Browsing Tag

sculpey

Daemon unit filler

Posted on July 27, 2013

I was going to assemble some horrors tonight from the models I stripped the other week, unfortunately my bitz box had other plans. Today I learned that while I have a large number of bases, I have only a single spare 25mm one, seen in the photo below.

My only spare 25mm base. A few chunks of baked sculpey for horror bases. Oh, and what I did tonight instead of assembling horrors.

I took two of the tentacle bits from the Tzeentch Burning Chariot and glued them onto a base such that they became tentacle unit fillers, instead of tentacle chariot bits.

The base is a re-formulation of the one I did for the Herald. I thought he was standing to high up on the base, so I made the sculpey thinner this time. When I mentioned my problem with the sculpey bending, Wappel said I probably didn’t have the temperature right, so I tried it at 250F instead of the recommended 275F. Still bendy, but I don’t have an oven thermometer, so who knows what is really going on there.

I also left some room on the base itself to glue some bits of rock down, to create some interest that wasn’t cork+scupley. The problem with unit filler, is that it’s lazy. The glorious thing about unit filler is that it’s lazy. But you have to put some effort in anyway. 🙂

My hope for my big unit of plaguebearers is to convert them in such a way that they don’t look like plaguebearers, or bloodletters, but could be used as either if the mood struck me. My colour scheme will not be god specific and will be similar across the army, and similarly I imagine that this 50mm square could be put into any daemon unit I put on the table.

After the glue dries, my plan is to re-oxid paste the area a bit, to create more cohesion between some of the rocks. And go buy 25mm bases so I can actually put some horrors together. I think I have like 40 horrors in my house…and only half that planned for the army.

Work-in-progress

Temple Guard – Banner Mk2

Posted on July 12, 2013

I had originally planned my Temple Guard banner to be modular. This was mostly because I didn’t have a plan for making one until after I’d finished the unit, but once I was done my original one I realized that I could easily make a new one for it.

The Thursday night before OFCC I scrambled to use some Sculpey to create a big slug of a banner and pin it so that it would fit into my banner-bearers hands. I primed it Thursday night and planned on painting it at the tournament. I usually eschew last-minute painting, priding myself on being good at time management, but this was a special case.

CHOP!

My painting station in the Red Lion.

Work-in-progress

Sculpey!

Posted on December 21, 2012

More inspiration from my new hero! He uses the baked sculpey in a lot of different ways…but I’m just a beginner, so I decided to make stone blocks with it. I didn’t screw up…but I didn’t do it right either.

You can buy this stuff from Michaels for a few bucks, in any colour you like. I choose white…because…I did.

Open the box and it’s this strange stuff that’s a little brittle to start with. Roll it around and when it warms up in your hands it becomes super pliable. I spent a few minutes shaping it into a long and flat piece of stone for my stegadon Engine of the Gods howdah. When I was happy with the general shape, I used my regular GW sculpting tool and some water to flatten out the fingerprint marks. Then I took the end of one of my paint brushes and rolled it around to create a smooth stone-like texture for it.

Cat hair comes free of charge on all my models…

This part was all easy…

It says to turn the oven at 275F and bake for 15 minutes. So I put it on a piece of aluminum foil and tossed it in there. 15 minutes later, I pull it out and check the consistency. Pretty soft…it says you should bake longer for thicker pieces, which this is, so I put it back in for another 15. 45 minutes later I pull it out and it’s still soft. So I turn the temperature up. 15 minutes later, it’s smoking. But still soft. Another 15 and it’s still smoking…and still soft. I think it was in the oven for almost 2 hours by the time I was done. Still soft. But I had to go to bed. It was hard in the morning and it looked like this.

This thing is going to be so awesome…

It’s supposed to be plain white…but it’s stone-like, and it’ll be painted over, so I call it done. 😛

I did two more pieces the next day (not shown) and put them on for the higher temperature for 15 minutes and they were smoking when I pulled them out. Slightly less dark, but still more pink than white. So…maybe 275F at 15 minutes is the right thing to do.