The new demon armies provide gamers the opportunity to play one set of models for both 40K and WFB. The lava bases project is for a friend of mine who wanted a complete set of bases for an upcoming chaos army project. All that’s needed is either a pinning or magnet system to flip an army from one system to the other.
The bases are green stuff/procreate over plastic bases. Texture is applied with a concrete rock, then lava channels are added with a wire hook tool and a standard sculpting tool. Hardest part of the whole project was mixing up all the green stuff - the bases used up a 30 inch roll of GS. I spent more time mixing than sculpting. FYI - don’t let your green stuff lay around too long. The roll I used was stored in the freezer for 6 years, causing the yellow portion to develop a skin that mixed poorly with the blue portion.
The bike/cavalry bases are designed to go from square to round. The square cav base slots into the open space on the round bike base.
40K collection
25mm round - resin bases
WFB collection
25mm square
Spectre Hobbies is now stocking gaming products cast by Chicago Terrain Factory. The initial release includes:
- 40mm Urban Bases
- 25mm Urban Bases
- 25mm Rune Bases
- Fallen Banner objective marker
- Alien Pod Mouth terrain piece
Look for the Chicago Terrain Factory products in the Bases category.
Using art clay to mold and manufacture scale Hex Nuts. Jedion357 threw down a challenge on TerraGenisis to create a DYI Hex Nut. Colonel Shofer suggested a latex mold using 2 part epoxy as the casting agent. Brain storming on the idea, I suggested using art clay as an alternitve mold material. The Colonel asked that I follow up with the project.
Hex Nut casting using 2 part epoxy and resin as casting materials. Resin on the left hand side, epoxy on the right. Impressions taken from a 4mm hex tool head and a 1/8 square plastic rod. The resin setup without bubbles and cleaned up from the clay with minor effort. The epoxy suffered a 50% failure rate from bubbles and still seemed a bit rubbery 24 hours after casting. The cleanup was a bit of a pain - the epoxy is clear & it is rather difficult to identify what material is the casting and what is flash. I would recomend resin as the prefered casting material for DYI Hex Nuts.
Hirst Arts has updated their site with a host of new molds & new Tips and Tricks. The new molds support building dungeons for a pair of old, dungeon crawl, board games. Plus there are instructions for making Gelatenous Cubes - and who would not like that.
PS - this is a test post direct from Google Docs.
PPS - had a bit of trouble getting the post to publish, needed to fiddle with the post time. I may start using Google Docs a bit more, just need to experiment to see how well Docs can post pics.
If you’ve ever wanted to try out the Hirst molds system without having to invest in molds and plaster, or if you’re already a plaster junky and want to hang out with like minded hobbyists, come on out to the Hirst Seminar at Adepticon 2008. The Hirst Arts Seminar page has all details about what, where and how.
The Alien Drinking Hole is painted in a purple with red accept scheme. Base coat was first a spray of black paint, then a spray of purple paint. The rough ribbed base dry brushed easily, taking coats of paint with little effort. As usual, I had a bit of trouble with highlights. First efforts were done with purple mixed with bleach bone, but I was left with an underwhelming pasty color. At that point, I added red as an accent & pounded on the high lights to bring the eye up the body of the terrain. Final touch is a bit of two part water effect in the basin to add the “drinking” portion of the “hole.” The water effect is tinted with a bit of orange, but the ink effect is very minimal.
Sculpting for the alien drinking hole is complete. A standard one-piece mold was created to copy the base of the hole, but for the tusks - I was able to try out my first 2 part mold. Art clay worked like a charm to hold the master while the first layer of RTV was poured. I used Smooth-On’s Universal Mold Release to little effect, the RTV halves firmly bonded to each other. My only recourse was to cut the master out of the rubber. Fortunately, the RTV smoothly cut away from the master, giving me a functional mold. Four casts later & I have all the parts to complete the project.
Shifting Lands is the home of Geboom and his marvelous resin cast boats, buildings and docks. The linked page takes you to a tutorial on how he builds his manor house kits but be sure to roam about the whole site.
The tutorial boils down to four steps:
- build a rough structure with exact over all measurements
- construct a mold & cast the rough in plaster
- carve incredible detail into the plaster
- construct a new mold & cast the detailed pieces in resin
Aside from the “insert artistic ability here” step, the process is a good guild to scratch building large objects using plaster as a base. One modification to this process that may save a bit of RTV would be to use the craft foam method developed by Dlmos. The craft foam process uses layers of 2mm foam to create a rough mold for plaster casting. No great amount of detail is going to be applied by the foam mold, but that’s OK - the goal is to create a basic (but accurate) shape to carve on.
In a way, you could call Geboom a graduate of the Hirst school of plaster. His earlier works with the Hirst blocks show a great deal of creativity but it appears that he has grown beyond the Hirst bricks and moved on to 100% self created projects. I see more and more of this sort of thing happening on the Hirst message boards - long time builders having been exposed to casting & mold making skills are now busy on their own projects.
Picked up the new Ruined Fieldstone mold from Hirst Arts at Gen Con. After a week of casting, I finally have enough bricks to start building. The most interesting parts on this mold are the 2.5 inch arch and the pillar pieces. The arches use a new 3D connection point - makes the arch much easier to glue & keeps the bricks at the proper angle. The ruined stones are interesting, but I’ve been able to ruin fieldstone with a bit of work. Cleverly, the ruin pieces stack on each other to create intact bricks. The only downside to the mold is the number of casts needed to complete a project - each size of brick has only one socket on the mold.
After building a “ruined” set of arches, it dawned on me that the structure is not all that ruined. What’s missing is any sort of ruin along the height of the walls. The fourth pic is an attempt to build the ruins vertically. Aside from a bit of sanding, the bricks also work well as worn or damaged spaces in a wall.
Completion of the Blast Wall project. I attempted to detail the plane plastic card wall using Apoxie Sculpt cut with water in a similar fashion to how UltraWerke uses green putty and acetone. Unfortunately, the Apoxie would not dissolve in water despite how mushy the epoxy may become in the presence of H2O.
Plan B was to use Foam Coat from Hot Wire Foam Factory with a bit of play sand. The mix was applied in a very thin, watery coat to the smooth surfaces of the blast wall. Once dry, the sand/plaster mix added a concrete type finish to the model. I would have preferred the epoxy finish because when a mold is created from this item, most of the plaster detailing will stick to the RTV, requiring a bit of re-detailing if a second mold is made.
