For miniatures where you want to add a little something extra too to make it a nice display piece or the center piece of your army, adding a little "Extra" to it can make a plain miniature into something outstanding.
I will now try and demonstrate some techniques I do to do more advanced groundwork for display like miniatures.
Material used for this exercise.
I use the basic materials that I used in the basic section, but now I start using plastic sheet, epoxy putty (fast setting type and normal sculpting type both made by Polymeric Systems) and plastic or metal bits.
I start with a basic plastic base, In this case one of the lager 40mm round bases and I use a jewelers saw to cut a hole into it. You can also use a sharp hobby knife. Be careful though not to cut yourself. I then glue a sheet of plastic card to the bottom. I usually use something about .60 in thick or about 2 mm and then carefully trim to size.
The pourpose for the hole cut into the base is to add "depth".. give's you move up and down area to work with. Its also where I tend to add water effects.
Once I have decided where Im going to want to place the miniature and what my "theme" is going to be, I begin to start adding bits and pieces of terrain and epoxy putty to build up the scene. This is where I sometimes use the fast curing 5 min epoxy putty because of its fast cure time I can work fast and not have to wait. Plus is its important to get something to line up right the putties strength and fast cure speed will help with this.
Next I apply my ballast mixture and glue it down with CA glues just like I do with the basic bases. At this point you can also add bits and pieces or what I like to call "Junk" can be larger rocks, battlefield junk or what ever.
Once the base work is done I primer the finished model. I paint all my base work because I feel it gives a painted figure a natural look. I find that unpainted base work looks "Out of Scale". You ask, what do I mean by out of scale? Well we spend hours painting a miniature figure to give the illusion of reality. In other words we take a small metal miniature and try and paint and model it so that it looks almost like it could walk off the war game table. When the base work is applied unpainted, I feel it looks "Unnatural" or "Out of Scale" So if we paint or finish it, it looks more natural.
I also add things like static grass, foliage or water effects at this time. Ill cover these things in the next lessons.
Examples of finished base work.
This ends the second lesson.
If you have an questions or comments feel free to ask at jeff @ dragonforge . com