Adventures in base making (Part 1)

Bit of a mini-tutorial on how I went about making the base for a small figure vignette. This will be the edge of a desert highway with a crash barrier.

The core of this is 40mm insulation foam, cut to size with my Proxxon Thermocut. A piece of cork, cut from an Ikea dinner place mat, is roughly torn by hand to create the tarmac edge, then fixed firmly to the top of the foam using white glue.

I like my bases to have a clean look, almost like they are carved from the scenery. So, when fully dry, the base sides were clad with 1mm plasticard, again fixed with white glue, creating a smooth surround. It does take quite a while to do this, as you have to do one side at a time and leave it to dry overnight. It is also important to keep everything square and clean and fill the plasticard joints to ensure they don't show. You can use a little Tamiya extra-thin to glue the cladding corners together, but be careful, this can affect some types of foam.

The cork road element was then covered with AK Terrains paste, Asphalt (AK8013), making sure to cover the top of the plasticard sides.

Personally, I find the texture a bit too subtle for my taste, so I added some more fine sand just to bulk it out a bit. I also added some AK Gen3 Ash Grey acrylic paint (11024) just to lighten up the colour. I'll be painting it anyway, but the colour is very dark out of the tub.

This was then smoothed out with a wet spatula to try and get a smooth-ish surface. It is a good idea to distress it slightly with a sponge, then go over it again with the spatula. This creates minor surface imperfections and adds a little more texture.

The ground part of the base has a small triangle of self-adhesive plastering joint tape applied to act as a key for the mud paste.

VMS Smartmud was then applied to the corner, ensuring it is pushed firmly into the mesh below. Again, I made sure to cover the top of the plasticard sides.

The texture was then enhanced slightly using a rolled up piece of kitchen foil to create some random imperfections. You can also press a suitable small rock into the surface to achieve this. Just depends on the look you want.

Whilst still wet, fine soil and small stones were sprinkled over the mud and moved around to where they looked the most pleasing.

You can see here, I also placed the crash barrier support in position, to make sure it blended into its' surroundings.

When happy with the layout, the ground area was then soaked with Mr.Colour Levelling Thinner (to break down the surface tension), then VMS Sand and Ballast Freeze was dripped over to fix everything in place.

The crash barrier support was removed at this stage, so it didn't get fixed into the ground just yet; we can always blend this in later.

All that remains is to let everything dry thoroughly - usually 12-24 hours - and we can move on to the painting.

Day of Days

 

Band of Brothers. That epic mini-series really captured my attention, and from the start I wanted to create a scene that portrayed the feel of the show.

The title of this piece, and one of the episodes, revolves around the final preparations for the parachute drop on D-Day. The scene in that episode that really struck me involves the paratroopers preparing their equipment on the airfield, with Lt. Winters helping everyone up to board the aircraft.

So, the scene is simple. It involves a couple of paratroopers making their final equipment checks with an officer coming to see them off. They look sykyward; maybe in anticipation, or maybe they are watching the first wave take off.

The Jeep is the Tamiya kit with a few added missing details and the steering turned slightly. I added the Mantis Miniatures jeep stowage set, which includes a folded canvas roof and some baseball equipment to put in the back, as well as some other items of equipment.

Painting was pretty straightforward as I wanted the jeep to show minimal wear; I assumed it would be fairly new, after all. Restraining the weathering was harder than it looked as there is a tendancy for it to look toy-like. Just some subtle modulation and a light dust layer did the trick.

The two figures on the airfield are both from Minisoldiers, and all of the equipment strewn around comes with the bending figure. The officer is a Soga Miniatures figure and it, along with the standing figure, had their heads modified to look up.

I read somewhere that paratroopers would lay out all of their equipment on a blanket whilst gearing up. That way they would immediately see that they had everything once the blanket was clear. I rolled out some putty for the blankets and pressed down all of the equipment into it.

As you would expect, painting of this equipment takes some time. Painting this, and the Airborne uniform is explained in more detail in previous blog post, here.

One item I hadn't tackled before was the inflatable "Mae West". Painting yellow is always a tricky affair but the key is to use a flesh undercoat before the yellow goes on. This really helps maintain the vibrancy of the colour, without it becoming washed out.

Another thing to consider is the shade colour. The opposite complimentary tone for yellow on a colour wheel is violet. Now this may sound odd, but used sparingly, this really does work. As always, I tried this out on a spare torso before committing to the figures.

This is the palette I finally used for the yellow.

Yellow Mae West Life Preserver:

Undercoat:        AK Gen3 11403 Highlight Flesh

Base Colour:     Mix AK Gen3 11042 Volcanic Yellow with a touch of 11078       Medium Orange

Shadow:            add AK Gen3 11406 Reddish Black (Sparingly !)

Highlight 1:        add more AK Gen3 11042 Volcanic Yellow

Highlight 2:        add AK Gen3 11041 Golden Yellow

Final highlight and edging was done with 11036 Ice Yellow, and the midtones were then glazed sparingly with 11078 Medium Orange

Finally, I was honoured to receive the D-Day theme award for this piece at the KMK Scaleworld show in Belgium.