go down to Mooloolaba beach and get some finer stuff.
That aside, it was cheap as hell, easy as (painting sand is easy? who knew?), and convenient. Definitely worth doing if you want a particular colour.
I've got some pictures of how it turned out on my pyramid (and the more or less finished pyramid):
(is there any way to thumbnail these? They look enormous on the page)




and the pyramid itself, just for fun.

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 22/11: Unit Fillers Done

Just a little update: my next block of saurus are done, including the two unit fillers from earlier. I've got some pictures below, but I'm not sure how to thumbnail them.

I've almost finished my modular river testers, so I'll show you how they went in a few days. They look good, pretty easy to make as well.

Saurus:



Unit Filler close ups:

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 22/11: Unit Fillers Done

pretty cool conversions, but i cant help but think that its... odd to paint the sides of the skink bases blue while still modelling normal ground on top of them.

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 22/11: Unit Fillers Done

Mmmm, true. It wasn't meant to imply water, just a band of colour to denote my skinks. But you're definitely right, I think I'll change it to something swampier.

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 22/11: Unit Fillers Done

Nice worshiping unit fillers

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 22/11: Unit Fillers Done

I really like what you are using to base these guys. What is that? It may just be the models on it making it seem more colorful than it is, but it looks cool.

This stuff caught my eye first as being different. But also the stuff you put on your unit filler bases looks unusally realilistic in the close up shoots. Is it regular flock?

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 22/11: Unit Fillers Done

Thanks Danbot! I'm really happy with how some of my bases came out.

I base all my terrain using the flock I made on the last page, with a dark brown under-coat. It's quite colourful (bordering on too vibrant, depending on your taste ), but I like it that way. The 'flock' is a little bit too chunky for my taste, so next time I'd do it with much finer sand, in case you were interested.

My units and unit fillers are based by glueing some fine sand down, using a mixture of pva glue, bubonic brown, and a very small amount of water. Wash quite liberally with devlan mud. Then drybrush here and there with different colours (eg. dark angel green, mechrite red, and gretchen green for the saurus and saurus unit filler, and the skinks using mainly stonewall grey). Finally, put down some patches of static grass/clump bushes.
It's really the devlan mud wash that does most of the hard yards; that stuff is amazing.

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 23/1: Modular River terra

Apparently I don't have enough to paint, so I've decided to make a modular river for my group. It'll eventually consist of:
- 4x long straights (including 1 bridge)
- 4x shorter straights (including 1 ford)
- 6x 45° bends (maybe 8, depending on how it all looks)
- 2x river forks (so I can make a big/small island if I like)
- 10" radius lake with waterfall (yeah, I'm dreaming big on this one )

Pretty excited. But, I held back on buying everything, and settled for doing some testers first. Just 2 straights, 4 corners.

Using 2mm plasticard, I drew everything out and then snapped the pieces where I wanted them.

Template I traced onto plasticard with a pencil


I roughly measured some extruded polystyrene, then cut a winding path down the middle, producing both sides of the river. Then I trimmed and shaped with a hot wire cutter to get it looking a bit better (oops, just realised I forgot to sand it for some different texture. oh well, that's why they're testers).

After glueing the river banks down


Then I painted everything up; a few different shades of green, attempting to blend them together with the green wash I made. I really liked the colour, and to be honest, I was tempted to leave the 'water' as is, and not bother with any 'water effects' products. But, testers are testers, so I went ahead with my plans, starting with using a hot-glue gun to seal icecream sticks to the sides of the pieces.
It's reasonably important to make sure you've sealed everything pretty well, but I'd say it's more important to place the pieces somewhere

Ready for the 'water'


I was either going to go the budget option of a PVC glue base with a bit of varnish on top, or to use Envirotex Lite (looking around, it seems like it gives the best results: doesn't shrink, can pour a reasonable thickness without drying difficulty, moderately cheap) I went with a mixture of PVC glue to water (2/3rds glue to 1/3rd water), tinted with a little bit of stone grey, and decided to risk a deeper pour (about 1cm deep).


It took 8 days to dry, in the Queensland summer, and there was significant amounts of bubbles. Reading around other forums, it seems like PVA is pretty likely to cause bubbles at even very shallow depths. It eventually shrunk down to maybe 3mm, with a very prominent meniscus where it joined the icecream sticks. Cutting the sticks off was quite difficult. I'm not sure what the best and safest way is, but I just tried to be very careful with a knife, using a sawing action. After shaving the menisci off the pieces, and adding a bit more to the bases, it came out like this:


I'm quite happy with these, and aside from drying time, they were very quick to produce. They definitely bring life to the table, and I can't wait to make a full set.

Lessons learned:
What went right: 2mm plasticard works well. Easily cut, but sturdy. The foam was good, and a simple paint job looks good. The bubbles actually look a bit like motion, and look ok, but I would avoid them if I could.

Performance AND Price - I used A LOT of PVA glue in just these testers. Roughly $5 worth, and I got roughly 138 inch² (~1 foot²). A 236mL (8 fl. oz) packet of envirotex lite costs about $20, and gives 2 foot² coverage. I'll definitely be using the resin approach next time.

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 23/1: Modular River terra

Wow. Very cool. Been trying to figure out a way to make water effects myself. Looks like it turned out pretty good. Did the bubbles all disapear?

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 23/1: Modular River terra

Wow, that's weird; I could've sworn I'd replied already. Ah well.

Nope, most of the bubbles stuck around, though they clumped together to create what looks like motion (if you're being generous). I think they look fine, but I wouldn't put them in a competition.

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 23/1: Modular River terra

Looking good Old Mosey.

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 23/1: Modular River terra

Took me awhile, but I finally got around to finishing my Skrox unit. 12 jav skinks, plus my old 10 blowpipe skirmishers, plus 2 reaper tyrants.


For the Kroxigors, I had my first use of Envirotex lite to make a water base:




I did the base by sealing the edges with plain sticky tape. I didn't do a very good job of this, as I figured I would just shave off the excess. Unfortunately, where I've done this is quite visible, even after applying 2 light coats of gloss varnish.
That was done in a single pour, and left zero (!) bubbles. It did, however, leave a fairly decent sized meniscus. From what I've read, this is avoided by doing 2 pours, the second being to fill up the meniscus. I'm going to try this with my next 2 Krox.

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 13/2: Skrox and a water b

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "meniscus". I have to say, looking at the photos of the river I'd have never guessed that you had the issues you note in your text. It's a funny thing, and happens to me a lot when I look at my figures and all I can think about a collection of errors, lessons and compromises, but other people see them as completed organic works. Keep at it, you are definitely getting better with every figure.

As for water, I've only tried that once with my lizard army when I made the Salamander conversion. I used Future acrylic floor wax - about 3 or 4 rather thick coats - and it seems to have worked out just fine. The viscosity was thick enough that I didn't find it necessary to have any sort of dam around the edges of the base. But I painted it on with a brush, I didn't pour it.

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 13/2: Skrox and a water b

By meniscus, I mean where the varnish "climbs" the walls, so the water isn't flat at the edges. And I definitely know what you mean about focusing on the errors in my writing. Internally, I'm definitely happy my painting, and the way it's improving. Cheers mate.

Anyways, nothing really new here, just posting my latest unit I've completed. Some more Skrox

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 13/2: Skrox and a water b

Looks good mate those colors work well

 

Re: Old Mossy's paint log - Update 13/2: Skrox and a water b

Cheers mate, I think so, too. This was my first real crack at edge highlighting (it's on the shields). Maybe not so clear in a photo of the unit, but it looks so much better with the edging. Might have to go back to some of my other stuff and have a crack.