This was a fun project and might not be completed!
the "Its Life Jim" add on to the Forward Base Kickstarter from
Antenocitis Workshop is cast in clear resin.
The colors are intended to underscore the Science Fiction feel of the models so are in an unusual spectrum.
Where possible I wanted to leverage the material to create effects so there would be a lot of translucency to the models.
To get this effect I relied on a lot of washes. heavily pigmented washes from
Secret Weapon and
The Army Painter for the bases coats and mid washes while turning to
Games Workshop for less pigmented washes.
Highlights and hard details were painted using the usual suspects, mostly Reaper and Vallejo.
I dropped in a Mantis Warrior Standard/Icon bearer from
Raging Heroes for scale. She's actually a little tall in retrospect because she's mounted on a base that is more elevated than most of my models are on... but you should get the idea.
One of the goals was to make the fan structures and berry-like bulbs, the blister-like masses, and the cylindrical rolled flowers to be very translucent... almost clear. In the case of the smaller berries and all of the flowers I gave them a light wash to tint them and later removed the wash from large areas of them with an eraser. The larger berries and the fans retained the tints. the berries have an orange glaze and are then detailed with a Reaper orange triad.
A shot of the whole set! It should provide plenty of alien life accents to whatever system I'm using... they'll make fine Chaos Flora, or Feywild stuffs... even Malifaux comes to mind... when not performing the usual Sci-Fi duties.
A look at the orange berries and the purple fallen trees. I had a hard time with the trees because I really wanted to leave the wood cores clear... like the trees were glowing in their decay... but... and I said I might not be done yet... I think I would have to put actual little lights under them to make the glows do what I was imagining. In the end I tinted the cores ... but I really should have done that first....
I'm going to do a lot of Illuminated buildings for the Undertown Kickstarter, and for the rest of Forward Base, so I'll look at these again when I'm doing that and see if I really want glowing terrain!
A look at the barrel blossoms. These were tricksey little devils! Tinted inside and out edge layered and then outer tint erased... whew!
This material is very flexible and really feels like rubber when so a lot of the smaller bits are moveable... like leaves etc... I've painted straight onto the surface after a good scrub and a couple of ultrasonic baths. the material takes paint reasonably well although it remains to be seen what the durability will be after they get a few games under their belts
Next up.. a push to finish up some GW legacy minis that are on the desk and hopefully the Space Pope from Raging Heroes.
