how to sculp starfish, barnacles,tang,... ?

[Farin]

hello

i´m having a great day - got home from my internship early and found time to strip paint from two of my privateer minis - a reaper and the fantastic skarre, queen of the broken coast

i wana repaint them since i screwed up the paint job on both ( too much experiments with colours ) and i want them to have bases that look like part of the beach with starfish, seaweed, barnacles and the other stuff that get flushed at the beach by the tide , plus i want the reaper to be covered by a few of these things so he looks as if he just came out of the water. My inspiration is the great Deathjack alyson and Mike Mcvey painted a while back: http://www.studiomcvey.com/

so heres my question: do you got any advice how to sculp these things or do you know any mini on CMON that is painted in a similar way?
Also i would like to know if anyone here has ever tried doing seaweed on this scale, since i´m concerned that it might look more like green sphagetti hanging from my jack than tang....


and by the way , a friend borought me his camera, so i might be able to provide photos of the wip - i just need new batteries and to test the macro ..

 

[Einion]

A starfish is pretty easy - smoosh a blob of putty down, then trim to shape. If you think you need to round off the upper edges then a light brush over with a soft brush, going over it randomly, when the putty is about half set should do the trick. Make a bunch and pick the ones that turn out best.

Getting the form of barnacles right is probably going to be harder but what I think will work is, apply a ball of putty (make sure it\'s stuck down well) and trim down to a small circle, then using tweezers pinch it up into a slight cone from multiple angles, finally push in the centre if necessary. Hope that makes sense.

Seaweed is one of those things I think you\'ll probably have to play around to get. It varies a lot anyway, from very flat sheets like kelp to globular types and various leafy types so you\'ve got a lot of different styles you can go for. If you want it free-hanging I think it might be best to do it flat on a ceramic tile or piece of glass and then pare off with a razorblade and glue into place.

Einion

 

[Farin]

@einion

well it makes sense to me, thanks alot !

i allready figured that starfishes are pretty easy to do ( can´t be harder than the mushrooms i did ), but your tip wit the random brushes sounds great, i try that. and the barnacles - i stared long enaough at the ones the Mcveys made, i think i try half a dozen on a piece of plastic card using your technique.

lets hope the camera works at the weekend, so i can show you folks a few pics

farin

 

[DaN]

Sea weed...
Hmm...

You\'ve given me another idea for a tutorial

I\'m thinking nodular seaweed wouldn\'t be too hard to do, maybe just a case of some small blobs of GS on some green cotton?
(Working from top of my head here)

And I don\'t see why normal seaweed couldn\'t be done with thin tissue paper...

 

[Amazon warrior]

Whatever you do, don\'t try the plastic fishtank weed, unless you don\'t want to paint it, because *nothing* sticks to that stuff! It might be ok if you want it as-is.

Incidentally, I made a cool lil anemone by sticking some thin rolls of putty together to make the tentacles, then wrapping strip of putty round the base to make the body when the tentacles were set. It\'s here if you want to have a look. Mine\'s a bit big, but with some practice, I\'m sure you could make smaller ones.

 

[Farin]

@DaN : glad i could help

yeah, the green cotton could work ( if we got the same picture in our head ) but i think i will need alot try and error here. its like i said, it could look like green spaghetti quite easily.

@amazon: thanks for the warning on the fish tank stuff, i keep that in mind

by the way, just finished the first pieces of the base for the reaper, the planks

i used a trick mike mcvey shows on his blog. just take a thin stripe of balsa wood ( mine is about 2 mm ) and throw it into water. when it´s soaking wet you can bend it easily by fastening it to cane or something simelar with a rubber band. when the wood is try you got a bended plank that looks like a piece from the curved ship body. i added another step by using a cutter to make crisscross cuts and removing bigger and smaller parts of the balsa...so far it worked, i got myself some really worn off looking plants. it looks great, i just hope the effect will be still visible after painting

tomorow i do the first starfishs

:bouncy: