Intermediate basing...

[CrazyIvan]

So I\'ve been working on a Marienburg warband for Mordheim (http://www.coolminiornot.com/browse.php?submitter=CrazyIvan)

I\'ve gotten the basics of basing down pretty well. The bases were coated with fine gravel, painted black, drybrushed codex grey, and static grassed, while the blue model (Vigo) had his crossbow resting on a peice of quartz I uncovered in the yard.

But the miniatures I find really great all have far more elaborate bases.

How do you go about doing those? As a beginner (those are my first three models painted with any degree of care), I don\'t have a billion little peices floating around.

Do you base them my way, than add the details such as a skull etc, or do you put those on the model before gravel and flocking?

What are some good sources of misc. debris?

 

[Nelson]

If it\'s something old, like a skull or a rusty weapon or artifact, i put it on first, then sand. This\'ll make it look like its been lying there for a while. for fresher stuff like heads, and body parts, i\'s good to put them on top. mordheim bases also look good with cobblestones or tile. you can use thin cardboard, putty, plasticard, whatever, and cut it into squares for the mordheim city look. If you have a credit card, which i dont you could order the skaven clanrat cmd. sprue. it has a severed head, some weapons, and a whole rack of skulls

 

[ejsaunders]

There are a million and one things you can do to improve the look of a base. Some of the best GD winners have either chosen to portray reality, or humor, you can\'t really combine both and expect to get away with it. For example, I remember one ogre base that was covered in small red with white spots mushrooms which really set it off (it had grass and other stuff on it too, but the mushys really made you want to take a closer look). Others I\'ve seen go for the realistic approach. It really depends on the look you want to capture and the feel you want to portray in miniature.

I.e. if you had lets say, an Eldar sniper shooting out of the window of a building, resting his gun on the sill of the window, muzzle pointing outside you could build up a small, or very large base with the window or perhaps even two sides of the building. You could go for the realism of getting it all in scale and realistic stone colouring or concrete/plascrete whatever you want or you could just build up a small piece of wall and a bit of broken window, its your choice.

If your looking for inspiration I\'d suggest the old Golden Daemon award winners, to check what they\'ve used themselves in past events and also the other miniature artists work here on CMON.

Golden D award winners:
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/demon-winners/

Old WD/GD/GW Staff paintjobs
http://goldendemon.org/EavyMetal/\'EavyMetal.html

If you want to represent something special then reference it against real life, do a little bit of research and find similar real life scenes, i.e. if you want to know what someone with their brains shot out spashes like then find an appropriate real life pic. If you want to know what sort of plants grow in snow and what colours/textures they are go check online or your library.

I apologise I\'m being vague, but if you want something in particular then I\'d ask a specific question, i.e. what do you think I should put on this base to make it better? If you include some pics and a bit of background on the mini then I\'m sure a load of people here will post constructive and useful comments to help you decide.