Work-in-progress

Stegadon Base: 1

My Lizardmen have sort of a yellow/red and grey colour scheme going on. The idea was that it was volcanic/lava colours, to better blend into their natural environment. I’ve looked into “lava” bases before, and while I was able to find some that looked ok (most of them are for 40k…), I’ve never gone ahead and bought them.

A quick search last week showed me that I might be able to…make them myself. So here I am, testing this idea on the largest base I’ve got.

I started with more cork. After using it on my skirmisher movement trays, I’m pretty impressed with the stuff. It looks like rocks when you’re done! The only concern I still have is longevity – will it all last longer than a few days.

After the cork, I set about trying to emulate this YouTube video on making lava bases.

I got a box of Milliput, so I wouldn’t feel like I was mushing hundred dollar bills onto my base (in the form of GW modelling putty). It has a very different texture than the green stuff I’m used to using – I used the “standard” milliput and it’s much more grainy when you’re mixing it together. Comes off on your hands, almost like a flaky dough.

I mushed it on there and then tried to use my sculpting tool to smooth it all out. That didn’t work, so I ended up wetting my finger and using that. Worried about fingerprints? Me too. But the tool I have is to thin, and so it left edge marks where it depressed into the putty.

After I’d covered the base, I used the tool as shown in the video to cut in and pull the putty apart to create channels. Then I used my exacto blade to cut mini-channels.

Lastly I used some extra putty to build up a step on one of the cork pieces for the stegadon’s back foot – he’s kind of standing on a rock or something.

I want to paint this separate from the model, so now I’m thinking of how to attach them afterwards. Patrick says he hasn’t had any issues with this sort of thing, but I’m thinking I’ll try to pin it, and then glue the pin down after painting.

For colours, I was thinking: the rocks my usual drybrush fortress/codex grey, the puttied ground a darker grey/black and the channels a red/orange. I’m hoping to do some source lighting such that the edges of the channels can “glow” a bit, but we’ll see how successful that is.

I would love if you would give your opinion on colours! What would you do with this?

Thanks for reading!

 

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