Thursday 17 April 2014

Bring me a base line – continued...

Geriatric Garage
With various commitments and the 'how much is too much' games I have been playing lately, my poor Scourge have been neglected a little, so I thought it was about time I swung back to the jellys and let you know how they were going!

Last time I focused on the bases of my grav tanks, so this time round I will be tackling one of the flying bases, more specifically for my Desolator.

As with my grav bases I wanted to make this base special and really embody the ruined city feel I am aiming for. I figured making general tiles is easy, so I decided to go for something a little more adventurous (after all, everyone can cut squares from plasticard!). What I really wanted was a pattern made from the tiles, one that was embedded into the street. After a little mulling over patterns that could mean something to a UCM city of old I decided on an Eagle. I roughly drew up my pattern, keeping the lines as straight as possible (I did only want a challenge after all, and adding curves in would have made it impossible! Next I measured out a cube and drew a grid, each square in the grid measuring the same size as the tiles I intended to use on the rest of the base, and drew the Eagle inside. Once happy I then did the same to a piece of plasticard, and I was ready to cut!


After I had cut all the pieces into squares I chose a place to start on the base (near the centre) and began to place the squares, cutting along the lines on each to create the pattern. Now, this turned out to be a complete ball ache and I should have started with something a little easier, but it did work! After I had all the pieces down I added some more normal square tiles to create the street, cutting a few to look like they had been smashed, added a kerb, some fallen masonry (concrete shards) and sand and Bobs your uncle, we have a ruined street!

Almost done
The lamppost is N gauge scale, though I had to chop at least half an inch of the bottom to make it what I regard to be a better size. It also came with a large LED which looked pretty ridiculous so I whipped that out and puttied in a better size light. To attach it to the base and make it fit in my shaped foam I drilled into the base and stuck in a piece of paper clip which slips neatly into the post. All in all this took a while, and I wouldn't go this over the top for each base but I am very happy with the results.

Finito!













Snow is another issue. I will be using the genius product which is Snow flock but getting the right mix is key. Do you just use PVA, or PVA and water, or PVA, water and white paint? Well after much testing I have decided on the last option. Without the paint the snow ends up looking a little old and trodden on, and I wanted a really fresh look. I also liberally covered the mixture while wet with more flock to make it look really new and recent.
I'd like to say I remember which is which, but I did this a few months ago and have no idea.
I am confident the right hand one is flock, PVA, water and paint and that I'll be using that...
This will be it for bases, as at Salute I picked up the final paints I needed and can finally get around to putting some slap on them. I have done a test on a Invader with the paints I did have though, so here is a sneak peak of the colour scheme.
My Invader is bluer than yours
Hope you enjoyed the post, and see you next time!

3 comments:

  1. Looking really nice. It is a bit more clearly defined colours than what I have seem to the scourges mostly so a good way of making the army looking unique. How will you do with squad markings?

    Also...what happened to the blue Marauder?

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  2. Thanks bud! Squad markings are really, really tricky with Scourge and I'm not really sure yet. Probably something to do with the bases, or possibly the 'spines' down the center of the model. The Marauder was embarrassingly a typo...

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  3. Looking very nice indeed.

    Cheers,
    Sword

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