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
Concept pieces for a new line of lava bases. A friend of mine is building 
a new demon army and is looking for a set of custom bases to highlight the force. His design calls for solid rock over glowing lava cracks - sort of like the thumb nail to the left. After creating a pair of bases matching the design, I threw together two other ideas just to see what else I could come up with.
The first two bases are made using Apoxie Sculpt. The material is inexpensive, but continues to display deficiencies when sculpting fine detail. The lava channels in base #1 are shallow due to the loss of flexibility in the epoxie after about 10 minutes of working time. Surface texture is from a piece of concrete. Base #2 is all “cold lava” with no channels for hot lava. Texture is from a bit of resin rubble.
Base #3 is made with Procreate. This epoxie has none of the rubberyness of green stuff and takes detail very well. The same concrete rock is used to apply the texture, but this time the detail is much more complete and deeper. Base #4 is a complete departure from the design request. This base uses floor tile to create free floating flagstone in a pool of lava made from basing paste.
Baegor the One Horned sculpted by Steve Saleh.
The annual Adepticon miniature has a number of obstacles to over come. The mini must try and satisfy both 40K and WFB players, try and have some sort of useful roll in an army collection and avoid the wrath of GW’s legal department. Baegor satisfies all of those criteria - an original demon character that should easily fit in with both existing demon collections and work well with the upcoming 40K/WFB demon books. The figure appears to be a bit thin, but then the photo does not have any sizing references other than the sculpted stone base. I’m eager to see what the production figure looks like, I hope the casting process does not flatten/stretch/thin the figure to any significant degree.
The third and final objective marker for Adepticon: The Weapon. The counter is a matched pair of curved blades made from two layers of plastic card with epoxy putty smoothing the transition lines. Laying two swords on a bare base looked all too dull- the solution was to elevate the blades on a pair of rounded tubes (which also matched the design concepts of the two previous pieces). Because the marker will be cast, the gap between the blades and the base was filled to prevent mold lock. Fortunately, the most common view of the marker will be from over head - hiding the fill.
For the Adepticon Team Tournament, I was tasked with creating three objective (40mm) markers of alien origin. This stipulation makes for a bit of a creative challenge - most equipment of human origin is a square with buttons or rivets. The GW universe has a variety of alien looks - but if I “borrow” from any given race the marker is no longer alien, it will be recognized as “Eldar” or “Necron”. After a bit of playing around, I fell into a three lobed foundation.
The Beacon uses three antenna to project a pulse or beam. This piece may also work as some sort of disruption field.
The Generator is a micro particle imploder - three chambers drive to a central collection hub.
The final marker remains a WIP - a weapon. The molding process requires a flat object, eliminating any sort of upright gun or barrel. I thought about a psychic crown - but a man sized crown could be difficult to communicate in 28mm scale and a head piece is not clearly a weapon. I’m considering three blades on a raised pedestal - but standard straight sword/knife blades don’t match the tri-lobe theme. Maybe a set of curved, falchion like blades. Or an exotic blade (think bat’leth) in a lobe style.
Check out Scratchbuilt Starships at The Redoubt. The author has posted a collection of fleet scale starships crafted from plastic card. Excellent demonstration of how to sculpt without ever picking up epoxy. On top of that, he’s promised a step-by-step article in the future. Stay tuned - I’ll be sure to link in any how to that comes along.
The Tech Dig objective marker represents buried treasure of a high tech sort. The main element is a plastic card box, with half rounds, thin full rounds and rivets. The digging tools are a bit of wire with green stuff wrappings as handles and plastic card heads. Finally, the ground is Apoxie sculpt textured with a concrete block.
A Tyranid drinking hole - even the horde needs to stop to refresh and refuel.
My first large scale sculpting effort, created for the Terra Genesis Drinking Spot competition. The drinking hole is based on a CD & is sculpted primarily from Apoxie Sculpt with smaller details in ProCreate. The goal is to create a sucking orifice with four upright tusks. The form begins with a one inch layer of Apoxie that is worked with a dental pick to create the woody exterior. The rim then has small mouths & tentacles added to break up the consistent pattern. The interior of the hole is a thin layer of Apoxie with impressions mass-produced using a stamp. Exterior detail on the four tusk bases is added as horizontal bands with small sucker holes made with a piece of aluminum tubing.
The tusks are a curved horn of Apoxie over a wire armature. I was forced to use a bit of ProCreate to detail the curve - the Apoxie would not hold the small amounts of detail that the smaller surface required. The last remaining step is to create a plug that will slot into the tusk base. The finished tusk will then be cast in a mold to create the set of four pieces.
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.
Bio leaching, DNA stealing, blood sucking alien invaders have landed. And I owe it all to the fact that I can’t sculpt fire.
One part of trying to scratch build everything is learning new things. Some times, those new things don’t come easy or at all. But while forming a shapeless lump that should have been an engine fire, I uncovered a technique that made for a rather neat organic effect. The marker on the left was the origin of the alien markers shown above.
Begin with a lump of Apoxie Sculpt. Smooth down the edges with a broad headed sculpting tool and form a bowl in the center. Cut up the edge with a sharp edged tool such as a needle. Round suckers are made from a 1/8 tube with a small impression within the circle. The small impressions on the tentacles were formed using a 2mm crochet hook.
One final lesson learned - Apoxie Sculpt has an active life of about 20 minutes, after that time the Apoxie no longer cuts when pressure is applied and responds by moving away from pressure. Apoxie is still fine to do large, terrain type work with for about an hour or more but will not respond well to small detail work. In comparison, green stuff/ProCreate is good to work with for more than an hour.
