First Article- Simple Basing

[LegionoftheCow]

Well it was a quicker start than expected but as Hammer was working on finishing his trollblood he decided to do up a small article for the base.

Here it is:

http://legionofthecow.wordpress.com/...simple-basing/


Also I was trying to submit an article here on cmon but the link doesnt seem to work...


CoW

[-Ice]

Excellent, but that's not exactly "simple". More of a "themed base" IMO. How about your basic, vanilla, you-see-them-on-magazines bases?

[LegionoftheCow]

Can you give a few examples of which ones you refer to?

This base can be changed to do whatever environment you like, perhaps we should do that to show the variety from a single thing? Desert bases, foresty, field, etc just changes with the paint colours and finishing touches

[Chern Ann]

Also I was trying to submit an article here on cmon but the link doesnt seem to work...
CoW

Eh? Seems to worky. Just post the article as a normal forum posts (images and all) and I'll promote it to an article if you're still having issues.

[LegionoftheCow]

Ya it just goes to a blank page for me after i click yes to "do you really want to submit an article"

Im not sure if the Final Shot links to the bigger image or what it does



So I was working on the base for my trollblood guy and I though I might as well take advantage of this opportunity to bring you guys our first article on basing. I was going for a pretty simple base with a bit of a marshy feel. So lets get to the fun stuff! Ok so to start off I made a mass of milliput in the rough shape of a rock. At this point you can't really make it look rigid and rock like but dont worry about it that will be taken care of in the next step. Once the putty has dried, take a hobby knife and cut away at any curved or rounded surface or edge on your rock until everything is sharp and rigid. Remember your are not cutting away big chunks, you should have already built the basic shape of the rock in the previous stage, you are just making small cuts on the surface. You may be thinking why not just use a real rock? Well that would be wonderful if you have the perfect one for the job but often times your model may not fit nicely on it and this is a way of making sure you have a perfect fit!


For this base I wanted to add some small pools to create the marshy look so at this stage I layed down some putty where the ground would go and I left out the areas where the pools of water go. [The white looking putty is the groundwork]

Once that putty has also dried, cover all of the ground area with glue and sprinkle some sand on the raised ground areas and overtop of that and in depressed areas where the pools go sprinkle some fine dirt. You could just use sand but it will give you a much more textured look which wasnt really appropriate for the wet muddy look of the marshes.
TIP: Sandy dirt from outside is great for its variety of shape, its fine texture and its dirt cheap cost! (hah!)


After doing all the texturing, I like to spray the base lightly with white primer to make it easier to paint. [Dont go too heavily just one or two spurts to make it easier for the paint to cling to the edges and raised areas]


This is where the basing turns more specific, it gets more complex because the goal I am after is a marsh base so in order to make this standard base feel more marsh like I've done some more in depth colouring and applied some water and so on to make it fit with the theme of my Trollblood. The following parts are optional. You may take the above and paint it in desert colours, dark colours, or change it to another environment type!
When painting the rock I used charadon granite and trollblood highlight (colors which I used in some of the finer details of my trollblod guy) and then I used some enchanted blue for the shadows (the color I used for the skin).


Before I started painting the ground, I covered it all with some dry pigments. This stage wasnt really for coloring purposes, rather I've found that if you take a heavy layer of pigment and add water to it, it creates a nice muddy effect. though I have found that the downside to this technique is that if you uses heavy washes and press down on the pigmented areas too hard the color will get moist and mix in with your other colors.


