need help for crazy idea: floating darkness

[Farin]

hello

well it´s been a while but after the second eye surgery and more work for college i finally spent an entire weak pinning and painting my cryx army ( tomorrow i will shoot pictures and reanimate my w.i.p. thread, i promise).

i´m a slow painter, but i managed to (nearly) finish several minis and as a big finish i wanted to build a special base for one of my warcaster, the witch coven of galghast.

see that hovering globe in the middle? Thats the egregore, an arcane globe that spits out liquid darkness, with other words: it´s a magic smoke discharger .

Now what i wanna do is to build that smoke by using water effect gel ( the vallejo stuff in the big cane that dries transparent) . i wanna dye it by mixing it with vallejo colour, and in the end i wanna end up with a transparent yet darkly coloured mass that looks like frozen cola, so to speak. my master plan has the following steps .

1. build a basic structure using a transparent warhammer flight base and cork to make a base structure . at the very end i will stick the globe to the light base

2. using thin transparent pvc-hose i build up a structure for the liquid darkness, especially \"feeler \" Tentacles that crawl around an old confrontation scelleton that i will glue to the base

3. using dyed water effect gel to build up , layer by layer the black ooze

Now my questions :

- what is the best way to get an uniform colour for the gel ? just mixing an d praying or is there a secret ? note that my kung - fu is weak, i never worked with water gel before
- is this stuff the (gel) even the right one, or do you know an easier way to realize my idea ? just painting the pvc tube wouldn´t work, since it would look exactly like coloured pvc tubes, not liquid.

so i hope , that once again you can help me. any thought and recommendation for this project is welcome !


farin

 

[airhead]

Is this for display or gaming - huge difference.

Thoughts -
Instead of tubing, get some clear sprue (model cars windshield sprue) and a candle. Mold, shape, taper and define your tenticles.

Attach to a clear plastic bead as a base then flow the tinted gel over it.

I\'d think that gel medium (Golden or Liquitex) would be cheaper, but the small amount in the Vellajo may be worth the difference - probably the same stuff.

Tinting would be by mixing something like Vellajo Smoke into the gel. Stir stick in a cough syrup cup and go for it.

 

[Farin]

it´s for gaming

my reason for the tubes is that the whole ooze will stay flexible after drying, so breaking won´t be a problem. that thought aside, the melting of clear sprue is definetly a good idea, i keep it in mind

and i already got the vallejo stuff -it isn´t sthat expensive. at first i had the same thought - that it is just like the gel medium you mentioned. turned out it isn´t . it´s a white paste that turns clear during the drying. i also thought i could jst paint the stuff after drying, once again i was wrong, acrylic colour just rolls of, it cannot adhere to the surface

right now i´m running a few test with small amount´s of the gel on a piece of plastic card and differnet colours mixed in , i let you know how it worked as soon as it´s dry

 

[QuietiManes]

If it\'s a base, how about buying one of those clear semi-spheres? From Plastruct or Evergreen, glue that to the base, paint it in transparent colours, then attach the caster on top of that? Like he\'s riding the impending storm of darkness. Otherwise, at least cut off a bit off the bottom of the ball you use and attach right to the base, for stability.

As for uniform colour, just mix it well. It might be neat if you implied some movement in the magic smoke by varying the colour or density of pigment. To do this in a cup is easy, just stop mixing it before it goes uniform. You could pour this on the sphere and it would work alright but you\'d waste alot of water-effects this way. To do this on a model, might be harder, on the sphere, do layers, darker colour first, lighter colour after. This will leave a not so smooth surface but I don\'t think you\'d mind that looking at the example you posted. You could just paint swirly patterns on the sphere before appying the transparent water effects too, for a smoother surface. The tentacles you can just put a couple drops of water in the cup you mix the water effects in, mix it up a bit, swish the tooth pick around so the colours swirl into each other, when you\'re happy, pour into drops/tentacles...let dry. Pouring it on a fishing line might help with the longer ones.

Oh and less is more. The see through water will go opaque fast so add the paint a drop at a time (as you probably know already from testing).

 

[Farin]

QuietiManes: the variyng of the colour/pigments was exactly what i wanna do, in a controlled way: let the colour fade from opaque black ( to hide the small steel pin in the large transparent one that i use to attach the sphere to the base ) to light sepia

well it´s already late for me , and my samples will take a few more hours to dry , so i think i call it a day.

i will definetly post pics tomorrow