Next I began coloring the ground of the base with the same colors I used to shade the armor on the trollblood guy. The reason for choosing the same colors for the base as were used on the figure is to help the figure feel like he is within the environment rather than seperate from it (because light bounces off objects and is essentially what gives us color, the colors of the environment are likely to appear, even if only subtly on the figure and vice versa. This is quite an extensive topic which will be covered in greater detail in future articles!). I started first with a wash of snakebite leather, then dark flesh. After those two layers I went in with watered down brown ink. I applied the brown ink more heavily in the areas near where the water is going to go because wet earth is of course darker than dry earth. After all the washes of brown ink the earth was starting to look a little too dark s I re-added some brightnes to it by dabbing on a mix of trollblood highlight and snakebite leather. Finally for the areas where the water would go, I used a mix of enchanted blue and chaos black to create some depth of shadow with color because the depth was not physically there. I also did a light wash of blue over the entire base to give it the feel of a cool environment.



For the next step I added some moss around the rock. For this I used GW flock and overtop I sprinkled some fine dirt to lessen the texture of the flock. After that I used the same pigment technique which I used to create the muddy look on the ground. This step was more experimental and it did not quite give me the effect I desired in the end. I decided to include this anyway as a reminder that while articles like this can be helpful, they are not a prescription and you should always experiment with new approaches to what you or others have done before! I also applied the static grass at this stage. Next I added some washes of darkened snot green to both the moss and the static grass. You can apply it over the whole surface of the moss but for the static grass you mainly want to apply the washes around the sides so that you don't crush all of the fibres down. And finally I added some specks of green in the area of the pools to resemble some plants in the water.




Finally I cut the bristles off of a big old brush that I had and glued them to the base to resemble taller grasses or reeds, and I applied the water effects. In the final stages I reworked some washes of brown ink and blue to achieve the darkness of the earth that I wanted. I also worked the brown and blue into the rock in order to make it feel like it was more part of the ground than separated from it.


Now all we do is wait for it to dry!

Final Shot:

http://legionofthecow.files.wordpres...hol1.jpg?w=388
OR



Hammer
Legion of the Cow
LegionoftheCow.wordpress.com

[gsr15]

Excellent tutorial, though I'd definitely agree this is far from a simple basic/intro base...but I still think I can learn a lot from it and maybe try out only one or two elements initially. I've never done more than just flock a base so jumping into something like this might be a bit much. Thanks for the article!

[LegionoftheCow]

Do you find it difficult to build or just the painting portion?

I suggested to Hammer(and myself) that we, in the future, separate painting and base making. The reason being is painting can be much more complex at times, or more involving so it adds to the complexity of the base, and I find that if we make a generic base the uses is unlimited but if we paint it many people forget that it is universal and think that base is more theme specific.

If I were to cut out the painting portion I feel this tutorial would come across much simpler for you guys.

Feedback is always great because sometimes as you progress through things, you forget where you were when you started, so you have to re-learn how to learn the basics.

Thanks! I look forward to making more articles in the near future!

[gsr15]

Yikes, sorry it took me so long to respond, haven't been checking in as much lately and this slipped down the list...I guess for me its a combination of both issues. Right now, I have a small set of basing materials (2 types each of flock, static grass, and bush clumps, a pile of rocks I've pulled from a gravel pile, and some clay cat litter.) I've never done a base in my life (beyond just flocking the whole damn thing in green) so to me, a basic base might include two or three materials (common ones, not so much the water effects and sculpting mediums) at most from a building standpoint. Painting wise I think I'd say the same thing, I don't right now think I could have come up with the combination of all the washes/ink layers you did on my own without a lot more experience and tips from more skilled folks like yourself (not to mention the use of dry pigments.) Something using maybe only, say 3 stages would be more accessible. I think 'basic' clearly means different things to different people...clearly what you've presented here really is basic to a lot of those reading this, but for me who has never done any basing at all it's more of an intermediate level.

Oh, one other thing...how did you actually attach the model to the base?

Regardless of my specific issues, it's still a very informative tutorial and I greatly appreciate you taking the time to put it together for us, I'm just going to try and cherry pick out a few ideas and see what happens.

[LegionoftheCow]

No problem, Ill try and cover some of those types very soon, i am just trying to get ahold of my old basing kit with all the different stuff ive used for dirt cheap!